Elizabeth I - 05 - The Thorne Maze

by Karen Harper

  Meg bent to feel for a neck pulse. “Dead and starting to stiffen. Beginning rigor mortis, so that means she’s been gone at least an hour, maybe as many as six. And so cold, even though the day’s warming fast.”

  “I warrant she’s been here at least since before dawn,” Elizabeth surmised, “perhaps since she may have chosen to walk outside last night after Kat threatened h—”

  Elizabeth bit her next words off; her stomach cartwheeled. Dear God in heaven, surely those who had beheld Kat’s berating Bettina in the hall last night would not take the old woman’s rambling warning to heart. Although only Elizabeth had heard Kat say that Bettina should be punished for listening at keyholes, surely every eavesdropper had overheard Kat’s threat that Bettina would soon be executed for her sins.

  To convince everyone that Kat thought she was addressing a woman beheaded nearly twenty years ago might help people to excuse Kat’s behavior, but it would also be admitting Kat should be locked up as being non compos mentis. Worse, her courtiers might think dear old Kat should be punished for this young woman’s death. And if they thought Kat had killed Bettina, would they wonder about Templar’s demise, too?

  Standing in the heart of the knot garden, Elizabeth suddenly felt exposed. Beyond agonizing about Kat, she had a second slaying on her lands, in her living labyrinths. The murderer was making a mockery of her attempts to solve a crime and to control her court and kingdom. She felt taunted and threatened, but she intended to fight back.

  “It appears that Mistress Sutton has died but how is the question.” The queen raised her voice to the circle of curious courtiers and servants. Her eyes skimmed the crowd; some gasped, some elbowed each other and whispered. Margaret and Darnley had appeared, looking smug as usual. Ned was here, but she didn’t see Kat or Mildred, only a dismayed Rosie, now accompanied by Chris and Jamie. Both young men looked shocked.

  “Guards, fetch a winding sheet, and keep everyone well back,” Elizabeth commanded.

  “Shall I summon the local authorities again, Your Grace?” Robin called from the shrub border.

  “Of course, we must ascertain the exact cause of Mistress Sutton’s death, but I shall tell you when we need the authorities. Send someone immediately to find Jenks on the London road where he has gone searching for her. He has orders to ride no closer to the city than Moorgate.” Robin hastened to obey.

  “Your Majesty,” Lady Rosie said, leaning on Jamie’s arm as the guards began to urge the crowd away, “it can’t be the pestilence which has killed Mistress Sutton, can it?”

  Everyone froze, poised as if to flee.

  “Set your hearts at ease for that,” Elizabeth assured them. “Though some victims of the black death seem quite well until they suddenly die, the plague is not in these parts. As for the more blatant form of the pestilence, we have all seen Mistress Sutton with us lately, not showing any signs of fever, spotting, or black buboes. With her husband newly dead, she may have died of a broken heart, for she was much distraught. I charge you to pray for her soul. We will arrange a formal inquiry of this matter.” Seemingly calm and assured, she stared them down until they moved away again and began to disperse.

  “Now that was a politic answer,” Cecil muttered. “Surely, we can link this to her husband’s death and your attack. I cannot believe the audacity of someone to leave bodies in your mazes as if daring us to solve the puzzle.”

  “It is someone,” the queen added, turning to look down at poor Bettina again, “we have brought here with us. Hell’s gates, even Hatfield’s too large to oversee with too many folk!”

  “Since we can’t go to London or back to Hampton Court, we could leave even more of your entourage behind and move into the manorhouse at Theobalds to defend ourselves better, Your Grace.”

  “I shall think on it, but we have much to do here first. Meg, get that sheet the guards brought out and hold it up to block out prying gazes from the upper windows. Meanwhile, before she’s moved inside, we must see if there are clues at this site. As for her body, I see no strangulation marks on her throat or evidence she’s been struck with something heavy, though we will completely examine her inside.”

  Elizabeth stooped amidst the interlacings of shrubs and roses to push the growth farther back from the upper torso. Indeed, no wounds, no blood visible at first glance, at least not on the front of Bettina nor staining the soil around her. And no scent of death yet, only the faint odor of the roses—or was it cloves?

  “See why I thought she might be drunk, Your Grace?” Meg interrupted her agonizing. “There’s that goblet rolled a ways from her left elbow as if she put it down when she was finished drinking.”

  For the first time, the queen noted a plain pewter goblet on its side in the soil. Elizabeth pulled her handkerchief out and carefully lifted it. “Lest it be a weapon with blood smears from the back of her head or such—or in case we can tell what was in it,” she said, tilting the goblet so the morning sun lit its depths.

  “Whatever it was, it has run out and left neither stain nor scent,” Cecil noted, peering into it over her shoulder. She handed it to him; he wrapped it more completely and stuck it by its thick stem in his belt.

  “I don’t believe,” the queen continued, “she merely fell drunk among these shrubs and died, for none of them lie under her and all above, as if they were arranged to hide her after she was laid here.”

  “Which means,” Cecil surmised, “she could have been murdered elsewhere and then, in the dark of night, her body arranged to give some sort of misdirection or, as we surmised earlier, a message from the murderer.”

  “More specifically, an insult, a challenge, or a threat.” As she spoke, Elizabeth parted the shrubs and thorny roses covering the lower parts of Bettina’s body. The queen gasped, and Cecil swore. Meg jumped so in surprise she dropped the sheet.

  The corpse’s skirts and petticoats were hacked off thigh high to expose her bare legs, and the hedge clippers were stuck into the ground between her splayed knees.

  Jenks had not seen anyone resembling Bettina, or even the horse which was missing, along the London road. He’d stopped at two inns to see if she’d gone in for refreshment, but no one recalled her.

  “An’ we would a ’membered her if’n we’d a seen her,” the keeper of a flea-bitten Rose and Crown on the very outskirts of the capital told him. But what Jenks had liked about the place was that the horses in the stables were better cared for than the people. The burly innkeeper was a man after his own heart and would do well to abet his plan.

  “Aye, the woman is a bit of a looker,” Jenks admitted, trying to jog the man’s memory and get in his good graces. “Built pigeon-breasted, she is, with a ripe body.”

  “Naw, that’s not why I would a ‘membered her, not in these times,” the man protested. “She’d be stupid as a cow, if she’s heading toward London ’stead of ’way from it, that’s what I’d a ‘membered. ’Fore folks were halted by a new ord‘nance closing the city gates to outward traffic, people be only hustlin’ out, not in, man!”

  “The gates have been closed?”

  “God’s truth, they have. City ’fficials tryin’ to keep the pest’lence bottled up inside best they can. Thank God Almighty I don’t live or work in there.”

  That settled it, Jenks thought. At first he’d meant to leave his horse here so he could tell Her Grace he hadn’t ridden farther than Moorgate, as she’d ordered. But now, no way was he taking the fine animal into plague London where people could actually be hungry enough to eat a horse.

  At all costs, Jenks was determined to help the queen find and question Bettina Sutton. But in case he failed at that, he meant to search her chambers, and somehow discover whether or not Her Grace could trust Chris Hatton and Jamie Barstow. She had said plain out she needed someone to go to Gray’s Inn and get information on those two. Besides, with Meg not wanting him, he’d dedicate his life even more to serving the queen’s every need.

  “I need to board my horse here for a few hours, maybe a
day and be sure, when I come back, he’s still here, been fed and watered, too,” Jenks said, taking an entire crown from his purse. “And they’ll be more of this for you if it’s like I say.”

  “Sure, if’n you’re not goin’ into the city, then coming back out. Don’t need no one here could be carryin’ plague.”

  “Just looking for the lady outside the walls and gates, because I know she’d not go in,” Jenks lied without blinking an eye. Ned would have been proud of him and dubbed it merely play-acting.

  “Hey, just don’t try handin’ me that coin straight out,” the innkeeper protested, jumping back. Several louts standing around leaped away, too. “Don’t care if you claim you been out in the country, can’t trust touching coins might a been in the city. Drop it in this here pot of vinegar, case it’s got the plague on it.”

  “Right,” Jenks told him and dropped the coin in the sour-smelling pot the man held out at arm’s length. “You just can’t tell who’s been where.”

  “We must discover as much as we can from examining her body, then properly reclothe it before we summon the authorities,” the queen told Meg. “These hacked-off skirts are shameful and insulting.”

  Cecil had left the first floor withdrawing chamber where her guards had laid Bettina on a long table, so Meg and the queen were alone with the cadaver. Since it was a room with little light, the queen had ordered lanterns placed at the woman’s head and foot. They flickered to throw the body into shifting shadows, as if Bettina yet breathed or moved.

  “Kat used to help with things like this,” Meg murmured, looking suddenly squeamish as she repeatedly wiped her palms on her skirts.

  “At least,” Elizabeth said, clearing her throat, “she wasn’t cut or stabbed with the clippers, though that’s what I expected when I saw them stuck like that—there.”

  She pointed to Bettina’s spread knees, which had gone rigid. Had her legs just relaxed in death like that, or had her murderer spread them to leave some message or threat beyond the hacked skirts? If they could find the several circles of material cut off, they’d have their man—or woman.

  “If all her layers of skirt and petticoats were cut off with those hedge clippers, someone’s used to handling those big, awkward things,” Meg said, “and it’s not me.”

  “I suppose those ragged sliced edges of material could have been done with a sword or knife. Now, enough of avoiding what we must do. Let’s be quick but thorough.” The queen forced herself to touch Bettina. “No bruises or scars on her legs anywhere I can see,” she observed.

  “Nor here,” Meg said as she unlaced the points which attached her sleeves and bodice to bare her white arms. “She’s so stiff we’ll have to turn her completely over to see the backs of her arms. And to unlace her bodice itself—if you think we should. You don’t really believe she could have died of a broken heart, do you, Your Grace?”

  “I’ve heard of it—or perhaps she died of fright, of being swiftly, suddenly seized. I thought my heart could beat right out of my chest when I was attacked.”

  They worked to turn Bettina facedown. “What is all that?” the queen cried, darting away in alarm from the purple bruises on the backs of Bettina’s thighs. “Not the beginning of the black plague swellings!”

  “No, for I’ve seen this before. I still may not remember some of my past, but I recall helping prepare my grandmother for burial, and she had these marks. Livor mortis, it’s called, where the blood pools and settles in the lowest parts of the body once the heart stops beating.”

  Holding her breath, the queen came closer to examine the discolorations of Bettina’s pale skin, along the backs of her thighs, even on her back as Meg unlaced her bodice.

  “So it’s natural, you mean?” she asked at last.

  “Natural if one’s dead and lay in a face-up position right after giving up the ghost. And I see no other kind of marks on her back under this bodice, or in front,” she said, holding Bettina’s shoulders up to peer at her chest. “Well,” she muttered, “she’s not gone stiff there anyway.”

  “I can’t fathom being so large-breasted, not when I—you and I—are both so small,” Elizabeth whispered.

  “I can’t fathom her getting in the flat-fronted gowns everyone wears. She’s built so unstylish, but I think men like it better, no matter what women think. Oh, pardon, Your Grace.”

  “I think with Bettina they liked it better, and she took advantage of that,” the queen said with a sigh as Meg relaced Bettina’s bodice. No use putting a new one on her, though they had sent Cecil to get a skirt of Mildred’s to cover poor Bettina so they could hand her over to the local coroner. The queen could hardly take one from Meg, and her own garments and most courtiers’ clothes were too richly woven for Bettina’s burial.

  “So,” the queen said, helping cover the corpse with the sheet again, “what could she die from if there is not a foreign wound or mark on her?”

  “Poison’s all I can think of,” Meg admitted, “and she did have that goblet.”

  The queen shuddered as her gaze snagged Meg’s wide stare. In the year Elizabeth became queen they’d faced a poison threat here at Hatfield. That murderer was long dead, yet the mere memory haunted the queen.

  “If it was poison,” Elizabeth whispered, “that could mean we are indeed looking for a murderer of random advantage, one who changes weapons at will, using whatever person just happens to be in his or her path to murder for the mad thrill of it. But I think not. There is method to these attacks, especially to use some sort of maze. What frightens me is that we have someone who perversely plans—and enjoys the thrill of the kill, because of some deeply harbored hatred—perhaps hatred of me.”

  “Any way we reason it out, the maze murderer’s outfoxing us so far.”

  Unfortunately, Meg was absolutely right.

  He was no numbskull, no matter what people thought, Jenks told himself. So, though he had now followed Her Grace’s orders to ride clear to Moorgate to try to find Bettina on the main road from Hatfield to the capital, he was not going through the plague city. Thank God, the Inns of Court were on the northern edge of London, and Gray’s the farthest out with fields and hills beyond, so he could go in that way and avoid the worst. Traveling afoot, he’d be in and out quick and safe with nary a brush with the Black Death.

  He walked westward through fields and down deserted lanes with the sinking sun in his eyes. He’d have to put up at Gray’s for one night and head out at dawn after talking to whomever could tell him about Bettina, Chris Hatton, and Jamie Barstow. Nothing complicated in that, he tried to buck himself up. All would be well.

  From this view on slightly elevated ground, it was hard to believe the city suffered. Yet he could see that the usually heavy traffic on the distant Thames was near nothing. As he looked down Chancery Lane toward Holborn, he paused, one hand on his sword. So few were in the streets. London lay before him like a ghost town.

  Still, he hustled down the lane toward Gray’s, blessing his lucky stars again that he need not go into the city proper. But nothing looked proper about London today. The few folk who scurried by glanced back over their shoulders as if someone were stalking them.

  More than once he almost turned to flee, though folks had said the pestilence this year was not as bad as last. That was not saying much, since over twenty thousand deaths had been recorded in London last summer. And anyone who caught the death had a less than half chance of pulling through.

  He told himself he would not fear, for he was on a crusade for the queen. Besides, if he took sick, suffered, and died, maybe Meg Milligrew would finally realize how much he should have meant to her. But he had things to do for the one woman who did appreciate him.

  Of course, he’d have to find a way to report what he learned here without actually approaching the queen until a proper period passed so he knew he wasn’t carrying the pestilence. Good thing Her Grace insisted everyone on her Privy Plot Council must know how to read and write. That bastard Ned had taught him when the
queen commanded it, one of his few kind deeds ever. So Jenks would only go so far toward Hatfield and send a note in with his horse. Once that smart stallion got close enough to the royal stables, he’d find his way. With a tight smile, Jenks pictured how heartbroken the queen—and maybe Meg—would be when his mount came back without him.

  “Now,” the queen said as she assembled her already decimated Privy Plot Council, this time also without Jenks, “we must investigate Bettina’s demise without panicking anyone about a murderer loose in our midst.”

  “That will be a good trick, as I’m starting to feel panicked,” Ned said. “I can’t believe Jenks hasn’t hightailed it back here yet when he didn’t find Bettina.”

  “I’m sure he has a good reason,” Meg piped up.

  “Lord Dudley has sent a man after him,” the queen explained, “but he has not returned yet either. By the way, I am considering bringing Lady Rosie Radcliffe into our midst at the next meeting, if there are no objections.”

  “To replace Kat?” Meg asked.

  “No one replaces Kat, or ever could.”

  “Then Kat hasn’t become suspect?” Ned asked, putting his hands up as if to ward off an attack from the queen. “I mean, I realize you said at an early meeting to ‘leave Kat out of it,’ Your Grace, but I’m not sure we can now. She admitted she sneaked out at night to speak to Templar in the maze, evidently just before he was murdered, then she threatened Bettina and voilà—”

  “Ridiculous,” Elizabeth cut in. “She was in bed in my chamber during the time Bettina must have been dispatched and placed in the knot garden.”

  That settled that, she thought, but she knew full well, though she’d put Kat to bed last night, she’d finally fallen asleep only to find her dressed and having breakfast when she and Rosie awakened. At night, the hall guards changed and even nodded off at times. But Elizabeth knew deep down, despite Kat’s dementia, she would harm no one. It was Mildred Cecil she was starting to suspect.