Murder at Hatfield House: An Elizabethan Mystery

by Carmack, Amanda

  Kate didn’t have to play again until the interval, and she was quickly caught up in the story. The princess and her father were locked away in a tower, but even there, love and hope could bloom. Melsemene glimpsed a handsome prince, played by Master Rob in fine velvets and furs, who was locked in the tower across from hers. They sent messages of poetry, sang to each other and, in one scene that had Kate almost in tears, met to embrace in person. The lovers planned a peaceful life away from the strife of wars and kings.

  Melsemene was even willing to give up her rightful kingdom for love and a life of scholarship. It looked as if she would be set free and exiled, alive, united with her true love, and Kate held her breath as she watched their joy, forgetting it was Rob and the apprentice. But then the evil king took back his bargain, and condemned the lovers to death, along with Melsemene’s father.

  Kate frowned as she watched the princess fall to her knees to beg for their lives. This tale began to sound all too familiar. A young, scholarly princess dethroned, imprisoned, betrayed by false promises, used as a pawn in the power games of others. Murdered through no fault of her own.

  It sounded very much like the story of Lady Jane Grey. Startled, Kate quickly glanced over the crowd, searching their faces to see if they made the same connection. Princess Elizabeth’s face went even whiter, and her beringed hands clutched the arms of her chair.

  “Enough of this!” Braceton suddenly shouted, as a hooded executioner raised his pasteboard blade above the princess’s neck.

  The actor playing the princess froze, stuttering to a confused halt in the middle of his final speech, and the executioner squinted past the torchlight. Rob, who stood at the side of the stage, held back by two “guards,” closed his fist around the dagger at his waist. Kate saw it was no stage prop, but a real blade. Had he been expecting trouble all along?

  Clutching her lute, she slowly rose to her feet and watched as Braceton stormed up the aisle. He reached out and pulled down the curtains, sending the actors waiting for their cues off in all directions. The apprentice leaped up from the block and fled, but Rob stood still and faced Braceton.

  “There is still one scene left,” he said. “The death of the prince—”

  “I will hear no more of this nonsense!” Braceton roared. “First the church is befouled, and now you vagabonds spout your treasonous poison in this very house.”

  Master Cartman slowly emerged from behind the stage, his face-paint streaked by the sweat pouring down his forehead. He wrung his hands together, no longer the regal king. “Nay, my lord, we speak no treason, I vow! ’Tis merely a play, one Master Cecil thought would please the Lady Elizabeth . . .”

  Master Cartman surely knew immediately he had said the wrong thing. Braceton leaped onto the stage, and with one powerful backhand sent Master Cartman tumbling to the floor. A woman in the audience screamed, and the young apprentice sobbed loudly.

  “I should have known this was the work of Cecil,” Braceton said, tossing the torn curtains down atop the cowering Cartman. “I should have known you carried messages hidden in your pretty words.”

  “No messages, my lord. I swear it,” Master Cartman cried.

  “I see the meaning in your story, and I will not let it pass,” Braceton said. “The queen’s justice will always be done. No more of your lies! Begone from my sight now, you foul hedge-pigs.”

  “Lord Braceton,” Elizabeth called. Kate turned to see the princess had come to the edge of the stage, Sir Thomas hurrying after her. Everyone else was huddled at the end of the hall, watching the scene with wide, fearful eyes, and Kate was glad her father was still tucked up in his chamber and not here to see this. “I fear the terrible events of this day have made you see treachery where there is none. ’Tis merely a play.”

  “You know very well, my lady, this is no mere play. You see the tale as well as I do,” Braceton said. He turned away from the shambles of the stage to face Elizabeth, giving Rob time to help his uncle to his feet and lead him quickly offstage. “And such treason will not be allowed to stand. I will have justice if I must tear this house apart board by board to do it.”

  Dark pink streaked across Elizabeth’s pale cheeks, and her dark eyes burned. “Then tear it apart! Send us all to the Tower, including these innocent players who only do the bidding of their masters in trying to amuse us. But you will find no treason.”

  Braceton stared down at her, huge and glowering, and Elizabeth looked tiny and frail next to him. But she did not turn away. Neither of them would ever back down in this clash of wills. “We shall see, my lady. I have been kind until now, gentle for the sake of your sister the good queen, who still has a care for you even though you have betrayed her again and again. But I will serve her despite that care. No more kindness.”

  He kicked out at a fallen column, shattering it. “And get these worms out of my sight, or their heads will be on pikes at your gate by morning.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Kate found the players’ cart in the sheep meadow beyond Hatfield’s gates, near a large old oak tree, under which was a favorite picnic spot of Elizabeth’s in the summer. Tonight the field was cold and damp, the moon obscured by the slide of purple-gray clouds. A few torches stuck in the earth illuminated the makeshift campsite, blankets on the ground, hastily packed chests still piled around. A woman sobbed quietly inside the cart.

  They’d left in a hurry after Braceton stormed out of the great hall, but it was impossible to travel on such a night.

  Kate drew her shawl closer around her shoulders as she cautiously scanned the darkness for any movement. Was someone out there right now, with their arrows or their blades?

  “Who is there?” a man called, his voice hoarse with caution. Rob Cartman stepped out of the shadows beside the cart and into an amber circle of torchlight, his sword drawn. Kate sensed a few other people by slight stirrings of movement under the blankets, but no one else showed themselves. It was as if they had all gone to earth, hiding.

  Which was no bad thing. Not with Braceton tearing through Hatfield. “It’s me. Kate Haywood. Her Grace sent me to see how you fared, and to give you this.” She held out the purse of coins.

  Rob slowly lowered the sword, which she saw was not a blunted stage prop, but a raw blade, like the dagger he had carried earlier. He raked a hand through his rumpled hair, and Kate could see the weariness etched on his face, the slump of his strong shoulders under his thin linen shirt.

  “How did you get away?” he said.

  “The same way you did—while Braceton was not looking,” she answered. “He is too busy questioning the princess and the Popes to bother with me.”

  “Nor hopefully with us. We will be away at first light.”

  “Princess Elizabeth said to tell you she is heartily sorry for bringing you into her troubles.”

  Rob gave a harsh laugh. “I would say we brought it on ourselves. For did we not seek you out on the road to Hatfield?”

  “Because Cecil sent you? And asked you to perform that play for the princess?” Kate said, exceedingly puzzled. Did Rob work for Cecil? Or for more sinister forces? “He is usually more subtle than that, I’m told.”

  “What do you mean?” Rob asked sharply.

  Kate remembered what Elizabeth sought to know, what she’d whispered so quickly before she sent Kate out to find the actors. She remembered her own startled realization that the play was far more than it seemed. She needed to get to the bottom of it all before anyone else was hurt. “Is the play not about Jane Grey? The sweet young scholarly maiden, dethroned and imprisoned? The pawn to the power of others?”

  “Hush!” Rob grabbed Kate’s arm, and led her beyond the light, beyond the hearing of the others. “I know not what you speak of. It is merely a classical myth, as so many other plays are.”

  “It is not a myth I have ever heard,” Kate argued. “And why would Lord Braceton react so? What had he to do with Jane Grey that would make someone want to send such a message?”

  “I don’t
know!” Rob almost shouted. The woman in the cart sobbed louder, and he went on more quietly. “I don’t know. You would have to talk to my uncle. He is the one who brought us the play and said we must learn it quickly.”

  “After you visited the Cecils?”

  Rob shook his head. “Nay, it was before that. But I don’t know when he got it, or who wrote it. It could be by any number of the writers we patronize, and they would pen anything asked for a few shillings. My uncle has seemed nervous about something these last few days, and changed his mind several times. I questioned him most ardently whether we should perform it, sensing that it could be too dangerous to bring up such dark memories. Yet in the end we deferred to Sir William.”

  Kate could make no sense of it all. “Can I speak to your uncle?”

  “He has ridden ahead to see if we are still welcome at the next manor house. He told us to stay with the cart, as it’s not safe to move it on these muddy roads till daylight.”

  “He has abandoned you here?” Kate cried. “So near to Braceton?”

  “Our livelihoods are tied up in what’s in the cart, Mistress Kate, these expensive properties and costumes. Without them we are truly nothing better than vagabonds.”

  It sounded plausible enough. But why would Master Cartman abandon his nephew and his possessions if he was not guilty of something? What was behind the strange play and his odd behavior? How were the play—about Jane Grey, who had been so passionately reformist in her religious ideas—and the Catholic priestly garb Ned wore connected? “Then you really know not what message was being sent in that play? If there was any message at all there.”

  “Truly, I do not know, Mistress Kate, or I would tell your princess. After what I have seen in London, she is truly our only hope now.” Rob sighed wearily and leaned back against the tree. “There is one thing, perhaps.”

  “What is it? Surely even a fragment of knowledge would help.”

  “Lord Ambrose, our patron, was on the jury that condemned Lady Jane and her husband to death. But it is not a matter he is proud of, and he would never advertise it in a play to Princess Elizabeth. Not seeing that Lady Jane was her cousin.”

  “If such a play would have displeased your patron, your uncle should never have mentioned it to Sir William. Truly, I do not understand,” Kate murmured, turning over everything she knew, all the jumbled-up, half-seen images. Who had paid the troupe to do the play? How did they know both the actors and Braceton, and poor Ned? The answers were out there somewhere, surely nearby. She just had to find them.

  “Nor do I,” Rob said. “But it would seem, Mistress Kate, that we will pay for it all the same.”

  *

  Edward Cartman stumbled over a knotty tree root in the darkness and fell to his knees, almost sobbing with fear. He had counterfeited terror and panic on the stage hundreds of times, but never before had he felt it as keenly as he did tonight. A cold wind blew around him, rustling the leaves over his head and seeping through his doublet.

  It had been a great gamble to present the play, but the promised payoff was so large it seemed worth it. Edward had lost much of the season’s receipts playing primero in the back parlor of the Rose and Crown, and with Lord Ambrose out of the country there was no chance of court engagements. The offer had seemed to come at a perfect moment, and at first seemed so easy.

  Until he realized what was really going on beneath the harmless commission. Until Braceton knocked him to the floor, and he knew he had lost the gamble.

  Edward pushed himself up from the dirt, the damp earth that smelled of rotten leaves and old smoke. His lungs felt as if they would burst. Surely he’d been running ever since they fled Hatfield. But it wouldn’t be far enough.

  He’d been a fool. He’d spent a lifetime clawing his way up from a boot-boy and apprentice to the leader of his own troupe. His brother, who had stayed sensibly on the family farm, had laughed at him. Until Edward came home wearing velvet and plumes, under the patronage of the wealthy Lord Ambrose. He’d shown them. And now he even had charge of his brother’s treasured son.

  But had they been right, in the end? Edward lost his head when he saw the great bag of coins on offer, just to perform one short play. And there was a chance the gamble could still pay off. He just had to ease his panic and think clearly.

  He leaned against a tree, trying to catch his breath. Suddenly there was a soft rustle, a mere whisper of movement through the wind, and a figure slipped between the trees.

  Just as on the night they met him to offer the coins and the play’s script, the tall figure was muffled head to toe in a dark cloak. In the deep shadows of the hood could be glimpsed a black velvet visor in place of a face. The only color visible was the glint of the moon on the eyes that peered through the mask’s slits. Edward couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman, or even human. Perhaps it was a demon, such as the one whispers said had killed the kitchen boy.

  “So you performed the play, as I asked?” the figure demanded, voice muffled by the mask and the cloak.

  “We did,” Edward managed to say, even though he still couldn’t seem to catch his breath. The whole scene had such a nightmarish air about it, like a witch’s gathering at midnight. But it was terribly real.

  The cloaked figure laughed. “And garnered a rare reaction, I’m sure.”

  “Braceton did not like it. Just as you said. Nor did Princess Elizabeth, I vow. Her face was white as milk.”

  “Good. You’ve fulfilled your bargain with me, then.”

  “Our dealings are at an end?” A faint spark of hope kindled in him.

  The figure reached a gloved hand into the folds of the cloak. For one terrible moment, Edward felt panic crawling like a cold, living thing up his throat. He feared he would see a blade emerge. He almost collapsed to the ground as a purse came out instead. The figure tossed it at Edward, and it landed with a metallic clink at his feet.

  “Yes. Begone from this place,” the figure said, turning away. “And never speak to anyone of that play. It never existed.”

  Edward scooped up the bag. The weight of it in his hand, the clatter of the coins, swept away the panic. The risky gamble had paid off! It truly had! His great luck had not deserted him.

  The relief made him bold. Without thinking, he called out, “If you ever do wish the play performed again, or any other nobles disconcerted, we know the lines well now. Surely others would be interested in it.”

  The cloak swept through the leaves as the figure spun around. “What others do you speak of?”

  Horrified, Edward saw his mistake. “None at all! I only meant—”

  “That play is for once and once only. But you go on to Leighton Abbey next, do you not? Or perhaps you wait for the return of Lord Ambrose.”

  “Nay,” Edward protested. He took a step back, only to stumble over the root. “I only wished to see if we could serve you again.”

  The figure moved so quickly, almost like a ghost. It was upon him in a swirl of the cloak, and gloved hands shot out to grab him by the neck.

  “I see I was mistaken to think I could be merciful,” came a muffled whisper. “My enemies show no mercy. God’s justice must be done. I cannot afford to be merciful either.”

  Suddenly the moonlight glinted on a blade, and it flashed down. Edward felt a sharp, horrible pain as the blade plunged into his chest and was pulled out again. The pain burned and then froze, and bitter blood bubbled up in his throat to choke him.

  He tumbled to the ground, and the last thing he felt was the sweep of a cloak hem over his cold face.

  CHAPTER 14

  Kate was torn out of sleep by the sound of shouting and the crash of furniture tumbling to the floor. At first she was sure it was only a nightmare, of the dark and confusing sort that had disturbed her sleep too often of late. But then a cry rang out again, along with a deeper, rumbling threat, and she knew it was no dream.

  She sat up straight in her bed, and for a moment she could hear nothing past the rush of blood in her ears. Sh
e pushed the bedclothes back, and as she swung her feet down to the cold floor, she heard her father cry, “Nay, I beg of you!”

  Kate snatched up her shawl from the foot of the bed and quickly wrapped it over her chemise as she ran to the door. She pulled it open to find her rooms invaded by Braceton and his men.

  After what happened in the courtyard, Kate had taken the precaution of carefully hiding her lute, but their sitting room was being overturned. Papers were scattered over the floor, plates swept from the sideboard, the chairs toppled over on their sides. A trunk Kate recognized as her father’s, a small case he always kept locked and in his own chamber, stood open as Braceton sifted through the contents.

  Her father knelt by the fireplace in only his nightshirt and cap, scrambling to try to gather up some of the papers. One of the men kicked them away, leaving a muddy bootprint over the musical notes.

  “What are you doing?” Kate cried. She rushed over to grasp her father’s arm, trying to lift him to his feet. He didn’t even seem to see her, he was so intent on saving his work. “You have already been through all of our things!”

  Braceton peered over at her, his eyes narrowed. “Ah, yes. The girl with the lute. You should have a better care with your father. It seems he was hiding this box from us beneath the floorboards. Surely that is a signal of some guilt.”

  “How ridiculous,” Kate said. She managed to get her father to sit on one of the stools, and kept her hands on his shoulders to hold him with her. “That box is always out on his table. There is nothing in it that has to be hidden.”

  “Well, it was hidden.” Braceton held up a pamphlet, his face turning brick red as he studied it. “What is this, then?”

  Kate’s father gave a strangled cry, and suddenly shot forward as if he would snatch it back. Kate grabbed a handful of his shirt, but it took every ounce of her strength to hold him.

  “That is something very old; I don’t even know why it’s there,” her father said.

  “Then perhaps it is your daughter’s,” Braceton said with a terrible smile. “Is it yours, Mistress Lute-girl?”