Elizabeth I - 05 - The Thorne Maze

by Karen Harper

  “Hear that bell?” someone shouted.

  “That’s just these here coins—”

  “No. Listen!”

  “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!” a new and distant voice buzzed through Jenks’s brain.

  “That’s perfect! The death cart’s coming. Let’s put both of them in it. The cart oafs never look too close and just dump them in a mass grave.”

  Jenks tried to tell Meg he wasn’t dead, but he felt as if he were. Every limb hurt as he was lifted and moved. Even his eyelids wouldn’t open, his jaw wouldn’t move.

  Jenks was jostled, swung, bumped.

  “Hey, ho! Wait there! Got two here, law students from Gray’s!”

  “Two less lawyers sounds good to me. Wrap’m up and toss them up!”

  Jenks hoped that Meg was wrapping a sheet around him, some sort of herbal plaster. Maybe she even got in bed with him, because he cuddled against her side under the sheet and slept the sleep of the dead.

  “Cecil,” the queen said with a wave to summarily dismiss his three scribes who were clustered around a paper-littered table with him, “I want to go to Theobalds today.”

  His face lit until he evidently saw the expression on hers. “Do you mean immediately, Your Grace?” he asked, sitting again as she indicated. Elizabeth sat facing him in the vacated chair next to his.

  “Yes, and perhaps we should take a small party. How many can you house there?”

  “Ten or twelve in beds, with your guards in the stables or in tents. As I said, it’s a small manorhouse. Your Grace, forgive me, but you changed your mind abruptly about Darnley being allowed to go to Scotland and then that he could not yet go. You said we would not visit Theobalds and now we are, just after you reversed your decision to allow Mildred to go there. Each time you change your mind, it is never a woman’s whim but to advance your plans or lay a clever trap.”

  “Even when we’ve been at odds, my Cecil, I’ve always told myself you were the best bet for a clever man to help me run my realm.”

  “I feel that we are fencing. Tell me straight out what you’re thinking—I beg you, Your Grace. It’s something about the maze murders, isn’t it?”

  “Cecil,” she said and rose to look out the single window, “my courtiers are whispering Kat had something to do with Bettina’s death, and it won’t be long before someone gossips that she talked to Templar and then struck him from behind. Because Kat is not well lately—and I have such a care for her—I must flush the murderer, and my attacker out now, at any cost.”

  “And, by implication, because Mildred is not herself lately and I have such a care for her, I must help you at all costs,” he said, rising.

  “Then you have thought that Mildred might know more than she says about something?” Elizabeth parried.

  “Perhaps. About something.”

  “My lord, can more be bothering her than a misshapen son and your first wife bearing you a strong one?”

  “I fear so,” was all Cecil could manage before his voice caught and his eyes filled with tears.

  How deeply he feels for Mildred’s agony, Elizabeth thought, and admired him all the more. She was going to find a way to make Mildred tell all she knew about Templar and Bettina, she assured herself.

  “I was going to stay at your Theobalds a short while,” she told him, “but I’d best arrange for some people and goods to go along. I hate to move Kat again, but I think it best.”

  “I had said we might fortify the manor and pare down our numbers there until we settle who is behind all this,” he reminded her. “Will you take Darnley and his mother?”

  “I’ll keep him under watch here and summon him when we are ready. You see, I had even thought we might set a sort of trap for the murderer, in the place he or she is evidently drawn to—a maze, this time your water maze at Theobalds.”

  “Your Grace,” Cecil called to the queen as their entourage rode the last mile toward his new estate under graying clouds, “I must tell you something before Mildred does. I would hate for us not to be completely clear with each other.”

  Her head snapped around so quickly the plume on her hat whipped her eyes. “Something important to our investigation you’ve been holding back?” she demanded.

  “I know we’re close to Theobalds and it’s likely to rain, but could we take a respite and have a privy talk before we arrive?”

  “Have everyone halt here for a moment!” the queen called to Robin.

  Robin did as she commanded, for once without an impertinent question as to what was going on. He helped her dismount, then skewered Cecil with a sharp stare. “I’ll keep the company back, but I’ll be within the sound of your voice,” he told the queen as he turned away to tend to the others. She had brought Kat and Rosie with her, but left Meg, Ned, and Clifford behind to watch Darnley and his dam, as well as to keep an eye on how Chris and Jamie were faring. When Jenks returned, she’d told everyone, he was to ride to Theobalds forthwith.

  The queen and Cecil left their horses and walked a slight distance to face each other across a fallen tree trunk where a cluster of chestnuts screened them from the road.

  “Do not mince words, my lord. Did you see Kat or Mildred in some sort of awkward situation concerning Bettina?”

  “The awkward situation I need to tell you about is mine.”

  “You?” she cried and grasped a tree limb sticking up like a lance from the trunk. “Cecil, you haven’t somehow played me false in all this?”

  “I have not lied but did allow you to be misled about something.”

  “A lawyer’s answer. Say on.”

  “Three days ago you asked me if I ever betrayed my marriage vows.”

  Her fingers laced, she clenched the tree limb in gloved hands as if she could strangle it. “And you said no.”

  “It was the truth, but there is another truth. One I am starting to fear Mildred has ferreted out. Though I never told her, perhaps Bettina did.”

  Elizabeth wrenched the limb so hard it snapped off in her hands, and she heaved it to the ground. “Stop treading a fine line. Just tell me,” she ordered.

  “Upon one occasion—I swear to you it was just one, which does not excuse it …” His voice began to trail off, but he plunged on, “I bedded Bettina, or vice versa, but I swear to you it was a fortnight before I wed Mildred.”

  The queen’s eyes widened then narrowed. She pressed her thin lips into an even tighter line. “But you were betrothed to her?”

  “Yes, while working day and night for your causes while your sister yet was queen, about nine years ago.”

  “In London, at Gray’s Inn,” the queen summarized for him, “two weeks before you wed your Mildred, while Bettina was recently wed to Templar, you cuckolded your admired mentor and teacher with his young wife?”

  “It was wrong, a sudden sin I’ve long regretted—suffered for, though I don’t think Bettina did. I swear to you, she instigated the act, though that does not excuse my part in it. At least she did not hold it over my head, never mentioned it again to me when she saw how regretful and self-loathing I was. Of course, I reckoned it didn’t mean that much to her when I heard she bedded others, but I did fear she’d boast of it or try to blackmail me some day as I rose high.”

  “And did she?”

  “She did not. I don’t expect you to understand, Your Grace. I just—”

  “You don’t expect me to understand?” she cried, her voice rising. “It’s the very sort of lewd, immoral, and evidently natural behavior I expect from men, including my father, that traitorous Tom Seymour, King Philip of Spain, Lord Darnley, and the list goes on ad infinitum!”

  “I am without excuse. I lost my head as I had years before with my first wife, Mary. There is—was—something of Mary in Bettina that momentarily swept me away. I had no notion at the time it would become common practice for her to take lovers, Bettina, I mean. I swear to you I have never done such with another! I can only throw myself upon your mercy for not explaining sooner, but I d
esperately needed you to trust me for all we’ve faced together. It—this grievous misjudgment on my part has appalled and haunted me, especially lately.”

  He heaved a huge sigh, snatched off his hat, and went down on one knee on the ground before her. She stared at him, but marveled at herself.

  Mere weeks ago, before someone tried to strangle her, she would have thrown a raving fit and let her infamous Tudor temper punish and banish this man, even if she forgave him later. But she needed him now, and, more importantly, she still esteemed and trusted him. He had not been wed at the time of his liaison and had not directly lied to her earlier, considering the way she’d couched her question. As for losing one’s head, she had nearly done so four years ago over Robin Dudley, and Cecil had counseled her and stuck by her.

  “Can Mildred know of this?” she asked in a steady voice.

  She saw that he’d braced himself for an onslaught. He looked astounded she was so calm. “Not unless Bettina told her—or Templar found out and told her, but whyever would they have? It’s been my worst nightmare that he would discover what I’d done, but I swear, I never fathomed Mildred might find out.”

  “I’m afraid we must ask her—tell her so we can discover if she already knew—and perhaps reacted somehow.”

  “She cannot be a murderess, Your Grace, even in her present distracted state. Moral, pious, even puritanical, it cannot be my Mildred we are seeking. She knows the Bible like a cleric, can quote it, believes it, too. And I fear telling her all this might send her off even more into the deep end of her melancholy.”

  “Even after getting away from the demands of the children for a while, she’s been acting bizarre?”

  “It seems at times she cannot abide me. Since little Robert’s birth, I have nearly despaired I was losing her, even as she seemed to have lost herself … .”

  His voice broke. She leaned down and put her hand, still in its suede riding glove, over his, trembling on his sword.

  “Because of Kat, I understand that, too,” Elizabeth told him, tears in her own eyes. “But I ask that you, even at the possible cost of discovering Mildred has committed some foolish or malicious act, let me question her alone. Perhaps without you there, she will be more forthcoming. And you do realize that what you told me just now could provide a motive for your doing away with Templar and Bettina—to keep them from telling Mildred or me or to keep Bettina from blackmailing you.”

  “But—”

  “Rest assured I know that, each time you’ve been with Templar or Bettina, you have suffered for your immoral act. I’ve seen it on your face, but never understood it until now. Besides, I believe your only motive for murder would be to hide that which you freely—if tardily, my lord—confessed to me today.

  “And so I ask,” she went on, tugging him to his feet, “after I speak with Mildred, you help me set a trap for our maze murderer and strangler, even if it is someone dear to us.”

  Jenks jolted from his dream and from his bed with Meg. Either Meg was crying or it was raining. But it felt good on his head and face.

  “How many this time, then?” a voice asked.

  “Fourteen. You still burying them six feet under?”

  “God save us, not with the rise in numbers. ‘Bout two, three feet has to do. I see you got a peeled onion ’round your neck. What you got in it to keep the death from creepin’ up your nose?”

  “Stuffed with rue, figs, and treacle. Damned dear the treacle was too, but beats garlic carried in the mouth all day.”

  “We been burning old shoes to purify the air at home. You think treacle costs a pretty penny, I know a man puts imported nummy in his ale.”

  “He still healthy?”

  “Think so. The likes a you not carted him to the likes a me yet.”

  “What’s been really rattling me is the shapes of the clouds, like they say, conjunctions of the planets in a malignant manner and all that.”

  “God save us, you seen om’nous ones?”

  “One rain cloud earlier like a huge axe hanging over St. Paul’s and one shaped like a hearse ’bout an hour ago.”

  “You’re all the hearse these poor souls be getting, so let ’er go then, and I’ll mark fourteen more.”

  Jenks jerked, fell free, then slid down, down. He landed hard with someone right on top of him. It wasn’t Meg because she always smelled like the sweetest of her herb gardens, and this bedfellow just plain stank.

  Chapter the Fifteenth

  CECIL’S HOPES TO GIVE HIS QUEEN A FIRST VIBRANT view of Theobalds went for naught as a warm rain began to fall. Still, he hoped she could see what a fine flow of land it was, joining the small manor with the rising ground where the house would stand someday.

  “The great house will go exactly where, my lord?” she called to him as if she’d read his mind. They halted their horses, though Elizabeth motioned for their entourage to ride ahead.

  He reined in as the others passed them, grateful not only that she hadn’t dismissed or berated him for his confession about Bettina, but that she seemed genuinely interested in Theobalds. He’d been so hungry for shared excitement about the building project with Mildred, but he had longed for it with his queen, too.

  “About three-fourths of a mile to the northeast. There!” he cried and pointed through the silver mists. “Gardens will stretch out there and there, ornamental lakes and walks. Someday, Your Grace, God willing, Theobalds will greet you at its gates with a grandeur that signifies your beauty and might—and my devotion.”

  Their gazes met, though they both blinked in the increasing raindrops. “God willing, once we rid ourselves of all who would harm such dreams,” she whispered and spurred her horse again.

  He followed, reveling in the view, even though he’d not yet changed one thing here. The rain was turning the dove-gray of the moated manorhouse to shiny pewter. Thick ivy knit its green fingers up the walls to frame mullioned windows. Cecil wondered if Mildred would be shocked to hear the royal party clatter into their cobbled courtyard. He was thankful he lived in the modern age when homes no longer needed thick walls, small windows, and moats to defend themselves, but could expand to embrace and enhance the surrounding countryside. It was essential that the queen’s kingdom remain strong to allow such safety, so they must ferret out this murderer who mocked and threatened her power.

  “And where is this unique water maze of yours?” the queen asked as she halted her horse again on the bridge over the moat. She turned in her sidesaddle and craned her neck to look back and out.

  “Over there,” he told her, pointing again, “fed by the same stream as the moat, sitting in that low-lying water meadow. It’s a quickset white thorn maze planted in weighted barrels one can row a boat through.”

  “Ah, good. A thorn maze adrift in water which is deepening even more in this weather,” she called over her shoulder as she headed into the courtyard. “But we shall learn its secrets and conquer it anyway, my lord.”

  He took her meaning. Elizabeth Tudor was determined to set a trap in his new maze. But the thing that scared him was what she planned to use as bait.

  A trickle of water on his face woke Jenks. But when he realized he was thirsty and painfully tried to lift and cup his hand, both his palm and mouth filled with wet soil. He could not even budge.

  He gagged, panicked. Where was he?

  With a fierce effort he dragged a hand free and began to scrape soil away from his mouth and eyes. He was in some sort of air pocket under debris and—dear Jesus, help me, he prayed—under a cold, stiff body huddled next to him.

  He half twisted, half clawed his way out, upward, toward the light. But there was no light, only blackness thick as fear. Had he died and gone to hell?

  He shoved someone’s leg, then a body aside to lift his head, sucking in great gasps of air. A pit. He was in a burial pit with corpses. Spitting soil, he dug and pushed and broke free.

  He squinted through the grit in his eyes. It wasn’t night but it was raining, with gunmetal clouds dar
kening the day. He lifted his face to let the rain wash his eyes.

  In pain, trembling, he tried to climb a steep dirt embankment, but it was slick mud, running with rain. He heard cannon fire and ducked. Had he fallen off his horse and tumbled into a trench in some sort of battle? Were these fellow soldiers? The rumbling came again. He realized it might be thunder.

  Then he remembered. He was in London in time of plague. With Hugh Scott, he’d been attacked at Gray’s Inn. But after that, what?

  He began to shout, though he wasn’t putting out much noise. So weak, his body aching, every which way he turned or moved. What if he’d caught the pestilence?

  But he quelled his panic as remembrance returned. The thieves who’d jumped them had put them in a cart, and now he was in a mass grave … a plague grave.

  “Let me out of here! I’m alive! Help! Help, ho!”

  It seemed ages before he heard a voice. His heart pounding, he stopped to listen, then cried out again.

  “I don’t have the death! I’m not sick. I’m down in this hole. Help me-eee!”

  A man’s head popped over the edge above him. He dangled a lantern. Even that dim light hurt his eyes. He could not see more than the silhouette of a head.

  “Help me, man! Thieves attacked and threw me in here, but I swear by all that’s holy I’m not sick.”

  “You might be now,” the fellow told him. “It’s not my fault. I just dig the pits and cover what the dead carts bring me. Hang on, and I’ll fetch something to get you out.”

  Elizabeth wondered if there was a way out of these complications with Mildred. She could tell the woman felt extremely nervous as she showed her monarch the accommodations that afternoon and they sat alone in the solar, mistress of the manor and mistress of the realm.

  “These lovely grounds and a new home will be a fine heritage for your son Robert,” Elizabeth assured her, raising her voice to be heard over the patter of rain on the oriel window panes. “I mean for him to be my man someday, just as his father is.”