The Fatal Fashione: An Elizabeth I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  They had not seen the queen since last evening, though one of her ladies-in-waiting had visited to assure Her Majesty that Marie was resting well.

  “Has Dr. Forrest returned?” the queen asked as they rose from their bow and curtseys.

  “Yes, with more soothing tonic, which, as you can see, may be helping,” Thomas told her, gesturing toward the bed. He was deeply moved and honored by her concern.

  “She’s told you nothing of why she left your home or where she went?” the queen pursued, keeping her voice low.

  “Nothing, Your Majesty,” Anne answered. “We are grateful for your hospitality here, but feel we should take her home. And we are wondering,” she said, speaking even more quietly now, “if we could hire the girl Sally to go with us as a lady’s maid for Marie-Anne. We’d pay her well, and, of course, her mother could visit her whenever—”

  “I think it best you not move her yet and keep her near Dr. Forrest,” the queen said. “But first, I have someone who can perhaps help us discover where Marie was before she was found dazed outside the palace. If you will allow me to bring someone in—”

  “Who is it?” Thomas asked. He realized Anne had spoken those very words in unison with him. His heart started to pound. What if his worst fears were realized and Marie had discovered who had come to town? And had gone there to learn all he had tried so hard to hide? Anne looked totally distraught, too, though she’d said earlier she wanted to learn where Marie had gone when she was missing.

  “It is just a woman I know,” Elizabeth explained, “who lives not far from the palace, near the royal mews. Ursala!”

  At first he saw only Sally’s mother, the queen’s strewing woman, in the doorway, but then another, a comely but unkempt young woman behind her. The queen motioned again, and the stranger came into the room, to the foot of Marie’s bed, and stared a silent moment at her.

  “That’s the one for sure,” she whispered before the queen’s strewing woman whisked her out as fast as she had come. Sally ran after her mother, and Marie started to stir and fuss again.

  “Who was that?” Thomas asked the queen. “And where was Marie seen? Anne, won’t you go and fetch Sally back?” he added, turning toward his wife. “We can’t have Marie distressed again.”

  “In a minute,” Anne said, standing her ground. It was no surprise that his wife gainsayed him, but that she did it before the queen astonished him.

  “I don’t understand the how or why yet,” the queen told them, “but that woman observed your daughter standing in St. Martin’s fields, staring up at a window of a loft near the royal mews.”

  “She’s been asking for a horse of her own,” Anne said, sounding entirely rattled. “Perhaps she simply wandered to the royal mews—to look at the horses.”

  “She told me nothing of wanting a horse, and she knows she can ask me for things,” Thomas blurted. He realized he should just listen, but he was so fearful of what he might hear.

  “She appeared,” the queen went on, “to be looking up at the window of the starch house of a woman who worked for me, a Hannah von Hoven.”

  Thomas fought to keep from falling to his knees. He felt as if he’d been poleaxed. To his amazement, Anne leaned against the high bed, holding the carved post as if the name meant something to her, too. How had it come to this?

  “And I regret to inform you,” the queen said, “that was the very day Hannah was found dead, evidently murdered.”

  “B-but,” Anne stammered, “mere happen—happenstance. That woman is mistaken at what Marie-Anne was staring at, especially in her state of m-mind. We don’t know either that woman you say saw our daughter or that Hannah von something-or-other who died. This misidentification must be straightened out. Thomas,” she demanded, and tapped his shoulder, “do or say something.”

  “I assure you,” the queen went on, “it all will be straightened out as soon as possible, so do not fear for your daughter’s involvement or safety. But what if she happened to see through that window the one who harmed Hannah? I know it is a wild possibility, but we must protect her so that we can discover …”

  Discover … discover. I might be discovered, Thomas thought. The queen went on speaking. Anne was insisting they take Marie home, for she would also be well protected there. Thomas was sure that he had said something, too, but he was sick to death that what he had done would be discovered.

  Chapter the Seventh

  AS THE QUEEN FACED HUGH DAUNTSEY IN THE SAME chamber in which she’d interrogated Cantwell that morning, she prayed this encounter would go better. She was still distressed by how shaken the Greshams had been that their child had been in the vicinity of a murder. They had insisted on taking her home. The queen had acquiesced but told them she would call on them at Gresham House on the morrow to see how Marie was doing. And, for now, Meg had agreed Sally could go with them; the child was pleased she could earn some wages. That Sally was safe and chose to stay a while in London had been conveyed to her adoptive parents by royal courier.

  The queen tried to buck herself up as Dauntsey rose from a smooth, deep bow. A daunting task, she thought, and almost giggled at her pun.’S blood, she was exhausted—and at midmorn, she scolded herself—if she found amusement in any of this mess. Had she caught this dreadful punning malady from Hosea Cantwell?

  “I have had good report of your skills from Lord Paulet,” she told Dauntsey. “Whatever has passed between you and my royal family in the past, I have need of your service now.”

  His face lit so it nearly reflected the rosy silk of his slashed and jeweled doublet. The man always overdressed for someone of his rank; he could nearly challenge her favorite court peacock, her dear Robin Dudley.

  “I would be utterly honored, Your Gracious Majesty, whatever the task.”

  Looking directly into Dauntsey’s eyes immediately cured her exhaustion. The hair on the nape of her neck rose, and her pulse pounded. His gaze was unnerving with those pale, rimless eyes, as if he had no irises, but rather vacant eyeballs, at least from this distance and in this light. With his pale skin, blond hair, and close-cropped beard, the man looked as if he had a tight white sheet wrapped about his head—as if he were some sort of specter. No wonder Dauntsey had failed not only at finance but at earning the trust of foreign moneylenders, for merely looking at him set her teeth on edge.

  “As I have cut my number of bookkeepers to the bone,” she told him, “I shall hire you to oversee a brief project, which, of course, could lead to other things.”

  “I am all ears, Your Majesty, though I do advise Lord Paulet on personal finances and have my investments in the stock market—”

  “The what? I know all the major markets in my capital city, but the stock market?”

  “The new name for meat on the hoof at Smithfield Market, Your Majesty. Investments are booming there. It’s not horses sold on that spot anymore, but mostly cattle—a bull market, as we say. I keep a place of business at Smithfield and bid and sell on stock, sheep, too, that are driven from the countryside into Smithfield. A few of us are doing quite well, running our own stock exchange.”

  Her ignorance on the matter annoyed the queen, and she hated so much as the mention of Smithfield, where she hadn’t set foot once during her reign. Years ago knights had jousted there, horses were kept and traded, even duels of honor fought. Then her Catholic sister, Queen Mary Tudor, whom Dauntsey once served, had ordered Protestants, many of them hardworking Londoners who would not renounce their faith, burned to death at Smithfield. It had sickened the nation and turned thousands against her cause. As an ardent Catholic himself, perhaps Dauntsey valued the site as much as Elizabeth detested it.

  “I was about to say,” she went on, fighting to keep her voice under control, “that I need a man with financial experience to account for a deceased person’s goods, then to see that the allotments of such property are correctly dispersed.”

  “I would be honored,” he said, sweeping both arms gracefully to his sides. “May I inquire what
courtier or ward has died?”

  “Have you heard of the death of my starcher, Hannah von Hoven?”

  “Your starcher? Yes, but I thought a person of some import—”

  “She was of import to me. She leaves no heirs, for I have just learned from a friend of hers that her twin sister died in childbirth in Antwerp years ago, and evidently there was no one else. At any rate, I need a man I can trust to oversee this task, especially since Chief Constable Nigel Whitcomb has declared the crown shall have a share—twenty percent. The rest will go to initial investors and, of course, to her clients who had already paid her for work not completed. In short, it will take more than simply looking over her books.”

  “Then Master Whitcomb will oversee this dreadful death inquiry, but you need a financial representative you can trust—and, of course, Thomas Gresham is busy with his building project and other, grander investments.”

  “Yes. You will work with Whitcomb on this, reporting to him as well as to me.”

  “I understand, Your Majesty.”

  “I take it Lord Paulet—and the van der Passes—can spare you?”

  He looked taken aback. “Lord Paulet will be honored to do so. As for my other clients, how appropriate you have chosen me, for I am honored to keep your other starcher’s accountings.”

  That was, she thought a few too many “honoreds,” but at least she had this man right where she wanted him for now. Too, she had well noted one fascinating fact. From excitement, or some other emotion she could not name, Hugh Dauntsey had begun to sweat profusely through his fine attire.

  The next morning the queen called for her coach to visit Gresham House. At the last minute, she told Boonen to drive her past Smithfield first. Both Rosie and Meg, who were with her in the coach, looked as surprised as Boonen sounded.

  “Smithfield Market, Your Majesty?” he asked, speaking through the open window before he mounted his perch. “Where all the animals are driven in and then taken off to butcher shops?”

  “The same, Boonen,” she replied, holding up the leather flap.

  “But it’s noisy and smelly there—could be dangerous, too, as the drivers of the herds can’t keep them all in check.”

  “Then go as near as you can, my man, without getting us in some sort of wild melee of hoofs and horns. This,” Elizabeth said to Rosie and Meg as she settled back in her seat, “will give Jenks and Clifford some new scenery atop this rocky ride.”

  “Why Smithfield, Your Grace?” Rosie inquired.

  “Because I was annoyed to discover yesterday that some of my subjects have places of business there to wager and bid on what they call stocks, and I need to see the place myself. Which reminds me—Boonen!” she cried, and rapped her knuckles on the ceiling. “After Smithfield, take us round to see the progress that Gresham’s new merchant exchange is making. And watch out for those holes in the street so big we may fall through to Muscovy or China!”

  Rosie thought that quite amusing, but Meg looked only nervous. No doubt, she was ruffled about seeing how Sally was doing in her new position as Marie Gresham’s maid. Or perhaps it was that lovers’ triangle with Jenks and Ned again. Meg had nearly wed Jenks two years ago but had always been more taken with Ned—any lunatic could see that. Now Ursala Hemmings had been added as new thickening in the stew, but it was Meg who seemed to be nearly ready to boil over.

  With four riders before and four following, the coach clattered out of the cobbled courtyard. The queen recalled that when this grand conveyance was new, people had run from it and children had screamed as if it were a monster from the gates of fiery hell instead of Whitehall. Now, a moving attraction of high style, it made its way along the busy strand to Ludgate Hill and then turned north with the three women looking out from beneath the partly covered windows.

  They smelled Smithfield before they saw it—and heard it, too.

  “See if you can find a place to stop with a view of the meadows!” Elizabeth shouted out the window at Boonen.

  “No meadows anymore, Your Majesty,” Jenks cried, leaning down to call in at her from his place as footman at the rear of the coach. “Just dirt pounded flat by bellowing beasts.”

  Holding a handkerchief over her nose to stem the stench and dust, Elizabeth gazed out over the pentagonal expanse of Smithfield. No longer the tilting field full of knights, tents, and gay banners she recalled, the place was indeed packed with beasts of both the animal and human kinds. Long, deep wooden drinking troughs radiated from the center, not only watering the stock but keeping them penned into pie-shaped areas.

  In the very center of the expanse, she could see the rough wooden monument erected to the martyrs who had died here during her sister’s rampage to return England to the Popish religion. As many of those arrested were local commoners, the trinkets of their trades, everything from kettles to horseshoes, were nailed to a huge tree trunk, meant to resemble the stakes at which they had died. Rust from the items had wept down the tree, like brown bloodstains.

  A wave of nausea swept Elizabeth, but she fought it back, trying to concentrate only on the animals. Cattle still streaming in from the countryside—beef on the hoof—shoved together those already herded at the stock market. She saw sheep for mutton, even pigs. Dogs yipping at the heels of the animals helped their drovers cut some out for purchase. Those were driven down different lanes, no doubt headed to butcher shops or to the large slaughterhouses near Eastcheap. Protesting sheep flowed past the coach, with their new owners shouting at them, trying so hard to keep the flock together that they barely gave the big coach a second glance.

  Despite the past horrors and current reeking ruckus, the queen thought, it was all somehow new and vital. She could see how men could make a fortune off this living lake of beasts and the rivers of flesh that flowed away from it to various parts of the town, including, no doubt, her own palace. She’d try to speak more about this stock exchange later with Hugh Dauntsey.

  As the coach rolled away and passed the site of Gresham’s expanding mercantile exchange, she noted well how it had changed in the four days since she had first seen it. A skeleton of wooden scaffolding clasped the lower building blocks; masons stood on it to help hoist the stones in place as they were winched upward. This time, neither Gresham nor his man Nash Badger was in sight, though the place crawled with workmen and builders. She saw four men, perhaps Gresham’s masterminds, glancing at their papers and pointing here and there.

  “On to Gresham House,” Elizabeth called to Boonen, and the coach jerked away again.

  Marie woke to find the thin red-haired woman speaking with her parents again. They were in the bedchamber they had said was hers. Yes, she remembered it now. She was grateful to be hidden away here with her other self, for Sally was nearby and had slept on a trundle bed last night. Sally no longer wore her hood to hide her face, and Marie knew it was now just herself who was hiding something. Or was she hiding from something—or someone?

  She remembered then that this woman who asked all the questions was the queen.

  “Marie, how are you feeling today, now that you are resting at home?” the queen asked, leaning over the bed to take her hand.

  “Better, I thank you.”

  “And speaking so much more. Are you remembering better, too?”

  Marie darted a glance at Sally, who smiled. “I don’t know what I’m to remember,” she whispered. “They—Mother and Father—have asked me, too, but I don’t know what I’m to recall.”

  “Then do not disturb yourself. I am going to speak with your parents in another room and then come back to see you again, so I will leave you here with Sally. Is that all right?”

  Marie nodded. She wished she could shake things up inside her head, so she could recall enough to make them all leave her alone. Why couldn’t she just go on from here? Why did she have to recall things she didn’t want to?

  When the queen went out with her parents, Sally brought a basin of water over to the bed. “How’bout let me wash your face,” she said
. “You got all that sleepy stuff round your eyes, thick white stuff I’ll just get rid of.”

  Marie wasn’t sure why she did it, but she knocked the bowl from Sally’s hands, splashing water on the bed and both of them. She gasped as a picture came back to her of someone’s face and head going under, under the water with white stuff in it …

  Sally looked shocked, but when she saw the look on Marie’s face, she held her hard.

  “What is it?” Sally cried. “Did you’member something?”

  Marie nodded wildly, her forehead against Sally’s shoulder. But the picture in her mind faded again, into half light, half dark, like a painted picture she remembered from her father’s privy chamber. Yes, she was remembering that, so was she better now? A portrait of two girls, like her and Sally, one in light and one in darkness, like some woman who had been in the light and then been plunged into death.

  Marie began to gasp and heave huge sobs.

  “I’ll fetch your parents or the queen,” Sally cried, and tried to pull away.

  “No, don’t leave me! I have to tell you about the painting—of two girls like us. It all means something I can’t recall, but I saw it.”

  “Saw what painting? Where is it, then?”

  “I’ll tell you,” Marie said, still holding tight. “And then you can tell them so everyone will leave me alone, because I can’t—just can’t—remember more.”

  It seemed to the queen as she conversed with Thomas and Anne Gresham that, though they might be falling all over themselves with hospitality to her, they were hardly speaking to each other. Thomas held his walking stick under his arm and kept twisting his grasshopper signet ring as if he could unscrew his finger itself. Anne seemed ill at ease in this room, which was obviously Thomas’s inner sanctum, filled with unique items he was most eager to explain, though it irked Elizabeth that his tour of the chamber kept them from the topic of his own daughter.