Murder at Whitehall

by Amanda Carmack

  “His friend Senor Gomez did say he wondered if Senor Vasquez had a—a romantic attachment of some sort,” Kate said. “He said he once glimpsed Senor Vasquez with a red-haired lady, but that he denied any romance. He was very devout, which seems to be another reason why he would not kill himself, I think.”

  “A red-haired lady?” Elizabeth said sharply. “You do keep your ears open, Kate. Very clever. But he did not know who this lady was? If this was a mere personal disagreement, we could avoid much trouble, I think.”

  Kate shook her head. “Senor Vasquez did not really seem the flirtatious sort, Your Grace, though he did seem to have a secret.”

  “And what was that?”

  Kate told the queen of her encounter with Senor Vasquez and Lord Macintosh in the garden, what she had overheard between the two unlikely conspirators. “I wonder if the red-haired lady could be the she Lord Macintosh said seemed reluctant.”

  “Lord Macintosh was keeping secrets with a Spaniard?” Elizabeth hissed. “What could they have in common? And both of them dare come here, demanding my help for their wretched causes. . . .”

  “The Bishop de Quadra begs an audience with you, Your Grace,” a page boy announced from across the room.

  Elizabeth tapped her coronation ring on the windowsill, her lips pursed. “Z’wounds, but I suppose I must see the man now. We will speak more of this later, Kate. In the meantime . . .” She paused, her dark eyes glittering with a hard, diamond light, glancing in the direction of her whispering ladies clustered on the other side of the room.

  “Your Grace?”

  “When the Spanish are here, perhaps you could take a glance at Senor Vasquez’s belongings before they are packed away? If he is indeed involved in some conspiracy, with the Scots or anyone else, mayhap he was foolish enough to leave some letters lying about. Or something to lead us to this red-haired lady.”

  Kate only had time to nod before the queen gestured for de Quadra to be admitted. The bishop always seemed to be dressed for mourning in his black cassocks, but today there was fury as well as sorrow on his heavy-jowled face.

  “Your Grace,” he said, his accent heavier than usual, “thank you for seeing me on such a sorrowful day.”

  “Indeed, Bishop,” Elizabeth answered. “Trust my word, we shall find out what happened. The happy relationship between England and my brother’s kingdom cannot be marred. . . .”

  Kate slipped out of the room and made her way up the nearest staircase, down the twisting corridors to the wing where the Spanish embassy was housed, safely distant from the French. When Elizabeth first took the throne and the Count de Feria was King Philip’s ambassador, they had stayed at Durham House on the Strand, once the home of Duke of Northumberland—and the site of Lady Jane Grey’s lavish wedding to Guildford Dudley, as well as her sister Lady Catherine’s union to the heir of the Earl of Pembroke, whom Lady Catherine did not seem to greatly miss. But Elizabeth had soon realized it was wiser to keep the Spanish closer and under her observation.

  Not that close watch had stopped what happened to the unfortunate Senor Vasquez.

  Vasquez had shared a small chamber with Senor Gomez beyond the bishop’s lavish reception rooms, where King Philip’s portrait watched over the scarlet velvets and carved chairs and tables of his embassy. She had not been sure how to get past the watchful Spanish servants, but even they seemed to be in hiding after what had happened. The king’s painted eyes watched over an empty room. But she knew she had to be quick.

  The small room was filled with the two narrow beds, their dark green wool curtains drawn back, two desks, two stools, and a few carved clothes chests. The desks were covered with piles of documents, no doubt secretarial work for the bishop, along with inkpots and books.

  Kate scanned the titles stamped on the leather covers. Theological works, mostly, in Spanish and a few in Latin. The papers, too, were in Spanish, and her small knowledge of the language was enough to see they would tell her little of Senor Vasquez’s personal business.

  She knelt down beside the chest carved with the initials JldeV. One of Cecil’s agents had taught her once how to pick locks, and she used one of her ivory hairpins to make quick work of the padlock. She had to push away a prickling feeling of guilt at so invading a dead man’s privacy, but she hoped he might forgive her if it helped her find who had killed him.

  She pushed aside the dark-colored doublets, the shirts and hose, but she could find no sign of any secret romances or political plots.

  There were more books at the bottom, poetry, it seemed, and one with rather shocking engravings of bare-breasted women. She gave a sniff at the sight of them, and riffled the cheap, thin pages to be sure nothing was hidden between them. She felt around the edges of the chest to see if there was a false bottom or hidden drawers, yet to her disappointment there was naught to be found.

  She sat back on her heels to study the small room, and saw Senor Gomez’s vihuela propped beside the fireplace. A thick stack of musical manuscripts sat next to it.

  A few of them were marked with Senor Vasquez’s initials, the same ones carved on the chest, and she studied them. Just madrigals, mostly, and some music for church services. But one, near the bottom of the pile, was very strange. It was laid out like a song, but the notes were not like any she had ever seen. Tiny squiggles and curves, some of them in different colors of ink. It reminded her of the Plato she had been studying at Cecil’s behest, the method of using music as a code. It also made her think of something else, something just beyond the edge of her memory. . . .

  Kate heard a muffled laugh from the next room, a burst of words in Spanish. She quickly tucked the strange music under her wide velvet oversleeve and made her way out of the chamber, after making sure everything was left in order behind her. She kept to the edges of the reception room, scurrying out before the two maidservants could see her.

  She hurried to her father’s room, passing courtiers who whispered together in doorways, their faces pale and shocked as word passed of what had happened in the garden.

  Matthew was sitting by his fire, his gouty leg propped on a cushioned stool, a book open before him. A pitcher of wine and a bowl of the queen’s favorite candied suckets sat on a table nearby. It was a most cozy scene.

  “Kate, my dearest,” he called when he saw her, “you are just in time. Gerald and the Parks are just on their way to join me for some wine.”

  “I am glad I got here before them, then,” she said, going to sit on the stool beside his chair. “You have heard of the poor Spaniard in the garden?”

  Matthew frowned. “Indeed, the maid told me when she brought the wine. Dreadful matter. The Spanish and their strange ways. After the days of Queen Mary . . .”

  Kate swallowed hard and nodded. She remembered the dark days at the close of Queen Mary’s reign, when her father had been tossed into a damp, dank gaol and she had feared for his very life. The days when everyone feared that Queen Mary’s Spanish husband had brought the ways of his country to England. Those days could never come again. The only way to keep them at bay, to keep England safe, was to make sure Elizabeth stayed securely on the throne. “I fear Queen Elizabeth thinks there is something even more sinister to the matter.”

  His frown deepened. “What do you mean?”

  She quickly took the music from her sleeve and laid it out for him to see. She told him of Senor Vasquez and his possible murder, as briefly as she could, and she said nothing of how she had actually come to have the music in her possession. Her father did not need to know everything she did at court.

  “What do you think of this?” she asked.

  Her father’s eyes brightened as she examined the music. “This makes no sense, even as some strange Spanish church music. What is it?”

  “I am not sure yet. I have had some lessons on the vihuela of late, but I don’t think these notes would work even on that.”

&nbs
p; “Quite right, quite right.” He looked up at her for a long moment, his eyes searching, full of worry, but he said nothing. “Can you leave it with me for a while, my dear? I will take a closer look, compare it to some other works.”

  “Of course.”

  “Perhaps we could show it to Gerald and the Parks also?”

  She could see how that might be of benefit, as Master Finsley and the Parks had long experience with all sorts of music and with courtly life as well. But something held her back, told her that the fewer people who knew of this paper right now the better. “Not as yet, I think.”

  He nodded, and as a knock sounded at the door he tucked the document away behind his chair cushion. Mistress Park hurried in, with her husband on one arm and Master Finsley on the other.

  “Oh, Kate, my dear girl!” Hester Park cried as she kissed Kate’s cheek and settled herself in the cushioned chair across the fire from Matthew’s. Master Finsley and Master Park took the stools, and Kate saw that Master Finsley carried his lute. “How happy I am to see you today. When we heard of the poor young man in the garden—saints preserve us. What a terrible thing to happen during the queen’s Yule.”

  Kate studied Mistress Park’s bright eyes, her reddened cheeks. It seemed she had missed something of court intrigue in her retirement. “It is a terrible thing. You must be sorry you have left your comfortable cottage to return to court.”

  Mistress Park shook her head and reached for the fruit suckets. Kate poured out wine for everyone. “Oh, my dear, we were here during Queen Cat Howard’s time, so long ago! We have seen such matters, and worse, before. The poor young queen dragged off to the Tower, screaming. So many arrests and rumors. One man was even poisoned at a banquet, right in front of us! Do you remember that, Edward? I think he was Italian, from the court of Florence. . . .”

  Her husband chuckled, almost as if poisonings and beheadings had taken on some glow of nostalgia. “Indeed I do, Hester. Everyone then was sure it must have been the anchovies. Such a vile thing to eat, even in Lent. But it turned out to be his wife who did it, was it not?”

  “So it was.” Hester clucked. “Shocking. Perhaps it was the same with this young man. Do they say he had a lover, Kate?”

  “Hester,” Matthew said reprovingly, “Kate is much too occupied with her work, not to mention too young, to concern herself with such matters.”

  If he only knew . . . Kate thought wryly. In her year at court, she had seen many flirtations and romantic plottings, not to mention stranglings and poisonings and thefts.

  Hester laughed. “Fie, Matthew! I was much younger than her when I married Edward and came to court, and you and Eleanor were just as young. Kate must listen to gossip, as everyone does who wants to survive at court.”

  “I have heard nothing like that about Senor Vasquez,” Kate said quickly. “Only that he maybe was seen strolling with a lady by the river.”

  “The man was Spanish, Hester,” Master Finsley said. “They use up all the heat of their blood in prayers, surely, and not for romances.”

  Hester sighed. “So sad for them. I heard this Senor Vasquez was quite handsome, if rather dour. In Queen Catherine Parr’s time, Senor Mendoza was still the Spanish ambassador after so many years. He was completely gray and could scarce walk with the gout. I thought him so ancient then.” She wistfully patted at the silvery curls peeking from under her cap.

  “But Queen Catherine’s court was scarcely dull,” Master Finsley said.

  “Not at all,” Hester agreed. “’Tis why we are not so easily shocked now, Kate my dear! Even a lady as great and virtuous as Queen Catherine was ever followed by gossip.”

  Kate thought of Queen Elizabeth and the drawing left in her room, and the rumors about Elizabeth, Queen Catherine, and Thomas Seymour that still persisted. “Such as when King Henry thought to accuse Queen Catherine of treason?”

  Hester’s eyes widened with surprise as she looked at Kate. “Do you remember those days, my dear? You would have been the merest child.”

  Kate shook her head. “I must have heard Queen Elizabeth speak of it.”

  “Queen Catherine was like a mother to her,” Edward said. “It would have been a great tragedy if her enemies had succeeded in their plots to overthrow Queen Catherine, as Queen Anne was.”

  “A tragedy for us who served her, as well,” Hester said. “Though we lost Queen Catherine soon enough, when she died in childbed only a few years later.”

  “Though ’twas a blessing for her she never saw the trouble her scoundrel of a husband Tom Seymour got himself into,” Edward said.

  Hester clucked again, and popped another cherry sucket into her mouth.

  “Does Queen Elizabeth often speak of her stepmother, Kate?” Gerald Finsley asked quietly.

  Kate turned to look at him. He watched her steadily with his faded pale eyes. “She does remember Queen Catherine with great fondness,” she said carefully. She did not speak of the sorrow Elizabeth had shown over her stepmother and what happened with Tom Seymour.

  “Queen Elizabeth owes much to that lady,” Hester said. “Queen Catherine sheltered her from a great deal. Such as . . .”

  “Surely Queen Elizabeth brought much joy to Queen Catherine as well,” Matthew interrupted sternly. “Queen Catherine longed for children, and Queen Elizabeth was like a daughter to her, no matter what foul gossip persists. But we have not come together to remember such a dark past today! We have little time together, my friends. Let us play some music. Gerald, I see you have brought your lute. Shall we play something for Christmas?”

  “Aye, Matthew, a fine idea,” Master Finsley said, reaching for his instrument. “Kate, will you sing?”

  Kate nodded, and settled in for an hour of her favorite thing—music with friends.

  * * *

  As Kate tried to make her way back to her chamber later, she found her path blocked by a crowd that grew thicker and thicker, pressing her in with fur sleeves and embroidered trains. The heavy, humid scent of French perfumes and burning oils from the braziers in the corner, the high laughter and nervous chatter, closed around her in the shadows created by torchlight and tapestries.

  After what had happened in the garden, the crowd and its constant surging movement was almost too much. Kate found herself glad that so much of the time she could hide above everyone’s heads in the musicians’ gallery—though the queen did seem to have required her presence at the courtly balls and banquets more and more of late.

  Kate suddenly froze in the midst of the crowd, and it felt as if she was caught in a dream moment. Everyone’s movements seemed to slow down to a brightly colored blur, their laughter like the indistinct hum of summer insects. Their splendor was too much of a contrast to the silent body in the garden.

  Kate knew she had to find out what was happening, to protect the queen, but could she do it? The vast palace and everything in it seemed so overwhelming.

  A sudden jostling push sent her stumbling out of the tight knot of the crowd to the front of the corridor, and the dream snapped back into sharp-edged reality. Just like the musical code in Plato—when things were looked at just a bit differently, a whole new pattern was revealed.

  “Pardon, mistress,” the man who jostled her said.

  As Kate gave him a small curtsy in reply, she noticed that the wave of people had drawn back a bit to make room for a group of men hurrying along the corridor. Unlike the peacock vividness of most of the courtiers, they were clad in somber, sensible blacks and dark browns, albeit of fine velvet and trimmed with fur. Their arms were filled with papers and books, their voices low and intent. They had some errand.

  And Kate quickly saw why. They were Sir William Cecil’s secretaries, and the work of the queen’s chief secretary never ended. She glimpsed Cecil himself in their midst, nodding at something one of his men was whispering. Sir William was not an old man at all, yet he always looked b
eyond his years. But his eyes were always bright and alert, always watching.

  “Ah, Mistress Haywood,” Cecil called as he drew near, and caught sight of her hovering at the edge of the crowd. The people near her looked at her with surprise, as if they had not seen her there before. “Well met, I think. Come, walk with me for a moment.”

  Kate nodded and fell into step beside him.

  “What think you of this unfortunate Spanish business?” he said.

  “I—I hardly know what to think, Sir William.”

  “You knew the Vasquez fellow?”

  “A bit. I talked to him at a banquet, and his cousin has helped me with some music. He thought Senor Vasquez might have some secret romance, but I know of nothing specific. He seemed rather an unusual man, with few courtly skills, but I have heard of nothing that could have led to—this.” She glanced back to see if anyone was close enough to overhear her before she went up on tiptoe to whisper in Cecil’s ear. “I did overhear something most odd, though.” She told him of the strange conversation between Lord Macintosh and Senor Vasquez.

  Cecil merely nodded, his expression never changing, as if such conspiracies were part of his everyday life. As indeed they were. “He was secretary to Bishop de Quadra, of course. The bishop is most angry, and relations with Spain are so delicate as it is. We have so many other things to worry about at the moment, this cannot be allowed to interfere. I am sure the bishop will merely say he cannot know everything his secretaries are up to here at court.”

  Kate nodded, thinking of the Scots and the French, of the queen’s many suitors who pressed around her. “What has the queen told you? I know she was to meet with you after she saw the bishop, Sir William.”

  “She has, rather reluctantly, agreed to stay in her chamber under guard for the moment,” Cecil said with a flicker of a frown. Kate could well imagine the “reluctant” part; the queen did so hate to be confined in any way. “But she will not stay there long. Not while there are Christmas festivities to be had. To quiet the bishop for the moment, I am on my way to speak to Lord Macintosh of the Scots delegation. He was known to have quarreled with Gomez.”