The Hooded Hawke: An Elizabeth I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  She drained the rest of her wine and put the goblet on a servant’s tray. “I will hear more of this later, Robert, in private, but for now, this cool, old castle feels good on this warm day. I pray it will serve as a most welcome haven from all that lies outside these walls—including that strange, heathen shire of Hampshire I am determined to see for myself.”

  The next day the queen requested a tournament of sporting events. It pleased her people well to have diversion from their travels. Elizabeth herself had shot the first arrow of the match but now watched from the upper parapet walkway that encircled the castle. Besides the breezes being cool up here, her view of the events was good—and, unless some villain flew overhead like Icarus with waxen wings and with a bow like Cupid, she felt safe.

  She had been using both Jenks and Cecil’s man Keenan to summon certain ones to her for conversation, which was actually interrogation. Drake stood by her side now with his bowling ball in his hands, for those not shooting at the butts were bowling on makeshift grass alleys servants had hastily laid out.

  “I was not aware you had brought two men with you,” she told Drake after some small talk. “When I heard, I sent word they were to participate today in the shooting match with the others and not hang about in the shadows.”

  “I believe I did not mention their presence, Your Grace, but I did not want to be alone on the roads. I wasn’t certain of the situation with ruffians or outlaws. Besides, since my summons to attend you on your annual progress was common knowledge among my shipmen, I thought word might get back to my cousin, and that would make him even more—ah, embittered toward me. In short I, like you, thought I could profit from some protection.”

  “Of course. A good idea. Are your companions strictly sailors, then?”

  “Sailors and soldiers.”

  “Skilled in what sort of warfare on your ship? Must each soldier at sea be adept in both firearms and archery, or do they focus on one task?”

  “Hugh there at the butts, for instance,” he told her, pointing at the man she had already identified and had been watching closely below, “is a fine bowman, even swinging from the rigging, though I did not realize you would include my men in the shooting match today.”

  “He has been included at my special request. Is he more adept at longbow or crossbow?”

  “Both, but—” He dropped his arm and turned to look her full in the face. “Your Grace, you aren’t thinking that …” He cleared his throat. “Both of those men are fully loyal to me—and you. That is why I brought them.”

  “But can you vouch for their whereabouts when you and I were shot at?”

  “I—no. They told me later they were in the servants’ tent catching a few winks until they heard the hubbub. But I know my men, Your Grace.”

  His brown eyes were so steady as he faced her, his expression slightly alarmed yet steadfast. She believed him, didn’t she?

  “You see, they were both with me that disastrous day at San Juan d’Ulua, Your Majesty,” he went on, his voice calm and deliberate. “They covered my back and may have saved my life.”

  “And could not have been corrupted since by an offer of coins from—say, your cousin?”

  His gaze wavered for a moment, and she sensed that his inward fears pressed hard on his heart. She understood that fully.

  “If a captain can’t trust his men, Your Grace, the battle might not be worth the fight, and it would certainly be impossible to win. A captain can’t go it alone.”

  Elizabeth nodded and looked away from him at last, down at her people playing their games—councilors and courtiers with servants looking on. “You are right, of course, Captain Drake, and there are some of my folk I can vouch for, too. After that, it becomes most difficult. Come with me, won’t you, while I see how things are going down there at closer range? A captain cannot always hang about the cabin or even in the crow’s nest but must mingle with the crew.”

  The queen noted that even Bishop Horne was on the hastily laid out bowling alleys. Accompanied by Francis Drake, she watched her courtiers cast their six-inch balls from knee height toward two cones. The winner was the one who laid his bowl nearest the cones, called marks. Most courtiers traveled with their set of balls, termed jacks or bowls, often in a tooled Spanish leather case. Much money, time, and curses were spent on playing bowls in her kingdom. Men wrangled over a hair’s breadth to declare a win.

  “What the deuce! A pox on it! You’ve cut me off!” Robin yelled at Lord Suffolk as she and Drake approached and stood a ways back to watch.

  Chuckling, Suffolk cast his second ball, then jumped and danced about, shouting, “Rub! Rub! Rub!” as it rolled toward the mark.

  “Ha!” Robin retorted. “Now there’s the rub—you’ve lost, my lord!”

  The queen was surprised to see that Cecil had left his papers to take on Norfolk on another alley, but maybe he, too, saw this opportunity to observe those who might be guilty of evil intentions. Still trailing her sea captain, Elizabeth strolled over.

  Cecil and Norfolk were bowling on the bias, a game that was much more of a challenge than regular bowls because it used jacks that were not quite round, so they rolled obliquely. It was Cecil’s turn, and Norfolk waited impatiently—and kept unwittingly scratching his left wrist, now not covered with his Spanish leather riding gloves.

  She sidled up to him, though when he noted how others turned his way, he swung around to face her. He bowed to her but ignored Drake.

  “Your Grace,” Norfolk said, “will you take a turn, then? One never knows which way the ball will go. Much like dice which are not loaded or a deck of unmarked cards, it is all so much more interesting.”

  “I warrant you like things veering off the way they should not rightfully go.”

  “At times, I do indeed.”

  “But I already play some such game with you, Norfolk. Best remember I make the rules in this land, and you will go by them or forfeit much. Are you all right? You have been digging at that wrist, scratching like a dog.”

  His eyes narrowed; he jerked his hand away from the other. “I swear, the beds at Will More’s place were full of fleas,” he muttered.

  She glanced down at the wrist at his side. He had shoved his cuff up during play but now yanked it down again. It was, of course, impossible that Norfolk himself had shot at her and Drake, for he had been standing not far from them with a gauntlet and hawk on his wrist. But Norfolk had many followers, perhaps allies of Queen Mary, Catholics and their ilk, even the Spanish—or simply others who liked his wealth, his coins he could leave scattered about and not miss one lost.

  Yes, she recalled how readily he let poor Fenton place the gauntlet on his hand, perhaps to hide his wrist. Had he mayhap been up near the stinging nettle hedges, not to build the stile but to ascertain its position? Though she had insulted him by giving him a falcon far under his rank, he could have been grateful to have his wrist covered. And then, perhaps he’d given that signal where he appeared to swat a fly away …

  “Let me see that wrist,” she said, and he, perhaps realizing too much protest gave away guilty motives, lifted his cuff and held it out for her.

  “I don’t see bites, but rather a red rash you’ve made much worse.”

  “It’s nothing,” he insisted, avoiding her eyes.

  She fought to keep calm when she would like to cuff him at the least or to toss him in this castle’s old dungeon at best. “I only ask because some on this journey have contacted stinging nettle, and that leaves a bad rash,” she said, hoping her nonchalant tone carried true. “See my herbal mistress for a cure, lest that could be your problem.”

  “I could not have something like that.”

  “I believe,” she said, aware that Drake and Cecil hung on their every word, “nettle seems pretty to look at but carries its poisonous ways within. Captain Drake, shall we take a turn bowling with jacks which do not slant astray, then?”

  She put her hand on his arm and turned away. Again she felt that strange circle
of chill in the center of her back and between her breasts, but she could hardly wear Drake’s armor among her closest kin and courtiers. She shuddered and tried to shake a strange sense of foreboding as she strode swiftly on.

  Chapter the Seventh

  Their first night on the road, with just over half of the distance covered to their next stop, they stayed at the tiny town of High Cross. The queen and her closest courtiers were ecstatically welcomed into an ancient inn, though one newly whitewashed and scrubbed for her visit. The rest of the entourage had to make do in rented chambers or their own tents.

  The next morning, after smiling and nodding through a concert of off-key madrigals and numerous fare-thee-well speeches, queen and court were offered a huge breakfast by local farmers who spread their plain but plenteous fare on plank tables on the village green, from which the sheep had been lately shooed away. Then it was off toward Southampton’s grand home at Titchfield near Fareham, where everyone looked forward to a more hospitable haven—but for the fact, Elizabeth brooded, that she could not trust her future host worth a fig.

  Her bishop’s warning about Hampshire haunted Elizabeth as her entourage plunged into another deep forest of that shire. Wolves and wild boars still inhabited these woods. More than once horses pricked up their ears, and her people’s chatter stilled at the sound of a howl or as a snorting, big-tusked boar charged across the road.

  “Rather like a black cat, eh?” Robin joked before she frowned him to silence.

  Once in a while, the royal entourage emerged to clearings and hamlets where people stared and even cheered her on. The day was sunny, but that made the forest roads they plunged through much like tunnels by comparison. Giant oaks loomed overhead, which Drake told her were just the sort used to build ships. They passed through deep banks of spiny, yellow-flowered furze where the faint smell of wood smoke from remote, invisible chimneys or campfires wafted on the air. Erratic dirt tracks led from the main road into mazes of thickets. Whether such paths were beaten bare by beasts of the animal or human kind she was not sure.

  Norfolk rode with her a while, but she found his presence more oppressive than the scenery, so she sent him back into the procession and made do with Robin and Drake, however much Robin seemed to dislike him. It pleased her to think he might actually be jealous of the man.

  In truth, she needed some diversion, for the fortified Place House mansion at Titchfield where they would stay was yet several hours away. The nearest town was Fareham, which some of her courtiers had been confusing with Farnham, the place they had left behind this morning. Robin tried to make light of the similar names with poems and puns but soon fell silent again.

  “You’ve seen our destination, Captain,” she called to Drake. “Describe it for me, then.”

  “I was surprised to see that Fareham, where I left my ship and the rest of my men on the River Meon, is such a flourishing seaport, Your Grace. The quays are bustling with exports of timber, bricks, and wheat and imports of wine, coal, and salt. Shipbuilding abounds there, too. I hope you will deign to visit my men and my ship.”

  “I will indeed. Is the Meon of Fareham like that pretty little River Wey we saw at Farnham?”

  “The Meon has much more—well, character, Your Grace. It’s a chalk river, flowing from the downs and the marshes, and its size and strength vary with the weather, as if it had moods of its own. With the shipbuilding there, it reminds me of the River Medway, where I grew up after my family left Dartmoor.”

  She saw Robin roll his eyes and dramatically pretend to stifle a yawn. She would have liked to slap him as Drake went on. “That was where, under your father’s reign, ships of the new royal navy laid up for repairs. I was fascinated by sailors and their stories. And it was an area ever fully loyal to the Tudors, unlike—well, I fear unlike the area around Fareham.”

  He may have realized he wasn’t helping her low spirits, for he seemed to sink into silence after that burst of information. She sent Robin away and ordered one of her guards to fetch Meg Milligrew from the vast parade of people. Would they never get to Fareham? she fumed. If they could but escape all these huge trees and deep woodland, she could breathe the free air of the sea.

  Worse, Cecil had begun her day by daring to argue again that she should have canceled at least this part of the journey, for, he said, backing up Bishop Horne’s warning, their next host, the second Earl of Southampton, was a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic and ally of Norfolk. Their stop with her bishop had been a short respite, but between Sir William More at Loseley House and Lord Southampton at Place House in Fareham, it was out of the frying pan and into the fire, he’d lectured her.

  “I know that, and I have said I know that!” she’d exploded at Cecil. “This is one way to keep an eye on them and use up their funds, which could go for more dangerous purposes than entertaining their true queen and her court! Best to beard them in their dens, so no more, Cecil, even from you!”

  Now, though, in the dark heart of endless forests full of feral dens, she wasn’t so sure she was right. Yet certainly there was safety in numbers, and she had that. Her guards rode before and behind the coach and at each of its wheels, so they did not block her view of the scenery or people she summoned to her.

  She turned to question Drake about how many men guarded his ship in Fareham. But his head bobbed in exhaustion, and he now rode just slightly back so his horse’s head was all she could see without twisting her neck.’S blood, this was a long, boring ride today, and, after she spoke with Meg, she would nap, too.

  “You sent for me, Your Grace.” Meg’s voice interrupted her thoughts. Her herb woman had made her way through the guards and appeared on the other side of the coach from where Drake rode. Elizabeth thought Meg rode a horse well—a good-looking palfrey, too—as she jogged abreast the coach.

  Elizabeth scooted toward the edge of her seat so she wouldn’t have to speak too loudly. She held the leather curtain farther back with her hand and leaned her cheek against its heavy folds. “Meg, has Lord Norfolk been to you for a cure for a rash or flea bites?”

  “Asking for the broad-leafed dock tincture, you mean?”

  “Whatever it is. Has he asked you for aught?”

  Elizabeth knew she was growing short-tempered even with those she favored and trusted, but she could not help it. And this progress was to have been not only for politics but for pleasure!

  “No, Your Grace, he hasn’t asked me for a thing. Piers’s and Sim’s rashes are finally better, though.”

  “I am glad to hear that. How does the little one? Still crying?”

  “Some. I dare say, Your Grace, I am a comfort to him. I—I understand his grief.”

  “And I pray he, in turn, will be good comfort for you, my Meg.”

  “Nothing will ever replace our little Ned, but—” She sniffed hard. Their eyes met. Elizabeth wondered if her own griefs ever showed so on her face. For one moment, watching Meg was like looking in a dark glass, not at her own stoic countenance but as she would appear if she ever dared show fear or grief in public. Meg’s face was so like her own, her form so similar. She even wore a velvet cap, one of the queen’s castaways, perched on her red hair. Elizabeth was glad to see it, for the woman hadn’t given a fig what she looked like for weeks after her babe died.

  “But what, Meg?” she prompted.

  “The lad reminds me so of Ned, it’s uncanny, Your Grace. Oh, I mean not so much in looks but in his flights of fancy and his way with words, once he gets going about fairies and ghosts and such. Ned’s taken to him, too, encourages him, says he’d make a fine boy to play the children or ladies’ parts—so maybe we can just keep him, Your Grace.”

  “We shall think about that, if Piers is willing, but I’m not certain the two lads should be separated. Jenks and his wife say Sim is just the opposite, you know, all solid fact, dedicated to taking over for his father back home, yet he loves the unknown and is thrilled to be on a journey.”

  “Jenks also says Sim keeps saying he can’t wait t
o see the sea. I thought maybe Captain Drake would want a cabin boy or such.”

  Elizabeth’s hand was getting tired of holding the stiff curtain back; it kept rubbing against her cheek and temple as the coach bounced along. Besides, it was time to send Meg back to her place in the entourage so Norfolk or others would not wonder what was afoot that the queen spoke overlong to her herbalist.

  “A cabin boy? A fine idea—I repeat, if we agree the two lads should be separated. I know how sore it pained me to be continually separated from my brother years ago—and, yes, sometimes from my sister, too, though she ever detested me.” She heaved a sigh. “We shall worry about the Naseby lads later, for there are other things to fret for now and—”

  Meg screamed. Her tidy cap and coif seemed to rip free of her head as she fell forward on her horse’s neck. In that brief second, Elizabeth screamed, too, as something sliced through the leather curtain she held against her head.

  Drake was half dozing in the saddle on the rear starboard side of the royal coach when a woman’s scream and then another cut the air.

  He looked ahead, right, then left. Had the queen screamed? No, more likely her herb girl, Meg Milligrew. It must be she who screamed twice.

  In an instant, he spurred his horse, but the queen’s guards engulfed the coach, shutting him out. Again he tried to ride forward but the Earl of Leicester, the Duke of Norfolk, and others edged him away.

  “What’s amiss?” he shouted, as a yeoman guard turned away from the coach and rode past him.

  “Got to fetch the physician.”

  “What befell, man?”

  “Arrow shot …” he called over his shoulder before the rest of his words were drowned by the buzz of voices.

  Drake’s first impulse was to ride into the forest in the direction from which the attack had come, but several yeomen guards were already doing that. He glanced behind him for his men. Neither was where he had been and should be.

  Once he heard the queen’s commanding voice up ahead and was certain she was safe, he swung his mount back along the now halting flanks of the entourage. People looked frenzied, but no one knew a thing, and he did not want to create panic by telling what he knew—which wasn’t much, wasn’t enough.