Murder at Westminster Abbey

by Amanda Carmack

  “Tell him I will meet him there,” she said. As the boy dashed off, she straightened and turned to study the queen.

  Elizabeth was whispering something in Robert Dudley’s ear as he leaned closer to her. The two of them laughed together, and Mistress Ashley tugged at Elizabeth’s sleeve again as if to draw her away.

  Kate knew she wouldn’t be needed again that night. The queen would be surrounded by fussing attendants at every moment. Kate slipped out of a side door into the night to make her way back to the ladies’ lodgings. She had preparations to make before the play was over.

  The evening was quiet, for everyone was gathered for the play. Only a few guards made their rounds, their boots scuffing on the gravel walkways, their breath silvery on the cold air. Their voices as they talked together were low and muffled, interrupted only by an occasional, heart-startling shriek from one of the Tower’s ravens.

  They paid Kate no mind as she rushed past them. She went up the steep stone steps to the parapet that wound its way around the Tower walls. From there she could see the river, a half-frozen gray ribbon lined with bobbing lanterns from the wherrymen’s boats. Beyond the strange, static quiet of the fortress, the city was still alive as people already sought out vantage points to watch the queen’s procession. Kate could hear the pulsing echo of their mingled voices.

  And somewhere out there, on the other side of the river, was Rob Cartman. In trouble. And she couldn’t just leave him to it.

  Kate hurried around a corner on the walkway, and her feet suddenly scudded to a stop, startled to find she wasn’t quite all alone after all. A couple stood in the thick shadows against the dark stone wall, entwined in each other’s arms, oblivious to everyone else.

  The moonlight caught on Mary Everley’s red hair, bound with a distinctive gold laurel-leaf bandeau Kate had helped her fasten before the banquet. Mary clung to the man as they kissed frantically, but he wore plain dark clothes and his face was hidden by his cap. He glanced up for an instant, giving Kate a glimpse of strange, almost golden brown eyes before he kissed Mary again.

  “Walter,” Mary whispered, the one word carried lightly on the wind.

  Kate backed away and hurried in the opposite direction before they could see her. If Mary was involved in a secret romance with no desire to confide in Kate about it, then Kate had no desire to interfere. Surely there was trouble enough to be had at court without running at it headlong.

  She only hoped that Mary knew what she was about, and that none of that trouble would attach to her now. . . .

  CHAPTER 5

  “This way,” the boy called as he led Kate across London Bridge. Harry had not been able to escape the queen’s revels and had sent the messenger lad in his place to meet her. The boy moved in and out of the knots of people, bobbing and weaving so that she could hardly see his head.

  She hurried to keep up with him, moving faster in her borrowed doublet and breeches than she ever could in skirts. She’d learned after last year’s adventures at Leighton Abbey that a male disguise could help her blend in almost anywhere, and she was glad she remembered to pack the boy’s clothes for their London journey.

  She tugged her cap lower over her forehead and moved as fast as she could with people pressed all around. Even so late at night, the bridge pulsed with life. The excitement over the new queen’s coronation crackled in the air, and no one seemed to want to miss a moment of it in sleep. Most of the shops on either side of the bridge were open, their front windows thrown ajar to display ribbons, books, and trinkets, all sparkling in the lantern light.

  The air smelled of sweet ginger cakes and sugared almonds, spiced apple cider dipped out of deep barrels, the richness of roasting meats, and the tang of woodsmoke curling into the chilly wind. It almost covered the sour scent from the river swirling below, the pong of chamber pots tossed from the upper windows into the water.

  Just like laughter and music covered any quarrels or shouts. This wasn’t a time for real life, for real worries or the everyday struggles of illness, hunger, and fear. This was a night for pleasure, for forgetting, and every face around Kate shone with smiles. Smiles—and probably wine flowing from the public fountains.

  Ordinarily, Kate would have highly enjoyed being among them, singing with them, enjoying a mug of cider. But Rob was waiting out there, in some sort of trouble, and that was all she could think of.

  “Come on!” the boy called, his grubby hand reaching up to wave at her through the crowd.

  A cup-shot group stumbled in front of her, leaning heavily against one another as they laughed. One of them fell into an icy puddle, making his friends laugh even more uproariously. Kate dodged around them, even as they called out to her.

  One of them reached for her sleeve, but she spun away.

  “Come have a drink with us, friend,” the man called, his voice full of drunken mirth. “’Tis a night to meet new people, is it not?”

  Kate shook her head. She had no time to be waylaid by affable drunkards, who were no doubt thinking of some scheme to make mock of someone who appeared to be a young country lad. She knew to avoid conycatchers. But something about his voice seemed familiar, and she glanced back at him over her shoulder as she hurried away.

  A beam of torchlight fell over his face, and Kate saw it was Mary Everley’s cousin, Richard St. Long. His dark, tawny-streaked hair tumbled in tangled waves over his brow, and there was a smudge of mud on his lean, clean-shaven face, setting off his pale blue-gray eyes. His fine doublet was unfastened to show a dirt-smeared linen shirt, and he had a pottery jug in his hand.

  She remembered he was not at the play with Mary’s father and brother, and now she knew why. He had more amusing things to do.

  She quickly scanned the faces of his companions, trying to see if she knew them, but most of them were unfamiliar. There were so many new and old families flooding the court after years in exile, scrambling for favor. So many fresh, eager faces. But she did recognize Edward Seymour, the young Lord Hertford, as Master St. Long pulled him up out of the puddle. His fine doublet and pretty face were dirtied, but he only laughed.

  “Come on!” the boy shouted impatiently, and Kate rushed on, leaving the drunken courtiers behind.

  They passed under the tall arch of the bridge. The severed heads of traitors had been removed from the spikes high overhead, and only living eyes were there to watch them. But no one seemed to care what they did; everyone was too intent on seeking their own illicit joys in Southwark.

  For a while they followed the path along the river, and Kate could see the stone hulk of the Tower across the water, lit only by rows of torches on the walls. Then the boy grabbed her hand and dragged her down a narrow walkway between two close-pressed buildings by the water stairs. They emerged into the teeming nighttime swirl of Southwark itself.

  The laughter here was even louder than on the bridge, punctuated with shrieks and shrill cries. Two women with red and white painted faces and frizzed hair, their stained yellow satin gowns drooping from their shoulders, stumbled past with a stout old man between them. From behind the walls of a bear pit were enraged roars and barks, shouted curses. Two men tumbled out of a tavern door and fell into the muck of the lane, seemingly intent on strangling each other.

  It was only across the river from where the queen sat watching her play, but Kate felt as if a whirlwind had swept her up and dropped her into a different world altogether.

  She stepped over a squawking chicken that strayed from the tavern yard, evaded a grasping old woman in tattered gray homespun, and ran after the boy.

  He took her to the end of Carter Lane, where a cluster of leaning buildings looked out over a small strip of garden. It was slightly quieter there, away from the bear pit. These were a bit above the lower grade of bawdy house, places with window glass and the midden heaps tucked behind, out of sight if not out of smell. Once the pits were closed, it would be louder there,
but for the moment only two girls peered down from one of the open windows, their faces ghostly white in the night.

  The boy led Kate to the farthest building, a half-timbered structure with a steep tiled roof and smoke twining out of the chimneys. A sign painted with the distinctly phallic image of a red cardinal’s hat swung from above the street door. It was closed, and a guard stood before it with his ham-sized arms crossed over his leather jerkin. He was quite the most gigantic person Kate had ever seen, with a bald, shaved head and blank eyes.

  But the fearsome giant let the boy run past him and pull open the door. He drew Kate after him into a long, empty corridor and the door clanged shut behind them.

  The corridor was dim and quiet, and for an instant Kate felt the icy touch of doubt. Why would Rob send for her now, when they hadn’t seen each other in many weeks? Why would he bring her to such a place? She had been too trusting of people she considered friends before, and it nearly got her killed. She had vowed to be done with that piercing curiosity.

  But she had already come too far to go back now. She slid her right hand over her left wrist, feeling the cold metal weight of the hilt of the dagger strapped under her doublet sleeve.

  In between hours of practicing music, she had persuaded one of the queen’s sergeants at arms to teach her some swordplay. She wasn’t exactly ready for the queen’s army, but at least she didn’t feel entirely helpless.

  She was glad of its hard touch on her skin as she followed the boy up a steep flight of stairs. At the landing was an open door, spilling out light and laughter, the smell of wine and heady jasmine perfume, but they kept going up the steps until they came to another long corridor at the top.

  The doors there were all closed, emitting only faint sounds of giggles, grunts, and the rustle of straw mattresses. The boy knocked at the last door, which was immediately flung open.

  A woman stood there, tall but delicate-boned in a fine but faded bright green gown with no sleeves or partlet. Her hair, an improbable deep red color, fell down her back, and she stared out at them with brown eyes heavily rimmed in kohl.

  “You took your time, didn’t you?” she said, reaching out to cuff the boy across his ear. “Where’s Harry?”

  The boy ducked away. “Couldn’t come, could he? Not when he was doing a play for Her bleeding Majesty. He told me to bring her instead.”

  “Her?” The woman looked past him, her eyes narrowing when she saw Kate standing there. “Don’t look like no woman to me.”

  At least her disguise was working, Kate thought with a faintly hysterical desire to laugh. “I’m Kate,” she said softly. “Where is Rob?”

  A dour smile touched the woman’s painted mouth. “Ah, so you’re Kate. Rob said you would help if you could. I said he was daft, no court lady would come here to the Cardinal’s Hat.”

  “I’m not a court lady,” Kate answered.

  The woman’s gaze flickered over Kate’s doublet and hose, her scuffed borrowed boots. “So I see. You’d best come in, then.”

  The boy ran off, disappearing back down the stairs, and Kate followed the woman through the door.

  “I’m Bess,” she said, lighting a candle on the table to add to the crackling flames in the fireplace. As the light filled the space, Kate saw it was a small chamber, nearly entirely occupied by a washstand, a stool, and a narrow bed drawn around with faded hangings. Shutters were pulled tight over the one window, and the air was warm and stuffy, close with the smells of smoke, unwashed garments, and Bess’s rosewater perfume.

  And next to the fire huddled Rob Cartman. He turned to watch as Kate came into the room, blinking against the light that washed over him.

  But he wasn’t quite the man she remembered from Hatfield, the dashing, golden-bright player with his handsome face and nimble acrobatics who could charm his way into any house. The man who had caught her up in his strong arms when the arrow pierced her body on that country road.

  His bright hair was tangled and limply matted, his jaw covered with stubble, and his eyes were rimmed in purple as if he had not slept in days. His shirt was unlaced and his boots muddy.

  Kate glimpsed a blanket on the rush-strewn floor behind him, as if someone had wrapped it around him and he shrugged it away. An untouched plate of bread and cheese sat nearby.

  “Bodkins, Rob, but what has happened?” Kate gasped.

  Bess rushed over to him in a flurry of mended green silk skirts and knelt beside him to reach for the blanket. “He never did do it!”

  A faint glimmer of the old Rob kindled in his blue eyes and he pushed himself to his feet. “You did come, then, Kate.”

  “Of course I did,” Kate answered, bewildered at the change in him and wondering what on earth was going on. “When the boy said you needed my help—well, you helped me once, didn’t you? I won’t turn away a friend.”

  He smiled again, a real grin like the ones she remembered. “Even when that friend asks you to come to the stews?”

  “I didn’t know that was where you were when I left the Tower,” Kate said truthfully. “But now that I’m here, you had best tell me what has happened. Why are you hiding here instead of performing with your troupe for the queen?”

  Before Rob could answer, Bess cried, “Because he daren’t show his face until they find who really did it! He’d be hanged for sure. He said you solved some murder at Hatfield House last year, that you would surely know what to do. How to find who did this.”

  Hanged? Kate was even more confused, and a touch frightened. “Did what?”

  Rob shook his head ruefully. “Killed my mistress, of course. Her name was Nell; she was Bess’s sister. And I found her right in the room next door yesterday, after the queen’s barge passed by. . . .”

  CHAPTER 6

  “When was the last time you saw Nell?” Kate asked once Rob had told her some of his tale. Bess had opened the window to let in the fresh, cold air, and had fetched some ale to make the cramped room more comfortable.

  But most of the time the girl hovered close to Rob, watching him carefully.

  “’Twas more than a fortnight ago,” Rob answered. He had combed his hair and splashed his face with cold water, and was now looking more like the man she remembered. “We’ve been busy ever since we heard from the Master of the Revels that the queen wanted us to play for her at the Tower. I only had the chance to come yesterday.”

  “And you found her dead,” Kate murmured, remembering his earlier words. He’d run up the outside stairs to her room, laden with gifts, to find his mistress sprawled dead on the floor.

  “What happened to her body?” Kate asked, her mind racing with questions. Doubts.

  “I got Mad Henry, the guard at the door, to carry her away,” Bess said. “The landlady, Mistress Celine, don’t want no trouble, does she? And no one would ask questions about someone like Nell. They would just haul one of us away and say we did it.”

  There was a hard kernel of deep bitterness in Bess’s voice, very different from the softness in her eyes when she looked at Rob.

  “We worked here together, Nell and me,” Bess added, “but I was off with a friend that day. Didn’t know what happened till it was too late.”

  “And you found Rob here with her?”

  “Nay, I hid when I heard someone coming up the stairs,” Bess said. “I didn’t know who it was, could’ve been the killer coming back for more. Then I heard Robbie here cry out. . . .”

  Rob’s face went white under the sun brown of his skin, and his long, elegant actor’s fingers tightened into fists. “If the foul murderer had been here when I found poor Nell, I vow I would have torn him from limb to limb.”

  Kate studied him carefully. She knew he was an actor, and a good one, practicing all his life to embody rage, pain, love, joy. But she believed him now, that he was caught in anger and grief. That whatever else he might be, a shepherd or a prince, he was
no killer of women. He had proved himself to her at Hatfield.

  “Then I am glad you were not here,” Kate said gently. “Or you might be dead, too.”

  For one flickering moment, some of Bess’s fierceness faded. She laid her hand gently on Rob’s trembling shoulder. “’Tis exactly what I said. Poor Nell, she was torn apart. Her head was that much crushed. Whoever did it was an animal, worse than those dogs at a bear pit.”

  Kate still watched Rob, the distance in his eyes. “But you cared for her, Rob?”

  He shrugged, but Kate could see the stark grief in the harsh lines of his face. “She was a merry girl, always full of good words and kind deeds.”

  “Aye, Nell never met a stranger,” Bess said. “She always wanted to talk to people, hear about their doings. That’s why she went off to see the queen yesterday when it was her day off. She was always going on about our grandmother’s tale of Queen Anne’s coronation.”

  Kate’s mind turned over Bess’s words. “So she had no jealous lovers? Mayhap some angry wife who followed her husband here and caught them together?”

  Bess shrugged. “There were jealous ones, true enough, but none who ever attacked Nell. She was too good at jollying anyone out of a temper. And she never gave anyone the French pox or anything of the like. And wives . . .”

  Rob gave a wry laugh. “You’re probably the first lady to ever come to the Cardinal’s Hat, Kate.”

  “Fine ladies don’t want to know their menfolk come here to get what they can’t in their grand chambers in the Strand,” Bess scoffed.

  “Well, I am not a fine lady,” Kate said. “I’m only a musician.”

  “A woman who works for the queen’s court,” Rob said. He reached for Kate’s hand and held it tightly between both of his, and Kate understood Bess’s tender looks for him. “That is why I need your help. You can move about in court easily, find him if he’s some fine courtier.”

  “I do owe you much, Rob, for what happened at Hatfield,” she said. “But how can I help you?”