A sister. Kate glanced back at the empty cottage, remembering Ned cowering in fear at the veiled figure who fled Hatfield. “Does this sister wear a veil, perchance?”
The woman scowled. “Nay, never.”
That was one thought vanished then, that Ned’s kinswoman could have been the veiled woman. Unless of course it was a disguise of some sort. Kate murmured her thanks as the woman turned back to her sweeping, and then went on her way back to Hatfield.
The lane was deserted, silent, giving her room to think about the terrible thing that had happened. She was so lost in her thoughts, she almost missed the tiny thing snared on a bush, until a ray of sunlight caught on it and made it shimmer against the grays and greens all around. Kate knelt down and carefully plucked it off to turn it between her fingers.
It was a feather, a finely cut, small fragment in peacock colors.
She knew enough of weapons from playing archery at court when she was a child to see it could only be one thing—the fletching from an arrow. Was it the same sort of arrow that had killed Braceton’s servant not far from this very spot?
Kate tucked it carefully in her cloak and rushed on. It wasn’t a veil or a black cloak, but surely it was some kind of small clue that would help her in her search. She had to hold on to it and let it tell her its secrets.
CHAPTER 12
“Dressed in priestly vestments? And you saw this yourself, Kate?”
“I did, Your Grace,” Kate said, as she stood before Elizabeth in the quiet of her chamber. The day was fading; outside the window, the light was tinged a pale rose-gold through the clouds, and soon night would be upon them. Braceton was still in the village surveying the gruesome scene, though he would return too soon. Kate was aching with weariness, but she knew that as soon as she closed her eyes, she would see poor Ned again. “It was—terrible.”
“I’m sure it was. You should not have had to see such a thing. That poor boy.” Elizabeth took Kate’s arm and led her to the chair by the fire. She poured out a goblet of wine and pressed Kate’s numb fingers around it. “Who would do such a horrible thing? And why?”
Kate shrugged. “I have been asking myself the same thing all afternoon. Surely it could not have been an attack on Ned himself. He has never hurt anyone at all. It seemed more like a—a message.”
“Aye, it does. But a message to whom? To what purpose? I have seen many strange things in my life, but none quite like this.” Elizabeth paced to the window and sat down on the cushioned seat. Her fingers tapped restlessly on the windowsill as she stared outside. “Did it look as if he had been killed there? Or was he moved from someplace else?”
Kate closed her eyes and forced herself to remember the details of the terrible scene in the church. “I know naught of murder, Your Grace, but I have seen pigs slaughtered in the farmyard before. I think he must have been killed there in the church, as there was such a quantity of blood on the altar and the floor. And it was beginning to dry, so it had not just happened. But—” She paused, frowning, as something struck her.
“But what?”
“But the vestments had very little blood on them at all. He was so carefully presented, as if he lay in state, like a true bishop. His hands were crossed with the crucifix and the rosary, and his eyes were closed.”
“So he was killed, and then dressed and arranged.”
“He must have been. I saw no signs of a struggle there either, Your Grace. I suppose he went to the church on his own for some reason, though I cannot see why he would go there at all.”
“Nor can I.” Elizabeth sighed and rubbed her hand over her eyes. “This whole matter has me puzzled exceedingly. Do you think the veiled woman you say Ned saw here had anything to do with it?”
Kate remembered the strange sighting here at Hatfield, the veiled figure she had chased and who vanished. The person in the cloak she heard about in the village. Surely they were one and the same, or at least connected? Mysterious figures such as that were a rarity in the neighborhood. She also remembered Ned cowering in fear, as if he knew something he could not communicate about the veiled woman. “I couldn’t say, Your Grace. I haven’t seen her again. It could very well be.”
“But no one in the village saw anything?”
“They say not. There was much confusion, especially when Ned’s father came running in, vowing vengeance. Meg and her daughter claim they saw naught before they discovered the body. Surely if someone had seen anyone about the church, they would say.”
“Perhaps. Or perhaps not, and who could truly blame them?” Elizabeth said quietly, still staring outside. “In these days it would be terribly dangerous to be associated with anything that smacks of deepest heresy. Best to keep one’s head down.”
Kate nodded. Who would wish to come to Braceton’s attention, if they could help it? Poor Ned was dead; there was no help for him, and few would endanger themselves for a mute kitchen boy, except his own grief-stricken father. Yet Kate had to help Ned if she could.
“There was one odd thing, Your Grace,” she said. “Master Payne was not around the church. I did not see him at all.”
Elizabeth turned toward her. “The old vicar?”
“Aye, Your Grace. He is usually lurking about there, shouting about sin and hellfire to anyone who crosses his path. He hates the Catholics. This seems like the sort of thing that would have him in a great fit of passion.”
“Master Payne does seem mad, but usually harmless. I have never heard of him actually harming anyone, though if he thinks someone is in danger of damnation, who knows what he will do? I wonder where he has gone.”
“Perhaps he did see something, and has fled from fear. Meg’s daughter did say it was a demon who did the foul crime.” Kate shook her head. “Or maybe . . .”
“Maybe he did it himself.”
“It could be anyone, Your Grace. It feels as if madness has come upon the whole world.”
A shadow flickered over Elizabeth’s eyes. “The world is always mad, my dear Kate. And sometimes it claims the most innocent among us as its worst victims.”
Kate thought again of Ned, so white and still, and she feared the princess was right. The world was afire. Who would be the next consumed?
Elizabeth suddenly rose in a rustle of satin and paced to the other end of the chamber and back. “Finish your wine, Kate. ’Tis almost full dark, and you must get to the great hall soon. The play will begin directly after supper.”
“The play, Your Grace?” Kate asked, surprised. “But—won’t Lord Braceton stop it now? He never liked it.”
“Lord Braceton has not yet returned from the village. When he does, he is sure to be full of more fury and choler than ever, but it will be too late to stop the play going forward.” Elizabeth paused at the small looking glass on the wall and studied her reflection—the pale pointed face framed by a small frilled ruff, the red-gold hair drawn back under an embroidered cap. She had no expression at all. “I feel we could all use a little diversion, don’t you, Kate?”
“Of course, Your Grace,” Kate said uncertainly. She wasn’t sure of any such thing. She wanted her own fireside, a piece of music to study, her father to talk to. Quiet, familiar things. Yet she knew Elizabeth rarely did anything without a purpose. If she wanted a play on this most inauspicious of nights, there was a reason.
“You have worked a bit with those actors, Kate,” Elizabeth said. “Have you learned much about where they have been of late? What they were doing there?”
“Not very much. We mostly talked of music,” Kate said. She thought of the handsome Master Rob, how open he seemed—and then how mysterious. “They were at Gorhambury, then went to Sir William. Probably Sir Nicholas sent them there. I know not where they were before that. London, mayhap.”
“Yet Lord Ambrose is one of the queen’s men. A most devout Catholic, they say. Why would he send his troupe to houses known to be of the new faith?”
“They say Lord Ambrose is abroad right now.”
“Even curious
er, then.” Elizabeth turned away from the looking glass and picked up a gown that was draped over the clothes chest. Kate saw it was a kirtle and bodice of tawny silk with ivory ribbons, and an air of darker gold damask sleeves. Beneath it was the fine red cloak Kate had worn before.
“Here, Kate,” Elizabeth said. “Take this and wear it tonight. You have been working so hard, and deserve to look your prettiest.”
Kate took the armful of fine fabric in surprise. Elizabeth had given gifts of clothing and food before, but these were very rich. It had been so long since she wore anything like that. “I—thank you, Your Grace,” she stammered as Elizabeth fluffed one of the ribbons on the skirt. “But I will only be playing to the side of the stage. No one will see me.”
Elizabeth’s solemn expression cracked as she gave Kate a teasing smile. “What of Master Cartman’s beautiful nephew? So golden—a veritable Apollo.”
Kate had to laugh even as she felt her cheeks become embarrassingly warm. For had she not thought that very thing about the handsome, dashing Master Rob? The man had appeared in the neighborhood too conveniently, and could well have been involved in the violent murders. She would be foolish to entirely trust him. “He is only a player, Your Grace. I know they flirt and flatter, and mean not a word of it.”
“Most wise, Kate, for I vow almost all men are the same. Peril to the woman who takes them seriously. But what of your other friend? The young lawyer?”
“Anthony Elias, Your Grace?” Kate said, surprised again that Elizabeth knew Anthony at all, though Master Hardy had done some legal work for Elizabeth from time to time.
“Aye. He seems of a more serious bent of mind, and just as handsome as Master Cartman, in his own way.”
Handsome? Of course Anthony was handsome; Kate couldn’t help but see that. But he was her friend, nothing more. Surely he only saw her as that? And she had no time for anything else, from either Anthony or Master Rob. “Anthony and I are merely friends, Your Grace. Do you yourself not say a woman’s happiest state is the single one?”
Elizabeth shook her head, still smiling. “You do pay too much attention, Kate. I say many things for many reasons. The single state must surely be the most prudent, but it is sometimes a lonely one. You are so young still, and have so many choices before you. You must ponder them all well.”
“I shall, Your Grace,” Kate said, mystified as to what might have brought this on. Elizabeth was not usually one to pry into her servants’ private lives, as long as they worked hard and were loyal to her. Kate herself knew she couldn’t think of the future any more than Elizabeth could, not until her father was better and their lives more settled. “Most carefully.”
Elizabeth nodded and turned away. “Then wear the gown tonight, if only to cheer me. And keep the cloak. The red suits you better than it does me.”
Kate thought of how the cloak kept her so warm on the chilly days. “Thank you, Your Grace.”
“And send Penelope to me. I must dress for the evening’s festivities.”
*
Kate played a song on her lute as she watched the servants carry in chairs and benches from the dining hall and line them up in front of the makeshift stage. The players were in the curtained-off area behind, and she could hear the sound of their voices as they ran snatches of lines, shouted and murmured, complained about costumes, but she could make little sense of the words.
She wondered if they were to perform the Princess of Carthage play, or if old Master Cartman had truly changed his mind to go with the older, more comic work. All Master Rob had done when she appeared in the great hall was send her to this seat with a distracted smile. He hadn’t even seemed to notice her new gown, or the way Peg had styled her hair with ivory ribbons. When she asked what music she was to play, he answered, “Something that will hold their attention.”
Which was not terribly helpful. Kate supposed she would just have to wait and see what happened when the curtain went up.
In the meantime, she softly played some of the Spanish songs she’d taken to Brocket Hall and watched as the audience filed in after supper. Elizabeth came first, and she sat down in the front row with Sir Thomas and Lady Pope. Sir Thomas seemed gray-faced and distracted, constantly scanning the room as if he feared attackers would leap out of the woodwork. Kate could hardly blame him; she felt that way herself, wary and shivery.
Lady Pope sat with her hands folded and her lips pinched together, disapproving as always.
Penelope sat behind Elizabeth, staring down at the lap of her skirt as she pleated the fine damask fabric between her fingers and smoothed it out again. Kate’s friend looked unusually introspective, as if she was as haunted by feelings of dread as Kate was herself. Kate tried to catch her eye, to give her a reassuring smile, but Penelope didn’t look up. The rest of the servants filed into the back of the hall.
Once Elizabeth and the others were settled, the doors swung open again and Braceton came in. Kate was shocked by his appearance. She’d heard the echo of his shouting when he returned from the village, the terrible threats of the queen’s holy wrath on anyone who had so profaned her church. Just what everyone had come to expect from him—threats and danger, destruction. The whole house seemed to hold its breath to see what would befall it next.
But then a taut silence lowered over the place, like the gray clouds outside and the cold wind that had swept up again. And Kate would hardly have known the man who sat down behind Penelope as Braceton at all. His burly, red-faced bluster was gone, leaving his face white and drawn behind his beard. He took in the stage with narrowed eyes, his fists braced on his knees, yet he said nothing. Merely watched, and waited.
Somehow that quiet attention was worse than anything else had been. Clearly the manner of poor Ned’s death was meant as some sort of message to the queen’s man. A taunt, perhaps—a grotesque warning centered around his Catholic religion. Perhaps the murderer was someone who had lost Protestant relatives to the queen’s fires? Braceton would never let such a thing go unpunished, unanswered. But who would pay?
No demon, as the girl had wailed, but someone very human.
“Psst! Mistress Kate,” someone whispered.
Kate tore herself out of her dark worries, and glanced over to see Rob Cartman peering at her from between the curtains. His golden hair gleamed in the torchlight.
“’Tis The Princess of Carthage tonight,” he said. “You can start the prelude.”
Kate nodded, and launched into the lively piece she had just finished learning. It was an interesting song, with an atmosphere of sunnier climes in its tune, a feeling of dancing nymphs and decadent banquets, of sea waves sliding across warm sand and birds swooping low over perpetually green trees.
Yet there was an air of sadness that lay over its lightness, a faint hint of darkness ahead that seemed to suit the night they now found themselves in.
She could feel the eyes of the audience on her as she played, Pope’s wary, Braceton’s piercing, Elizabeth’s encouraging, but Kate let herself sink into the music and become lost. Sometimes music was the only escape, though surely it could never last for long.
As the last notes of the song faded away, the stage curtains swept open, and Master Cartman stepped forward. A gold-edged white toga was draped over his fine dark red doublet and black hose, and his graying hair was covered by a plumed helmet. A blunt-nosed stage sword hung at his side, rattling as he bowed low before the princess.
“My lady, and good gentles all,” he said in a booming voice. He swept a grand gesture over the room, and Kate was amazed that he suddenly seemed not like the changeable, bad-tempered, nervous man who stormed around shouting unpredictably at the other actors. He seemed large, regal, almost otherworldly, and she knew she was back in the magic of playacting. It had been far too long, and despite everything she found herself drawn in. She could tell from the rapt looks on the audience’s faces that they were, too.
Except for Braceton, who still scowled.
“Imagine yourselves not at H
atfield House, not in the midst of the cold and the rain,” Master Cartman went on. “But be transported to a warmer shore, in a place and time far away. A time where emperors of great kingdoms wage wars on one another to win the fertile fields and the shore of the sea, where virginal maidens tend sacrificial flames in vast and rich temples, where conquered peoples are enslaved to the powerful. And where forbidden love blooms. . . .”
He bowed again, and left the stage as the curtains swept open. Kate leaned forward over her lute to examine the scene. The props she’d seen spilled out of trunks and cluttered around the hall now set a classical milieu. White columns set to either side of the stage framed a painted cloth of palm trees and green hills. A pasteboard chaise was set to one side, and one of the young apprentices lounged upon it. He too was transformed, by a long blond wig and a pleated white gown.
He pressed the back of his hand to his brow in despair and glanced at Kate. As she launched into the first chords, he began to sing.
I am Melsemene, princess of Carthage.
He sang in a sweet, pure voice, not yet cracked by adulthood. His words told the tale of how the princess was her father’s only child, the fount of all his ambitions, protected and cosseted, educated in all the finer arts and languages, the most beautiful and kind lady in all the land.
But then her father the king angered the gods, and in retaliation they demanded that Melsemene be married to Guyal, the cruel, ugly son of a neighboring king. Even though Melsemene wants only her life of study and contemplation, she is forced to agree to the marriage to save her father’s life.
The song ended in a roll of thunder from metal sheets beaten backstage; then a new painted cloth dropped down, a scene of dark clouds and lurking creatures hidden among the trees. More actors crowded onstage, dressed in their costumes of armor and swords. War had come to Carthage, thanks to the princess’s new prospective father-in-law, who wished to steal her kingdom and imprison her and make his own son king.
Murder at Hatfield House: An Elizabethan Mystery Page 12