Murder at the Queen's Masquerade

by Amanda Carmack

  She made her way through the queen’s bedchamber, also filled with wide-eyed, whispering courtiers, and into the corridor that led to the larger privy chamber. She passed the two guards stationed as usual just outside the door, tall, burly men in the queen’s green and white livery, armed with halberds and daggers. Kate remembered they were the same men who were there when she came through with Mistress Ashley, probably the same who were there all evening. They seemed stoic and still, as their position required, but when Kate peered up into their faces she noticed their frozen expression, their darting eyes.

  “You are called Ned, are you not?” she said, remembering one of the men who often guarded the queen’s carriage on progress. He was exceptionally tall, usually smiling.

  He gave her a startled glance, not shifting his stance. “Aye, Mistress Haywood, that’s me. And this is my brother Wat.”

  “What think you of this strange business tonight?”

  The two brothers exchanged a long glance. “We heard nothing all night, mistress, and that is God’s own truth,” Ned declared. “Everyone was in the great hall, and it was quiet. We would have seen anyone who tried to get inside, or heard any noise if they tried to climb in the bedchamber window. There was naught.”

  “And there are guards on patrol in the courtyard,” Wat added. “Surely none could get in the tower at all.”

  “That’s just what Will once said!” Ned cried. “And look what happened to him. He vanished, didn’t he? Snatched in the night by spirits.”

  “Hush now,” Wat said, his lips tight. “He just left, of course. Everyone knows it.”

  “Will?” Kate said.

  “He was another guard, and he disappeared not long ago,” Ned said, even as Wat tried to hush him.

  “Vanished?” Kate asked. It made sense. Surely this Will was the guard who had died in the queen’s wardrobe room. Cecil did know how to cover things up in a most plausible fashion; the other guards would think it was a ghost, and the courtiers wouldn’t notice. But guards and servants saw things others did not.

  “It was the ghost!” Ned cried. “They say that pearl, the one that Queen Anne wore, is surely cursed. If it’s gone now, maybe the ghost was after it. It took the pearl. Maybe that’s best, aye?”

  “Unless we get the blame for it,” Wat muttered.

  Kate was quite sure it was not a ghost that took the queen’s pearl, or who killed Will. But who did? “You are sure you saw nothing at all unusual tonight? No one tried to get inside the queen’s rooms at all?”

  “Nothing at all, Mistress Haywood,” Ned said. “Everyone was at the masquerade.”

  Kate nodded and gave them a reassuring smile. She turned toward the stairs. It would indeed be almost lunatic for anyone to just try and walk into the queen’s chambers. Yet surely the pearl had not just floated away by itself, in the hand of a ghost. She liked a harvest moon phantom tale as much as the maids of honor, who shrieked and dove under their bedclothes, but she wasn’t able to trust in the truth of them at all. If it was true, wouldn’t her mother come back on a masquerade night? Or Queen Anne?

  Nay, it was something much more solid that took the gem. But how?

  Kate felt the press of the small, gilded object in her sleeve, and she drew it out to study it closer in the torchlight. It was very intricate, the gold pierced in an elaborate pattern. Surely she had seen it before, or something rather like it? She lifted it to her nose and caught a faint whiff of rosewater.

  She felt a rush of footsteps from the bottom of the stairs, and quickly tucked the gold object away and continued on her path. She passed knots of people, all whispering frantically, but not at all like the wild merriment of the masquerade. She found a door that led into the courtyard, and slipped out into the cold night.

  The silence after the constant wavelike murmur of the palace felt loud. An icy wind swept around her, and she hurried to finish her task. Rubbing at her arms in their thin sleeves, she carefully peered up at the tower that housed the queen’s chambers.

  The moonlight that shimmered through the clouds turned the gray stones silver. She could see the teeth of the parapet high above where she had walked with Rob. Candlelight shone a soft gold in the narrow windows, but she could see no way in with the steep walls. For just an instant, she fancied she saw a wisp of a shadow between the stones of the parapet, a ghostlike movement, and she laughed at herself.

  But the sob she heard on the wind was uttered by no phantom. She heard it again, and followed the sound around the corner of the wall. She found Rob sitting there on a marble bench, next to young Thomas, who cried uncontrollably into his hands. Rob was obviously trying to make him cease, to be strong, but it was doing no good. He shot her a desperate glance over Thomas’s head.

  “Look, ’tis Kate,” he said.

  Thomas glanced up, and as she made her way closer, she saw the tracks of tears on his cheeks. For all his good looks, his acting profession, he was still just a lad.

  “They think I have taken the queen’s pearl, Mistress Haywood!” Thomas cried, wiping his tears on the red and green sleeve of his acrobat’s costume. “I never would have done such a thing, I swear it. I only want to be with my Rose.”

  “Rose, is it?” Kate’s gaze met Rob’s over Thomas’s bent head. Rob shrugged and shook his head. “I do believe you, Thomas, and I know the queen will as well, when you tell her where you were tonight. Losing at cards is surely no crime, no matter what Lady Lennox and Lady Green say.”

  “I cannot tell where I was,” Thomas said, his jaw set defiantly.

  “Was it with this Rose?” Kate asked. “Is she the one you have been trying to impress with trinkets?”

  “She cares naught for me, but she is everything,” Thomas said. “She did agree to talk to me for a moment while everyone was busy at the masquerade. She works in the stillroom here, and can’t take long away. I won’t bring doubt on her fair name!”

  Kate frowned. It sounded as if Thomas’s would-be sweetheart was no maidservant or farm daughter, which didn’t bode well for his poor, dramatic heart. But she would have to warn him later.

  She shivered in the cold wind, and Rob quickly swung his short velvet cloak over her shoulders and walked her a few steps away from Thomas.

  “You should be inside, Kate, seeing to the queen, not catching a chill out here,” he said. “I will make sure Thomas gets into no more trouble tonight.”

  Kate nodded. “Perhaps you could find out who this mysterious Rose is? The more information we have, the less Lady Lennox can accuse Thomas of, aye?”

  He nodded in return, and she could see in the light of his blue eyes that he understood her. She was not alone in facing the snapping jaws of the court.

  As she made her way back into the castle, Kate found herself even more determined to prove that young Thomas was innocent of the theft, no matter how easy a target he might be for courtiers.

  The small object in her sleeve rubbed against her wrist. She drew it out and turned it in the moonlight. It shone up at her, gold and intricate.

  Suddenly, an image snapped into place in her mind. She remembered where she had seen it before, as she raised it from her belt to inhale its scent. In the hand of Lady Green.

  * * *

  “It is most discourteous to keep us from our beds so late,” Lady Green said querulously. “I am an old lady, and I grow weary in these cold nights.”

  “Forgive me, my lady. The queen thought you might enjoy these, as a small token of her esteem.” Kate held out the small silver platter of sugar wafers, stamped with the queen’s seal.

  “Did she indeed?” Lady Lennox sniffed. “It is about time my cousin paid me some courtesy. I am ill done by at this court.”

  “Indeed you are, Margaret,” Lady Green clucked.

  “I am the queen’s nearest kinswoman, yet I am disregarded, snubbed. My mother’s jewels stolen.” Lady Lennox
gulped down some wine, and shook her head. “It cannot be borne much longer!”

  Kate curtsied, and left the platter on the table at Lady Lennox’s elbow. She knew she could not stay long, for fear of rousing the ladies’ suspicion, but she had seen what she needed to. She had wanted to examine Lady Green’s attire and demeanor, as well as that of her pet monkey, for herself. Lady Green did not wear her pretty pomander at her looped gold belt, but the embroidery on her gown was unmarred. Unlike her monkey’s jacket. Its rows of fine sequins, flashing gold against the soft velvet, were torn. He nibbled at a wafer, and seemed to eye Kate over its edge.

  It gave her an idea, yet it seemed so strange, so fantastical, she wasn’t sure exactly how it was carried out. She had to find out for herself.

  “Is that all?” Lady Lennox snapped to her. Kate curtsied once more, and ducked out of the chamber as she heard a volley of furious whispers between the two women behind her. Hoping no one would pass by for at least a few minutes, Kate pressed her ear to a small crack in the wood of the door and listened carefully.

  “. . . will be caught! And it will be your fault, Margaret,” Lady Green wailed once they thought they were alone. “I am barely able to keep my head up with pride as it is. My foolish son knew he needed to marry a fine dowry, but he would not do his duty. Now what will I do?”

  “Don’t be so silly,” Lady Lennox snapped. “Keep a cool head, and none will know what happened. Don’t blame me. I merely gave you a chance to honor your debts, and help me right a great wrong at the same time. That pearl is mine. It was my mother’s, not that whore Anne Boleyn’s.”

  “I know, Margaret,” Lady Green said. Her voice was meeker now, weary. “I am glad to be of service in seeking such justice. But you said it would be so simple, and it gets more complicated all the time.”

  “Only because I thought you were smarter than that simple-minded guard.”

  “I told you—I tried! It was an accident.”

  Kate silently implored them to say how they did it, and where the pearl was now, but they fell silent. She knew she couldn’t linger there for much longer; someone was sure to pass by.

  “Never mind that,” Lady Lennox said, her voice gentler, coaxing. She sounded a bit like the queen when she was bent on charming someone, a Tudor changeableness. “Hand me that wine. I have gotten myself out of worse spots than this before. Matters will look better in the morning.”

  “Aye,” Lady Green said with a sigh. Her monkey gave a shriek of agreement, and Kate remembered her earlier idea. She backed away from the door, and hurried along the corridor just as two maidservants turned the corner.

  It was a wild idea indeed, but it was all she had for the moment. She had to investigate it.

  She hurried back to her own chamber, and found that luckily Violet was still gone. She dug down to the bottom of her clothes chest, and found what she sought, a boy’s doublet, shirt, and hose, garb that had placed her in good stead once or twice when she needed to go where no lady should. She quickly changed her clothes, and found a lamp and a sturdy walking stick.

  She only hoped she was right, and the queen’s pearl would be quickly found.

  Chapter Six

  She hurried up the narrow spiral staircase to the parapets where she had walked with Rob and studied the round openings of the hatchways set in the flagstone floor. She wasn’t sure where they led, but she did know that the queen’s suite of rooms lay directly below her feet. She set down the lamp she carried and took off her cloak before reaching for the stout walking stick.

  Even with all her strength behind it, the stone hatchway was hard to lift. She finally managed to wedge the stick beneath the edge and push it away. It creaked and cracked, and the momentum of it made her stumble. She knelt down by the edge of the opening she had uncovered and held her lamp up to peer below.

  As she had imagined, there was a small space, probably used for ventilation of the crowded rooms below. It was wide enough for crawling through, since she was small, but only just.

  Kate glanced up at the stars, twinkling like tiny diamonds from behind the clouds in the cold sky, and took a deep breath. She feared getting stuck, but she knew she had to try it.

  She slid to the very edge of the opening, and carefully lowered herself down before reaching back for her lamp. She had to crawl on her hands and knees, and the floor felt rough beneath her, all thick beams and plasterwork. The air was warm, especially after the chilly night, and stuffy, smelling of dust and mice. Kate carefully studied the narrow space ahead, and could see very little beyond the circle of her lamplight.

  She was deeply tempted to abandon her errand, to run back up onto the parapets and down to the crowded rooms of the castle, but she kept moving ahead. She was too curious now to turn back, and no ghosts or narrow space was going to stop her from finding the truth. She felt carefully ahead with her fingertips. As she inched forward, the flame of her lamp suddenly flickered in a rush of cooler air. For an instant, Kate’s throat tightened with the fear that the light was about to go out and she would be plunged into darkness. But the flame returned, and she ran her hand over the space where the breeze had been. Her fingertips found a wide crack between two floorboards, and inside the crack, she could feel a tiny, rough object.

  It was a shimmering gold sequin, held by a scrap of thread and a brown lock of coarse hair.

  All fear was pushed away by a sense of relief—she had been right! She slid her hand into the opening and pushed harder to slide it away in order to see what was beneath.

  She found herself staring down through one of the gilded ceiling panels in the queen’s wardrobe room below. And the queen, standing at her looking glass in her red brocade bedgown, was staring right back.

  “Kate!” she shouted. “What are you doing up there?”

  Kate held out the tiny, shimmering sequin in her hand. “I think I know who has your pearl, Your Grace.”

  Chapter Seven

  “I have no idea what Your Grace is talking of!” Lady Green cried. “Breaking into your wardrobe room through a ceiling? I could never do such a thing—I am an old lady.”

  “Perhaps you could not,” Elizabeth said, pacing the length of Lady Green’s chamber. There were few people there now, only Lady Green in her bedgown, Lady Lennox hastily summoned to her friend’s side, Kate, and Lady Green’s skittering monkey, but the queen’s long, angry strides made the space seem small. “But you could assuredly find help.”

  “Who would want to do such a thing at all,” Lady Green protested. She had been angry when first roused, then quiet when she saw it was the queen who summoned her. Now she seemed unsure. “Merely some servant, surely.”

  “Or someone not human at all?” The queen took the sequin and tuft of pale brown hair from where she had tucked it in her velvet purse, and she strode over to where Lady Green sat with the monkey on her lap, Lady Lennox standing behind her. Elizabeth held up the bead to the spot on the creature’s little jacket that had been torn, and the gold fragment matched the others.

  The monkey let out a loud screech, and tried to snatch the sequin back with its curled claw. The queen jumped away, and the monkey shrank back at her sudden movement. “Come now, show me what you have, little creature,” Elizabeth cooed, with one of her most charming, coaxing smiles. The same smile that calmed ambassadors and privy counselors seemed to work on the monkey, too. He held out his paw, and the queen carefully opened the little gold buttons of his jacket. The pearl—large, creamy, unharmed—tumbled into her hand.

  As if outraged by the subterfuge, the monkey shrieked and jumped into Lady Green’s arms, hiding his wizened face in her shoulder.

  Lady Green cradled him close. Her expression, so proud and defiant only moments before, crumpled. She closed her eyes.

  But Lady Lennox did not relent. “Surely the creature could have done this foul deed all on its own? Dumb animals like such shiny baubles.”

>   “This was also found near the door to the wardrobe room,” Kate said quietly from where she stood behind the queen. She held out the pomander, and Lady Green took it from her in silence. “There were scratches on the latch that made it look as if the pomander was used to try and prevent the lock from catching. It didn’t work.”

  Before Lady Green could say anything, Lady Lennox snatched the pomander away and threw it across the room. It shattered and the pieces fell to the floor, and the monkey let out a frightened yelp.

  “What errant nonsense this is!” Lady Lennox shouted. For an instant, she looked like an older, stouter, taller version of the queen, all Tudor fury and red hair straggling from her nightcap. “Perhaps this girl took it herself, Your Grace, and accuses Lady Green to cover it.”

  Kate thought of poor Thomas, unfairly accused and terrified about what might happen to him. What might happen to them all, without the protection of those higher than themselves. Even Lady Lennox was not invulnerable.

  “How dare you, cousin,” Elizabeth said, her voice so icy that even Lady Lennox subsided before it. “Mistress Haywood is my servant, and her loyalty proven time and again—unlike that of the Lennoxes. Everyone knows you claimed this pearl as your own mother’s. Yet even I would never have thought you would use your own friends thusly.”

  “It—it was entirely my own doing, Your Grace,” Lady Green said, her voice shaking. The woman who had made her daughter-in-law’s life miserable with her complaints and demands, who terrified servants, did indeed suddenly seem an old lady. She was small and pale in her chair, swallowed by her bedgown. “I did have debts . . .”

  “Debts to Lady Lennox herself, so I have heard,” Elizabeth said. She still spoke coldly, but there was a hint of mercy, a touch of kindness. “You should choose your friends carefully, Lady Green—and perhaps be more grateful to have a kind daughter-in-law such as Lady Violet, who has always served me so well here at court. And has given you a lovely granddaughter. If you had come to me when my cousin asked you to do such a criminal thing, I would have been more kind to you than she has.”