by Karen Harper
“Tops’ls down!” First Mate Haverhill bellowed on the deck just below her. “Just the lower foremast and mains’l!”
Back to reality, Elizabeth began to plan the rest of her day. She must return to Place House and sneak up those back stairs, and tomorrow mingle with her courtiers and hosts. She intended to interrogate Lady Mary, for if she knew anything about her husband’s loyalty to the northern lords, the young woman might be forced—coerced—to tell. Elizabeth hated deceitful marriages, for she’d seen enough of those, but she was getting desperate to make Norfolk and his cronies play their hands. Then she’d find a way to trump them—and maybe accuse them of complicity in murder, too.
At first the queen could not believe her ears when a voice aloft shouted, “Fire!” She scanned the forest on the starboard side but saw no smoke in the trees. The summer woods were quite dry, though; even Hern the Hunter had mentioned that the shake shingles of his cottage roof were dry as tinder.
“Fire arrows!” another voice above her shrieked.
She heard a whoosh and a thud—and then she knew. Stooping behind the wooden bulwark of the ship, shading her eyes, she saw a streak of fire whiz by just above her head. That arrow pierced the lower mainmast sail and set it afire.
Then everything happened at once. With a scream, a sailor with an arrow in his back and his shirt aflame crashed from high above to the main deck with a sickening thud. Haverhill rushed to him, bent over him, then moved away. Dead? Another man dead with an arrow in him?
Jenks and Clifford bent low and zigzagged their way toward her, but Drake shouted at them to stay down and stay back. He yelled up at her, “You there, man! Down! Get down flat on the deck!” Elizabeth sprawled on the boards as Drake’s voice cracked out, “Fire on deck! Haul water up the port side! Down from the shrouds! Fire on board!”
All the while, his voice got louder, louder. Perhaps he would panic as he had under Spanish attack. No, she realized he sounded louder because he was coming closer, up the short flight of stairs to where she lay. Hunched over against the next flaming arrow, which also slashed into the sail to ignite it, Drake half crawled, half rolled toward her and blocked her in with his own body. Smoke and heat began to belch out above them, but the air was a bit better here.
“Coming from the forest again?” she asked.
“Yes, but I don’t think they can hit us from this angle. The ship’s a sitting duck if we don’t keep the sails unfurled to keep moving, yet that will make them burn faster. Then the masts and decks will ignite.”
“It must be you the bowman is after,” she said. “Only those I trust know I’m here.”
“I shouldn’t have left Giles holding the horses. But other than him, are you sure no one could have seen you leave or come aboard—and recognized you or your men?”
“I’m not sure of anything anymore.”
“John Hawkins would never give orders to burn one of his own ships.”
“Not even to discredit or disable you?”
“By my faith, if the Spanish are behind this, I will wring every one of their necks with my bare hands!”
“I’ m going to peek to see if I can at least tell what part of the forest the arrows are coming from. We can have it searched later,” she told him, breathing raggedly. The smoke and heat were getting worse. Her eyes stung, and she could scent the stench of burning canvas clear down into the pit of her stomach.
“Permission denied,” he said, pressing her down, breathing hard, too. “Those arrows—from a longbow—are not coming from the forest fringe, but at least a ways in. They’re powerful and perfectly placed to burn us to the waterline—or pick us off if we get up to shoot back or jump overboard.”
“Shoot back at what? The enemy’s invisible again. Just hidden, I mean, by the trees.”
Men continued to scramble down from the rigging above them and take cover. The mainsail burned briskly, and the mainmast began to char. Blasts of heat slapped at them. The ship shuddered when it nosed into the riverbank and went slightly atilt.
Pinned down, aground, with flames crackling and spreading in the sails above them, they were not only sitting ducks but about to be cooked.
Chapter the Thirteenth
The smoke and flames will cover for us,” Drake told her, starting to cough. “We’ve got to get you on shore.” Jenks and Clifford must have realized they could safely move about also, for they appeared, eyes streaming tears from the smoke.
“Drake, you’ve got to get back to your men,” she insisted, “to try to save the ship.” They helped each other up; the three men clustered around her like a barrier. No more arrows came their way, though, if they had, their sound must surely be covered by their shouts of the crew and the roar of the mainsail burning.
“You come before the ship,” Drake argued. “We’ll go down a mooring rope together so I can get you back to town.”
He took her hand and led her with Jenks and Clifford tight behind. Drake looked over the gunwales, then began to haul up a thick rope. “We’re aground in the soft riverbank. The three of us will hail a smaller river craft and take you the short distance to the town wharf, where you can get your horses. Haverhill, to me!” he shouted, then started hacking again.
“Here, Cap’n!” the first mate cried, emerging bedraggled from the fog of smoke.
“Any more than one man hit?”
“Just Smythe, Cap’n—dead when he hit the deck.”
“And the bucket brigade?”
“We’ll keep it from spreading on deck, but the mains’l and mast are done for.”
“I’m going to see that our guest gets safely back to town.”
“Drake,” she said, turning close into his shoulder so the others would not hear, “you regret you left the fleet at San Juan d’Ulua. Though we yet stand on your ship’s decks where you are master and commander, I order you to stay.”
She turned away from him. “Clifford, you go down the rope first to be sure it’s secure, then I will follow, then Jenks.”
No one argued, but she heard Drake say to Haverhill, “I want Hugh Mason brought forthwith to me, even if he’s helping fight the fire.”
“Didn’t want to bother you with your guest here, Cap’n, but he never sailed with us.”
“What?”
“He came aboard, all right, fuming at being told to stay below and in the galley. But he musta gone o’er the side soon after, when we was still in dock.”
Even as Clifford seized the thick mooring rope and disappeared over the side of the ship, Elizabeth’s stare met Drake’s. “Hardly a sick stomach as he had in the forest,” she said. “I’ll wager that your Giles back in town isn’t holding the horses, either.”
Drake’s face turned nearly as red as his beard, and a pulse pounded in his forehead. “I’ll see to him—both of them. But now, at least let me send a company of armed men with you.”
“And draw attention to me when I can slip back into Place House better this way? Put the fire out, Captain, and save your ship, then hie yourself to me on the morrow so we can make plans to save ourselves.”
She grasped the rope, which went loose when Clifford’s weight left it; she stepped on an empty cannon platform to get over the side. She swung her leg up and over. Jenks helped lift her with a hand on her elbow; she felt Drake’s firm touch on her waist.
Despite Jenks and Haverhill gaping at them, Drake told her, “Peace or war, garbed male or female, you are brave and bold, my queen!” He bowed smartly and kissed her dirty hand before he let her go.
The mooring rope was almost too thick to clench; the friction of it burned her hands. She started to slide too fast until she also gripped the rope with her legs. Soon Clifford helped her down, and Jenks followed.
“I’ll flag a ship,” Jenks said when they all stood on the stretch of grassy bank. She saw he had his pick of river craft, as several sloops and smaller trading vessels coming or going from Fareham had either stopped to watch the fire or to help with it.
He soon re
turned, and the three of them ignominiously took a small French merchantman piled with coal back into Fareham. Smoke- and soot-blackened, agonized and angry, the Queen of England noted well that Drake’s man Giles and their horses were nowhere to be seen. At least that meant that John Hawkins and his lackeys were now the prime ones to be suspected, but England could no more afford to lose that man and his ships than she could Drake.
Pulling her cap down over her face in the growing dusk, afoot between her two big guards, the queen stretched her strides toward Place House.
Elizabeth felt sore all over; her feet hurt from the walk back from town in her new boots, and she was black and blue from throwing herself onto the deck. She’d scraped both hands on that big mooring rope when she’d abandoned ship.
Rosie Radcliffe helped her take a sponge bath and wrapped her in a robe, but Meg kept hanging about, even after she put some soothing marsh mallow salve on the queen’s hands.
“Why aren’t you running to see Ned and Piers?” Elizabeth asked. “I’ve told you all I know and why we must concentrate on John Hawkins now. I’ll probably summon him here from London if he’s still there. Yes, Cecil can send Keenan for him first thing in the morning. And I may call a Privy Plot Council at first light, so best you get some sleep, Meg, queen for a day. Well, whatever is it?”
Rather than looking at her, Meg’s gaze met Rosie’s as the lady-in-waiting combed the queen’s long red hair.
“Your Majesty,” Meg said, “I made a big mistake today. You see, Ned and Piers stopped under the windows there—just for a minute—to sing me a little song. Gracious, Rosie heard them first and called my attention to them.”
“And reminded you of your duty to stay put,” Rosie replied.
“Just tell me!” Elizabeth ordered. “I assured Captain Drake today that my closest servants always told me the truth, but you are hemming and hawing.”
“Yes, Your Grace. I went to the window to watch—I mean, I was keeping back of the drapery but then stepped out for a second and—”
“’S blood!” Elizabeth said, rising so quickly the comb caught in her hair. “Spit it out. Someone recognized you? I mean as yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe not. Even if they did, they could just think your herb mistress was waving out the window.”
“And think it’s my herb mistress so finely dressed? And think if I’m supposedly resting that Ned and Piers would be singing me songs? I’m afraid to even ask, but who was it?”
Meg hesitated, then blurted, “The duke and the earl together. Then they hurried off.”
Elizabeth pressed her hands to her head. “So you are telling me,” she said, trying to keep calm, “that the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Southampton saw you gesturing and grinning down at Ned and the boy. That’s what you’re telling me when I expressly ordered you not to look out the windows?”
She was losing control. It was too much for one day. This meant that John Hawkins might not be the prime culprit. If Norfolk and Southampton had somehow realized she wasn’t here, that changed everything again. If her enemies had somehow construed where she had gone, their orders to their hirelings—even to that missing Spanish archer—could have been to frighten or to fry her and Drake!
“When was this?” she demanded, as Meg cringed. “What time?”
“Ah—I’m not certain, Your Grace.”
“Early afternoon,” Rosie put in.
The queen began to pace. Yes, if those two had recognized Meg, especially since she was fussing over Ned and the boy, they would have had time to discover Meg was missing and put two and two together. She wished she could do the same. Her brain was spinning too fast. Another dead man, a rain of fire arrows, a half-burned ship, and she was no closer to being certain who was behind all this than—than if she’d spent all this time searching the forest for an invisible foe.
“Your Grace, I rue the moment but can’t rue the reason. I just—Ned and Piers—I couldn’t ignore them, not after—after losing my baby, then kind of losing Ned and myself, too.”
“I know. And I did tell Ned it would buck you up to have him and Piers here today, but he still should have known better than to tempt you. You are both at fault. Hell’s gates, Meg, don’t look so morose. Besides, what you told me makes me realize that my first order of business tomorrow is not to call a Privy Plot Council meeting but to question Mary Wriothesley about her husband’s actions. So it may be for the best, though if her lord and Norfolk have figured out that I had my herb mistress stand in for me while I went sailing in men’s garb, he and his cohorts—and Mary, Queen of Scots, no doubt—will have a good laugh at my expense, damn them all.”
“She’d best not try to look down her nose at you, Your Grace,” Meg said, standing straighter and pulling her shoulders back. She lifted her chin and spoke decisively, which made Elizabeth recall why she’d ever thought she could pull this switch off in the first place. “After all,” Meg went on, suddenly sounding like the best-tutored woman in the realm, “the Scots queen’s the one who helped to kill her husband in that explosion in Edinburgh—everybody says so—and ran off with that blackguard Earl of Bothwell, even though her supporters claim he forced her. Lord Cecil said she’s ruled by her female passions, and that’s why she’s doomed as a queen, while you are ruled by reason.”
Yes, Elizabeth thought, her nemesis the Queen of Scots might be ruled by her female passions, those very passions that the Queen of England had almost let free today with Drake. She had smothered them before they could catch and flame like those lighted arrows in the sails, but it made her understand Mary Stuart the more, because she still felt the fire—not the one on the ship, but the one in her heart.
After the rather stilted Sabbath church service—given by the man who was possibly the only local Protestant cleric and one who had obviously never been invited to Southampton’s home before—Elizabeth changed to a plainer gown for the rest of the day. As she was expecting Drake to show up sometime soon, she didn’t plan to look too plain, yet she wanted to show him she was mourning the loss of his sailor and, almost, his ship. She was also awaiting her hostess, Lady Mary, who had been summoned to attend the queen alone in her privy chamber forthwith.
“So strange in a Protestant country,” Rosie mused as she lifted Elizabeth’s single-stranded pearl necklace over her carefully coiffed head, “that so many in the land are named Mary. They are too old to be named in honor of your royal sister, so it must be for your father’s sister Mary, the Tudor Rose, or more likely for the Virgin herself.”
“That reminds me of that so-called welcome pageant we had when we arrived here,” Elizabeth told her, “with the Virgin Mary herself lecturing me. Yes, a thousand Marys, but these last years I’ve ruled, the name of another virgin is the very fashion, too.”
“Indeed. At least near London, I hear not only of many newborn Elizabeths these days but also of Virginias in your honor.”
“Listen to me—unlike Meg listened yesterday, my friend,” she told Rosie, as she stood and flicked her fan to cool her face and throat. It was a warm day already, and she expected her interview with Mary Wriothesley to be heated.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Sit at your embroidery in that back corner and do not panic or despair at what you hear. And what you hear, unless I give you leave to speak of it later, is to be held close to your chest—like a winning hand in a game of primero.”
When Clifford came in to announce that Mary, Lady Southampton awaited in the hall outside, the queen had him move Rosie’s embroidery frame for her. Once her friend was settled, sewing away as if her very life depended on it, Elizabeth told Clifford, “The Lady Mary may enter.”
The young woman looked especially pretty this morning, the queen thought, perhaps still flushed with happiness over her tryst with her lover. Elizabeth had learned the name and the trade—Jamie Clewiston, son of the local goldsmith and apprenticed to his father—of the man who had played poor Actaeon, punished for gazing on the nakedness of the
goddess Diana.
“I hope you enjoyed the Sabbath service, Lady Mary.”
“Oh, yes, of course, Your Majesty.”
After Mary curtsied, she sat carefully in the chair the queen indicated. Their toes and skirts nearly touched. Elizabeth took a fig from the dish on the side table and ate it slowly without offering her one. In the silence, the young woman squirmed slightly, but she knew better than to speak again until the queen did.
“Since you don’t give a fig for me, I didn’t think I’d give one to you. I brought these from London,” Elizabeth said, her mouth half full.
The woman looked instantly appalled. “I—I don’t understand, Your Majesty. My husband and I are honored to have you in our home.”
“But your loyalty lies with another queen, is that not true?” She loved these figs, but they were turning to mud in her mouth.
“I—certainly not, Your Majesty. I’m sure you know that we have clung to the old faith, but you have given your people the right to follow their consciences if it is in private.”
She spoke well. Her dander was up. It might take a lot to make her crumble.
“So you or your retainers would stand with me—fight with me—against Catholic, pro-Mary of Scots factions in the north, if it comes to that?”
“But—my husband should be here to tell you of our loyalty, and I beg you to send for him.”
“If I do that, he would hear of your disloyalty to him, Lady Southampton. You see, how can I trust your profession of loyalty to me when I have seen more than once with my own eyes—and those of one of my servants yesterday behind the old burial mound—that you are not even true to your husband?”
The woman had gone stone still. Her eyes went wide; her pouted lower lip dropped open before she closed her mouth. She gripped the arms of her chair so hard her fingers went white.
“Well?” Elizabeth said. “I’m referring to the man who was turned to a very virile stag onstage, though I suppose the transposition from polite to passionate is part of his allure offstage, too.”