by Karen Harper
“But victory,” Cecil finished for her. “Your assured Mary and her next husband Norfolk may believe they are assured of victory in cutting off the green vine of Elizabeth.”
Chills racked her. Again she felt that strange, icy circle between her breasts and her shoulder blades as if a ghostly shaft had sliced right through her. She imagined pain there; for a moment she could not catch her breath. She saw her dead falconer and felt his life bleed away as she held his hand. Poor Tom Naseby lay dead at her feet, and Drake’s sailor crashed to the deck with a flaming arrow in his back. Warnings, all dire omens of worse to come?
Her voice shook as she said, “I believe you may be right, Cecil. But if my rival queen knows of the bowman sent to slice through the vine, why a knife instead of an arrow—or bolt or quadrello?”
“Worse, where and when will the next attack be made?” Drake asked, and stepped between her and the window as if to shield her from the outside. “You know, Your Grace, however warm the night, Norfolk’s rooms are across the way, as is a slate roof where a bowman could look in here.”
“I have guards both outside his room and on the roof, but you are right. I have no one inside Norfolk’s chamber to know what is going on with him. But he’s wily, a fox indeed, so he would not allow his archer to shoot from his room, where he could be traced. I may have set him up in that fox and geese game tonight, my friends, but he may well be playing hoodman’s blind with me.”
“The same game as blindman’s buff?” Meg asked. “You mean he’s put a hood of sorts over your head and amuses himself by dealing blows? You can’t tell who’s hitting you so it just goes on and on until you guess right?”
“Yes, but we must do more than guess!’S blood, it has to stop here and now! If I can’t control Norfolk, though he’s daily underfoot, I will be forced to change my royal cousin Mary’s status from guarded guest to prisoner. Once that’s done, it’s a slippery slope to worse things, and I can’t abide the idea of a queen ever being executed again. My father may have done it to my mother and to my Howard cousin, Queen Catherine, but I can’t stand the thought!”
Elizabeth lowered her voice, for it sounded nearly out of control. She could not believe she had blurted all that out, her deepest fears, when things had not yet come to such a pass.
“Maybe,” Rosie said in the awkward silence, “the Duke of Norfolk is still seething over the fact the Tudors beheaded a Howard queen.”
“I’m at the point where I don’t care why but what he’s doing. And I can hardly arrest the highest noble in the land over a pillow!”
A horrid headache suddenly clenched her forehead as if it were in a giant vise. She motioned them to leave her, and Rosie helped her into the adjoining bedchamber, where, once the door was shut, the queen burst into tears that splattered the beheaded vine like rain.
Elizabeth drank a soothing posset Meg sent in and slept the sleep of the dead, until a repeated knocking on a distant door roused her.
Her bedroom was pitch-black. For one moment she could not recall where she was. A low-burning lantern should be on the far table. Where was Rosie? At least her headache was gone, but she felt light-headed, disembodied.
Then she remembered everything—and that she had put Norfolk’s precious pillow in its linen pillowcase under her own bed. She peered around the bedcurtain that, like the bed itself, she had hauled with her on her progress. Thank heavens, Rosie came back in with the lantern.
“What is it?”
“Justin Keenan’s outside in the hall with an important message he will give only to you.”
“Have him pass the note in.”
“He had nothing written—something he’s seen. About Norfolk, I believe.”
“’S blood. Is Cecil not with him? It must be the middle of the night.”
“After two of the clock. I can tell by the new guard on the door. All Keenan will say is to tell you it’s important.”
“Let him in the outer chamber, and have a yeoman guard come in with him.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” Rosie said, shoving her bounteous hair from her face as she went back out.
Elizabeth realized she must look like one of the Furies, but Keenan was too disciplined and circumspect to come to her in the middle of the night without the sure knowledge of something dire.
She tied her long hair back and wrapped her robe around her. She felt a bit dizzy at first and thought she might lose her balance. Even this time of year, the slanted floorboards of the inn were cold where the mats did not reach. She tried to shove her feet into her woolen mules but kicked one away, just as Meg had said she’d kicked the stone jar under Norfolk’s bed. Norfolk’s bed, which the damned Queen of Scots wanted to share only so she could get the English throne and have a double claim to it through her own bloodline and Norfolk’s, too.
Elizabeth found the other slipper and went into the outer chamber. Keenan bowed low. He looked distraught.
“Tell me.”
“Both of my horses are gone. There wasn’t room for them in the inn stables, crowded as it is tonight.”
“You woke me for a horse theft, man? Are you dement—”
“I had them tethered out in back and was sleeping on the ground near them. They’re the fastest courier mounts I’ve ever had, and they cost Lord Cecil a pretty penny.”
“Then go to see Cecil!”
“The point is, Your Majesty, though I woke after the horses had been led off a ways, I glimpsed Norfolk on one, and two of his men shared the other. I think they’re gone—horses and men.”
She gaped at him. “You think? Did you not check? Norfolk gone?”
Six quick raps resounded on her door to the hall, four slow and two quick ones. Cecil—and Cecil never used that knock unless something suspicious was going on.
“Enter! But where’s my guard?” she asked as Cecil, hastily dressed with his hose not even gartered, came in. He bowed jerkily to the queen and nodded to Keenan.
“When Keenan woke me, I sent one of my men and one of your guards to roust out Norfolk. Only one of his three servants is in his chamber. He’s fled.”
“How did he get past Ned? He’s on the staircase. I can see how Jenks might have missed him if he took Keenan’s mounts from out back instead of from the stables, where I had Jenks posted, but Ned? Hell’s gates, if Norfolk or his men have hurt Ned, Meg will never recover. Keenan,” she said turning to him, “I regret I was short with you. My brain is fogged, and I couldn’t grasp at first how the theft of your horses was linked to Norfolk.”
“I ask your pardon, but I was too overturned—about my mounts and the duke—to put things more carefully, Your Majesty.”
“Cecil, send my other door guard to look for Ned Topside, then summon more guards here. If Norfolk has indeed fled, it could mean the onset of the revolt. Or he found that his pillow was gone, and that panicked him.”
“His pillow?” Keenan said.
Another knock on the door. It was Ned and her guard with one of Norfolk’s three men held fast between them.
“Where has your master gone, man?” she asked Norfolk’s valet when her men hustled him before her. Keenan quickly stepped back into the corner to make room.
“Your M-Majesty, I didn’t know he’s gone’til I was waked.”
“This one sleeps just inside Norfolk’s door to the hall, Your Grace,” Ned put in.
“Then he should have known when Norfolk and the other two decamped—as should you, Ned!”
“The duke and the other two went out their window and down knotted bedsheets into the courtyard,” he explained. “And I’d vouch for this one telling true, since I could hear his snores through the door to the hall where I sat. I’d moved closer off the back stairs to keep a better eye on the door, and here they slipped out another way. Maybe they knew I was there.”
Elizabeth’s knees buckled; she sat down hard on a stool. Her head spun with all this. Yes, she believed this bedraggledlooking servant of Norfolk’s, too, for he was the one who had been left
behind to watch the game of fox and geese last night when the other two knaves had disappeared, perhaps on some errand with a silent signal from Norfolk—perhaps to pack. Meg said she’d barely missed them in the hall. Did that mean Norfolk was intending to flee anyway? He could not have known his pillow was gone then.
“Ned, go back to Norfolk’s bedchamber and look under his bed for a pair of saddle sacks. It’s where Meg found the pillow. See if the three shirts in it have been disturbed, for then we’ll know if it was the loss of his pillow that panicked Norfolk—and if so, how important it must be to him and his schemes.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, and lit out.
“And this sorry barnacle?” Keenan said, stepping forward and gesturing at Norfolk’s wide-eyed man. “I half believe his story, for he’s not one of the duke’s guards but the one who packs and loads his wagon.”
“My guards are to hold him for further questioning. And, at first light, a search party is to set off to trace Norfolk’s path. Granted he’s gone north, but how far north? And to whom? Keenan and Cecil, stay with me a moment more. Rosie, you, too, though I doubt sleep will be back to visit any of us this night.”
She was suddenly glad Drake wasn’t here, because she knew she looked a fright. Yet she was grateful to Keenan for rousing her. She would see he had a fine mount to ride tomorrow, until someone could track down Norfolk, thief of horses and thrones.
Meg jerked awake when little Piers cried out in his sleep. She and Ned had laid a pallet in the small herbal distillery room at the back of the Bramble Bush’s kitchens, hard by the flour-bolting room, which had made the boy sneeze. Ned had taken a nap between the two of them, but he was not back yet from his post outside Norfolk’s bedchamber.
“Piers, my boy, I’m here,” she said, as she rolled over beside him and touched him carefully. Sometimes he struck out if wakened too quickly from a bad dream.
“Oh, Mistress Meg,” he said, and wrapped his skinny arms around her neck. “I had that nightmare again. Where’s Sim?”
“Staying with Ursala and her little one, remember? They had to make do in the hayloft above the stables this night.”
“Oh, aye,” he said, pressing his face into her shoulder and not loosing her one bit. Rather than being pulled on top of him, she shifted her weight to lie beside him, holding him close.
“You were lost in the hedges again?” she asked. “Maybe if you tell the bad dream aloud, it will purge it. I heard once, if you bid it go away, it won’t dare come back.”
“It was all brambles and nettles catching at me again,” he began, his high voice still shaky.
“Since this inn is called the Bramble Bush, mayhap that reminded you.” From the large open-hearthed kitchen just outside their door, she could hear someone stirring where other servants from the queen’s retinue slept on the floor. They were stuffed cheek by jowl in this inn tonight and would be at their next stop tomorrow night, too.
“Mayhap,” Piers said, “but there’s men on one side of the hedge, ones want to hurt my father. I can’t see through who it is. I don’t know where he went. I have to keep looking for him, but can’t’cause I needs stay hidden or the bad men will get me, too. ‘A life-and-death matter … life and death,’ they say. Does that mean they kilt him? I can hear them but not see them. And I can’t run’way, can’t get my feet to move … and it’s not the spell of the fairies done it this time to me …”
“There, there, my lad, it’s all right. I’m here.”
“Where’s Ned, then?”
“Doing a service for the queen, that’s all. Jenks, too, but they’ll be back bright and early before we set out, so you’d better get some rest now.”
“Don’t let them—those bad men—find me and take me’way, too,” he said with a big sniffle.
“I won’t,” she said, her voice soothing. She finally let him go but continued to rub his bony back as he curled up in a little ball. “You just go to sleep now, and I won’t let anything happen to you ever.”
“Promise and cross your heart?”
“Cross my heart,” she told him, and rubbed his back lightly until his breathing evened out and finally slowed.
Cross my heart, she thought, for if I’d lose you, too, my heart would just break—break and—and stop, I’d see to that myself.
Keenan, Cecil, too—another word with both of you before we call this a night, and a dreadful one at that,” Elizabeth said, and motioned them to sit at the small table in the outer chamber. They had just handed Norfolk’s nervous servant out the door into the custody of her yeomen guards, who were increasing in number in the hall.
But again a rap on the door. Clifford admitted Ned, out of breath and wide-eyed.
“Yes, the shirts were out of the saddle sack under the bed—which sack wasn’t there.”
“He found the pillow,” Cecil said.
“Which indicates,” the queen noted, “he probably slept with it every night.”
“And,” Ned reported as Keenan’s head went back and forth as if he watched a tennis match, “it looked indeed as if he hastily stripped the linens from his bed and knotted them, then went out the window with his other two men. The twisted sheets were still dangling partway to the ground.”
“Then,” she said, “Norfolk knows the pillow completely gives him away. What Ned has found is also another piece of evidence that clears the third servant of the duke’s, for, if he were in league with them, he surely would have pulled up those bedsheets so they wouldn’t be spotted at first light.”
“The duke did leave this,” Ned said, thrusting a square of parchment at her. “It doesn’t have your name on it, Your Grace, but says To Whom It May Concern.”
“The wretch,” she muttered, as she opened the letter. “That’s his idea of a warped joke—and an insult to me. Well, if I cannot keep Norfolk under my thumb, I can stop him at the other end of his quest.”
“To free and wed the Scots queen?” Cecil asked. “Earlier this very night, Your Grace, you were reluctant to move against her.”
“We must stay nimble on our feet and adapt instantly to their maneuverings. Ah, how foolish of him to tell me this lie,” she said, as she bent even closer to the lantern to read aloud the words:
“Written in haste to protect all of the queen’s court and retinue—I fear that what I thought was a mere skin disturbance from poison nettle may be much more. Lest I have the red rash—”
“He’s claiming to have measles?” Cecil said.
“Yes, though, of course, he implies it could even be the pox, because he knows I—everyone fears that above all things. Lest I have the red rash, and not wanting any harm to come to the queen’s precious person—The lily-livered, churlish, ruttish maggot-pie!” she exploded. “I warrant he had this note carefully composed and did not just dash it off. He knew he might have to flee and tries to make it sound as if it is to help, not hurt me! And he dared to sign it Her Majesty’s loyal servant, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk!”
“And then,” Keenan spoke at last, “to go down bedsheets, as if by merely walking the halls of the inn to depart, he might spread the pestilence to you—to all of us.”
“Exactly. How dare he think I would believe such drivel!” she demanded, raking her fingers through her hair. “As soon as I arrive at Lord Sandys’s house, I will write to Lord Huntingdon. I can surely trust him. I shall command him to ride north and be certain that Mary of Scots’s guardian, Lord Shrewsbury, has her moved from his Chatsworth Castle, where she resides as my guest but continues to abuse my hospitality. Like it or not, she is going back to Tutbury Castle, where she will be much more closely watched!”
“Do you want Keenan to take that message to Huntingdon?” Cecil asked.
“If you can spare him. It must be someone we can trust, so yes. Indeed, I will even charge you, man,” she said, turning to Keenan, who looked so alert it seemed he was ready to set out on the instant, “to ride along with Huntingdon to Shrewsbury to be certain my cousin is delivered sa
fely to Tutbury and then report back to me.”
“Being sent to Tutbury and under guard,” Cecil said, “will send a clear message to her and to the rebels, Your Grace. She always did hate Tutbury.”
“So she wrote me more than once. I’ve never seen the place, but have you, Keenan?”
“When she was there earlier this year, I rode in twice.”
“Go on, man,” she urged, wishing he weren’t so closemouthed. “Is it as godforsaken as she claims?”
“Even in the summer, the sight of it chills one’s bones, Your Majesty. Though high up, it overlooks only the plain and the banks of the river there. You can see for miles, which surely grieves one closed in the tall tower. The castle is damp and noisome with a marsh under its walls, and the place is in ill repair.”
“I see. I should say I’m sorry for that, but I am only heartsick—and deeply hurt and angry—at all this deception and treachery from my own kin. You may both leave me now. We set out just after dawn, probably riding north on that traitor’s very heels—and, Keenan, on the hooves of your stolen horses.”
Chapter the Sixteenth
Mary Stuart, the former Queen of Scots, deposed by the Scots lords so that her son may rule under their care, the former queen now residing in the realm of England, is to be forthwith removed from Chatsworth Castle to Tutbury Castle by order of Elizabeth Regina, Queen of England …
Elizabeth sighed and crossed out the last few words. Since she would sign this order as Elizabeth R, why should she include her name and title in this letter to Shrewsbury, as if he didn’t know who she was? Yet she wanted this missive Keenan would carry to Lord Huntingdon and then north to sound formal and formidable. She had rewritten it four times already and had a good mind to sign it Your assured Elizabeth, to see what Mary of Scots would make of that when they read it or showed it to her.
Still, this was only a draft of the letter. It had better be, since her hand shook and betrayed her impatience and ire. She did not feel safe, even as she sat at the table in this King’s Oak Inn where her entourage would spend the night before arriving at William Sandys’s mansion, the Vyne, in northern Hampshire on the morrow. She crumpled up the parchment and began again.