by Karen Harper
She turned slowly, regally, and walked toward her bedchamber as fierce tears burned her eyes. The enormity of this loss loomed before her like a dark hole she could fall down and down. A fall. Amy Dudley had fallen under mysterious circumstances, as had Geoffrey and Luke. And Hester Harington was missing.
She made it into her room before she finally tripped on her loosed stocking.
Chapter the Fourteenth
O cruel prison how could betide, alas,
As proud Windsor where I in lust and love …
Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour,
The large green courts where we were wont to love,
With eyes cast up into the Tower…
— HENRY HOWARD, Earl of Surrey
“GET UP, GIRL,” ELIZABETH ORDERED, AND pulled the bedclothes off Meg Milligrew the next morning. “Ill or not, your queen has need of you.” Who was ill or not? Meg’s muddled mind wondered as she struggled to throw off sleep and clear her head. Oh, that’s right—she’d been claiming she was puking. The mere thought of Ben Wilton being on the grounds and in town made her sick to her stomach. But the queen had sent his barge to fetch Cecil, so she’d snatched a few good hours of sleep last night. The queen! Here in this room.
“What is needful, Your Grace?” Meg jolted upright in her rumpled bed.
“I will take no time for my doctors bleeding me, purging me, and lecturing me on my diet because they believe it will improve my choler. I have things to do. Arise and now.”
Someone near the door held a lantern that hurt Meg’s eyes. She came finally awake to see the queen had come in black mourning garb to the little room near the kitchen block Meg shared with two scullery maids. Kat Ashley peered in the door with Lord Robin’s sister Mary Sidney, and Bella Harington. With the dreadful news yesterday, it was just like them not to let Her Grace out of their sight. When Elizabeth Tudor was in pain, anything could happen.
Wrapping her sheet around her shift, Meg scrambled out of bed. The queen stood between her and her clothes, but she knew that tone of voice brooked no delay.
“What can I do, Your Grace?” she asked, not bothering to look for her shoes under the bed. “I would have come posthaste if you’d but summoned me.”
“I need curing herbs that heal the mind and heart as well as the body. I have England’s work to do and need them now.”
Meg knew it must be early morning yet, as the maids had not been roused. Her wide gaze snagged Kat’s as the queen stalked from the chamber, leaving her friends who shared the other bed gawking. Nearly running, Meg padded down the long hall toward the pocket of a chamber she used as her herbal room here at Windsor. Fortunately, since the corridor was pitch black but for occasional sconces set along the hall, the queen’s guards carried lanterns as well as pikes.
Her Majesty got there just before Meg did. However did her royal mistress know exactly where this was in the maze of rooms down here? It sobered Meg to realize how the queen, sooner or later, seemed to know everything.
Meg shoved the door in and sneezed, either from her bare feet on stone floors or the fine, sweet dust that always hung in the air from her mortar and pestle. “Get a light in here!” the queen ordered. Someone thrust a lantern into the tiny room, and Lady Harington raised it high. It threw strange, shortened shadows on the walls and cluttered shelves.
Meg cleared her throat. “Which herbs do you require, Your Grace?”
“You said once that sweet marjoram helps those given to oversighing.”
“Oh, yes, especially those who are lovelorn and th—” Meg cut herself off and began to scrabble through her wooden boxes for the marjoram.
“What else would serve?” the queen demanded, leaning over her shoulder.
“For oversighing?”
“For what ails me!”
“Let me just recite their virtues and you decide, Your Grace.” Meg’s heart ached for her queen, but she was glad that Ned was now predicting she would call a Privy Plot Council meeting. More than just Amy Dudley’s death needed looking into. Meg had Geoffrey’s stained death shirt hidden in this very room, and the cause of Luke’s fall needed to be found. She had overheard, however, courtiers wagering that Her Majesty would get Cecil busy and call a governmental Privy Council meeting with her advisers to see to the realm’s business—without Lord Robin, of course. So maybe the queen still would not have time to look into Geoffrey’s demise.
“I have basil, which is good for the heart and takes away sorrowfulness,” Meg announced, racking her still sodden brain.
“Yes, some of that.”
Meg pulled out a parchment packet, then a second. “Boiled chervil root gives courage.”
“Do you think that I need courage, girl?”
“No, Your Grace,” Meg murmured, slapping that box closed. “Rosemary comforts the brain and heart and cures nightmares.”
“Yes. Bring that. If I ever sleep again.”
“Lavender for the nerves, but then that’s already in your garments. Oh, I have vervain for contentment, one of the herbs I strew on your floors.”
“Yes, all right, but if you already have it all over my floors, it is not worth a damned fig.”
“I’ll put more on fresh. And a pennyroyal garland helps giddiness.”
“Hardly that,” the queen said with a sniff. “I have already been cured of such.”
“Lastly, meadowsweet to make the heart merry.”
“Merry? I shall never be merry again, never. Hurry with them, as I have much to do,” she commanded, and swept from the room like a whirlwind.
As Kat followed the queen and her coterie out the door, she glanced back at Meg and shook her head. They both knew that perpetual activity was one way Elizabeth Tudor tried to stave off grief and heartbreak, but they both knew she would eventually spiral down and crash.
SECLUDED AGAIN IN HER PRIVY CHAMBERS WITH A FEW intimates and Meg, who was strewing fresh vervain and meadowsweet on the floor, Elizabeth Tudor flung orders this way and that as she rampaged through piles of papers on her desk, signing some, thrusting others at Bella or Mary. They had suggested she send for one of her own clerks or secretaries, but she wanted only her closest friends around her now.
“Cecil will have to explain that … Cecil can see to that,” she said as she waded through parchments to clear a place on the abalone-inlaid tabletop. “Now,” she said, seizing a fresh sheet and dipping her quill pen again, “I must plan a fine, public funeral for poor Amy Dudley.”
Elizabeth noted well that silence descended on the room. She looked up and stared each woman down, including Meg in the far corner, until all nodded or murmured acquiescence. Elizabeth had not slept last night but had paced the floor, railing at what had happened. Now her legs hurt. Her thighs, one of which Robin had stroked so seductively but yesterday, trembled. Her eyes burned with tears, shed and unshed, and she had the most violent headache topped off by a continual urge to sneeze from the herbs hanging heavy on her person and in the room.
“At Oxford, I think, would be fitting,” she told them, swiping at her nose with a lavender-scented handkerchief, then exploding in a racking sneeze. She blew her nose loudly, then went on. “St. Mary’s Church of Our Lady at the university will do. Lady Dudley shall have swags of black cloth, painted escutcheons, and a fine choir and chief mourner I shall hire for a good fee. Then a large feast after.”
“But, Your Grace,” Mary put in, holding a pile of papers to her breasts, “you told me last night to write Robert at Kew to command that Amy’s body be buried in Cumnor Church after it was viewed and searched by the coroner. Have you changed your mind?”
“And if I have?” Elizabeth challenged, then softened her voice. “No, this large funeral is for after her early interment, after we have the questions of her death settled publicly and truthfully. And write to your brother that, as all the court, he is to be fitted for mourning clothes, even at Kew.”
“You will not write him yourself?” Mary asked, flinching slightly as if she w
ere expecting another explosion.
“It grieves me sore, dear Mary, but I will not write nor see your brother until his name is cleared—pray God, soon—and he may return to us all. Of course, I believe him innocent, but it must be proved to others beyond a doubt.” Even as she declared Robin’s lack of complicity or guilt, doubts gnawed at her. She saw tears flood Mary’s wide eyes as she nodded.
“Write the funeral orders, Bella, and I will sign,” Elizabeth said, jumping up and thrusting her pen into her friend’s hand before she tugged her into the chair she had just vacated. The queen strode to the oriel window where but yesterday she and Robin had lain together—and nearly lain together indeed. That is what would have happened. That is what she, fool that she was, had wanted to happen before the dreadful news had saved her. Why could a queen not carry on as a king and to hell with what people thought? Must a woman’s reputation be so much more pristine and precious than a man’s?
“The royal barge,” Elizabeth cried excitedly, pushing her nose nearly to the leaded glass window before shoving it farther ajar. “The barge is back.”
The queen noted Meg spilled the rest of the herbs she had been carefully strewing, but she seized her cloak and hurried past the girl. Elizabeth was out the door and down the corridor so quickly that her guards, companions, and courtiers scrambled to clear her path and then keep up with her. She fought not to run, to keep her eyes clear of tears, striding out of the palace through the gate named for her father. She walked down the grassy knoll among roses and herb beds, along the edge of town to the royal landing before she slowed her steps. Never had she walked this before, but she did not want to wait for her litter, and Robert was not here to pick a good mount for her.
The September afternoon sun glittered off the Thames as she glanced in the direction of Kew. She blinked back tears, but when she saw Cecil standing at the front of the barge, she was suddenly sure his eyes watered too.
“I am glad to see you, my Lord Secretary of the State,” she called to him in a scratchy voice before he made his way across the gangplank. He had two of his clerks in tow, both carrying fat satchels. “I have need of you as things have been piling up this summer since you brought us back that fine Scots treaty,” she added as he approached. She had expected him to be reproachful or angry but she read naught but concern on his strong, stern face.
Cecil bowed then kissed the hand she offered. “But now that the seasons are shifting again, we shall take care of all your burdens,” he said, his voice controlled and comforting. Always when William Cecil spoke he said volumes beneath the surface of his words. It was something they shared, and she realized how desperately she had missed that and him.
They began to walk up toward the palace with a vast entourage trailing while her guards made a buffer through the swelling crowd. “And, Your Grace,” Cecil added quietly, “I am here to help in public and in privy councils.”
BY LATE AFTERNOON, WORKING STRAIGHT THROUGH WITH Cecil’s clerks madly copying and ferreting out documents he kept calling for, the queen and her chief secretary had cleared her pile of papers or set things aside for the Council meeting tomorrow. It was nearly dusk, seven of the clock, when Elizabeth was finally alone with her old friend.
“Though I can hardly go rushing to Cumnor to investigate Amy’s death,” she said as they yet sat side by side at her big desk, “I mean to call a Privy Plot Council meeting late tonight to do something about it.”
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but I think you need your rest. You’ve obviously been burning the candle at both ends even before this tragedy occurred.”
“I cannot rest now. I must know what happened to her so that others far and wide may know and leave off their carping and slanders. Besides, two men in my service have also met with strange deaths through falls.”
“Yes, but, as with those, Lady Dudley might have simply fallen. She was ill, mayhap morose or distracted.”
She turned sharply in her chair to face him. “Can you assure me there was no foul play in her death, my lord?”
His usually steady gaze wavered before he looked back at her. “Of course not,” he said.
“Then I mean to send Ned Topside and Jenks covertly to Cumnor, not to get near the formal investigation but to learn whether Hester Harington, alias Franklin and Felicia Dove, could have possibly been in the vicinity. I suspect her of culpability and mayhap complicity in Luke’s death, perhaps even Geoffrey’s, so why not Amy’s, though that is a long shot? Well, what is it you know you are not saying?” she demanded when she saw the usually stolid Cecil blanch white as marzipan.
When he did not have an immediate answer, she went on. “My Lord Cecil, do not tell me to tread carefully here, as I shall do that. But the lutenist has been snagged in many a lie, changed her identity, and then fled before I could question her more.”
“But what motive? If deep-seated anger at her parents, would she not attack them somehow? Because she wanted to be at court, and then became insanely jealous of others you favored? But a motive for three apparently disrelated murders? Sui bono, Your Grace, what can be her reasons, not only for harming the men but Amy, if you are striving to link all this together?”
She gaped at him one moment. Why was he arguing so hard, as if this girl were his client in court and not the queen herself? “Cecil, she might have pushed Geoffrey to be able to take his place. As for Luke, he was on to her guise and warned me twice about her, so who knows what else she thought he knew? And,” her words came out halting now, “her parents tell me that Hester used to love me—her kinswoman on the throne she feels could have been hers—but now I think she hates me because she thinks I’ve betrayed her.”
“Yes, all right. I can see that much,” he admitted, shifting slightly away from her in his armed chair.
“I believe,” the queen plunged on, “she’s stalked me the way a hunter does his prey. I’ve felt for weeks someone was watching me, over and above the fact I assume de Quadra and his ilk have spies at court, but it wasn’t like that. Hester would, I fear, actually like to be me, and with her Tudor blood, however diluted in her veins—My lord, are you quite well? You look too pale, so the barge trip here and then my working you so hard …”
As she reached to touch his arm, he shook his head and gathered the last of his papers. “I’m fine. But you said Hester might be guilty of complicity earlier. Do you think there is some sort of plot here?”
“I don’t know. Harry says she had a fat purse, and I know she must have been in the employ, even briefly, of others besides—besides Robert Dudley.”
She got up and went to the window, leaning her hands on the sills to support her shaking legs. She tried to go on but her voice snagged. Robin. He could have hired Felicia-Hester to go to Cumnor. But he would have had to defy his queen to spring the girl first, mayhap so she would not be further questioned and reveal who had hired her and for what. But if Robin had sent Hester to harm Amy and someone saw her there, what would be easily traced and proved is that Felicia-Hester had been in the employ of the queen of England. Her stomach knotted at the dreadful possibilities that could come from that twisted knowledge.
“Your Grace,” Cecil’s voice interrupted her thoughts, “I will do all I can to help delve into this. Shall I summon the others, your cousin Harry too, for our Privy Plot meeting?”
“Yes, after dark when I shall supposedly retire, let us say at nine of the clock. And about my needing rest, my lord,” she said, turning to face him, “I swear if I let down one moment I will turn into a screaming banshee and everyone will know that I am a mere weak woman.”
He rose and came toward her. “A woman indeed, Your Grace, but never mere and never weak, not you.”
“Oh, Cecil,” she blurted, “Mildred is blessed to have you and I shall never, never have someone to love.”
“But you—”
“The other thing you must do, of course,” she plunged on, sniffing back tears, “is make marital overtures again to Archduke Charles, Catholic or not
.” She drew her handkerchief from her sleeve and blew her nose. “Send some sort of grand gifts to keep the Holy Roman Hapsburgs calm and happy right now, my lord. I may want no part of him, but I must put up a bold front. Well, are you speechless at last that I am broaching a marriage, a foreign marriage, or that I can think politically about it and not just personally?”
“Of course not,” he insisted.
She thought he lied gallantly, trying to buck her up again, her dear Cecil whom she—God forgive her—had treated abominably but never would again.
“You are a queen who has learned to face necessity,” he said.
“Necessity,” she repeated, and added a long list of her father’s favorite curse words. “And shall that be my bedfellow all these years to come?” She glanced out the window, toward the roofline where Hester or someone had come to spy on her. “Send for our fellow conspirators, my lord,” she ordered, “including young Gil. And send the barge to fetch Dr. Dee too, though he won’t make it here in time for the meeting. He must bring his signal mirrors, observation glass, and flying harness back again forthwith.”
IT HAD BEEN NEARLY TWO YEARS SINCE ELIZABETH HAD sat with her entire Privy Plot Council. Ned, Jenks, and Meg looked excited, probably that Geoffrey’s death would now fully be addressed. Kat still seemed drained and tired; Harry and Cecil resigned. Gil sat drawing Elizabeth’s face until she rapped the table with her knuckles and gave him a cut-off signal, so he sat up and paid attention.
“Now, before we turn to the main subject, the latest death and Hester Harington’s possible crimes, I just want to say that I have never needed all of you more than now,” Elizabeth began their meeting. Her voice caught. She had been talking so much today, fearing her own silences within, that her voice was turning rough and made her sound ever on the edge of tears.
“Anything we can do to help, Bess,” Harry said, using her sobriquet for such sessions and investigations. “Of course, I’m especially interested in Luke’s strange demise, but if Felicia’s flight from right under my nose is somehow tied to Amy Dudley’s death …”