by Karen Harper
Meg nodded. She could just hear Ned correcting Ben Wilton’s grammar. And Sarah. She was no longer Sarah Scutea nor Sarah Wilton, not in her crazy head or in her hurt heart. Her true self was Meg Milligrew.
“They said,” he went on when she didn’t speak, “the coins you gave me and some more you’d have are for us to start life again in London and I’m to treat you good.” He held up a small, fat purse, then let it drop from his belt again. “You go ’long with me and I’ll try,” he added, but she saw a vein throb in his forehead as if he was holding back. “Look, Sarah, the money’s enough for me to lease back your folks’ old ’pothecary shop on the Strand just down from Whitehall Palace so’s you can run it. Who knows the queen won’t shop there, give you a royal warrant and all.”
Meg shook her head as she gathered her things. “That’s all over,” she finally choked out.
“Her woman said Her Majesty’s relying on me to take good care a you. And that this paper”—he produced the parchment where she’d forged the queen’s name—”really was from her, delivered by you.”
Meg couldn’t stem the tears then, at Her Grace’s gift even in her anger. How desperately Meg desired to be here to help her through the loss of Lord Robin and all the troubles it had caused.
“Wait ‘til everyone hears who you served,” Ben’s voice droned on as they left the castle. “They’ll come flocking to the ’pothecary, put some real coins in our purse, eh? Now, see here, Sarah,” he said, spinning her around to face him just outside the walls, “I’m gonna try to take care a you, but you gotta do like I say. Come on now, woman.”
She moved quickly so he wouldn’t touch her again. She feared he’d take care of her, all right, one way or the other. Not looking back, she followed Ben Wilton down to the public landing where they caught a hired barge downriver to London.
But at the last minute, before the turn in the Thames, she glanced back to see the top of the sturdy Round Tower before it disappeared with all she had left behind and would never have again.
“SO WHAT IS IT?” NED DEMANDED WHEN HE RENDEZVOUSED with Jenks, who was gesturing at him madly not twenty yards into the woods. Ned couldn’t decide whether to tell him what he’d learned from the old woman or just save it for the queen, but he didn’t even have an extra moment to decide.
“A body,” Jenks told him, breathless, dragging him by one arm deeper toward a small, wooded ravine.
“What? Whose?”
“See for yourself.”
Ned smelled the corpse before he saw it. It had evidently been stuffed in a hollow log with leaves shoved in after it, for Jenks had not been too careful in its resurrection.
“Fletcher?” he asked, nearly gagging. The corpse was naked but for a pair of linen underbreeches. “What happened—that is, what did she do to him?” he asked, his voice nasal as he held his nose.
“Not her usual style,” Jenks observed stolidly. “Looks like she’s stuck some small dagger in his ribs from behind, then cut his throat.”
“And took his clothes so no one could trace him?”
“If that was her purpose, she wasn’t too careful. One of them dropped a note about payment they’re due that’s signed by some man with a Spanish-sounding name. We’ve got to ride,” Jenks said, kicking leaves back over the corpse. “All we need is someone finding us with him.”
“Ride where? You mean to confront de Quadra? You think that’s where the girl’s gone?”
Jenks pulled the paper in question from his jerkin and began to unfold it carefully. Within were long hanks of brown hair.
“She stripped him of his hair too?” Ned asked.
“No. His was always short and thin. She cut her own,” Jenks explained as if Ned were the slow one. “I warrant in his clothes, hair cut like him, and on his horse, Hester Harington could make it past the guards to get back in Windsor. We’ve got to get back there and warn her. Like I said, let’s ride, and if you can’t keep up, that’s just too damned bad.”
Chapter the Seventeenth
The fowler hides as close as he may
The net where caught the silly bird should be
Lest he the threatening prison should but see
And so for fear be forced to fly away.
My lady sews while she doth assay
In curled knots fast to entangle me
Puts on her veil to the end I should not flee
The golden net wherein I am a prey.
What needs such art my thoughts then to entrap
When of themselves they fly into your lap?
— JOHN HARINGTON
ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND STOOD BY HERSELF on the vast, flat stone roof of Windsor Castle above the royal apartments, waiting for Hester Harington to find her. For the second evening, she had ordered the guards thinned and had sent her ladies away. The door to the roof from her privy stairs stood open, but she did not yet have that old feeling she was being watched by someone who wished her harm.
Though the queen could command thousands, she had never felt more alone. That was as it must be tonight and mayhap always. It was partly penance for becoming besotted with Robin when she must never trust a man. It was atonement for ignoring the business of her realm and her precious reputation, which she must now resurrect and protect at all costs.
“Like wearing a hair shirt now and hereafter,” she whispered as she scratched at Dr. Dee’s flying harness under her tight bodice. Her father’s fanatical first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had worn a hair shirt when she could no longer please him because Anne Boleyn had danced into his life. Now Elizabeth, their heir, must rid herself of Hester to regain the kingdom and the power and the glory. She must be the bait in her own trap.
Her legs and back ached from standing, her shoulders from the taut, thin, wirelike ropes of the harness attached to the turret above. Just as the sickle of moon sliced through the scudding clouds, Elizabeth saw a shadow emerge from the door. She could discern the pale silhouette of a slender man, mayhap Hester’s embodiment of Franklin Dove. From here the hair seemed much shorter, but then he—she—wore a cap pulled low.
“I never thought to find you here,” the soft voice, Hester’s indeed, said. The queen saw her look up, behind, and all around the dim area before she wedged something into the door to keep it closed. “I have ascertained you have no guards waiting below or hidden here to pounce on me in some sort of trap.”
“Where would I hide a guard on this vast stretch of roof?” Elizabeth countered, gesturing slowly. “I felt we must have a privy discussion and knew you would want to come here, even if just to peer in windows at the sorrow you have wrought. Dare I guess you have been visiting my chambers again, niece Hester? I hope the royal food and drink, bathwater, and clothes suited you these last weeks I took you in.”
“Took me in—deceived me, that’s sure. You were falsely kind, then callous, then cruel. Nothing you have done since has suited me!” she cried, stepping forward with a bit of swagger.
“Why did you not come to me when you first ran away from home?” Elizabeth pursued, standing her ground. “Why did you not tell me the truth of your checkered Tudor heritage?”
“Do you think I do not know you told my parents to exile me to the countryside, make me marry a man unworthy of me so I could breed his brats and dilute my heirs’ royal blood? You must have always feared my heritage!”
“Hester, I gave you no thought for years, as I had other problems, other people to worry about, and—”
“That’s it, try to belittle me again, the granddaughter of a king and your own niece and heir,” she cried, hitting her breastbone with her fist. “Try to say my mother came from an illegitimate affair. The true Catholic believers of this country and this world say you came from an affaire de coeur the king had with Anne Boleyn when only he believed he had divorced his true wife!” she ranted. “Wait until I tell your French and Spanish enemies who I really am when you are gone, Aunt Elizabeth!”
“But I am going nowhere, Hester,” she insisted, figh
ting to keep calm when she longed to leap forward and smack the girl to her knees. The queen knew well enough zealous Papists would gladly swarm to promote even the likes of Hester Harington as queen over Protestant Anne Boleyn’s daughter.
“Had you known who I was,” Hester was saying quietly, as if she had never slipped into a tirade, “you would never have taken me in—never have taken me unknown without my brilliant music. You would never have raised me high, as you have our kin Lady Katherine Grey or Baron Hunsdon.”
“ ‘Raised me high,’ Hester? Is that why you’ve thrown others down from heights? Was it simply that they were in your way, or was it some sort of warning to me that you stood above them in your regard?”
“Here is my last warning for you,” Hester whispered, then sang in an eerie voice the children’s rhyme, “Her fall is nigh who climbs so high. You see, dear aunt, your master lutenist Geoffrey came upon me gazing in your windows at Richmond, but I knocked him unconscious with a brick with which I had thought to break your window. I seized his lute and played as he had before, even after I pushed him. It did not enter his mind that a mere girl who seemed drunk and was offering him a drink—”
“You stole, then splashed my wine on him,” the queen accused, gripping her hands hard together. “For many weeks, Hester, you have watched me and stalked me as prey you would entrap. Then Luke Morgan got in your way, but what of Amy Dudley?”
“Amy Dudley?” Hester asked, crossing her arms over her chest and rocking slightly back on her heels as if she were enjoying this. “You mean your lover Lord Robert’s wife, whom you arranged to have pushed down the stairs by some lackey you hired? I just might confess to your counselors, like Lord Cecil—to your entire court and beyond—that you sent me to do it. You only detained me in Eton first so it would look as if I escaped and then harmed Amy at the behest of someone else.”
Elizabeth stared at the girl, aghast. For once the depth and breadth of her twisted hatred stunned the queen to silence.
“You think I had something to do with her fall?” Hester went on, taking the inquisitor’s part now. “No, I accuse you of causing her death, and you must be cast down from your arrogance for that as well as other crimes and sins.”
“Stop playing me for the simpleton, as you have in the past,” the queen commanded, her muscles tightening against what she sensed was coming. But she must press on to find out who else was involved. “You and whoever sent you to Amy could only hope her death would be my downfall. That someone was either de Quadra or—ah,” Elizabeth said, as Hester sucked in a sharp breath at his name, “that figures, since you mentioned the Spanish Papists. De Quadra it is, then?”
“I am just astounded how you blame everyone but yourself, aunt. Besides, many have hired me to do their bidding, including yourself and your precious Lord Robert. He deserves to be brought down too, for the way he treated Amy. But for an accident of birth and cruelty of chance—and your hatred of me because you are in league with my parents—I could be queen.”
Her voice became sharper, her expression, even seen through thickening twilight, more contorted.
“I adored you from afar,” Hester plunged on in her disjointed tirade. “I worshiped you when I saw you in the crowds, or riding with Robert Dudley, or on your barge, or through many a window. But now it is all over.”
“You know I admire your brilliance and talent. Will you not tell me how you managed to kill Amy? You fooled me many times before, but I know your handprints were on her death. However did you carry it off so cleverly?”
Hester swept off her hat and threw it aside. She had severely hacked her hair with a knife or sword. “She sent them all away, her entire household, just to be with me,” she boasted. “After all, I told her I was sent from Robert—and it killed me to kill her instead of you.”
Hester lunged with both hands raised. The queen shoved her back. She had expected and prepared for this: the double ropes would hold and Cecil and Dr. Dee would rush to her aid from the small roof atop the narrow turret where they waited. But she must know if Robert had sent Hester to Cumnor.
“Hester, who sent you there?” she cried, shoving her back yet again. But the demented woman flashed a knife at her, above her in a huge arcing swipe. It glinted in thin moonlight as it caught one of the harness ropes. The queen feared she had fatally miscalculated. Who could fathom that a murderess who pushed people to their deaths would have a knife?
Though thrown off balance, Elizabeth hardly budged as the shoulder ties yanked. The girl was slashing, sawing at them.
“Now!” the queen cried to Dee and Cecil, and heard an answering shout. She longed for Jenks, for he could have just leaped to her aid, not climbed down a damned, shaky wooden ladder.
Ducking Hester’s high swings with the weapon, the queen fumbled for the small stone cudgel she had at her belt, but it was pressed between them. Her shoulder ropes went slack and fell free. Hester heaved her back. They struggled for eternity, the queen pressed to the very edge, the knifepoint nearly in her chest while, with all her might, she counterbalanced Hester’s thrust of it. Though the queen kept her feet fairly anchored, Hester pressed her head and shoulders into the wall’s deep niche, just like the one Geoffrey had gone through at Richmond.
Elizabeth wrenched the knife away, cutting her palm. They grappled for the weapon at waist level. Despite the slice of pain and her bloodied, slippery hand, she tried to stab at Hester’s midriff. The girl’s purse broke free, and coins cascaded and clattered at their feet even as the knife skittered away.
“That was her knife—Amy’s,” Hester gritted out. “She wanted to die, fell so easily—but you …”
Elizabeth could have held her ground, except Hester seemed willing to go over with her. Everywhere the queen hit or grabbed at the girl with her right hand, she left a slippery mark of blood. Suddenly Cecil’s face appeared, John Dee’s too, but Hester clawed and kicked at them. Cecil tried to reach for Hester, Dee for the queen, as both women teetered on the edge of night.
In one last, mad moment, writhing, struggling, their weight took them over. Hester grabbed for Elizabeth, but the queen pulled free. With the queen’s blood smeared across her face, the girl shouted a curse and simply vanished.
Flailing upside down, Elizabeth saw only blackness. No, her skirts shrouded her head as her ankle ropes jerked taut and held. Under her skirts, the hidden ropes she and Dr. Dee had tied down from her harness to new stone fastenings on the floor as double anchors had saved her. But where in hell were Dee and Cecil while she dangled upside down?
The men hauled her, ignominiously, back up.
“Thank God, thank God,” Cecil kept muttering as he wrapped her cut hand in a handkerchief.
“What took you so long after I shouted?” Elizabeth cried, sucking in a breath of clean, fresh air.
“We came immediately,” Cecil insisted, “but it just seemed like a year—to me too.”
But, she thought, as Dee cut her free of the foothold ropes, she had outsmarted and outlasted Hester, just as she would anyone else, sane or insane, who wanted her throne.
“There would never have been that much slack to allow you to budge if she hadn’t cut the ropes above,” Dr. Dee was saying fretfully. “I’ll have to restring those better next time.”
The queen would have laughed if she were not afraid of plunging into hysteria. “There will not be a next time for me, good doctor, not trying to fly,” Elizabeth assured them, still gasping for breath and fighting dizziness. Cecil was so white it looked as if he were the one who had nearly been lost.
“At least all this, Dr. Dee,” Cecil said, his hand steadying her arm, “shows Her Majesty has now learned to keep her feet firmly on the ground.”
“Ha!” she countered. “I may have had my feet tied down, but to a high roof under the heavens.”
Gingerly, as if they all had fought that slip of demon girl, they leaned over the edge of the parapet to look below. It appeared the dark-clad body of a thin man was splayed on the cour
tyard stones.
“It ends as it began,” Elizabeth whispered. “Dr. Dee, I must get out of this harness, as I shall never wear anyone’s again.”
Let clever Cecil wonder what that meant, she thought as she saw him hastily stoop to gather some folded papers Hester must have lost amidst her coins.
Still shaken, the queen walked unsteadily down her privy stairs to her rooms, with Dr. Dee and Cecil close behind, carrying a lantern they had lit. She walked into her bedchamber the same moment someone began pounding on the door.
“Your Majesty, it’s Jenks!”
“Enter!”
Jenks and Ned, mud-spattered with a cluster of guards behind them, nearly fell into the room in their haste.
“Hester’s on her way back in man’s guise and she’s got a knife!” Jenks cried, scanning the room wide-eyed.
“And we think,” Ned added, breathless, “de Quadra is behind Lady Dudley’s death.”
“What would I ever do without all of you?” the queen said, turning to take Cecil’s arm. “My lord, stay with me, and the rest of you get Hester’s body out of the courtyard,” she told her astounded men. “Bring her inside and lay her out carefully. I shall tell her parents the dreadful news.”
“I will go down with your men and then tell them myself,” Cecil insisted.
“No, it is my place.”
Cecil stood straighter, as if at attention. “The pinnacle of all England,” he said, “is your place and ever shall be.”
BELLA SHOOK WITH SOBS BUT JOHN HARINGTON STOOD dry-eyed at Hester’s makeshift bier. They would set out toward home at dawn. The queen slipped back into the lantern-lit chamber—the same one Luke Morgan had died in—from which Hester’s coffin would be carried to a wagon for the journey back to the Harington home. Her death and burial would be private for many reasons.
“Your Grace, our gratitude is unending,” John said when he saw she had stepped back in. “For not making what she did—tried to do—public. For giving us the gift of our son’s being born without a cloud over his head and his name.”