The Fyre Mirror: An Elizabeth I Mystery: 1 (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  “A stone cavity?” he asked, frowning. “How small?”

  “About four feet square,” Cecil answered for the queen as she held her arms out to approximate the size. “And Her Majesty says there is similar stone work, though without holes in the ground, on two man-made hillocks at the edge of the palace lawns.”

  “Did you not pass my man Jenks on the road, Dr. Dee?” she asked, suddenly remembering him. She put both hands to her forehead. “I sent him to your house to question Simon Garver about those hillocks. After all, the old man worked at Nonsuch while it was being built and memories of Cuddington were still fresh.”

  “Ah, Jenks—yes. Those actors hailed him as they were coming back into town, and I saw him stop to speak with them, though I just rode on.”

  “He’d best ride on too. Tell me more then of how the old man is doing.”

  “Your physician’s—and my Katherine’s—care and the herbals your strewing-herb mistress sent have availed him some comfort. Though he should recover, I fear he does not want to.”

  “I thank you for coming directly here with the mirror, Dr. Dee. Now if you would excuse us …”

  “Your Majesty, you mentioned the old village on this site just now. Surely you aren’t thinking there is some Cuddington curse after all this time?”

  “Was there ever?” She asked the question of herself more than of these two brilliant men.

  “John Mooring, the lord of the manor house there, according to my mother, cursed the king.”

  “My father. God’s truth, I can understand why Mooring was angry enough to risk treason and death for such a curse.”

  “Before I go, Your Majesty,” Dee put in, “this may not be the time, but I brought a plan to you for using mirrors on ships to signal, day or night, of dangers.” He extended the parchment to her, now quite curled.

  “You may leave it here, and I shall consider it as soon as I can,” she told him. “Ship signals aside, this already is the time, day or night, of dangers. I need to see my dear friend, Kat Ashley, and get some sleep and try to think. My lord Cecil, will you see that Dr. Dee is well cared for this evening?”

  Another of Clifford’s distinctive knocks resounded. “Perhaps Jenks came back in the dark, though he said it would be tomorrow,” the queen told them. “Enter!”

  She, Cecil, and Dee gaped as Clifford opened the door, for not only Jenks but Katherine Dee stood there.

  “Your physician did all he could, and I, too,” the woman cried, even before she crossed the threshold and managed an unsteady curtsy. Her face was glazed with tears, her hair wild as if she’d torn at it. “He’s gone.”

  “My old friend is dead?” Dee asked.

  “Yes—gone,” she said, her voice rising to a squeak as she ran to her husband’s arms.

  “I deeply regret Master Garver’s loss,” Elizabeth pronounced, fighting to keep her voice steady. “My kingdom can ill afford to lose the former generation of artisans, whose skills and knowledge grace our lives yet today. Jenks, did you have time to speak with Master Garver before he died?”

  “So close but so far, Your Grace,” he said, shaking his head. He looked as grief-stricken as she felt. “Mistress Dee said she’d go in first to decide if he could answer a few questions for me, but she gave a cry and said he was gone and I rushed in.”

  “An immediate cry,” Elizabeth asked, “or did it take her a moment in the room, evidently to realize he was gone?”

  “Well—quite soon she cried out, I guess.”

  Elizabeth’s gaze snagged Dee’s. Again she glimpsed an expression of stunned knowledge that his wife, at least, could come under suspicion. He looked away before the queen did as all eyes returned to the crying Katherine.

  Apparently missing the tension in the room, Jenks went on. “Dr. Forrest came rushing downstairs. Surprised he was, but he said the old man lost his will to live and so gave up the ghost.”

  At the way he’d put that, Elizabeth again sank into her chair, for her trembling legs would not hold her.

  The queen questioned Katherine alone at some length that night, thinking her emotional state might make her admit something. Though it seemed entirely possible that a badly burned man who was supposed to live could suddenly die—while only Katherine Dee was with him and Jenks was about to question him—Elizabeth and Cecil were newly suspicious of the young woman’s motives and deeds. But in the end, they decided not to detain her, so she returned to Mortlake with her husband the next morning to help make funeral plans for Simon Garver, too.

  Exhausted and frustrated, Elizabeth took a stroll upon the rooftop the next morning rather than walking either outside or inside the palace. Even the beautifully painted and carved walls of Nonsuch were starting to make her feel as trapped as Whitehall had the winter before.

  “The breeze is lovely up here, and you can see for miles,” Meg Milligrew, who had accompanied the queen with Floris and Kat, said, and sucked in a deep breath.

  “Yes,” Elizabeth said, leaning both elbows in a cutout portion of the crenellated walls, “you can almost see the small meadow behind the hunt park from here, and over there, the spire of Mortlake Church, where both the Garvers will now be buried.”

  “It’s the most beautiful view in the kingdom!” Floris gushed, thoroughly annoying the queen. She was glad Kat’s companion had a sunny disposition, so she did not deign to correct her. But as lovely as it was here, her kingdom held many stunning views, and surely the woman who was nursemaid to elderly folk had hardly been all over to judge anyway. Such chatter was almost as presumptuous as Heatherley insisting she must choose his portrait because it was finished. But the queen scolded herself silently, for she was too much on edge with everyone. Each time she thought things could not get worse, they did, though she was not certain how any news could be blacker than Dee’s blurting out last night that anyone who saw the running boy was doomed to die.

  Elizabeth braced herself when she saw Lavina Teerlinc appear at the top of the staircase to the roof, which Clifford guarded. Ned Topside was with her, and, gesturing to Lavina to wait a moment, he hurried to the queen.

  “Your Grace,” he said, evidently out of breath from the climb, “Mistress Teerlinc says she must speak with you on most urgent business.”

  Elizabeth looked past Ned. Lavina was actually wringing her hands, and her expression was that of someone who has just sucked a lemon. Surely no one had managed to set fire to the portrait she was repainting, not here in the shelter of the palace.

  “I will speak with her privily,” she told her little coterie. “Floris, keep a close watch on Kat up here.”

  The queen walked to Lavina, and they stood about six feet from Clifford at the edge of the roof overlooking the hunt park. Lavina curtsied stiffly as the brisk breeze shifted her hair and skirts.

  “You have something important to tell me?”

  “Something dat’s been eating at me for over a veek now, since the day of Vill’s death, Your Majesty.”

  The queen caught her breath. “And what makes you tell me now?”

  “Because I see him trying to trick you again, that’s all.”

  “Him?”

  “I know you favor him, Your Majesty, but your boy artist, Gil, he isn’t telling you all he knows either. I thought he vould, since you seemed so—close. It vould be none of my affair if these dreadful things veren’t happening—Vill’s death, his portrait slashed, mine burned, even Henry’s portrait of you marred.”

  “Lavina, what about Gil? He’s holding back what? And, as you say, you have done the same.”

  “Dere, you see. Already you defend him.”

  “Calm yourself and start at the beginning. I assure you I am grateful for any help you can give me in solving Will Kendale’s death—any.”

  Biting her lower lip, Lavina nodded. She glanced out at the hunt park and went on. “I saw Gil Sharpe sneak out of his tent and go into the voods—vit a mirror.”

  “With a mirror? Just before the tent fire?”

&n
bsp; Lavina shook her head. “The next day—ven you vent to Mortlake to visit Dr. Dee for the day.”

  Elizabeth breathed again.

  “I vas painting outside, a view of the palace. He came out of his tent and rushed into the voods. I’d seen Dr. Dee looking around there, drawing too, so I thought maybe you told the boy to make another sketch. I vas upset you didn’t ask me to do it.”

  “I value your honesty. Say on.”

  “Vell, truth was, I didn’t see the mirror at first because Gil had it hidden in his shirt. But ven he got into the trees in a bit of sun, he took it out and played it up and all around, catching the sunlight. He hoisted himself up in a tree and fixed the beam on my tent—dis vas before the tents vere moved.”

  Elizabeth had begun to tremble, whether with terror or rage, she was not sure. Gil had a mirror about which he had not told her. Gil had climbed a tree when he had said his leg now hurt him and he never climbed anymore. She had trusted and supported and cared for Gil, and like other men before him, he had betrayed her. She had let Gil’s talent and her longing for her lost brother lead her astray to trust him.

  “I only held dis back,” Lavina was saying, “since I thought you vould hold it against me if I tried to put the blame on him. But I’m afraid now, afraid since my portrait was burned, that I’ll be next, attacked like Vill.”

  “Lavina, you did well to tell me these things. I can’t believe it of Gil—there must be some explanation. But I am grateful. You may go now.”

  As the woman curtsied and left her, the queen put both hands on the wall to brace herself. She must go to face down Gil now. He might even be lying about his illness; there were ways to make oneself vomit.

  “Your Grace, are you quite well?” Clifford’s voice came close behind her.

  “No, I am not well, my man, and haven’t been since that first fire came swooping from the trees out there.”

  “Forgive me, but I heard some of what Mistress Teerlinc said. I saw something that made me think the boy—your artist—hated Kendale.”

  “Tell me,” she ordered, her voice hard. “This seems to be the time and place for confessions and accusations.”

  “It was just before that first interview you had with him in your chamber here at Nonsuch. He had to wait for you and Secretary Cecil to be free. And all he did was stalk up and down the staircase, muttering and glaring at those large paintings Master Kendale had done long ago. Made some obscene gestures at them too.”

  She hit the stone wall with her fists. “’S blood,” she cursed, followed by a few of her father’s other favorite oaths. “Next the birds in the trees will be testifying against that boy. Clifford, come with me. Meg, attend,” she called to the women waiting and watching across the rooftop.

  Floris lifted both hands, palms up, as if to ask What? but the queen ignored her and stomped down the stairs.

  Gil drank more of the spearmint elixir Meg Milligrew had brought him and lay back on his pallet in his tent. He had propped the painting of Dorothea up so he could see her. He’d hidden the mirror that was once hers under his single blanket at the foot of his pallet. He had to get up soon. Get up and face the queen. But he was terrified that she’d pry out of him the real reason he’d come home early, and then they could both be in danger. Elizabeth Tudor had always been able to search out his deepest thoughts, and that scared him witless now.

  Besides, his ribs were as sore as his throat from retching. He hated to make himself throw up. It was a trick with a feather down the throat he’d learned from the other apprentices in Urbino. No one wanted to get too near a sick lad, and it was one way to get a day off from tasks too.

  “Gil! Gil Sharpe!”

  The queen? Here? Surely, in agonizing about her so much, he didn’t only think he heard her.

  “Gilberto Sharpino, get presentable and come out right now!”

  “I am ill within,” he called feebly.

  “Not as ill as you will be if you do not get out here now!”

  No, this was no dream. Not in his worst nightmare could he have imagined that tone. “Yes, Your Grace!” he called, and grabbed for his doublet.

  She’s found out, he thought. Someone had come after him from Urbino and told on him, demanded that he be turned over to them. No, they would simply have abducted him—or worse. He could not get over the thought that someone sent by Maestro Giorgio had focused a mirror upon the wrong tent and killed Will Kendale merely by mistake when the assassin had meant to murder him.

  Gil opened the tent flap, trying desperately to smooth his uncombed hair. The area looked greatly deserted, yet a few folk were still about. The queen’s big, burly yeoman guard and Mistress Milligrew were with her, but stood well back. He glanced into Meg Milligrew’s eyes; no help there.

  “I have need of a mirror, Gil,” the queen clipped out, “and I suggest you get it for me.”

  His jaw dropped.

  “And I swear,” she went on, rhythmically wagging an index finger at him, “if you ask what mirror, you can spend the rest of the time here in the wine cellar with the other rats!”

  He hadn’t seen her that angry for years, and never at him. Her usually pale cheeks were almost as rosy-hued as her hair. He darted into the tent and, forgoing the urge to flee under the far side, unwrapped Dorothea’s mirror and went back outside with it.

  “This one, Your Grace? As you recall, I told you of Dorothea. This was hers, and she never asked for it back. Surely someone has not come looking for it or me—”

  Her clarion voice interrupted him as she seized the mirror he extended and immediately read its inscription aloud: “‘Complain not to me, O woman, for I return to you only what you gave me.’ Well,” the queen cried, now wagging the mirror at him by its handle, “I am complaining! And I expect you, my young man, as well as this mirror, which shines so brightly in the sun, to return what I have given you, namely kindness, care—and the plain truth.”

  He gaped at her, horrified that he had nothing else to hold her off with but the final confession. And that he could not give.

  “All right,” he said. “I more or less stole the mirror, but I could not bear to give it back to her. And in truth, as I said, she never asked for it before I left Urbino.”

  “Dorothea?”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “You fled Urbino two years early and came back here because you took a mirror which was not yours, but belonged to your master’s mistress? In other words, because of a woman?”

  “Well—yes, Your Grace.” His knees were weak as grass, and he locked them to stand. The queen herself had given him another way out of a full confession.

  “And why then were you in the hunt park on the hillock up a tree and shining sun from this mirror on Lavina Teerlinc’s tent shortly after Will Kendale’s had been burned with him and his boy in it?”

  Gil stood stunned again. He prayed that he would not have a double murder pinned on him if he clung to this new excuse for why he’d really fled Urbino.

  “I—yes,” he stammered. “I went out to test the mirror to see if it could catch the sun’s rays and project them on a tent. I thought you meant to include me in the search for a murderer as you had in times past.” He lowered his voice. “I must admit I overheard Dr. Dee’s theory about a fire mirror setting off the blaze. It wasn’t easy for me to get up in that tree anymore—which hurt my pride more than my leg—but, yes, I scaled it, just to the lowest big crotch, and tried to see if I could flash light on the tents with it.”

  “And was it possible? To focus your secret mirror to catch the sun and train it on the tents?”

  “Yes, it was,” he admitted, feeling naked before that sharp-eyed Tudor gaze. “But,” he went on, head down, “I couldn’t tell you without letting you know I had that—that mirror.”

  She looked into the reflecting glass even as he spoke. The light off it even here in the privy garden illumined her fine face. Thank God, Gil thought, her high color was abating and her tone was tempering.

 
; “’S blood, it’s as good as raining mirrors lately,” she said. “Dee’s many mirrors, this one, the one in your painting of your lost Dorothea, my cousin Mary’s, and whichever one lit the fire to murder Kendale and the boy Niles—if it was none of those.”

  Gil held his breath, uncertain whether he was still under a cloud or not. Suddenly the queen thrust the mirror toward him, stiff armed, so he was gazing right into the glass. “Did you use this mirror to start any sort of fire, Gil Sharpe?”

  “I did not. Instead it was used by a woman to begin a fire in my heart.”

  She sighed, and her arm went limp as she lowered the mirror. “I must take this for a while, for safekeeping.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “You sound like a parrot Kat Ashley used to have, ‘Yes, my lady, no, my lady.’” She took one step away, then spun back. “Are you sick in the body, heart, or soul, poor Gil? You know, you must get over your Italian lady. I assure you, it can be done.”

  “Yes, I—I shall heed your advice, Your Majesty.”

  “And that reminds me, find Henry Heatherley and have him describe to you the Italian man who was asking all about my artists—including you—in the inn at Mortlake. Gil, you’ve gone pale again,” she said, stepping toward him. “Clifford,” she cried, turning back over her shoulder as the big man rushed up to take his elbow to steady him.

  Despite his trepidation that the queen would cast him out for the dangerous secret he still kept from her, Gil felt a greater fear. The next time Elizabeth of England confronted him, he would have nothing left but the terrible truth. The remnants of his strength fled, and he could barely nod as Clifford helped him back into the tent.

  Maestro Giorgio Scarletti and his artists’ guild had indeed sent someone after him. He felt his heartbeat accelerate as he collapsed on his mussed pallet. They meant to silence him. To kill him. Should he try to flee to draw his pursuers away from the queen? But if he ran, she might suspect him of the fires here. It was obvious she already did.