by Karen Harper
“I forgot to tell you, Lord Robert, the queen is beginning to believe whomever that lutenist Felicia Dove worked for may have spied on her and urged Felicia to cause Geoffrey Hammet’s and Luke Morgan’s strange falls too when they got in the way. Put it in writing to me if you can think of any possible ties the lutenist could have had to any courtier who might have wanted your wife dispatched. After all, Felicia was sprung from her confinement two days before your wife’s death, so who knows she wasn’t sent to Cumnor too.”
He went out quickly and, this time, slammed the door as loudly as his heart slammed again his ribs.
IN LATE AFTERNOON STEPHEN JENKS AND NED TOPSIDE rode through the remnants of the country fair in the small town of Abingdon before wheeling back and reining in. Only the booths of a few itinerant vendors who had not yet moved on remained on the central town green. They could see where the crowd’s feet had trod the grass between the aisles of makeshift tables of wares and the burned-out circles where meat had been cooked and sold on the day Lady Dudley died nearby.
Splendid, Ned groused to himself. Her Grace had sent them to look for one girl and an unknown man in the area where a popular country fair had drawn people from all over. Talk about a needle in a haystack.
“Yer a wee bit late for the festivities,” a big bear of a man called to them, emerging from a low-slung tent and shading his eyes from the setting sun.
One more person they might as well question, Ned thought. He and Jenks had stopped to question numerous people on the road, showing them the drawing of Hester Harington, saying their sister had run off, mayhap with a man on a single horse. Absolutely no one had claimed to have seen her, though many remarked on the fine portrait and touched Gil’s charcoal sketch with their dirty, calloused fingertips until they’d smeared it. At least they had a second one. They were completely out of sorts, late, tired, and so hungry that even the smell of rank meat made their mouths water.
This man did not blend in with the rest. He had massive shoulders, a bull neck, no waist at all, and spoke in a broad Scots accent. “Abingdon Fair coupla days over, lads, ’cept for those of us stayed to sell off wares,” he told them in a friendly enough voice, though, of course, not every Scot had to be crude and rude, Ned thought magnanimously.
“What a pity,” he said, with a hand to his chest and a doleful look at Jenks, who just nodded. “And we’d heard it was at next week’s end, not last. We’re players, you see, my good man.”
“We coulda used a bonny bit a that,” he told them, handing a pig’s trotter up to each of them from a rusted iron grill over a cook fire that had long gone out. Beads of lard had congealed on the edges of the pig’s feet. However hungry, Ned just held and gestured with his while Jenks gobbled his down and heaved the bone into a common refuse pile crowded with loud crows vying with the local dogs for scraps.
“In other words,” Ned went on, doing most of the talking as he and Jenks had agreed, “no excitement at the fair.”
“Oho, dinna say that,” the Scot told them, rocking back on his heels. His thick hair was so slick to his head, Ned wondered if that’s what he did with the trotter grease. “Dinna ye hear,” he said with a smirk, “the queen’s fancy Lord Robert Dudley’s wife got kilt nigh here, coupla miles over at Cumnor House? Folks been buzzing and some gone over to look at the place, ’cept they’re not letting anyone in to see the stairs where the lass got thrown doon.”
“Got thrown down?” Ned repeated. “Someone saw her get ‘kilt’ then?”
“Nay, lad, but everybody kens someone was hired to do it for Lord Robert or even the clever queen. Elizabeth been besotted by a man and may carry his bastard, but Mary, Queen a Scots, now there’s a fine figure of a woman!”
“Now see here!” Jenks exploded, and spurred his horse before Ned nudged his own mount forward to cut him off. “You and others who don’t know—” Jenks shouted.
“Dinna ken what?” the Scot challenged, glaring up and around the back of Ned’s horse at Jenks. “ ’Sides roasting the best trotters, I warrant I can take on one more braw lad in the wrestling ring for a healthy wager!”
“He meant,” Ned put in, glaring at Jenks, “you and the others don’t know how sorry we are to have missed the fair and all that excitement. So where is this Cumnor House anyway, and are folks sure the poor lady was really ‘kilt’?”
“I hear the staircase wasna steep or long enough for a fatal fall, ’lest someone broke her neck first,” the Scot told Ned, ignoring Jenks now and lowering his voice conspiratorially. This lout, Ned thought, ought to be on the stage with all his dramatic aplomb. “And there’s a coroner’s jury convened to hear the case and all, but ’tis said her waiting maid, one Mrs. Pirto, overheard the poor lass at her prayers.”
“Overheard her praying aloud and loudly too, I warrant,” Ned prompted. He was studying not only what the man said but how he said it. Not often he’d heard the Scots brogue to learn to ape it.
The man nodded. “ ‘Deliver me from desperation,’ the poor, sad, thin thing was saying on her knees with her hands clasped and tears apouring doon her pale cheeks. Goes to show she ken someone was out to harm her,” he added, shifting stances and his tone again. “And any jackass would ken who. Now, how aboot doing some bloody war scenes for me, in ’change for them trotters?” he asked as Ned put a booted foot out to kick Jenks and keep him from charging the lout again.
“We’ll just have to do that, perhaps tomorrow,” Ned said, jerking his head toward Cumnor with a glare at Jenks. They were starting to draw a curious crowd from the scattered cottages and tents. He realized they’d best be done with this man and show the sketch around. “We may even work up some scenes and call the new work ‘The Sad Case of the Lady Dudley.’ But you see, we’ve lost two others of our players, a man and a girl, through a misunderstanding. The girl, brown hair and eyes, sometimes goes about garbed as a lad, for our work, of course. And often carts her lute with her, or if she’s sold it again, she still likes to sing.”
“Och, lad, ye ken, I did see such a pair, day we was setting up,” the Scot said, scratching his slick head. “A man and a lad on one horse and the lad holding a lute, real careful like.”
“Bull’s-eye,” Jenks muttered, while Ned just wished he’d keep his trap shut and not stir this brawler up again. He could see Jenks had been reaching for Gil’s sketch in his saddle pack, but he obviously let it be since the man had only seen her at a distance. “That’s them all right,” Jenks said excitedly. “Name of … Meg and Ned, and we’ve got to find them and tell them no hard feelings for the fight we had.”
“The man, not the one holding the lute,” Ned said, leaning down excitedly, hoping Jenks left off his chatter. “Can you describe him?”
“Hmm, a thin lad, ye ken. Good rider. Wore dark common garb, both a them. Their horse looked winded and was a fine one too, well-curried, a chestnut mare with four white feet and a white forehead and strange, dappled mane. The two of ’em eloping together or stole something, did they?”
“That lute,” Jenks blurted in the same moment Ned, deciding it was time for bribery and no more blatant lies, fished out a coin to give the man.
“No need,” the man protested, puncturing Ned’s theory that all Scots were tightfisted. “Ye not even eat your trotter yet,” he said to Ned, looking almost hurt.
“This money’s for the rest of your pile of them over there,” Ned explained, then while the man walked away to gather the other pigs’ feet in a swatch of greasy cloth, he whispered to Jenks. “No need to tarry with these others just to get the same information and tip them off we’ve been around asking, especially since it sounds like Felicia and the man were just skirting the fair. I’d bet the rest of those larded trotters and a throne that was her and the link to whomever sent her here. It couldn’t be just coincidence she fled here from Eton, and I doubt if she came to play the lute at this louse-ridden country fair.”
“No, ‘cause he’d have remembered that,” Jenks said, making Ned roll his eyes. “But I can tell you
the man was probably Edmund Fletcher, Lord Robert’s man.”
“How in heaven’s name do you know that?” Ned whispered, wide-eyed.
“Not just ’cause he’s a bony rake of a man. That’s his horse, Firkin, and it disappeared the day Felicia-Hester did, right along with Fletcher too.”
“Fletcher, Firkin, Felicia, Hester! It sounds like one of her damned songs,” Ned muttered through gritted teeth. With all his hard work and brilliance, it annoyed him to no end it might be Jenks’s knowing horseflesh that could link Lord Robert to his wife’s murder.
THE SUN WAS SETTING AND THE QUEEN WAS CLOISTERED with her ladies. She had kept herself inside all day, working, seeing only Cecil and her intimates, including Meg, who was one of the few who knew how devastated the queen actually was—not so much over the death of Amy Dudley but the death of her tenuous trust of Lord Robin.
Since the queen was staying inside, Meg decided it was now or never. From her lookout site among her roses, she had seen Ben Wilton working alone on the barge landing. And with no one suspecting a thing, she had contrived to get in and out of the royal wardrobe rooms.
In her tiny distillation chamber, Meg managed to dress herself but for a partially unlaced bodice back. After sneaking out the side servant’s door, she ducked outside Windsor’s walls, garbed in the queen’s clothes: huge sleeves, brocade bodice, and a bush of satin skirts over a farthingale that hung on her hips like a massive birdcage. Best of all for the disguise, she wore a dark blue velvet cape with a huge hood she could try to hide inside. While the court was at supper in the great hall, she had to make both her entrance and her exit on the wooden boards of the barge landing—the stage for her very own masque.
“Oh, Ned,” she whispered, hustling through a break in the hedges to hide herself from the castle guards, “wish you were here and would help.”
She must pull off a good enough rendition of the queen to convince Ben, but it would not have to be the performance of her life in that respect. It wouldn’t be like trying to convince someone who really knew the queen. Meg had always feared imitating her before a person who knew Her Majesty well, but now she must playact before someone who had known her well. Meg shuddered in outright fear. This little performance meant her peace of mind and maybe her entire future.
Holding her skirts off the damp grass—for the queen was slightly taller—Meg kept behind the hedges and made her way down to her rose and herb beds above the river. Yes, facing the water, Ben was still alone on the wooden landing, his turn to guard the barges, no doubt. The castle guards proper had stationed themselves farther along the bank. Holding herself erect, she sidled down the slope and strode toward the landing.
“Sirrah,” she clipped out as she tried to mimic the queen’s commanding voice with what Ned called her metallic tone.
“Ah—you?” he cried, squinting into the setting sun to see her better. She wondered which you he meant until he blessedly fell to his knees.
“You may rise,” she intoned, then wanted to kick herself that she hadn’t let him stay down.
“But you—alone—out here, Majesty?” he stammered, trying to shade his eyes with the cap he had swept off.
“As you must know, I have received a blow of late and need some time alone—to walk out to think. And I thought when I saw you here—you are the Ben Wilton they said was the bridge shooter from London, I believe …”
“Oh, yes, Majesty, that’s me. Took many a boat through at high tide, saved many a soul.”
“So I hear, and that is why I am sending you back to that duty, Ben Wilton.”
“But there are other shooters back in London,” he said. “I just got hired on royal duty here last week.” Meg moved carefully away, keeping her back toward the sun and not letting him get too close. Their shadows flung themselves long and lean across the landing to the barges. Meg was tempted to pull her hood farther forward but she didn’t want to overdo it on this warm day.
“Yet I am sending you back to oversee them all—with this warrant and these coins,” she added, thrusting forward the document she’d carefully written with the queen’s signature—thank Ned again for teaching her to read and write, and the queen for paying her a stipend. Though she treasured anything Her Grace ever gave her, she would part with her entire fortune to have this man go away.
“But, you mean back to London—afore you go?” Ben demanded, sounding either angry or suspicious now.
“I have a care for my people,” she said, her voice catching as she aped exactly words and tone she’d heard Her Grace use. “And I send my best barger back to have a care for my people in my capital city.”
To her dismay he shuffled slightly closer, head cocked. Mercy, she’d overstepped. He would realize it was her, however long she’d been gone from him, however much he probably thought that she was dead if that old friend of her mother’s had not told she came back. When he went down again on one knee to put out his hand for the parchment and the purse of coins, she realized she shaded him now and he was looking up at her with some emotion she could not name.
She wanted to flee. He must be on to her. Ned had not taught her well enough, or her courage to command herself like the queen had failed her. Elizabeth Tudor had been foolish to keep her close so that she could have a double to stand in for her if there was a need in solving a crime or running a realm. She was doomed for sure, she feared, as Ben Wilton frowned up at her and she stepped aside to get the sun in his eyes again.
“Majesty,” he said, his burly shoulders shaking, his brash voice as tremulous as hers had been, “I shall ever obey. And I shall never forget this day you commanded Ben Wilton to do your bidding.”
Meg knew an exit line without Ned’s prompting. Her knees nearly knocking, she turned and strode as quickly as she could in queenly fashion back toward the distant castle. But she kept her head high and her shoulders squared the way Elizabeth of England always did in public, no matter what her burden.
Chapter the Sixteenth
Blame not my heart for flying up too high
Since thou art cause that his flight began.
For earthly vapors drawn up by the sun
Comets become and night suns in the sky.…
I say again, blame not my high desire
Since of us both the cause thereof depends.
In thee doth shine, in me doth burn afire
Fire draweth up other and itself ascends.
— JOHN HARINGTON
“WHAT DID HE SAY?” THE QUEEN ASKED THE moment Cecil entered her privy chamber upon returning from visiting Robert Dudley at Kew. “Do you deem him innocent?”
Cecil sighed and sat in the chair on the other side of the low-burning hearth as she indicated. He heard pounding on the roof above, but neither the queen nor Kat reacted to it, so he tried to ignore it. Had she been keeping so busy she had ordered her long-desired repairs on the old palace already? She should know full well the treasury was too gaunt for such work. Surely she hadn’t put some of the castle guards to work, for he’d noted the watch had been greatly cut from when he’d left at dawn today.
Security in the state apartments was not much better. Kat Ashley was the only lady in attendance, and she kept staring out the window into the gathering dusk. The queen herself poured him wine and handed it to him. Didn’t she realize she could be at risk with lessened security? Mayhap he’d have to see to it secretly himself, as he’d been forced to handle other things lately, but he’d best keep his mind on the business at hand.
“Your Grace, I will tell you flat,” he said before he took a sip as she hovered over him, “that Lord Robert is guilty of overmuch ambition and arrogance, but I truly don’t believe he is stupid enough to have his wife murdered, not since he knew that she was dying. He wanted his marriage over and admits that. And, of course, the man is greatly self-serving and that can be dreadfully dangerous in one close to the monarch.”
She backed up several steps and sank into her chair, her hands gripping the carved, clawed arms
of it. “I know, I do know. But it was not long ago the same things were said of me, when my sister was yet on the throne. And I killed no one to advance myself, though I am sure my enemies would have delighted to prove I did.”
Kat drew their attention as she began to sputter about something, then stamped to the door, opened it with her good arm, and went out. Mayhap, Cecil thought, she was going to order that infernal pounding stopped. Elizabeth just shook her head as her worried gaze pinned Cecil to his chair again.
“And there are other things that Robin—Robert—and I have in common,” she went on. “We each lost a parent to the headsman’s axe, each was sent to the Tower and feared for our own lives. In terrible times, he stood by me, believed in me, comforted me—yes, even loved me from afar. He helped me to pull through.”
“It’s true then that he sent you flowers when you were in the Tower after the Wyatt Rebellion?” he asked.
“Oh, yes.” Her taut mouth bent into a hint of smile, and she closed her eyes as she spoke, tipping her head against the high-backed chair. Cecil leaned forward to hear her better through the racket from above. “One time he sent a small nosegay of early spring posies he bribed one of the guards’ sons to bring me,” she said, her cheeks taking on a deep blush that reminded him again of Dudley’s power. “And the boy was to say that someday he would send me gems the same color as those primrose and forget-me-nots. They lasted for days stuck in a pewter mug of my wash water, and then I pressed them in my Bible. I have them yet.…”
She opened her eyes and sat up straighter. “Later he sold the only meager piece of land he had and loaned me a pittance that was a fortune to me when Queen Mary would have gladly seen me go about in rags in exile. He stood by me always when others turned their backs, my lord. Sometimes he’s nearly like a brother, my other self—”
“Then, if he is completely cleared and returns, treat him as a brother, Your Grace, the way you do Harry. Favored, but not the favorite.”