Murder at Westminster Abbey

by Amanda Carmack

  The queen often called the long, snaking procession to a halt as they made their slow way down the Strand, past the grand houses of the nobility, so she could take flowers and greet the people who pressed close on all sides.

  Tall railings draped with silk hangings and guarded by men from the guilds could not keep them back. Flowers were tossed from the crowded windows of every house, and children were held up high on their parents’ shoulders to throw the new queen their tokens. Even the hidden sun peeked out from behind the clouds.

  “Oh, Kate!” Mary gasped, clutching at Kate’s hand. “Isn’t it all so beautiful? How blessed we are to see such a day.”

  “Blessed indeed,” Kate murmured. It was indeed a glorious thing to see Elizabeth take her rightful throne, to know the Haywoods and all the queen’s friends no longer had to fear. That the future held such promise. Yet Mary had only an hour ago been quarreling with her brother, and Henry Everley would no doubt be waiting for her when they reached Westminster Palace.

  Kate thought of poor, dead Nell, and her grieving sister, Bess, of how women always had so much to fear and no place to turn for shelter. She stared out at the vast sea of faces, the swirl of people from every walk of life, rich and poor all together, and she feared it would be a hopeless thing to find Nell justice in such a clamor.

  The procession wound to a halt at Fenchurch Street for the first of the city’s pageants for its new queen. A tiny, golden-haired child clad all in white stepped out onto a high, velvet-draped dais and began to speak. Even from a great distance, Kate could see that the poor child looked terrified, and his carefully rehearsed words couldn’t even be heard above the roar of the crowd.

  “Good people, I pray you silence,” the queen called. “So I may hear the words of this angel.”

  The child blinked hard and began his speech of welcome again, as the queen listened attentively.

  Kate leaned closer to Mary and whispered, “Are you quite well?”

  Mary turned to her with her red-gold eyebrows raised. “I am always well! Have you known me to be ill, Kate?”

  No, Mary was never ill. Yet Kate couldn’t help but remember that flash of fear on Mary’s face. Mary had been such a good friend to her, helping Kate when she was so new to courtly ways. If Mary was in trouble now . . . “Your brother . . .”

  Mary abruptly turned away, her hand falling to her side. “My brother knows not of what he speaks. Men never do. At least most men. Have you ever known a man to be sensible?”

  Kate thought of Anthony Elias, of her friend’s steady manner and smiling green eyes. “Perhaps one.”

  “Only one? Then you see my meaning. Oh, look! ’Tis Gracechurch Street. What do you suppose will be the meaning of this pageant?”

  Kate wasn’t distracted by Mary’s words, but she knew this was not the place to press for secrets. She nodded and peered ahead to see that the queen’s litter had lurched to a halt again, and was in fact backing up through a garland-bedecked arch.

  “What is happening?” Mary asked, as all the ladies in their chariot leaned to the side, struggling for a glimpse amid the shouts and chaos, the showers of flowers and ribbons.

  Kate also strained to see, trying to remember every vivid detail so she could tell her father about it later. “It is a platform of three tiers with an arch to pass underneath . . . ,” she said. It was so large she could see only parts of it at one time. Stretching from one side of the street to the other, the arch was surmounted by a painted and gilded Tudor rose, white within red. Two statues, labeled Unity and Concord, held the whole elaborate affair up. At the bottom, Kate recognized a robed man’s figure in a flat cap and a woman in an old-fashioned gabled hood and high-waisted gown.

  “I think it is King Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, the queen’s grandparents,” Kate said. “And . . .”

  She strained to see, and glimpsed a young woman at the top of the platform, her flowing red hair showing she was Queen Elizabeth herself. In the center was old King Henry VIII, as portly and bejeweled as he ever was in real life, before illness and girth overtook him. He seemed to stand astride all the world, beefy fists on his hips. Next to him . . .

  Next to him was a lady in black velvet, her dark hair falling over her shoulders. A pearl and gold B pendant hung from her neck.

  “Oh.” Kate fell back to her seat, stunned and saddened by the sight.

  “What is it?” Mary demanded, her own view blocked by the canopy of the chariot.

  “It is Queen Anne Boleyn,” Kate answered. She instinctively looked toward the queen, far ahead in her white and gold litter, remembering how Elizabeth had knelt on the cold floor of St. Peter’s, searching for her mother. Now her mother was there, receiving her due honor as queen before all of London. Kate could see the tears sparkling on Elizabeth’s pinkened cheeks as she looked up at that dark figure.

  But Kate’s own mother still seemed a world away.

  Kate longed to go to Elizabeth, to cheer Queen Anne with her, but it was too far to go and she would be lost in the long procession. The crowd surged again against the railings, close enough to jostle even Kate’s chariot. She and Mary held on to each other to keep from being tipped out.

  “Kate! Kate Haywood!”

  Startled by the sound of her name amid the wordless, joyful cacophony, Kate studied the heaving mass of people. A bright green plumed cap waved in the air, and she glimpsed Rob Cartman. He was taller than most of the people around him, and Bess hung on to his arm. Her red hair and green gown glowed, and she was frantically gesturing to someone behind Kate in the procession.

  She glanced back over her shoulder, but she could see nothing except more of Elizabeth’s lords and ladies on their gold-draped horses.

  “What is it?” Kate shouted back. The procession had already lurched onward, and Rob and Bess were lost to her sight. She longed to know what they were trying to tell her.

  “Who are you talking to, Kate?” Mary asked. She, too, looked behind them, and she suddenly smiled as if she saw something that pleased her.

  It was probably not Henry Everley, then, Kate thought.

  “No one,” Kate said. “I just imagined I saw someone I knew.”

  “The queen is right,” Mary said, still smiling that soft, secret smile. “This seems a most blessed day to see.”

  CHAPTER 8

  “Is that not Matthew Haywood’s daughter?”

  Anthony Elias’s attention was suddenly caught by Master Hardy’s words from across the room. Master Hardy, the lawyer who had been Anthony’s employer and mentor ever since he decided to apprentice in the law himself, stood beside the open window of his new town house with Mistress Hardy, watching the new queen’s joyful procession go by.

  “Matthew Haywood?” Anthony said, as he made his way through the crowd of the Hardys’ guests to join them. He tried not to betray too much interest at hearing Kate’s name. It had been many weeks since they last met, and his new work in London kept him very busy indeed.

  Yet too often, late at night while he studied thick legal volumes by candlelight, he would remember how Kate’s laughter sounded, like a beam of sudden sunlight on a gray day. Or how it felt to hold her hand to help her out of a boat or over a puddle in the road. It had taken all his strength to let go of her slender fingers then.

  Anthony was still a long way from setting up his own practice of the law, and his widowed mother in their country village relied on him alone. He had raised himself from the son of a blacksmith to nearly establishing a law practice of his own through hard work and dedication. Master Hardy often said a young man in such a position should wait to begin a family. That the right wife with the right connections could be beneficial—at the right time. Anthony knew such advice was only sensible.

  Yet Kate Haywood was not like anyone else he had ever known. She was so intelligent, so interested in the world around her. So—so alive. Their friendship
in the long, dangerous days in Hertfordshire had been all that sustained him sometimes.

  And he was as excited as a young pup at the thought of even glimpsing her again—even though he was meant to be so serious in his new black robes, solemn and somber. He had to laugh at himself, yet he couldn’t stop from joining the Hardys at the window.

  “You remember the Haywoods, I am sure, Anthony,” Master Hardy said. He held his wife’s hand as they watched the sparkling array of lords and ladies halt below their Gracechurch Street house, only recently purchased. “Matthew Haywood served the Tudors for many years; he was especially a favorite of Queen Catherine Parr, I think. But they suffered much under Queen Mary.”

  “As did we all,” Mistress Hardy said, squeezing her husband’s hand. No doubt she was remembering, Anthony thought, those days not so long ago when Master Hardy was arrested and his offices in Hertfordshire ransacked.

  “Very true, my dear,” Master Hardy said. “But Matthew Haywood was ill, and his daughter little more than a child when they had to flee after Princess Elizabeth was taken to the Tower after Wyatt’s Rebellion. I am happy to see them find royal favor now.”

  Anthony peered down at the crowd, but he couldn’t see Kate in the bejeweled throng. Ahead, it looked as if the queen’s litter had halted for a pageant workmen had been building for days, giving him time to study the faces closer.

  Mistress Hardy sighed, her faded blue eyes turning misty. “Matthew Haywood was the most divinely talented lute player, I remember from our own courtly days when my father was lawyer to noble families. Matthew always played for the dancing.”

  “And all the ladies sighed with love for him,” Master Hardy teased.

  His wife laughed. “Not I, for I could only see you, young jackanapes that you were. And Master Haywood only had eyes for his wife. Such a beauty Eleanor was. Do you think he will play for the coronation feast?”

  “Since his daughter is now in the queen’s train, perhaps so,” Master Hardy answered. “I have heard nothing of them since that sad business in Hertfordshire.”

  “I cannot see Mistress Haywood,” Anthony said, too eager to see Kate to fully conceal it any longer.

  “Is that not her, in the black-and-white gown with the new high ruff there?” Mistress Hardy said. “She does look like her mother, does she not?”

  “Anthony is a young man, my dear, and surely cannot tell one style of ruff or gown from another,” Master Hardy said.

  But Anthony had at last glimpsed Kate. She leaned out of one of the chariots crowded with the queen’s ladies, trying to see ahead to the pageant. Her black-and-white gown, though finely made of a lustrous satin (Anthony did know something of gowns, thanks to Mistress Hardy’s conversation on nights he dined with the older couple), was simple compared with the jewel-trimmed velvets of the others. Her dark hair was twisted and pinned atop her head, leaving her graceful white neck bared above the delicate lace ruff.

  She wore no pearls or diamond necklaces, but she had no need of them. She looked like a swan among crows, and Anthony had to make himself look away from her. He did not deserve her, not yet.

  “She does look like her mother,” Mistress Hardy said. “Eleanor Haywood was most extraordinary. Perhaps you will see the Haywoods, dearest, when next you call on Anne Somerset at court.”

  The Dowager Duchess of Somerset, the mother of the young Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, and the widow of King Edward VI’s uncle and executed Lord Protector, was Master Hardy’s greatest noble client. Anthony suddenly felt a reluctant touch of hope thinking he might have a way to see Kate again.

  “Perhaps I shall,” Master Hardy said. “The Seymours are in great need of much legal counsel these days. I shall look for Matthew Haywood and his daughter.”

  Mistress Hardy slid a sly glance at Anthony. “And perhaps Anthony would care to accompany you there? He must find the company of only old sticks such as us dull indeed.”

  Anthony feared he could feel his face turn hot at her teasing words. He looked back to the street.

  “Perhaps so,” Master Hardy said distractedly. “And speaking of old sticks, I must speak to our guests and be sure there is enough wine. It has been a long time indeed since we entertained in such a fashion. . . .”

  On the street below, the procession lurched again into motion, on its way to the next pageant. Kate sat back in her chariot, whispering with the red-haired lady next to her, and she was lost from his sight. But at least he knew she was really out there, safe and whole and prospering.

  As Master Hardy moved away, his wife took Anthony’s arm and sighed. “Yes, indeed,” she said, seemingly as if to herself. “Eleanor Haywood was most extraordinary. I am sure her daughter is also very interesting. Were you not friends with her, Anthony, when you and my husband were in Hertfordshire?”

  Friends? Aye, Anthony thought. They had been that, and only that. “I did know her there. She lived with the queen’s household at Hatfield. Though I saw her very seldom.”

  “Such pretty dark-haired children she would have someday,” Mistress Hardy said whimsically with another sigh. “I am sure she will look for a musician, though. . . .”

  She drifted away into the midst of their guests, leaving Anthony to stare down at the street. A line of trumpeters were just marching past, blasting their salute into the winter air. Was one of them a suitor to Kate?

  Aye, he thought. He should most assuredly accompany Master Hardy the next time he had Seymour business at court. Perhaps Kate would be happy to see an old friend.

  CHAPTER 9

  There were thirty-nine ladies arrayed behind Queen Elizabeth at Westminster Palace, arranging their long scarlet velvet trains and their gold coronets as they waited to begin the walk to the coronation at the Abbey. But Lady Mary Everley was not among them.

  Kate hadn’t seen her since very late the night before, when all the ladies had fallen into their makeshift beds at Westminster, exhausted from the procession and the long banquet after. There had been no time to ask Mary about her tryst on the Tower ramparts, or about her brother and his fit of temper, and Mary had been quiet and remote. That morning Mary was gone when Kate awoke, and even Lady Catherine Grey hadn’t seen her.

  Kate stepped back from her task of arranging the line of trumpeters and drummers who were to lead the procession to the Abbey, scanning the ladies’ faces again. Still no Mary.

  Even the queen seemed to have noticed her absence. Elizabeth turned away from Blanche Parry adjusting her sleeve to study the scarlet flock arranged behind her. Despite the glories of the day, Elizabeth’s face was very white, her dark eyes frantically sparkling, the tip of her nose slightly red as if with a cold. Her hand, arrayed in jeweled rings, fluttered over the crowd.

  “Where is that blasted Everley girl?” Elizabeth muttered. “She is never where she is meant to be, and after I gave her this place as a favor, too. She is meant to carry my gloves. Kate! Kate Haywood!”

  Startled by the sound of her name, Kate hurried to the queen and dropped a low curtsy. “Your Majesty?”

  “You are friends with Mary Everley, are you not?” Elizabeth said impatiently. She yanked her arm away from Mistress Parry to smooth her gold satin sleeve herself.

  “I do know her, Your Majesty,” Kate answered. “But I fear I have not seen her since last night.” She remembered Bess’s description of her sister Nell’s murder, and a shiver danced over her skin. It was a long way from a Southwark brothel to the queen’s palace, but surely it could not be safe for Mary to wander alone.

  Unless she wasn’t alone at all.

  “Go and seek her now,” Elizabeth said with a fierce sneeze. Ten ladies leaped forward with handkerchiefs. She snatched up one and waved the rest away. “We must depart anon. If she isn’t here within five minutes, I will give the gloves to someone else and Lady Mary can go rot in the countryside.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” As
Kate backed away, she saw the young Duchess of Norfolk standing behind the queen, waiting to carry the royal train. With her was one of the many elderly Howard aunts, Lady Gertrude. She was stooped, leaning on a cane, swathed in black velvet and an old-fashioned headdress, but her eyes were bright and alert in her raisinlike face.

  She suddenly stood up straighter as Kate’s gaze caught hers, and her rusty cry made Kate freeze for an instant. “Eleanor! Is it you?”

  Eleanor. Could old Lady Gertrude mean Kate’s mother? “I—I am Kate Haywood, Lady Gertrude.”

  Lady Gertrude shook her head, a doubtful frown flickering over her wizened face. “But you look like him, just as she did. Why has she not come to see me for so long?”

  “Kate!” the queen shouted, and Kate abruptly remembered her errand. There was no time to ask Lady Gertrude about her strange words, and the duchess was taking the old lady’s arm to lead her to a chair.

  Kate ran down one of the narrow corridors of the medieval palace, toward the queen’s chambers. She had no idea where Mary could be, but that seemed a good place to start. The rooms and halls were full of bishops and lords readying themselves for the procession, of pages scurrying around with last-minute messages, and maidservants on errands. But there was no Mary.

  At last Kate glimpsed Mary’s cousin Richard St. Long. She well remembered the last time she saw him, reeling drunkenly through Southwark with Edward Seymour, grabbing for the sleeve of her boy’s disguise. But maybe he could help her today.

  The rumpled hair and dust-streaked, half-fastened garments of Southwark were gone, and Master St. Long was as handsome as a courtier should be in the torchlight. His sun-streaked brown hair was brushed back from his thin, clean-shaven face, and he wore a black velvet doublet and gold-lined short cloak. Like so many of the young men who sought to emulate Robert Dudley, he wore a pearl drop earring in his left ear. But there was something not quite correctly fitting about his fine clothes, a strange pulling across his broad shoulders, as if he couldn’t afford clothes quite as closely tailored as Henry Everley’s.