by Karen Harper
His stomach twisted. Without Elizabeth, England—and his wild, passionate ambitions—would be not only becalmed but sunk. And to think he’d been insulted that she had asked him about the loyalty of his men yesterday. Where in creation were they?
Her Grace had even ferreted out earlier that his man Hugh was a fine shot—and that sailor suddenly seemed to have extra coins for gambling. His other man, Giles, did, too, for that matter, though not shiny, new-minted ones.
By God’s faith, where were they now when he hadn’t given them leave to depart their posts? He’d question them stringently, as the queen had commanded him to interrogate that blackguard Barnstable. After all, both men had been on his cousin’s ship before he’d transferred to the Judith just before the battle at San Juan d’Ulua. Then, too, their covering his back as he’d boasted to the queen was before he’d let his cousin down by inadvertently leaving him behind.
He passed the royal physician, riding with the yeoman guard in the opposite direction, as he broke from the rear of the royal entourage and thundered down the road the riders and wagons had left even more rutted than they’d found it. If his actions looked suspicious, as if he were fleeing, he’d simply stand his ground and explain to Her Grace. And he’d flog those two if they had just dropped behind—or, God forbid, gone into this deep forest for their own devices, especially since the arrow obviously came from there.
Around the next turn in the road, he saw the two of them emerging from the fringe of forest. Their horses were tied to a tree trunk. How long could they have been gone? Had they stopped this far back, and he’d been dozing and not noticed?
“Where in heaven’s name have you two been?” he roared, as he reined in between them and their mounts.
Slack-jawed, they gaped up at him as if he were a ghost. They had nothing in their hands, at least, so he hadn’t caught them with bows or a quiver full of bolts or arrows.
“Just had to relieve ourselves, Cap’n,” Hugh said, shrugging. “Too much rich food and ale, e’ en for the likes of us last night, you know, more’n a quick stop would do for. And can’t hardly plop one’s bum over the side rail and just fire away off a horse like at sea, eh?”
The man’s rational explanation and jovial mood calmed Drake somewhat. But Giles didn’t look a bit innocent. No, he looked pained, green at the gills over something.
“And you, man?” Drake said, putting one arm across his saddle and leaning down toward him.
“Ne’er was seasick a day, Cap’n, but got the runs bad today.”
Drake decided not to grill them now but to watch them better, much as he’d seen Her Majesty deal with those she did not trust.
Then it hit him, and chills shot up his back: Today, as at Loseley House, just like the queen, he, too, was in the vicinity of the arrow’s path. Granted, he rode a bit back and on the other side of the coach, but thank God he had been ready to nod off, so perhaps his head had dropped then, or the coach had bounced just a whit to make the arrow intended for him miss its mark. No. No, it must have been meant for the queen, and she or her herb girl had been slightly wounded. He prayed that was all. He must ride back to be sure.
Worse, he was suddenly affrighted that the queen might think he’d turned tail and fled just now—and believe him a coward or traitor, as his cousin no doubt still did.
He turned his horse to ride toward the upheaval around the queen. He muttered a string of sailor’s oaths he never used, no, not even when he’d fled the massacre at San Juan d’Ulua, not so much, as he always claimed, to fight another day but because he was terrified he’d lose his first ship and never be trusted to command one again. His only opportunity for a future now was to convince the queen that she could trust him and that he’d never flee again.
After Dr. Huicke had come in haste and examined Meg, who was not even bleeding, Elizabeth had sent him away. Then fear and fury flooded in, and she came back to herself again.
Though she’d screamed in shock, since she’d been certain Meg was not hurt, the queen had stared silently at the arrow that had stuck in the gilded wood of the coach beyond and barely above her head. She glanced at the terror-struck Meg, still ahorse, with her hair wild, then to the arrow again. Other than that, Elizabeth could not move, could not think. Her guards had reacted, though: Some had gone into the forest.
Slowly her thoughts settled. Someone had shot through the trees expertly, exactly through Meg’s hair and the curtain beside the queen’s head and into the coach. Or else the shot had gone awry and missed what it was meant to hit—either Meg or her, but either way, the shooter could have meant to hit the queen.
Her mounted guards and closest courtiers had made a solid wall of protection around her, but they were now crowding Meg away from the coach.
“Get in here, Meg!” She found her voice at last. “Get in here!” The woman half fell, half dove into the coach. The queen slapped the pierced curtains shut on the side from which the missile had come.
Outside her coach, chaos continued. She watched out the other side as more yeomen guards peered in. Robin, Norfolk, and Cecil appeared at the side she had open.
“Shall I lead the search, including for the arrow?” Robin cried, leaning down to look in.
“It’s stuck in here.”
“I’ll stay close. Guards!” he shouted, and began to give orders. “However deep the thickets and foliage, more of you, go! On foot if you must! Boonen,” he cried to her driver, “we can’t coast along here like sitting ducks. Onward! We are far closer to safety at Titchfield than in turning back. On, man, and at the fastest clip you can safely manage!”
Elizabeth was both moved and annoyed by his taking over. “And Robin!” she cried, as her brain began to really work again, suspicions and all.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Send someone back through the entourage to tell the others I am well but to beware. They should strive to keep up even if we leave the baggage carts behind. And someone fetch Ned Topside here to his wife!”
“But he mustn’t leave little Piers unattended!” Meg cried, and that made the queen realize she, too, had recovered her wits.
“At least the bolt only grazed your skull,” Elizabeth said.
“My cap flew off, though—it was close.”
“Very close,” the queen said, and scrutinized the offending bolt stuck in the painted and gilded wood. Her own head might have been there had she been sitting straight up in the center as she usually did, or perhaps if the curtain had not slowed or deflected the shaft. Then, too, Drake had been nearby again when it hit, but where was he now?
She kept her hand firm on her friend’s shoulder, hoping to comfort her. But indeed, Meg could have been mistaken for herself on that horse, and she began to shake harder than her herbalist or the bouncing coach.
Though it was no doubt but a few moments, it seemed to Meg an eternity until Ned rode up to the coach. She cried when she saw him and knelt to reach up to take his hand through the crack between the pierced curtains. He rode quickly and jerkily along beside them, since the queen’s driver was going at a good pace.
“Slow down, Boonen!” the queen shouted, and yanked the curtains open wider on Ned’s side. “Boonen, we are away from the attack, man, and my bones and teeth can’t take the jolting!”
“Better you keep the curtains closed, Your Grace,” Ned piped up, “than face another bolt from the blue.”
“From the greenwood, you mean. And no jesting! I can’t abide this dark, damned forest. Take Meg back with you and sit her down in a wagon, not up on the seat. It is possible that the shooter believed she was me, although the fact the bolt plunged into my coach may make that a pointless point.”
Meg saw Her Grace shake her head at her own inadvertent punning. Meg held hard to Ned, but, in the stronger light now, she studied the bolt the queen had mentioned, stuck deep in the wood. The vehicle slowed as Francis Drake rode up hastily on Ned’s other side.
Meg frowned up at the bolt. She’d seen the first one at
close range, and this one looked pretty different to her. “Your Grace,” she said, her voice trembling, “this one looks like an arrow, not a bolt, doesn’t it? Maybe it wasn’t even shot by the same man—or shot by someone who is skilled with any sort of bow.”
As Ned rode away with Meg sitting before him on his horse, the queen clenched her hands so hard that her fingernails bit into her palms. She was furious with herself for letting panic command her actions and cloud her brain. While she cowered, her herb woman, no less, who had been as endangered and shaken by the deadly missile as she had been, had the presence of mind to see that the bolt was not a bolt at all but an arrow!
Two attempts on her life—if they were that. By more than one person, as Meg had suggested? She had a bolt and an arrow for evidence, yet perhaps was no closer to knowing who was the expert marksman or-men, who had, thank the good Lord, evidently missed everyone this time.
Then, too, Drake had been nearby, on his horse, his head probably even visible to the shooter above the height of Meg’s head and the top of the coach. It was feasible that the marksman had mean to hit Drake, she reasoned as, on her knees to give herself some height and leverage, she tried to dislodge the arrow. She amazed herself by not being able to budge it from the wood, at least not without perhaps snapping it off. Yes, indeed, this was not a bolt but an arrow, a fully fletched one with a shaft longer than a bolt.
“Drake,” she cried, “climb in here and pull or pry this arrow from where it stuck.”
He tied his horse’s reins to something outside and slid in from the saddle as if he were walking the yardarm of a tossing ship. He adeptly avoided her wide skirts and looked where she pointed. She opened the curtains of the side it had shot through to give him more light, for two guards blocked her view of the forest now.
“Ah,” he said, “driven deep, as if the shooter were close, when he obviously was not or someone would have spotted him. And to place it so, through all those thick trees and hanging foliage …”
“You sound as if you admire his skill.”
“I’m afraid I do, though I am thankful he was just a whit off—unless, of course, he was right on target.”
“Who was his target, do you think? It was not my falconer, Fenton, who stood between you and me this time but my herb woman. Had you thought that you might be the target as well as I again?”
“Yes—yes, of course.”
“Then what do you mean that the shooter might have been right on target?”
“That he might have only wished to affright you—again—or to warn you this second time. Or me.”
“Exactly, Captain. Both of us—either of us—could have been the bull’s-eye again, to be warned or killed. But warned to do what—to flee from whence we came? To simply fear whoever hates us? For it seems the marksman is lurking in each place we stop or pass, and that, of course, means it could be someone either stalking our progress or in our progress.”
“Yes, I agree,” he said, frowning. His usually commanding voice sounded shaky now, but perhaps that was from the jolting of the coach.
“I can hardly turn everyone in this large retinue into spies watching each other for who disappears into the forest from time to time,” she muttered.
Hastily, as if to change the subject, he said, “I shall pull the arrow out and try not to snap it off.” He started to say something else, then tugged and wrenched the arrow out. “At least four inches into that hard oak,” he reported. “To come the distance it did—but longbowmen are few and far between in this modern age,” he added, as if to himself.
“Longbowmen? You think that arrow was shot from a longbow? Those went out with my father’s reign.”
“I say that because this arrow,” he said, glaring at it in his big hands, “must have come a long ways, and an arrow cannot be shot by a crossbow, which also would have the distance. A shortbow would have been useless from a ways within the forest fringe.”
“Yes, surely someone would not have shot from the first line of trees, or he could have been seen. And if he were farther back, the thick foliage should have gotten in his way, especially with a shortbow. So I—or we—may have now been shot at by a crossbowman and mayhap a longbowman who should be nearly extinct but for decrepit, old men …”
“Well, it cannot be a marksman back from the dead or some sort of forest phantom. Your Majesty, I must tell you that I noted both my men were missing when this arrow was shot,” Drake blurted. “I searched for them and found them emerging from the forest far behind the end of the procession. They both had loose innards today, they say, and were seeing to nature’s urgent call. They had no weapons of any sort on their persons and, I believe, could not so swiftly have covered the distance in the forest from the place from which this came to where they emerged, nor, I can assure you, do they have crossbows or longbows in their saddle packs.”
“I see,” she said, taking the arrow from him. “That was quite a lengthy recital—confessional, perhaps. It is good you acted quickly and told me quickly. I charge you to keep an eye on them both.”
“I shall. I told you also lest someone who does not appreciate my attending you on this progress should report to you that I fled like one guilty.”
“Another thing we share then, Captain,” she said, carefully placing the arrow on the opposite leather seat, “is necessary devious thinking for our own personal protection and advancement.”
Their eyes met and held.
“Yes,” he admitted, then added, “and one more thing I must confess.”
She frowned. “Which is?”
“I have—Your Majesty, I have seen arrows like this, not with the same fletching, but the shafts are much the same. Look,” he said, gesturing toward it, “a pyramid point that tapers to a square base, cleverly carved.”
“But what’s this wrapped around it?”
“That’s quite characteristic and also gives it away,” he whispered, then cleared his throat. “It’s wrapped tightly with a strip of soft leather so it rotates in flight and digs deep into its target—much more deadly. These were the very sort some of the Spanish bowmen shot at us at San Juan d’Ulua.”
She sucked in a quick breath. “Spanish! I knew it. I feared it. Then—your men, like you, perhaps, could have collected such arrows for keepsakes of your deliverance.”
His fine features seemed to clench around his narrowed eyes. “True,” he said. “I have a few yet in my captain’s cabin. Quadrellos, the Spanish call these arrows, Your Grace. They bored so deep into the bodies and bones of my men, we call them homicidal arrows.”
Chapter the Eighth
As the afternoon wore on, the royal entourage, tired and distressed, pushed on through fields, villages, and a final forest. Never more than on this day had Elizabeth regretted England’s law that each local parish must maintain its own roads by spending but four days a year repairing them. That included cutting back brush and filling holes larger than pots with stones, neither of which had been done here. And if an obstacle was in the way, such as an ancient tree trunk or thicket, the road might take a sharp jog around it, so the queen’s progress must, too.
Yet Elizabeth was certain she could smell the sea, and that kept her spirits up a bit. She thought the horses pricked up their ears and pulled harder at the scent, too. As they burst from the shaded tunnel of the last deep woods, the sun-struck scene awaiting them before the town of Fareham startled them all.
It looked as if the entire population of the village, perhaps of the whole area, had turned out for a grand and glorious welcome. Cheering, waving people, six or seven deep, packed the rutted dirt road into the town. Banners, many improvised from tablecloths or petticoats, smacked smartly in the breeze as people waved them or held them aloft on poles. Some sort of low wooden scaffolding had been erected and was strewn with leafy boughs, evidently as a stage for a pageant. In the midst of it all, Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton, and his wife, Lady Mary, rode to greet them on flower-bedecked matching horses.
&n
bsp; Elizabeth called to Cecil and Robin from the depths of her coach, “I was expecting hard looks and meager cheers. Perhaps I was in error to judge, though I know well enough the tricks of pretense and artifice.”
“But you had ordered,” Cecil said, bending down a bit to look in at her, “that we would ride straight for the shelter of Place House. Your Grace, after that possible attempt on your life today …”
“My people, Cecil, are awaiting, and in an area I had been fretting was not strong for a Protestant queen. I will not cower from terror, even in this open area with many about we do not know. Especially, their queen shall not sit, as if some guilty prisoner, in her coach to watch these festivities. But,” she went on to stay the further protest coming from him, “I am not disillusioned that those white-teethed smiles coming this way may not be the bared fangs of wolves. Boonen, halt here!” she shouted. Then she added quietly to Cecil alone, “Deploy my guards carefully, my lord, and do put on a pleasant face.”
The twenty-four-year-old Earl of Southampton, Henry Wriothesley, whose last name was pronounced Rise-lee, was a young whelp Elizabeth still had hopes she could tame. These last few years, he was much more at court in London and was becoming a vocal member of her nobles, though she was afraid he listened far too much to Norfolk. What galled her most about Southampton as a covert supporter of her rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, was that his father had been one of her father’s staunchest supporters when the old religion was being supplanted by the new.
The first Earl of Southampton, Thomas, had worked for King Henry VIII and his chief advisor, Cromwell. Twenty-seven former monastic manors, including Titchfield Abbey but a half mile from here, had been awarded to this earl’s father for “his good and true and faithful service” to the Tudor king. Young Henry had inherited the earldom at the tender age of five but had somehow turned back to the Catholic faith while yet wallowing in the wealth that had flowed from the Tudors.