Elizabeth I - 05 - The Thorne Maze

by Karen Harper

  “It would be my greatest pleasure to tell you tales out of school, Your Majesty,” Templar said with a solemn nod. “But I must add, despite some youthful indiscretions and tomfooleries, you have chosen your chief secretary well. He is my ideal of the perfect lawyer: detached yet dramatic, persuasive yet practical, and cautious yet challenging. And I assure you, there is no profession where an ignoramus or impostor is more easily detected and exposed than in the pursuit of a calling to the law.”

  Elizabeth sensed she was hearing one of Templar’s lectures. “Then let me lay out a problem, a conundrum, as you say, Master Sutton.” He sat intently, as she explained what had happened last night and how Bettina had been her salvation. It touched her to see Templar reach out to grasp his wife’s hand in pride of what she had done. And it moved the queen deeply to sense these two such different people had evidently built a strong marriage, when she had known so many fragile or fragmented ones.

  “I can tell that Bettina did not inform you of this before,” Elizabeth told Templar. “I especially admire anyone who can hold his or her tongue on such a thing and will reward it—judiciously.”

  “Ah, Your Majesty,” Templar replied, “your wit is a match for any lawyer I have seen called to the bar. Now, since Bettina and I—and obviously Cecil—know of this terrible and treasonous attack on your person, what can we do to help ferret out and bring the perpetrator to queen’s justice?”

  “Come, Kat,” the queen commanded that afternoon as she sat with her ladies in her withdrawing room. “We shall take a walk outside to the Thameside gardens. Ladies …”

  Like colored flowers turning to the sun, her maids of honor and ladies of the bedchamber popped up from their seats, where they had been bent over embroidery, reading, or whispering. Elizabeth had included Bettina in their company today and motioned for her to attend also. She’d have asked Mildred along, too, but Cecil said that she’d gotten pounding head pains during the masque, and had since been keeping to her bed.

  The queen had hoped to send Meg to her with a tonic, but her herbalist was still off somewhere. Perhaps she was concocting a new potpourri to offer her women so she could question them about their scents. As far as the queen knew, she hadn’t smelled gillyflowers on a single one of them, for lighter rosewater fragrances, like she herself wore, were now in style.

  “A walk,” Kat said, getting up stiffly while the other waited for her to catch up. “I’d like that.”

  The queen set a slower pace than usual, for the day was warm and humid. It amused her that several of her maids had already copied the wearing of the soft ruff she wore, but it galled her sore that some had taken, as Rosie had predicted, to gaily wearing Kat’s overmade ribbon and gauze garters on sleeves or at belts.

  When they passed the maze, Elizabeth noted well that Jenks and Ned had roped it off. The queen had told Ned to put out the word that it needed to be clipped and raked. Actually, she did not want it disturbed until they had an opportunity tonight—when the moonlight was exactly right—to return to the maze and mime her attack. Bettina met her gaze and nodded. With Jenks and Ned along for guards, the Suttons were pledged to accompany Elizabeth and Cecil to re-enact and reason it all out together.

  Everyone chattered about the most frivolous things, the queen realized. How an attempt on one’s life could change one’s outlook, making daily duties seem so trivial. Besides, she was grieved by the plague marauding through her capital city, even encroaching on the southeastern shires. If it came closer, she’d be off early to old Hatfield House, buried deeper in the countryside.

  “Gracious,” Kat said and tugged at Elizabeth’s sleeve as if she were a child, “there’s that lad of yours, looking as if he’s up to no good when he should be saddling your father’s horse.”

  Heads turned toward Kat and the queen. The chatter stopped, then when Elizabeth did not react, began again. However confused Kat had been, she’d not forgotten names before.

  “That’s Jenks, Kat, and I will have a word with him. Wait here with everyone.”

  She traipsed off the gravel path to see what he had to say. He bent in a bow, smoothly sliding his swordpoint out of his way so it wouldn’t skewer the ground. She realized she had not felt a man’s sword belt or hilt against her last night from behind either, and most courtiers wore them when dressed—well, to the hilt.

  “Pardon, Your Grace, but didn’t think you’d mind if I followed you out here. Lord Dudley says he’ll escort you to the stables when you’re ready.”

  “Tell him an hour, and if he’s late, I will marry him to one of the scullery maids. Say on.”

  “Your guard Stackpole swears up and down he can’t find the note,” he said, speaking fast and low, though no one could overhear. “Can’t read anyway, it turns out, but the Countess of Pembroke’s tiring girl been taught to sound things out and she read it for him. Stackpole doesn’t know a thing about scents but the girl says it smelt fine. As for that linkboy, can’t find hide nor hair of him—raven-haired, he was, with a red welt on his chin.”

  “Was he a boy indeed? Short or not?”

  “Tall, Stackpole said, and the tiring girl saw him, too. A lad of middling weight with big shoulders.”

  “’S blood, next we’ll learn he was dragging two silver garters about,” Elizabeth muttered.

  “And something else, too, Your Grace, something personal.”

  “About my person?”

  “I guess I never say things right. About me.”

  “Say on.”

  “I know it’s not a good time, but when e’er I see you, it’s with all sorts of folks about, and I need your permission.”

  “My permission for what?”

  “You are ever the first lady—queen, I mean—in my life. But I was hoping if I courted a—a woman, you’d give me your say-so.”

  She had seldom been more astounded. Quiet, dutiful, straight-arrow Jenks? In love? Ned needed a good watch at all times, and she nearly wore herself out guarding her women from flirtations and dangerous tangles of the heart and body, but she had not fathomed Jenks. And then she knew who he meant, and her heart went out to him. Meg had ever been hopelessly, but foolishly, enamored of Ned Topside.

  “And will you name the one you love?” she asked.

  “‘Tis Meg Milligrew, Your Grace. I mean, now that she’s widowed and all. Since we both serve you, we would never leave. Like Kat Ashley and her husband years ago, ’fore he died.”

  “Jenks, you have my permission to approach and court Meg, if you are certain about your intentions and hers.”

  “Hers—well, I’m clod-foot at women’s feelings, ’cause horses are so much easier to read.”

  The queen fought back a grin. “Let me know how things proceed, Jenks. Perhaps Meg will, too,” she added and shot him an encouraging smile as she returned to her waiting retinue.

  The entire world was falling in love if they weren’t already in that hopeless state, she thought, entirely frustrated, though she made conversation and responded to her ladies’ chatter. Cecil was fretting for his Mildred; Bettina and Templar, though apparently mismatched, seemed to be quite suited. Jamie Barstow had evidently found the chink in Rosie’s armor. The queen herself was attracted to both Robin and Chris Hatton, however much younger Chris was.

  And then there were the politics of love. Cecil, her counselors, and her Parliament had more than once requested that she wed, though she had managed to put them off yet again. Hell’s teeth, Mary, Queen of Scots was looking for a second husband already, and Elizabeth must play a part in that to be certain she wed someone who could be trusted. Someone ambitious but malleable to the will of the Protestant, English queen even when he bedded with the Catholic, Scottish one.

  She strode the rest of the way to the gardens, hardly hearing the chatter and giggles about her. But the moment they reached the flowers, she decided to toss out her bait. “Look at these pretty gillyflowers, everyone. I can smell them from here.”

  “A spicy smell, rather too strong
,” Anne Carey put in, wrinkling her pert nose.

  “I like it myself, and so does our queen, even tucking gillyflowers in her bodice or her hair,” Kat declared, stooping to behead a flower and thrust it at Elizabeth. For once she was about to correct Kat when the old woman continued, “Queen Catherine Howard may be too young for your father, lovey, but he’s so enamored of her, that, just like other old husbands with flibbety-gibbety wives, he’d do anything to please her.”

  “You must take your sister riding while she’s here, as she won’t come out of her chamber for me,” Elizabeth told Robin as they walked toward the vast brick and wood stable block.

  “Mary does ride out, sometimes even alone like last night. I would have gone with her, but I couldn’t leave the foaling and she wouldn’t hear of a guard going along.”

  “At night? Last night? And alone?”

  “Don’t fret,” Robin soothed. “She said she’s likely to go mad cooped up. You know she’s always glad to see you, but just can’t abide anyone else around. Enter my realm, my queen,” he smoothly shifted the subject, and swept Elizabeth a bow as they stepped into the long corridor of slatted wooden stalls.

  Despite her delicate nose, Elizabeth had always loved the smell of the stables, well-tended ones, at least. Once one adapted to the undercurrent of animal smells, the nostalgic ones were discernible: straw, leather, soap, and polish—men. And sounds like the creak of saddles, the snorts and stomping of the big beasts. It all reminded her of the few happy times she’d shared with her father. She had become an excellent horsewoman to please him above all else.

  “What do you think of our new arrival?” Robin asked her and pressed her hand on his arm close to his solid ribs as he swung open a stall door with the other.

  The white mare Fortune, the queen’s favorite mount before the animal’s belly swelled, stepped forward to nuzzle the gloved royal hand and crunch down the offered apple. Robin smacked Fortune’s flank and she sidestepped to reveal her gangly foal, who went noisily back to suckling. For one rapt moment, the queen and her Master of the Horse just grinned and stared at the new stallion.

  “What shall you name him then?” Robin asked.

  “Destiny, I believe.”

  “Ah, Fortune and Destiny, names after my own heart, but it is truly you who are after my own heart—or I wish you were,” he teased, his voice rough with the sudden passion that could flare from him without warning.

  Though her stomach cartwheeled, she decided to ignore that. “You do a fine job with all of this, Robin.” She gazed around the vast stable block with grooms busy at their tasks. “And I hear your implication about your fortune and destiny, which I am certain will be on the rise.”

  “Meaning someday you will not rip to shreds my patent for the peerage as you did before everyone when you were—were angry? Someday you will actually give me the earldom you have promised?”

  “Yes, Robert Dudley, yes! I had to be certain I could trust your loyalty to me, even if I asked you to wait—to sacrifice or take on some task that seems dangerous or difficult.”

  “Such as what now?” he demanded. He closed the stall door and leaned against it with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed.

  “We read each other well yet, do we not? The earldom of Leicester will yet be yours, for I would raise you high.”

  “My queen!” he cried and went down on one knee in the straw, head bent.

  “Do not thank me overmuch. And put from your mind that we shall wed, my lord. That is not why I will create you earl when we return to London this autumn, though I do have a queen in mind for you.”

  His expression looked both ravaged and raptured when he raised his face. As ever, she could see his mind working to catch up to hers. “You don’t mean to offer me to Mary of Scots?” he cried, exploding to his feet. “Hell’s gates, I know you’ve wanted to push her toward someone you can trust, but she’d never have me.”

  “She will if I find a way to convince her, coerce her.”

  “Not with your Master of the Horse whom she will see as your cast-off, former favorite.”

  “I must find a way, my lord. The last thing I need is the Stewarts dangling Lord Darnley before her with his Tudor ties and noble Scottish blood. I cannot abide or allow an alliance between my cousin Margaret and Mary of Scots, damn them, connivers both.”

  “But—you cannot ask that of me, not when I will always love you, and I know you would never command me to—”

  “Shh,” she said and pressed her gloved fingers to his lips. “We will discuss it privily later. Besides, when has love ever had a thing to do with royalty and realms?”

  Fighting tears, she turned slowly, sadly away, and he hurried to keep up. They walked from the stables into the blazing afternoon sun. He’d fallen silent, and she ached to think that she had broached the subject with him—or that she would ever actually send him away, and to the woman she feared and detested more than any other.

  For, despite their problems, Elizabeth had always felt better with Robin around. And to think that Cecil had said once Robert Dudley was just waiting for a chance to rattle her so that she would realize she loved and needed him—even as a husband, a king.

  She nearly lurched to a stop, and, thinking she had stumbled, Robin’s hand shot out to steady her elbow. Surely, she thought, Robin could not have been the one who laid hands on her in the maze. No, as she had reasoned out before, his future hung on her good will. Besides, the foaling gave him an alibi. Unless after that, while he was supposedly changing his clothes, as Jenks had mentioned, he’d waited in the hedges for her. Thinking just to shake her up, he’d not known his own strength. He’d meant to rescue her himself before Bettina came charging in …

  She pulled free of his touch. Her attacker had been at least partly victorious if he could make her believe even her closest friends could be guilty. She shoved down another stab of panic when she recalled Mary Sidney had been abroad last night. Of course, her dear friend wanted only the best for her brother, so did that entail forcing her into Robin’s arms? Or worse?

  No, the queen told herself, Mary had no motive for harming her sovereign and friend. Surely, surely she could not blame Elizabeth for the fact that she had caught the pox from nursing her queen. Friendship overcame such trials and tragedies, didn’t it?

  “Devil take it,” Robin muttered, startling her again, “but would you look at that!”

  “What’s wrong with that horse?” she asked, following his gaze. Around the far side of the stable block, a groom led a limping roan with what appeared to be long cuts across its throat and neck.

  “I’ve warned him, but I’ve a good nerve to beat that spoiled, sadistic bastard Darnley to a pulp for whipping every horse he rides,” Robin muttered, as he smacked a fist into a wooden gate then kicked it open. His sudden shift to violence upset the queen as much as the sight of the poor horse. “He whips his hunt dogs, too,” Robin raved on. “The little priss is not quite twenty, so he’ll only get worse. He looks like such a handsome, graceful lad, then acts like a brute in private.”

  “Then I must admit I hardly know him—and he sounds like his mother’s boy indeed,” Elizabeth said and tucked that new bit of knowledge away for dealing later with the Stewarts and her Scottish problem. For first, in the moonlit maze tonight, she had her own to solve.

  Chapter the Fifth

  “IS YOUR HEAD PAIN BETTER, MY DEAR?” CECIL ASKED his wife, as he hurried into their small suite. It consisted of a bedchamber and outer room, the latter which, when Mildred was not here with him, was filled with his own scriveners and secretaries. The household maid they’d brought from London peeked her head out of the bedchamber, saw it was him, and dosed the door to give them privacy. Mildred turned slowly toward him from where she’d evidently been staring out the casement window.

  “Like you, my head pain comes and goes,” she said, standing her ground. “I didn’t want any of that elixir, even if it is from the queen’s herbalist. It makes me sleepy, and I don’t
want to sleep. There is much too much to do around here.”

  He assumed she was being shrewdly flippant, for he’d not spent much time with her since they’d arrived. He’d been late to bed, risen early. He’d left for the Privy Plot Council meeting last night and would be back out in the maze after dark tonight, none of which Mildred could know about.

  “This evening, let’s go over our plans for building Theobalds,” he proposed with a smile, as he dropped his leather satchel on the table and gave her a quick hug. “It will have to be before dark as I have a meeting later.”

  “You’re the one who loves poring over the minutiae of measurements on those diagrams, Will,” she protested as she weakly returned the hug. Mildred was a hardy, vigorous woman, so her apparent feebleness dismayed him. He needed some better tonic for her and soon. “When they become reality,” she went on, “I shall advise you on furnishings and ornaments on little Robert’s behalf.”

  “Since the house is to be his inheritance, I thought you’d be pleased to contribute even in the planning stages.”

  “If you put one tenth of the funds and time into Theobalds as you have into expanding and refurbishing your family’s ancestral Stamford home for your Tom, I’ll be eternally pleased.”

  “The queen may visit Theobalds soon, and I’d like to have Templar come see that water maze, too,” he said, bending over the table to roll open a parchment diagram of the ground floor. “They’ll be excited to see it early.”

  “Ah,” she said, remaining at the window while he poured himself a glass of ale, “Bettina will be excited to see it, too, I suppose.

  “I’m not certain, but the Suttons seem to be inseparable.”