Elizabeth I - 05 - The Thorne Maze

by Karen Harper

  “Oh, Your Grace,” she cried, hastily rising to her feet while the parchment rolled noisily closed. “I had the door open for my lord’s return—he is all right?”

  “He is yet about my business,” the queen told her from the doorway. “I fear he will be late, and I am sorry if you are lonely, but there was a good—a bad—cause.”

  “He told me of Master Sutton’s sad demise.”

  “I have come to see the widow. Your lord moved her chambers into this hall today.”

  Mildred’s jaw dropped, and her eyes widened before she recovered. “It’s all right,” Elizabeth explained. “The murder took place out in the maze, not in this hall near you, Mildred, so put your mind at ease.”

  “I—I shall, thank you, Your Majesty. I shall put my mind at ease.”

  Through the door set ajar, Jenks finally spotted Meg bent over a seething kettle in a small brick garden shed she used for drying herbs. Since the queen had left the maze, Lord Dudley had sent Jenks back to the stables to oversee tending the parish officials’ horses, but he was taking the long way around by the outbuildings.

  “Meg, you all right?”

  She jumped and gasped. “Don’t sneak up on me like that! Now I’ve burned my knuckle, making this tonic.”

  “I didn’t sneak up. Called your name right out.”

  He stepped into the cluttered place, lit by a single lantern. Hanging bunches of drying herbs bumped his head and swayed. “I see you know those slip knots, too, like what was used on the garters round the queen’s neck,” he observed, noting how neatly she’d tied each bunch.

  “Meaning what? I’ll not have accusations I’d ever harm her, not with what all I been through.”

  “What we’ve all been through. I missed you desperate bad the years you were in exile for—displeasing her.”

  “Jenks, has she sent for me?” she asked, fanning the air with her hand to cool her burn.

  “It’s me wanted to see you.”

  “You’re seeing me.”

  “I warrant I am,” he agreed, and looked her over with a guilty grin. Sure, Meg Milligrew resembled Her Majesty in coloring, size, even in the face, but she was ever her own woman. “Even in the middle of all kinds of things going on,” he tried to explain, “I always want to see you.”

  Her head came up a bit, and her eyes widened. “It’s kind of you to wonder if I’m all right. It’s just that Lord Cecil mentioned earlier today he’d like something to lift his wife’s spirits.”

  “Anything I can do to help?” he asked and stepped closer.

  “Hardly,” she dipped out, then looked sorry she’d said that. “I’m using a few drops of this expensive oil of spiknard to relieve Mildred Cecil’s downheartedness,” she explained, turning away and pointing. She sounded nervous. Jenks shuffled nearer to her and her array of jars and paper packets. “I’m boiling it with borage for courage,” she went on, talking faster and faster. “Apothecaries say, it ‘purgeth melancholy.’”

  “Then I could use a swig myself,” he said, his voice slow and soft in contrast to hers. His chest almost touched her back, and he could feel the heat from her as well as her kettle.

  “Hm,” she said and giggled. “Just don’t get it mixed up with the yew juice in this other jug.”

  “Yew? From those patch-piece bushes in the maze set among the hornbeam? What about yew?”

  “And you’re supposed to be tending the queen’s horses?” she said, her tone teasing as he lightly placed his hands on her shoulders and leaned closer, pretending to peer past her. “Any farmer or forester,” she went on, “knows that even a big animal eating yew can be dead quick as quick from a mere mouthful of yew shrub.”

  “You’re brewing up poison?” he demanded, turning her to face him.

  “Not exactly. Just like with foxglove and some other herbs, a little is good physic, but too much can kill you. And yew, in the right, spare doses can help with gout, bilious problems, and infections. If I tell you a secret, can you keep it?”

  “’Course I can. You don’t mean Her Grace has some sort of infection from that attack on her?”

  “Jenks, I swear, you need someone to take care of you,” she said, shaking her head and shifting slightly away. “Jamie Barstow has a urinary infection and doesn’t want anyone to know. Manly pride, and I guess you know about that.”

  “Me? Barstow’s sweet on Lady Rosie, that’s who he doesn’t want to know, I warrant. But if a man truly cares for a woman, there comes a time when he lets down his guard. You know, tells her true how he feels.”

  He carefully took her hurt hand, lifting it to see if there was a burn mark. He couldn’t see a thing in this light. But he felt the burning for her, in his heart and in his loins.

  “Meg, you been widowed nigh on two years, and I know your union wasn’t happy—”

  “Like being trapped in hell, it was.”

  “But have you ever thought of marrying again, I mean someone who served the queen, someone who understood and admired you to …”

  “What about the queen?” a deep, distinctive voice came from the door behind Jenks.

  Ned. Damn his eyes, Nedl

  Meg pulled her hand back as if it was burned for sure. Her expression, which had been wary, lit like a Yuletide candle.

  Jenks’s hopes fell. He’d practiced aloud what he’d say, recited it to a bunch of horses all afternoon, and now Ned Topside—Meg too—had ruined things again.

  “Ned, come in,” Meg said. “We were just chatting about this and that.”

  Jenks pushed past Ned and stormed out the door, banging it so hard the whole shed shook.

  Clifford located the Suttons’ chamber, knocked on the door, opened it, and announced the queen and Lord Hatton to those within. Bettina had wilted over a table, sitting between Rosie Radcliffe and Jamie Barstow.

  Rosie and Jamie jumped to their feet to curtsy and bow, and Bettina, looking dazed, slowly stood and managed a half-curtsy. Elizabeth sat in the chair Jamie vacated, made Bettina sit again, and turned to comfort her.

  Jamie went to stand by Rosie and whispered to her, but Bettina stared at the doorway. Thinking Clifford was standing there yet, unsettling her, Elizabeth turned to motion him away, but only Chris waited, hat in hand.

  “Sir Christopher Hatton,” the queen said, “of course, you want to offer your condolences to your teacher’s widow.”

  She gestured for him to take Rosie’s chair, but evidently Bettina didn’t see that. She stood and hurried to him, her hands outstretched. “Oh, it’s been so dreadful,” Bettina cried, “and here, you’ve lost a dear friend, too.”

  Bettina, the queen thought, hugged Chris a bit too hard and long, but then grieving widows could be granted some leave for overwrought emotions. She noted that Jamie Barstow, despite the fact that Rosie Radcliffe was hanging on his arm, looked angry enough at Bettina’s boldness to spit.

  “All of you out now,” Elizabeth said. “I need a few moments alone with Bettina.”

  They cleared the chamber, and Clifford closed the door. “Will you have a place to live—and a means of living?” Elizabeth asked the young widow as she returned to her chair. She gripped the arms of it so tightly her fingers turned stark white.

  “I suppose I could stay on at Gray’s in some capacity, or go to live with my sister in Kent. Though it would tear me up to do it, I can sell Templar’s extensive library piecemeal.”

  “You mustn’t do that, not to just anyone. William Cecil is ever eager to increase his library, and admired your husband, so you must speak to him, or perhaps he’ll even donate some of them for the Gray’s Inn library. Bettina, as esteemed and well-known as Templar was—do you think he had enemies, someone perhaps who hated him enough to harm him, someone who wanted him out of the way for some reason?”

  She stared unblinking at the queen, as if she’d never considered such a thing or that her husband might have been murdered. Yet she did not protest or argue the queen’s implications.

  “He always spoke h
is mind,” she whispered at last. “He was a demanding, not a coddling teacher and mentor, he said, to prepare his students for the courts and to combat the evils of the world. He often told his students, ‘The law is not made for a righteous person, but for the lawless, the ungodly, the unholy and profane, and murderers … .’”

  Bettina burst into tears and buried her face in her hands. The queen put a hand to her shaking shoulder and waited until she quieted to gasps and sniffles.

  “I know this is a dreadful time for you,” Elizabeth told her, “but you must immediately make a list for me of names and possible motives of those Templar may have offended. Bettina, I will pay for a fine funeral for your husband, and have him buried nearby, if I have your permission. The coroner should not keep his body long. Shall we send messengers to your family or his?”

  “Oh, Your Gracious Majesty,” she choked out, “I can’t thank you enough. I—looking back now, I had so little time with him, and never was worthy of his standards, his talents.”

  “I too had little time with him, but I can tell you what I observed,” the queen said. “Your bright spirit and faithful heart brought him much joy.”

  Bettina burst into tears again. Seeing the woman had soaked her own handkerchief, the queen almost extended hers, until she recalled the crumbled brick inside. Templar’s murderer could well have been her attacker, someone who sneaked up from behind in the maze to maim or murder.

  Hardening her resolve, while Bettina sobbed herself breathless, Elizabeth stood and fetched paper and pen from the sideboard and placed them before the poor woman.

  “This is important, Bettina. You have helped me before, and I pray you will help me again.”

  A half hour later, the queen opened the hall door and called Rosie to come back to spend the night with the grieving widow. She dismissed Chris and Jamie, and, trailing Clifford through the warren of corridors, took the tear-splattered list with her.

  Chapter the Eighth

  THE NEXT MORNING AFTER BREAKFAST, ELIZABETH MET again with her Privy Plot Council, having them use the back staircase to enter the state apartments.

  Meg, Ned, Jenks, Cecil—all looked as ragged as she felt.

  “While we are waiting to see what the parish officials turn up,” Elizabeth began without ado, “we must plunge ahead, assuming that Templar’s murderer is my would-be murderer, too.”

  Her voice caught. Cecil shifted forward, sliding his clasped hands across the corner of the table toward her, almost as if he’d touch her. She wished Kat could be here, but it would only upset and confuse her, so Elizabeth had asked Rosie and Anne Carey to take her outside for a walk—and not near the maze.

  “We will begin by reviewing evidences we were examining before Templar’s murder,” the queen continued. “Firstly, no other gowns the women wore in the masque, except for mine and, of course, Bettina’s, bore grass or dew stains on the hems. Nor did I find any hairs but mine snagged in the garters.”

  She nodded to Cecil. “And I, unfortunately,” he said, “did not discover upon Templar’s body the piece of black cloth Kat saw him recover. I’m afraid we’ve been wide of the mark all round.”

  “Ned,” the queen went on, “you said that the handwriting samples did not match the note I received?”

  “Not the ones I have already, Your Grace, though quite a few courtiers are yet to give them to me. I could hardly make handing them over a royal command.”

  “They won’t even bother now, I warrant,” she said, smacking her palm on the table. “Everyone knows the court must become even more solemn with a death among us and funeral in the offing. Besides, I will not even pretend to be promoting amusements which are not of a religious nature while the plague is still in my kingdom. The ruse of your elaborate play must be put on the shelf for now, Queen’s Master Player.

  “Jenks, what of your early morning search of split places in the hedges?” she asked. Jenks looked particularly glum this morning. He had hunkered down by himself at the end of the table, away from his usual seat next to Meg.

  “Oh, aye, Your Grace. The hedges are old, but big bald spots are few, what with the yew and privet patching. I checked the two thin places you mentioned at the back of the maze and found nothing snagged in them.”

  “I gave the hedges a good looking over, too,” Ned put in, repeatedly tugging down his pleated linen cuffs, “just after Jenks did this morning.”

  “We were supposed to go together,” Jenks muttered. “Sounds like you’re just watching what I do and crashing in after.”

  “The point is,” Ned declaimed in his most erudite stage voice, “I observed no leaves or twigs broken primarily in one direction. In other words, the breaks in the hedge could just as well be exits as well as entrances for a thin intruder—or for no one.”

  “Such brilliant deduction is always of use to us,” the queen said, her voice dripping sarcasm. “And this is no time for bickering among any of you.” She leveled an index finger at Ned, then Jenks. “My lord Cecil, anything else to report?”

  “I believe I found the site from which the fatal brick was plucked,” he said, “though I can’t actually prove it and didn’t find it discarded anywhere.”

  “Someone probably gave it a good heave-ho into the Thames or the well,” Meg murmured.

  “The brick entry to the grape arbor behind the maze is crumbling a bit,” Cecil continued. “It’s the old mortar at fault—and exactly one brick is missing, chipped or lifted out.”

  “Aha. And the surrounding bricks match the crumbled brick you found in Templar’s wound?” Elizabeth asked excitedly. Each time someone mentioned the grape arbor, she pictured the thin, tall Lord Darnley there, the same spoiled wretch who kicked dogs and beat horses—and who obeyed his treacherous mother’s every order.

  “We could make the match now, Your Grace,” Cecil said, “as I have chipped out the brick which was next to the missing one.” He reached into his satchel under the table and fetched up a heavy rectangle swathed in a piece of burlap. While Cecil unwrapped it, from her puffed sleeve the queen drew her handkerchief and carefully opened it on the table.

  “Templar’s blood?” Meg asked, gaping at the handkerchief.

  “With bits of the brick in it we believe killed him,” Cecil explained.

  “Looks like a match to me,” Meg whispered. “Don’t mean to brag, Your Grace, my lord, but apothecaries need a good eye to match seeds, powders, and petals, sometimes by subtle smells, too. And that reminds me, the new elixir tonic for Lady Cecil’s ready, my lord.”

  Elizabeth first shot Meg a quelling look for rambling off the subject. Yet she understood Cecil’s sense of urgency. If Meg had made something special for Mildred’s melancholy moods, perhaps she’d better have her mix up something else to try on Kat, though it was hardly the same malady.

  “The same, it seems to me,” Cecil was saying, “the brick’s hue, I mean. Though the rosy colors of Hampton Court’s bricks are from different kiln batches and may have weathered irregularly, I say Templar’s murderer took his weapon from what was at hand—much as those garters about your neck must have been selected nearly at the last minute, Your Grace.”

  “And so,” the queen said, “are we searching for a culprit who is confident enough to know he can improvise—or one who is rash and stupid enough not to plan ahead but attacks on mere whim—or passion.”

  “I’d say he—or she—is a confident criminal,” Cecil said. “I cannot fathom two crimes of passion with whatever was at hand, though, I must say, garters seem a female weapon of choice and a brick masculine.”

  “Yet we shall and must proceed as if the attackers are one and the same person,” Elizabeth argued.

  “At least we know we’re looking for a brick—a bloody brick,” Ned said. “And we therefore may be looking for possible bruises on hands—and scratches on the culprit from pushing through hedges.”

  “Lord Darnley’s a whit scratched up,” Meg blurted. “Saw it yesterday, wrists, hands, even on his face.”
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  “That pretty face marred?” Ned muttered. No one else paid that comment heed, but the queen caught it.

  “Before I let you go, as Lord Cecil and I have much of the kingdom’s business to see to this morning,” Elizabeth said, “I must tell you that Bettina gave me a list of those whom Templar had possibly offended. I asked for an entire list, though the names on it, of course, of people who could possibly have been in the area must be those most closely scrutinized. But, so as not to unnecessarily smear reputations, I will study the list first, then decide who of us must pursue which names. And so, with a reminder to be vigilant for scratches on skin, I dismiss you also with my thanks, all but Secretary Cecil—and Ned.”

  Ned, she thought, looked pleased. Did he think she would shower him with praise for observations any of them could have made?

  “You have a part for me to play to draw dose to Lord Lennox now that he is back at court?” Ned asked, jumping far afield when she just stared at him after Meg and Jenks left.

  “I have a part for you to play with the ‘pretty’ Lord Darnley, as you call him. What do you know of Darnley’s practices and predilections?”

  Ned gaze wavered and dropped away from her steady stare. “He’s selfish and rude,” he said, sounding not so sure of himself.

  “Don’t joust with me, Ned. Darnley prefers men to ladies, does he not? And has he approached you?”

  For one moment, she feared her favorite actor was at a lack for words, but he did not disappoint her. “He dared,” Ned answered, sitting up straighter, “to say he wanted play-acting lessons, not, he said, in comedy or tragedy but instruction in romance. I saw through his gambit and turned him down flat, so whatever you have in mind won’t work, Your Grace, as Darnley knows I prefer women.”

  Elizabeth had never seen her principal player so much as color up before, but he blushed bright as a rose.