by Karen Harper
“Enough!” Elizabeth cried, smacking a fist on the table. “It could have been a man or a strong or zealous woman for all I know. Someone tall enough, however, to be able to lift these garters over my head. And tie this strange knot in them.”
“A common slip knot, used by sailors, farmers, even some falconers,” Jenks said. “We use them in the stables, when colts need tight control, even before we start with bits and harnesses. The more the colt tugs, the tighter the rope or strap gets, but it’s just as easy to loose, too. Let me show you.”
“No, not with these, as I mean to examine them closely in better light tomorrow,” Elizabeth said.
“What about Lord Robert?” Meg blurted. “He knew where you’d be, Your Grace, and must know those knots.”
“Impossible,” Jenks argued, though he didn’t raise his voice as he usually did when he defended his master. “I don’t care if some people still wrongly think Lord Dudley had his wife killed. I heard tell he was pacing back and forth in the stables, though they said he did leave after the foal was born to clean up and change his clothes.”
“It wasn’t Robert Dudley,” Elizabeth protested. “He has everything to lose if I lose my life. At any rate, whether my attacker—and perhaps, potential murderer—was man or woman, I was, as Ned correctly says, at a great disadvantage to be so taken by surprise.”
“Perhaps your attacker was, too,” Cecil said, leaning across the table to return the note to her. “Almost everyone was masked, including you, Your Grace. Perhaps we have not an attempt at a royal assassination but a case of mistaken identity. Your attacker erroneously believed he or she was strangling someone else. Even though it must have been dark in the maze, when your wig came off to reveal your red hair or your mask slipped, he or she ran, appalled.”
“If you ask me who I’d put at the top of the list,” Meg muttered, still looking upset from her dressing-down over her Robert Dudley theory, “it’s Margaret Stewart, the Countess of Lennox. I see her giving you snide looks all the time, Your Grace.”
Elizabeth and Cecil exchanged lightning glances. She could read that he’d been thinking the same. In these privy plot sessions, Elizabeth had always given her people leave to speak freely, and Meg had boldly done so. Margaret covertly championed Mary, Queen of Scots. Had Meg hit the nail precisely on its Papist plot head?
“And we all know,” Ned said, “that her husband, Matthew Stewart, is tall and—as the wily Scots say—a braw man.”
“He’s not at court right now,” Cecil said before the queen could reply. “But their lanky, nimble-footed son’s been lurking about and perhaps would only be too happy to do the deed for his mother. Margaret Stewart seems to command him with an iron hand, despite the fact he’s nearly twenty. Would that I could control my eldest that way,” he added, under his breath.
“I know the Stewarts have sent privy correspondence to Mary of Scots,” Elizabeth admitted, “even probably plotted against me over the years, so perhaps they are becoming desperate. Margaret was highly insulted I named her as one of the five foolish virgins, and her son was masked in the audience.”
“Then too,” Meg put in, “the countess is old enough to favor gillyflower scent yet, out of fashion though it is. I never get close enough to her to know what potpourri she carries in that gold filigreed pomander of hers.”
“Hm,” Ned interrupted, narrowing his green eyes, “the pomander studded with bloody-hued garnets which she swings on its chain as if it were an orb of the whole world.”
Elizabeth glared at him for his usual overblown bombast, but perhaps they had all leaped far afield. Surely, the Stewarts would not risk actually laying hands on their queen—or at least would have finished the job had they set out to do it. Yet in this search for a serpent in her court, they must look under every stone.
“Meg, you must discover what scent the countess favors,” Elizabeth commanded, “and that of other women who were at court tonight. Try offering them some new fragrance or potpourri you’ve concocted, and ask them what they’ve used before.”
“I could try to ingratiate myself with the countess—spy on her, Your Grace,” Ned suggested.
“Indirectly mayhap, for she would never trust you outright. And you must feign to plan another amusement where each person who will take part must give you in their own handwriting what sort of costume they would like to wear.”
“Why feign it? I could indeed create something for a large cast of actors—and suspects.”
“No, spend your time and effort on this,” she ordered, thrusting the small paper at him. “Then I shall examine those notes to compare handwriting. And be certain they include some of the key words here for comparison.
“Jenks, see if you can turn up the note my yeoman guard Stackpole said he had, or at least ask him if he recalled if it had a scent. Also, get a description of the strange linkboy who fetched the note to him and track him, if you can.”
Jenks nodded as Ned perused the note. “I’ll have Lady Rosie ask for all the women’s garments to be returned forthwith, their garters included,” Elizabeth continued. “She’s been helping Kat oversee the wardrobe, so perhaps she can account for or trace such unique garments.”
They gazed silently at the silvered ribbons wrapped with gauzy tissue, carefully knotted. Cecil drummed his fingertips on the table. He’d been frowning throughout, but now looked as if his countenance could splinter.
“My lord, are you quite well?” she asked.
“Hardly, Your Grace. I fear, at the least, we have before us an attempted murder on a mistaken noble victim on royal property. And, at the most, high treason against your most precious person. Could someone besides Robert Dudley have known where you would be and lain in wait there?”
“Only Mary Sidney and, for obvious reasons, I trust her with my life,” she said, gripping her hands on the table. “But when I told her where and when I would meet Lord Robert, Kat thought she heard someone listening at Mary’s keyhole. I looked out and—she was mistaken.”
“Then your attacker could be some random wretch,” Cecil said, “who merely saw you leave tonight and went out the same or a different door behind you. We can delve into that.”
“I first stopped under the big oak. I saw no one enter the maze, but I wasn’t always looking.”
“We’ll have a devil of a time determining a possible culprit, since nearly everyone in the audience was thoroughly disguised at your express command. And since you want this kept quiet.”
“Not so much because I don’t want gossip about me and Lord Robert again, but more to avoid inciting panic—nor will I give any satisfaction to my enemy who might be behind the attack.”
“Or,” Jenks put in, “your attacker could have been some random oaf who walked in from the road or river, then just spotted a comely woman alone.”
“In short,” Elizabeth said, “we may never know. But we are going to try desperately to.”
“Thank God, Bettina Sutton stumbled on you,” Cecil said, rubbing his eyes with thumb and index finger. “You must promise not to go off alone ever again.”
She was going to tell him that only she would decide what she did, that no one could frighten the Queen of England, no implied threat, terror tactic, or direct attack. But she knew he was right. The times had suddenly changed, for her, for all of them who were the crown or served the crown. And this was no time for a display of Tudor temper, no matter how effective a tool it could be at times.
“You must return to your wife, my lord,” she told Cecil as she rose. Everyone else stood, scraping back their chairs. The queen stepped away with Cecil. “How did Mildred fare in the short time she’s been here?”
“I am certain she enjoyed the evening, Your Grace. Yet her countenance hidden behind that mask made me so uneasy,” he admitted, “since I could not watch her expressions to read her moods as I have been wont to do, and even that desperate form of detection has not served me well …”
His voice trailed off again. Poor Cecil, she
thought.
“This meeting is adjourned,” Elizabeth said, when the others still tarried. “Dear friends, I know I have enemies, some of them, as ever, my own courtiers and kin. But we must pursue and capture the murderer from the maze.”
Chapter the Fourth
“HOW IS KAT THIS MORNING, ROSIE?” ELIZABETH ASKED as the pretty young brunette bustled into the queen’s bedchamber without the older woman.
Picking at her breakfast of ale, manchet bread, and stewed carp, the queen was still in her nightrail and barefooted, for it was warm in the room. She did not wear her robe but had draped it about her neck to hide the bruises there. She’d pulled her hair down to cover her forehead bruise, and covered the scratches on her cheek with Meg’s concoction of alabaster face cream. Rosie evidently noticed nothing strange and proceeded to open the windows to let the July breeze chase the sunlight in.
“You’re going to be upset,” Rosie said, so dismayed that as she walked back toward the table she wrung her hands, “so I might just as well tell you straightaway.”
The queen’s goblet clanked against her breakfast plate. Rosie was never an alarmist. “Have you finally accepted Jamie Barstow’s attentions?”
“He’s very kind, honorable, too, Your Grace, but it has naught to do with Jamie.”
Elizabeth’s insides lurched. “Kat’s not failing?”
Rosie shook her head. “I failed you. Last night she drank that new tonic of Meg’s before I could stop her. I coaxed her into bed, though she kept insisting you needed her. When I went to use the garderobe, she slipped out. I finally found her, though.”
“Slipped out where? Is she all right?”
“Yes, but she had wandered around who knows where and ended up in the corridor outside Mary Sidney’s chamber where she was looking in each keyhole. Still, I think the tonic did her good as she finally slept without being haunted by her usual nightmares.”
Rising, the queen held out her hands to Rosie who rushed to hold them. “Do not take this amiss, dear friend,” Elizabeth told her, “but I see I must not put the burden of Kat’s care so much on you. Because you are so scrupulous and trustworthy, I fear I expect too much at times, and it is not fair to you.”
“I want to help. You know I do.”
“In the few years you have been among my ladies you have helped a great deal. The others smirk and gossip and giggle, but not you. I trust you with my jewels, my wardrobe—and with my dear Kat, but I shall have others, especially Mistress Milligrew, help you more. And having said all that,” she added, loosing Rosie’s hands with a deep sigh, “I do have one more favor I would ask of you.”
“To put off Jamie, Your Grace?”
“No, if he is behaving as you say, not Jamie. That is—well, I mean this not as it sounds, but, for now, that is your affair.”
“Name anything I can do for you, Your Grace.”
Their eyes met and held. It bucked Elizabeth up to have an attendant and friend who helped fill the void left by Mary Sidney’s absence and Kat’s decline. Though the queen had never said such aloud, she admired Rosie’s no-nonsense attitude toward men. The maids of honor, her unwed ladies, were always being swept away by the gentlemen of her court, who had seduction at worst, marriage at best in mind.
Rosie’s admiration of Jamie Barstow notwithstanding, the maid alone seemed to see masculine flatteries for what they were and steered the steady course of spinsterhood. Even when among the queen’s married attendants, her ladies of the bedchamber, Mary Radcliffe, dubbed Rosie, was a touchstone reminding the queen of her necessary virginity, however much Elizabeth loved being cosseted and courted. Soon, she should invite Rosie to become a member of her Privy Plot Council. This task would be a sort of test.
“The favor is simply that I ask you,” Elizabeth said, gathering her robe closer about her neck, “to collect personally the gowns and masks from the ten ladies who played the parts last night, even their shoes, stockings, and especially those distinctive garters, and clearly note which things come from which woman.”
The queen fully intended to see who came up short garters, but she also meant to peruse the hem of each gown and every slipper for soil or grass stains. Surely, discerning her attacker would be easily accomplished.
“The garters? Those slippery things? But Kat made so many of them and even handed the extra ones out at random, to men and women, too. It did keep her happily busy half a day, and we’ll probably see them pinned for a jest on men’s sleeves or as tippets on hats or … Whatever is it, Your Grace? What have I said?”
Deflated and furious, the queen almost couldn’t speak. So much for easily finding her strangler.
“It’s a disgrace that Templar and Bettina Sutton were allotted those small chambers on the ground floor beyond the kitchen wing!” Elizabeth groused to Cecil as they walked toward her withdrawing room mid-morning. Cecil was toting a pile of bills, grants, and dispatches she’d just signed.
“Your Grace, you know your palaces are cheek-by-jowl when you are in residence, not to mention that the threat of growing plague in London makes the salubrious air here an attraction to your courtiers—as much as your presence is, of course.”
“I want the Suttons moved. Templar is your mentor and friend, and I may owe Bettina my very life. See that some better chambers are opened by sending someone to their country seat. ’S blood, my courtiers long for their own homes in these warm summer months when the roads are good, do they not?”
“They do indeed, Your Grace,” he said in such a heart-wrenching tone she stopped walking and turned to face him.
“You too, my Cecil?”
He shrugged slightly and frowned down at his armful of papers. “I visited Stamford in the spring, but it is my new land and building project at Theobalds I long for. But never,” he added, nodding to enunciate each word, “at the price of leaving my queen when she has need of me. And with this nearly fatal attack upon your royal person, we must be steadfast and vigilant.”
Touched, she placed a hand on his arm. “Indeed, Sir William, Principal Secretary Cecil, Master of the Court of Wards, Chancellor of Cambridge College—and many more honors yet to come—your queen ever has need of you, and especially now. But when I soon visit Cambridge as we’ve planned and stay at my old home of Hatfield en route, Theobalds is but a scant few miles’ ride. And so, I shall go to see your land and building project there.”
She was amazed that tears glazed his eyes. “It’s not worthy of your presence yet,” he insisted, “though I intend to make it so someday when the Cecils can house the queen’s majesty and your court for a fine visit. So far, despite the spacious grounds, it has but an old moated manor house I’ve scarce spent a night in—and, they say, it is haunted.”
“Haunted?” she repeated, as her mind flashed to her strange experience in the chapel corridor yesterday.
“And a further curiosity I hope to take Templar to see,” Cecil went on, “though I warrant you would fancy it, too, Your Grace. A water maze.”
“Indeed? I’ve never seen such. Flooded by a stream or moat?”
“A sturdy stream feeds both maze and moat. The hedges are planted in barrels with stone ballast, and one must row oneself through the shrubs. Templar will love it.”
“Speaking of Templar, I had asked Bettina not to tell anyone what happened last night, but I never intended for a wife to keep such from her husband, so I must correct that, if she hasn’t told him already.”
“How could a woman keep that in? To rescue and revive her queen?”
“Perhaps if we put Templar’s and your fine minds together—with mine, too—we shall discover not only someone we suspect but someone we can question and imprison. When we restage the crime tonight, I intend to take Templar and Bettina with us.”
With Cecil in her wake, the queen swept into the room where the Suttons awaited. As he bowed and she curtsied, Elizabeth found herself assessing them as she had everyone so far this morning by their height and musculature. Her attacker had been tal
l enough to easily reach those garters over her head and strong enough to throw her down. Templar was tall enough, but his body seemed almost frail, however firm and resonant his voice. Bettina was not only petite but had breasts like a shelf—though they were bound up last night to get her in that dress. Yet, she surely would have felt Bettina pressed up against her back. No, her attacker had either been a muscular man or a tall, spare woman of some strength.
Elizabeth welcomed them and indicated they should sit across the small, round table from Cecil and her. The Suttons’ eyes grew wide as Cecil put down his papers to pour wine and the queen herself passed the plate of sweetmeats.
“This privy audience is a great, great honor, Your Majesty,” Templar said.
“Master Sutton, I believe you retired to bed directly after the masque last night,” Elizabeth began.
“As ever, I lull myself to sleep by concocting legal conundrums for my students to debate. After dinner each night at Gray’s Inn, I write out a legal problem and place it before the salt, so that two of the inner benchers may argue it, and I retire to bed immediately after hearing their pros and contras. But I wish to extend an invitation to you to visit our law school at the inn, Your Majesty. You have graced us with your presence on holidays, but you would honor us even more if you would come to see the daily making of an English lawyer.”
“I believe I have your curriculum and encouragement to thank for the fine men and advisors I have around me—my lord Cecil, especially, of course. Indeed, the Inns of Court are a finishing school, our third great, if unnamed, university. Certain of my long-time courtiers, members of Parliament, and lately, Chris Hatton and Jamie Barstow, are the fine products of your tutoring.”
“Ah yes, those two young bloods,” Templar said with what Elizabeth construed to be a rueful shake of his silver head while Bettina fidgeted, crossing her legs and rearranging her skirts yet again.
“Perhaps,” the queen said, “you will also favor me with assessments of each man’s strengths and weaknesses—and hugger-mugger stories of their student days with you.” To her amazement, now her serious, serene Cecil looked like the lad caught with his hand in the plum pudding. “On occasion I need something to hold over all their heads,” she added with a forced laugh.