by Karen Harper
She’d been nearly shouting, but it did feel good to get that all out, and she could always trust Jenks. “Here, help me up, my man,” she said, more quietly, as she offered him her hand. “London is out of the question, so we’ll simply have to make do with what we can here to flush out the maze murderer.”
Her first night back at Hatfield, despite how exhausted she felt, the queen couldn’t sleep. It almost seemed the place was haunted, for memories marched back and forth in her brain about the good times and the bad. From here she’d been ordered to the Tower and feared she’d never return. She’d been questioned here for her parts in Protestant plots; she’d been ignored and afraid and yet hopeful too that someday the throne could be hers, that a woman could rule alone. At dear, old Hatfield, she’d learned to survive against all odds and that was just what she meant to do again.
She must have nodded off because when she woke a woman in white was standing by her window. Her heartbeat jumped to a pounding pace. Surely, not a spectre, but …
It was Kat in her nightraiL She’d been sleeping in the truckle bed with Rosie against the wall of the queen’s chamber, but now she walked toward the door to the hall. Rather than bothering Rosie, who was breathing heavily in sleep, Elizabeth got up, wrapped herself in her damask robe and shoved her feet in her flannel mules. She’d bring Kat back to bed herself and bother no one else.
But her old friend had quickly, quietly opened the door to the privy chamber and then to the dimly lit hall. “Just changing rooms,” Kat whispered to the guard—Stackpole, not Clifford, who was down the way by Darnley’s door—and the beef-wit let her pass. Granted, Elizabeth had not wanted to tell the guards how unhinged Kat could be, but she could have slapped him for letting her out in the dead of night.
Yet Elizabeth merely held up her hand to silence him and went out, too. Tomorrow would be soon enough for new commands and reprimands for her guards. At least Hatfield was far smaller and safer than the great palaces where Kat had wandered off before, but Elizabeth still could not bear to order her to be restrained or confined.
Somewhat unsteady in her bare feet, Kat went down the corridor toward the smaller, servants’ rooms under the slant of eaves. Perhaps Kat was going to find Meg, for Elizabeth was not certain which chambers her people, or her cousin Margaret’s, were in.
Elizabeth was just about to call to Kat when she opened a door and stood in shadows thrown by a single lantern lit within. Through the thin linen of the nightrail, the queen could see how thin and frail Kat looked, for full skirts and sleeves oft hid her shape.
“I overheard the two young men talking about you and wanted to warn you,” Kat said to someone within.
“What? You are the queen’s old nurse, are you not?”
Bettina’s voice. Elizabeth had no notion Kat knew where to find Bettina or had business with her.
“Yes, I’ve been with her a long time,” Kat said, her words not quite as angry as Bettina’s strident tones.
“Why are you here at this hour? She hasn’t sent for me? And what young men were talking about what?” Bettina demanded, her voice rising.
“The Princess Elizabeth has naught to do with this warning, but everyone will be talking soon. You’ve made your own bed and you must lie in it. Did you think it would be easy to wed an older man yet carry on with younger ones?”
“I—do you mean you overheard Chris Hatton speaking with someone?” Bettina stammered. “I’ll get him for that.”
Elizabeth pressed herself to the wall, wanting to pull Kat back, yet mesmerized by the disjointed conversation. Bettina must have come closer to the door, for her voice grew louder and her shadow leaped onto the hall floor. Wherever the confused Kat was going with this, perhaps Bettina would give something away.
“You do know that the penalty for adultery by the monarch’s wife is treason and the punishment death, do you not?” Kat cried.
“Monarch’s wife?” Bettina demanded.
“Your royal husband has already executed Anne Boleyn on trumped up charges of adultery, but you have truly betrayed him, so you will surely die!”
“Go away!” Bettina screamed. “Are you demented to come in here like this and—”
“Catherine Howard,” Kat cried, “your ghost will haunt the castle!” The disheveled but fully dressed young woman appeared in her door and tried to shove Kat back. “And you’ll deserve your fate,” Kat carried on, “for taking younger lovers and cuckolding the old man … .”
“Kat,” Elizabeth whispered, stepping forward to seize her arm, “quiet now. Sh! Back to bed.”
As shocked as she already looked, Bettina gaped to see the queen. “She sleepwalks and has delusions,” Elizabeth explained to Bettina, putting her arm around Kat to pull her away. Unfortunately, two doors nearby opened and faces appeared in them. One was Meg’s. Elizabeth gestured to her, but saw she must be sleeping naked with a sheet wrapped under her arms, so she motioned for her to stay back.
“Come, Kat,” Elizabeth coaxed. “Come with me. She’s confused about Catherine Howard’s ghost at Hampton Court,” Elizabeth whispered to Bettina.
“But probably not confused about Chris Hatton speaking ill of me!” Bettina said in a stage whisper. She dared to pursue the queen as she hustled Kat down the halL “I swear I’ll speak to them—Sir Christopher Hatton—about this!”
“Catherine Howard,” Kat muttered to Elizabeth as she huffed along, “is also the one who’s been listening at keyholes, because I’ve seen her.”
“You mean the woman you were just talking to?”
“Yes, lovey, Catherine Howard, the one I saw kissing Nicholas Culpepper in the maze back at Hampton Court.”
The queen just shook her head. Nicholas Culpepper had indeed been Queen Catherine Howard’s long-time paramour and had also been beheaded for treason years ago. On the scaffold Queen Catherine had made a defiant speech that she would rather be the wife of Culpepper than queen of England, the little fool. But this latest obsessive dementia of Kat’s was too much for the queen to bear. It was getting so difficult to keep others from knowing how ill Kat had become.
“You mean,” Elizabeth said as tears blurred her vision, “you saw that very Catherine Howard behind us in the hall”—here she turned and pointed at Bettina—“listening at keyholes?”
“That’s what I said. It’s not right. She should be punished and stopped.”
“Whose keyholes? When?”
“Well, why don’t you ask her?” Kat said sassily, pulling free from the queen to point at Bettina, who stood, hands on hips, at the turn of the hallway about ten paces back.
“You deserve a good thrashing, you strumpet!” Kat shouted at Bettina. “But as I said, you’ll soon enough be executed for your sins, and we’ll see who has the last word then!”
Bettina turned and fled toward her room. Numerous doors in the hallways opened, then slammed, though several faces peering out briefly registered on the queen: Mildred Cecil, Robin, Lord Darnley, Chris Hatton.
For days, the queen had fought both hysterical laughter and tears, but once back in her bedchamber, she gave in to both.
“Mildred, it is good to see you,” the queen greeted Lady Cecil the next morning after breakfast as the Cecils joined her in the small, oak-paneled room she was using for her presence chamber. “My lord Cecil says you insist on leaving for Theobalds at once. Since I shall go over soon to see the site and my lord must needs stay here for now, cannot you wait a few days?”
“He’s always wanted me to take a part in planning Theobalds’s great house and grounds, and now I shall,” Mildred replied as she rose from her curtsy and sat next to Elizabeth on the window seat as she had indicated.
“But there is nothing yet for you to do there,” Cecil said, brandishing a large, rolled document as if it were a sword. “I’m having the old manor cleaned for our arrival and the plans for our future are all here.”
In truth, he had come straight to Elizabeth even before breakfast, vexed that his wife had taken t
he sudden notion to move on to Theobalds, or if he refused that, to Stamford where the younger children were staying. Ordinarily, he would have promoted that, but had admitted to Elizabeth that he felt uneasy about Mildred’s temperament and tendencies. When the queen had explained to him the upheaval with Kat and Bettina last night, they commiserated over the behavior of their loved ones even more.
“I can’t believe I slept right through that row between Bettina and Kat,” Cecil had said, shaking his head.
“Mildred poked her head out the door, so she heard it,” the queen had explained. “I’m surprised she didn’t tell you first thing this morning, as Lady Rosie says it’s been noised high and low already. You don’t think—is there anything about Bettina or even Kat’s acting like that which would make Mildred want to flee?”
“Not that I know,” Cecil had said with a slump to his shoulders that frightened her. “But then, I’m only her husband, so what do I know?”
“And I am but the queen. Indeed, I’m starting to long for the mere trials of some political revolt or international outcry to tend to instead of all these domestic worries on top of Templar’s murder and my attack.”
“My lord husband,” Mildred said to bring Elizabeth back to the present, “Her Grace has not yet heard another reason I would leave for Theobalds. I know your dear Katherine Ashley has become dim of wit, Your Majesty, and I could take her with me and watch her closely.”
Elizabeth dared not look at Cecil. The last thing on God’s green earth they needed was for Mildred to tend to Kat or vice versa—or would that be good for both of them? No matter, the queen thought, she could not bear to part with Kat.
“As is my custom all these years, dear Mildred, I will keep Kat close to me,” the queen explained. “Since she becomes confused in familiar surroundings, I fear how she might react in new ones. However, I would deem it a great favor if you would help to keep Kat calm, to spend some time with Lady Rosie Radcliffe here as she tends Kat. And in a day or two, I shall take a small party to accompany you and your lord to see the site on which great Theobalds will stand and—”
Someone rapped loudly on the door. “I’ve sent a guard to fetch Bettina,” she explained to the Cecils, “and he’s been overlong.”
“Then I shall be on my way to see Kat,” Mildred said, rising as Cecil answered the door. The yeoman guard Stackpole entered, which reminded Elizabeth she would rid herself of him the moment they got back to London.
“Beggin’ your pardon, but Mistress Sutton’s gone, Your Majesty,” Stackpole blurted.
“Gone where?”
“Don’t know, Majesty. Could be out for a morning walk, but your own strewing herb mistress says she don’t think she even went back to bed last night after the set-to everyone’s talking about.”
“Then send Meg to me—and find Mistress Sutton!”
Meg soon appeared of her own accord. “I heard Bettina’s gone missing,” she said as Cecil closed the door so the three of them were alone. “I don’t think she ever went back to bed.”
“But she headed down the hall that way.”
“After she carried on so, I thought I’d better keep an eye on her,” Meg explained. “Just in case you sent for me to help with Kat, the state that she was in, too, I got garbed and sat in the hall, nodding off ’til dawn to see if Bettina came back, but she didn’t. That’s what I’m telling you.”
“One step forward, then two back in this—this labyrinth,” Elizabeth muttered as she began to pace. “What I like least of all is the way Templar went missing the same way Bettina has, and you know how we found him. Yet I trusted Templar, and I do not trust Bettina.”
Both Cecil and Meg stood back, silent, as if waiting to see which way the royal wind blew. The queen stopped, whirled, and sat.
“Meg, fetch me some sort of calming herbs for this headache I’m getting. Cecil, send someone to fetch Jenks to me so I can have him search the surrounding roads for Bettina. She protested that I not send her back to London, but that, despite the plague, could have been a diversionary tactic. It is where her home is, where she could gather up Templar’s books to sell so she could flee, especially if she’s guilty of something dire.”
“I didn’t have the chance yet to tell her I’d buy his library in toto,” Cecil explained as he headed for the door and Meg darted out. “When I mentioned helping Bettina that way, Mildred wouldn’t hear of it, not with the coming expenditures to make Theobalds a fine place.”
“Such uncharitableness is not like her. Cecil, wait,” the queen insisted as he put his hand to the door latch. “I must tell you something that Bettina said about Mildred’s problems, but it really begins with you.”
He froze, his hand outstretched. His eyes widened, then narrowed. “With me, Your Grace? And what could Bettina know of Mildred’s problems?”
Elizabeth walked closer to him, studying his face in the slant of morning light. “She said that Templar had mentioned Mildred was somehow jealous of your first wife—and her son Tom, your heir.”
“Nonsense. A bright, sensible woman like Mildred, jealous of a long-dead woman? Now, the part about Tom, I understand, because Mildred’s been at sixes and sevens since her firstborn surviving son was such a delicate child. She frets for his bent back, and the way his legs are a bit uneven.”
“And don’t you, too, my lord?”
“Of course, I’d like him to be hale and hearty, but he is my son with my dear Mildred, and I fully intend not only to provide for him, but richly too, beginning with Theobalds being his inheritance someday. And,” he added, finally dropping his arm from its stiff stance, “I’ve learned with Tom that the strong outer trapping of a fine-looking lad can belie the weak character within. I have vowed to myself that I will spend more time with Robert than I did with Tom—perhaps that was what he needed, not just my carping at his flaws.”
“And have you told Mildred about your love for her son and her?”
“It’s something she surely knows,” he insisted. “As for the notion she’s jealous of my first wife, that is daft indeed, though that’s how Mildred’s been acting lately. I shall think on it and speak with her, come hell or high water,” he promised as he opened the door and went out to fetch Jenks.
His last words echoed in the queen’s mind. Lately she’d known a bit of hell and high water herself.
Jenks set out on the road to London with orders to turn back if he did not overtake Bettina before the capital’s outskirts. Elizabeth’s guards and servants searched the grounds and surrounding forest for any sign of the woman, though the queen knew everyone was murmuring that the last time they had searched for a Sutton they had found a corpse. Like a ghost into thin air, Bettina seemed to have vanished.
At noon, Elizabeth gave the order for the search to cease and for everyone to return to their duties. The scent of the lavender and violet water with which Meg had bathed her forehead had somewhat soothed her, though each time she frowned, she felt her head pain again.
“I’m more sure than ever now that she was guilty of Templar’s death,” Elizabeth told Cecil as she finally settled down to signing warrants and state papers. “And perhaps even of the attack on me, which must have been a spur-of-the-moment decision when she saw me in the maze where she had gone to be alone—or to meet someone.” The scratch of her quill pen on parchment seemed incredibly loud now that the hue and cry outside had ceased. “If she dares go back into London to abscond with Templar’s books and perhaps head for a ship to flee to the continent to sell them, she deserves the plague if it seizes her!”
“I still cannot believe she murdered Templar,” Cecil said, shaking his head as he handed her the next document. “She obviously had the best of both worlds, her adoring law students and Templar’s support, so why eliminate him?”
“Because, my lord, she must have found someone she wanted more, someone who would have her if she were free. And then, when Kat exploded at her like that last night with such accusations, which though demented were yet clo
se to the mark, Bettina must have decided to flee. I really think—”
A scream shredded the silence outside. Elizabeth leaped to her feet and headed for the door with Cecil right behind. “That must be Bettina,” Elizabeth said, yanking open the door before her guards could. “Jenks has brought her back against her will.”
Forcing herself to walk circumspectly, the queen descended the great staircase, cursing because the short, slatted gate which kept the larger dogs on the ground floor was latched. Cecil scrambled to get it open, and they went outside even as voices and hubbub filled the air again.
Elizabeth squinted into the sudden sun. Meg stood again in the center of the knot garden, which she’d partly tamed since yesterday. She had no clippers in her hands, but was pointing down into the central hedges which still looked thick and ragged.
The queen came closer as Cecil and guards fell in around her. Darnley and his mother, Robin and others, Lady Rosie without Kat or Mildred hurried toward the knot garden, too.
“I—I found her,” Meg gasped out, wide-eyed when she saw the queen. “Just lying here … like she’s asleep—Bettina, but she won’t wake up. She could be drunk, but I think she’s dead.”
Chapter the Twelfth
“KEEP EVERYONE BACK,” THE QUEEN ORDERED ROBIN, but did not protest when Cecil waded with her into the knee-high knot garden.
Bettina lay on her back, her hands crossed over her breasts, her eyes closed and features slack as if in untroubled sleep. Her usually olive-hued skin was as pale as purest candle wax. Neatly aligned in a twist of yew and rosemary shrubs, she was only visible head to waist with her lower torso greatly obscured.
“Meg,” the queen managed to choke out, “see if she’s dead.”