Murder at Whitehall

by Amanda Carmack

  She held it out to Rob. “What do you make of this?”

  Rob frowned at the closely written characters. He carried it to the small window and held it up to the light to better read it. “I do not understand this at all. It’s like no music I have ever seen, even ancient church music.”

  “I know. See this character here, and this one? Then they’re repeated.” Kate stood at his shoulder and pointed out some of the parts that had puzzled her the most.

  He turned it to look at it from another angle. “Where did you get this?”

  Kate hesitated. She did trust Rob, aye—but how much did she trust him?

  He looked down at her, his gaze steady. “Kate. You are in danger, aren’t you?”

  “Worse. I fear the queen might be.”

  He glanced back at the paper. “Does this code belong to Her Grace?”

  “It is a code, then?”

  “It must be. Lord Hunsdon is cousin to the queen, a man with many alliances and enemies. He knows how to use the talents of his retainers. I have carried a few messages for him since he engaged my actors.”

  Kate smiled. Surely if Lord Hunsdon trusted Rob fully, she could as well? But she worried about what those “messages” might be. Rob had too much of a propensity for trouble already. But actors, like musicians, could go places no one else could, practically unnoticed, and they had a high rate of literacy and sharp memories. “Have you seen this code before?”

  “I am not sure. Mayhap something very like. It is not English, is it?”

  “I think it must belong to a Spaniard. Look how the letters are formed.” He looked at her again, his eyes narrowed. “Was this in the possession of the man who slit his own throat in the garden?”

  Kate swallowed hard. “I am not sure yet. Maybe it was his.”

  “And this is some scheme that endangers the queen?”

  “How could it not be? I am not at all sure he killed himself. Mayhap something—or someone—is in the castle. And if that is the case, the queen could be in danger.”

  Rob studied the document for a moment more before he folded it and tucked it away in his elaborately slashed and puffed sleeve. “Come with me, Kate.”

  Puzzled but intrigued, Kate followed him out of the room and up yet another flight of stairs and down a crooked corridor to one of the newer wings of the palace. There seemed to be innumerable chambers there, wedged in wherever there was a bit of space, to house some of the hundreds of people who clustered around the queen.

  Rob led her into a long narrow chamber lined with beds and clothes chests, each closed off from the others by screens and curtains. It reminded Kate of the dormitories that accommodated the young maids of honor, rows of ladies watched over by the Mistress of the Maids. But not always so strict that there was no time for midnight feasts and practical jokes. Kate had lodged with them enough at the beginning of the queen’s reign to know that though it could certainly be merry, it was also exhausting.

  And distracting—there was no quiet time for writing music, or privacy for carrying out the queen’s more secret errands. She was most grateful to have her own chamber now, no matter how tiny, or how much jealousy it attracted from those who did not merit court lodgings.

  But Rob didn’t seem to mind his accommodations at all. The room was quiet at that hour, with everyone else off seeking card games or playing tennis at the indoor courts. He led her to a space at the very end of the row, which she would have known right away was his. His bright green short cloak was tossed on top of the iron-bound chest, and the bedcovers were rumpled. A lute sat in its stand next to a folding traveling stool.

  “It’s not much, I know,” he said with a laugh. “But it is home for now.”

  He pushed the cloak aside and opened the plain wood clothes chest to take out a small stack of books, which he handed to Kate.

  She studied the simple leather covers, with no lettering or embellishment. “What are these?”

  “I told you Lord Hunsdon has many interests, many ways of helping his cousin the queen. He gave me these to study.” Rob opened the top volume and riffled through the densely written parchment pages. Kate glimpsed lines and drawings, circles bisected and layered with symbols, sketches of strange trees and flowers. It didn’t look like any book of sonnets or prayers she had ever seen.

  In fact, it rather reminded her of Dr. Dee’s alchemical volumes from Nonsuch.

  Rob seemed to find what he was looking for. He turned the book around to show the page to Kate. “Do you think this looks somewhat like your strange music?”

  Kate peered closer. For an instant, she was sure it looked like nothing at all. A circle, much like Dee’s horoscopes, was divided into four smaller circles that were then divided into several segments, each drawn with letters and numbers, and odd symbols, including some musical notes. But as she studied the drawing, suddenly the lines seemed to click together in her mind.

  “I see!” she cried. “If the circles are turned this way and lined up, one can tell where to substitute a letter for a musical note.” She told him of her recent studies of Plato, and he nodded.

  “Or, if it is turned this way, there is something completely different,” Rob said. “One needs the key to break the code, which would be most useful here.”

  “Does Lord Hunsdon send many letters thus?” Kate asked.

  Rob shrugged. His expression was that careless one, a half smile that she had come to distrust. It usually meant he was up to some trouble. “He merely said that an actor, a man who must write quickly and be always studying human nature, might find these books interesting. I am sure men like Cecil and Dudley have similar volumes.”

  Kate was sure they did. She turned the volume upside down to look at the circles from a new angle. “These are most interesting. But could this really be the key to the Spanish music?”

  “Perhaps not the key, but surely something like it, with these symbols here.” He pointed out something that looked a bit like a treble clef. Opposite it was the letter T and the number four. “It might give us a place to untangle it.”

  Kate nodded. “Where did these books come from? They look rather old.”

  “Lord Hunsdon did not say, but I suspect a monastery. There is a watermark on the endpapers of some of them. The monks of old used to be fascinated with cryptography, I think. But look at this.” From the back of one of the other books, he withdrew a loose sheet of parchment.

  It seemed to be a sonnet, but not a very good one. The rhymes were strained at best, the images overwrought—a tale of a “silver goddess” who would soon descend from the clouds to save England and bring her into the ways of the light.

  “I hope you did not write this,” she said wryly.

  Rob laughed. “If I had, I would not admit it. Nay, it came with this volume as a sort of key. When Lord Hunsdon was living in exile on the Continent, he searched out and compiled many things like this.”

  Kate quickly compared the letters of the terrible poem to the circles, and began to see other words in their place.

  An image flashed through her mind, of Queen Catherine Parr’s Lamentation of a Sinner in its awkward musical setting. The queen had not been a woman known for her awkwardness in anything; quite the opposite. But Queen Catherine had also had to find a way to keep secrets from a most dangerous husband, the king. Perhaps in music, right in plain sight?

  “Rob,” she said, excited to have a possible clue to lead them out of confusion. “You are quite splendid!” Impulsively, she went up on tiptoe and kissed his cheek.

  He gave her a quizzical glance, suddenly looking rather young and vulnerable. He quickly covered that small glimpse with a smile. “I see I must find strange books to give you more often. Shall we meet later to look more at your music?”

  “Of course, I—” From the corridor beyond the large chamber, there were suddenly the sounds of running feet and a sla
mming door, reminding Kate that they were never alone at Whitehall, even in their quietest moments.

  “Of course,” she said. “But it must be someplace where we cannot be found out. . . .”

  * * *

  Lady Catherine Grey slipped into her tiny chamber and pulled the door shut behind herself, closing herself into blessed, dark silence. Lady Jane Seymour, who shared the space, was attending on the queen, as was everyone else, and surely no one would think to come looking for her for a few moments at least.

  Catherine sank to the floor amid puffs of her black and white skirts, and buried her face in her hands. She longed for the comfort of one of her little dogs close to her, or the squawks of her parrot, but she dared not go yet to her own chamber. Her maidservant would be there, and would fuss if she saw that Catherine had been crying.

  The queen’s servants would be there, too, under the guise of laying the fire or delivering wine. But Catherine knew why they were really there. To watch her, and report her every movement, her every word, back to her cousin. Everyone was always, always watching.

  Her head was pounding, one of the sick headaches that had plagued her on and off since childhood, gathering in painful streaks behind her eyes. She dragged the pearl-edged headdress from her hair and threw it across the room.

  How had everything that seemed so bright and promising only months ago gone so horribly wrong? That summer at Hanworth, the Seymour country estate, was so golden. Long days rowing on the lake, having picnics under the trees, playing at primero, laughing with Jane and her family. And at night . . .

  Ah, at night her sweet Ned would kiss her under the moonlight, and whisper that he was hers entirely, that their hearts would always be as one. She had dared to imagine life would always be that way, light and bright and perfect.

  Now Ned just put her off. “Nay, my sweet, your stepfather advises we should wait and gather the support of the privy council before we approach the queen,” he would say when she pressed him. “I say he is right. We can be together as we dreamed, but it must be in the right way, a way that preserves your royal rights.”

  Her royal rights! As if she cared about that. She had cared once, very much. But she saw what “royal right” did to her sister Jane, to her father, and she wanted none of it. She had seen a better way of life, and she didn’t want it to end on the block.

  And what did her stepfather know! Adrian Stokes had once been her mother’s Master of Horse, as Dudley was to the queen. A man Frances Grey married for the protection of his lowly name, when to be an heir to the Tudor throne was a great peril. And married for love. Aye, even Catherine could admit her mother and Adrian had been much in love. What did he know of maneuvering around the royal court? Her mother would have known, none better, but Frances was gone, and Catherine felt so alone.

  With Ned, she had not felt alone. She had felt that the two of them could face anything at all together, and their love would triumph. But now she felt him pulling further away from her, drawn into a world that didn’t include her. They even whispered that the queen would soon send him on a mission to France, and he seemed to relish the prospect.

  She had tried to fix things herself, and now she feared she had failed at that as well. It had seemed like such a fine idea, to use the schemes of others as they had thought to use her as a mere pawn. By the time they realized they had underestimated her, it would be too late, and she would have what she wanted. So she had allowed the Spanish to think she agreed with their conspiracies, planning to use it for her own ends.

  Yet it was all slipping through her fingers, faster and faster, like a silken scarf, and she feared she might end up like Senor Vasquez. She had made a great mistake, and now she was truly alone. Only the musician, Mistress Haywood, seemed to look at her with any kindness now. In her green eyes, Catherine saw some of her sister Jane, a sort of—seeingness. But without Jane’s core of cold steel.

  Yet even musicians couldn’t be trusted now. For was not Mistress Haywood employed by the queen? And the queen was Catherine’s greatest enemy.

  “Oh, Mother,” she whispered. “What have I done?”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Feast of St. Thomas, December 29

  Master Orrens, tiremaker, Monkwell Street, Cripplegate, near St. Olave’s Church and the Talbot tavern, just down from the Barbers’ Hall.

  Kate glanced down at the scrap of paper in her gloved hand, given to her by the clerk in the Office of Revels, and then up at the street around her. She saw the tower of St. Olave’s not far away, old, square, solid stone, darkened with decades of city smoke and soot, rising above a crowded churchyard. She had to be near the place.

  The crowd, hurrying on their own errands, jostled past her, and she stepped back into a quiet doorway to get her bearings. It was a typical street, narrow and close-packed with houses, but respectable-looking, as befitted the domain of a merchant who sometimes provided services to the royal court. The shops on the lower stories displayed wares such as fine leather-bound books, silk ribbons, and beautifully wrought brooches and rings. A tiremaker, a man who made finely wrought headdresses for the ladies of the court and for theatrical masquerades, would fit in well there. The cobbles of the street were fairly clean, and no laundry linen flapped from the upper windows.

  Kate was tempted by the smells of candied almonds, cinnamon, and sugar drifting over from a nearby comfits shop on the cold wind. It had started to snow, great, fat, wet, white flakes falling from the slate gray sky, and even her fine new red cloak and fur-edged cap wouldn’t keep out the cold. But there was no time to tarry. She had to be back at Whitehall in time to play for that night’s Christmas mummers’ mask and the dancing after.

  She glanced down the street again, and saw one of the painted signs swinging in the wind. The colors of it had faded, but she could clearly see the image of a wirework crown, edged with something that made it shimmer in the gray daylight.

  “Kate!” she heard a man call out, and she spun around, so startled by the sound that she almost tripped on the cobblestones.

  It was Anthony Elias, stepping out of one of the shops across the lane. He waved and gave her a tentative smile, which widened when she waved back.

  Kate wished her heart hadn’t beat just a tiny bit faster at the sight of him after so long. He was as handsome as ever, with his glossy dark hair brushed back under his cap, his eyes as green as a spring day in winter. He wore dark, somber colors, as befit an apprentice lawyer, but in finely woven, well-cut wools and a touch of velvet. A parcel was tucked under his arm.

  “Kate,” he said as he hurried to her side, dodging dogs and children as he crossed the lane. “You are looking very well.”

  “And you, Anthony,” she answered honestly. He did look well—so handsome, as he always had, ever since they first became friends at Hatfield. But something felt different now, some sort of distance.

  “I am surprised to see you away from Whitehall,” he said. “It must be busy at this time of year.”

  Kate laughed. “So it is. Queen Elizabeth loves any excuse for a revel, and Yule is her favorite time of year. I am just here to perform a quick errand for her. As you must be, for Master Hardy.” She nodded toward the parcel.

  “Aye. The Hardys are preparing to go to the country for Twelfth Night, to visit Mistress Hardy’s family, and I am to go with them. But business must always come with us.”

  Kate thought of the young lady she had seen with Anthony on the day she went ice-skating. Mistress Hardy’s niece—pretty, sweet, well-born, suitable to make a prosperous lawyer’s wife. “I am sure Mistress Hardy’s pretty niece goes with you?”

  “It is her parents we visit.” A faint blush touched his cheeks. He hesitated, as if he wished to say something, but then merely glanced away. “You are on errand for Her Grace, you say?”

  “To a tiremaker just along the way,” she said carefully. Even though Anthony had helped her bef
ore, she wasn’t sure how much to tell him now.

  “The queen orders new headdresses?”

  Kate laughed. “You have become more conversant on ladies’ fashion, I see. Though she certainly never says no to new garments, this time she merely had a question for Master Orrens. She had ordered his wares before.”

  “Let me escort you, then.”

  “I should not take up your time, Anthony.”

  He smiled gently. “I have the whole afternoon for you, Kate.”

  Kate considered this. It would be nice not to go alone to a strange shop—and to have a few more minutes with her friend. Perhaps he would see something there she missed. “Then I happily accept your escort. It should not take long.”

  They made their way along Monkwell Street, talking of cases Master Hardy was letting Anthony take responsibility for, gossip tidbits from court. Master Orrens’s shop, though, appeared to be closed. The window of the lower floor, which should have been open to display his fine wares, was shuttered, and no light shone from the upper windows, either. Yet the doorstep was swept clean.

  Kate knocked at the door, and after several long moments there was a shuffling sound, and a scrape as the portal slid open. A maidservant peeked out timidly, her young face freckled under her cap.

  “I would like to see Master Orrens, if you please,” Kate said.

  The maid’s eyes shifted between Kate and Anthony. “He isn’t here now, miss.”

  “Do you know when he will return? I was sent here by Queen Elizabeth herself to inquire about a headdress he once made her.”

  The maid’s mouth gaped from shock. “The queen! He’s been gone for days, miss. I don’t know when he’ll be back, or where he’s gone. He said he was going to order supplies, but it’s never taken so long before. The cook thinks he has gone back to France, mayhap.”