Murder at Westminster Abbey

by Amanda Carmack

  Then she glimpsed two faces that startled her. Master Hardy, the lawyer, and her friend Anthony Elias. Her fingers fumbled on the strings, but she quickly recovered and went on playing as she watched them.

  They sat at the far end of the great hall, with a few other courtiers Kate recognized, cousins of Robert Dudley and the Seymours. They observed the gathering carefully, talking quietly among themselves. Kate couldn’t imagine why they were at Durham House at all. Master Hardy was most loyal to Queen Elizabeth, and to a Protestant England. He had been arrested during the last weeks of Queen Mary’s reign, taken off to London while his Hertfordshire offices were ransacked. Yet here he was at the Spanish embassy. Kate couldn’t fathom it.

  She had to admit, though, that her heart gave a glad leap to see Anthony again. He was as handsome as ever, with his lean, elegant face beneath a black velvet cap and alert green eyes watching all around him.

  Her attention was suddenly caught by the Count de Feria. He had risen from his place at the head table and was hurrying toward a door half-concealed in the dark wood paneling of the walls. He spoke quietly, intently, with a small group gathered there. One ascetically thin man in cardinal’s robes whispered to him most fiercely. They looked as if they were intent on important business.

  Impulsively, Kate tucked her lute beneath her stool and hurried out of the lonely gallery. She remembered the maze of hidden corridors they had passed, and she was sure one would lead her to where Feria was in conference. She couldn’t learn anything playing her lute alone so far from the guests. She had to try to discover whatever she could in the short time she had at Durham House.

  Holding her skirts close to still their rustle, she rushed through the small warren of hallways. They were obviously meant for servants to move quietly through the massive house, and they were mostly empty now. Once she had to duck behind a doorway to avoid a rushing page boy. A few of the closed doors hid faint noises, conversations, tears, a murmured rhythm of prayer. The whistle of a scourge whip.

  Kate remembered hearing that Feria sheltered many monks and nuns turned out of their monasteries by Queen Elizabeth and she shivered.

  Half-fearing she would become so hopelessly lost in this world behind the walls that she would never get out, Kate at last found another staircase. She followed it down, and discovered exactly what she was looking for—the small chamber where Feria and his friends were talking in confidence.

  The servants’ door in the paneling was slightly ajar, the tapestry hung before it swung into place to muffle the Spanish voices. Kate pressed her back to the wall as close as she dared to the opening and listened.

  Her Spanish was halting, but she could decipher enough words to know they were talking of the queen’s court. Their solemn words were punctuated by the clink of silver goblets, the sharp whistle of the winter wind past the window.

  For a time they talked of inconsequential things, the health of Feria’s new wife, Jane Dormer, who had once served Queen Mary, the abysmal weather, the news from Spain. Then someone asked about “the lady, our friend,” and Feria laughed.

  “The lady is most offended, I fear,” he said. “It is not difficult to keep her very friendly. She served in Queen Mary of blessed memory’s household with my wife, and remembers our friendship from those days. She is sweet and biddable, as a lady should be. Unlike her vain and clever cousin.”

  Catherine Grey—he had to be speaking of her. Kate thought of Lady Catherine whispering with Feria, of Elizabeth’s dislike of her cousin, her certainty that the Greys were not to be trusted. That Catherine was angling to be named the queen’s heir.

  “But what of her religion?” someone asked in a querulous voice. There was the rustle of stiff silk and Kate wondered if it was the ascetic cardinal who spoke. “If she is a heretic, she would be no suitable wife.”

  “She assures me she has long been a faithful Catholic, and is hated by her family for it,” Feria said, most confidently. Kate almost laughed at his certainty. Catherine Grey struck her as no great devout worshipper on either side, unlike her firmly Protestant sister Lady Jane.

  “She bears some watching, then,” one of the other men said. “Has she been helpful?”

  “She knows much of what happens at court, and is not shy to talk about it,” Feria said. “She declares she puts her trust entirely in me, and thus in King Philip. It is too bad about our other—friend. She was also most useful, if a bit greedy. It’s a shame to have lost her assistance.”

  Their other lost friend? Kate pressed her hand to her mouth in a sudden spasm of worry. Could they mean Lady Mary? Surely not. Just because she had been friends with Catherine Grey . . .

  “What does Lady Catherine say about Robert Dudley?” the cardinal asked.

  Feria laughed, a most unpleasantly humorless sound. “Ah, yes. Sir Robert, the former traitor to our dear Queen Mary. He is so much in favor now that he does whatever he likes. Lady Catherine says it is well known his wife has some malady of the breast, and Elizabeth waits only for poor Lady Dudley to die to make him her consort.”

  “A lowborn cur like Dudley, King of England!” cried one of the men. “The scandal . . .”

  “Indeed,” Feria agreed. There was a clatter as more wine was poured. “But for now he is in the ascendant. I have advised Lady Catherine to come to an accommodation with Sir Robert, as we all must. He is surely not completely unamenable to us. He fought with King Philip’s armies in France.”

  “To save his own neck after his father was executed,” someone grumbled.

  “Be that as it may, he owes a debt to our king. Dudley is hated by many with great power here in this benighted country, such as Norfolk.”

  “Norfolk,” someone scoffed. “A mere puppy.”

  “Young he may be,” Feria admonished. “But he is a duke, the queen’s cousin, and protective of his place. He hates Dudley, and it is said he favors the French ambassador. If Norfolk decided to throw his weight behind Mary of Scots . . .”

  “Better a heretic like Elizabeth than a Frenchwoman like Mary,” the cardinal grumbled.

  “So we must keep Lady Catherine and her friends close,” said Feria. “We must make sure the doors of Durham House are always open to those who share our views.”

  “What did that Henry Everley want of you, then, Count?” the cardinal demanded. “He looked most wild when he rode in yesterday.”

  Henry Everley had been at Durham House as well? Kate shook her head, baffled. It seemed there was no one in all of England not involved in Spanish plots.

  Feria was silent for a long moment, and Kate thought he might not answer. She curled her fingers into tight fists to keep from screaming in frustration. She had to know what Lord Henry was doing there!

  “Lord Henry proposes to be of help to us, but I vow we must be most cautious of him. Such passion can be unpredictable,” Feria said at last. “He probably cannot be of help like our lost friend.”

  A loud clatter from below Kate’s hiding place, as if someone had dropped a tray, sharply reminded her where she was. She couldn’t be caught eavesdropping on the Spanish ambassador. Elizabeth would be forced to disavow any knowledge of what her musician was doing; then Kate could be of no use to her. She had learned a very good start here tonight, proof that Catherine Grey had befriended the Spanish and that Henry Everley had also been there before he disappeared.

  She had also learned that Mary, too, might have been a spy. But that was information she needn’t share just yet.

  She longed to hear more, but she knew she had to go before she was discovered. Kate carefully backed out of her hiding place and tried to make her way back the direction she had come, to be in her gallery playing her music as if nothing had ever been amiss. But she had forgotten how winding the narrow back corridors of Durham House were.

  Kate was certain she was almost back to the great hall, sure she recognized a certain turning, but they
ended in walls or blank doors. The more she searched, the farther she got from where she wanted to be, and she could feel her hands becoming cold with impending panic.

  As she turned down another corridor, Kate suddenly heard a patter of swift, heavy footsteps coming toward her from beyond a sharp corner. Not wanting to be caught, Kate ran as carefully as she could in the other direction, searching for a place to hide until whoever it was had gone past or turned direction.

  But the booted steps kept behind her, moving faster when she did, slowing when she did, but always out of sight behind her. Her heart pounded in her chest, so loud it almost drowned out the steps.

  She ran faster, but her unseen pursuer was still behind her. Trying to breathe past the stiff boning of her fashionable court bodice, Kate glanced behind her, but she couldn’t see anything. Yet she was sure she heard the sound of breathing, the press of malevolent intentions, slowly and deliberately bearing down upon her.

  Do not be fanciful! Kate told herself sternly. Surely it was only a servant going about his tasks. Not one of the dispossessed ghosts of Durham House, not a—a murderer . . .

  A flashing image of Mary Everley sprawled dead on a stone floor, blood and torn fingernails, passed through Kate’s mind and she bit her lip to keep from crying out.

  She ran even faster, and so did the steps. Louder and louder, closer. She was sure they were after her now, but why didn’t they just shout after her if she was caught spying? Why didn’t they show themselves?

  At the head of a narrow staircase, Kate twisted around and frantically scanned the shadows. The steps were still racing closer, echoing in the tall stairwell. There was a sudden swirl of dark cloak, like bird’s wings taking flight, and a swift glimpse of a tall figure.

  It was all gone in a blink of an eye, and Kate couldn’t even think let alone study the figure. She caught a glimpse of a line of fine silver buttons on a black sleeve, glinting, bright, just before a hand landed on her shoulder and gave her a hard shove.

  For one sickening, cold instant, she teetered on the edge of the step. Her hand flailed out, blindly seeking a wall, a handrail, anything to break her fall, but she grasped only air. She pitched forward, crying out as she managed to twist around and catch herself before her head could bounce off the hard step.

  She rolled, stair to stair, her heavy skirts tangling around her. She was sure she was dead, never to see her father again, never to see anything at all, and a strange calm descended on her. Everything seemed to slow down before speeding up horribly.

  At last she lurched to a stop on the landing. Her hair had tumbled from its pins, a dark tangle blinding her. For an instant she was sure she was dead, but then a bruising pain flashed down her side, reminding her she was still earthbound.

  And someone equally earthbound had shoved her. That hand belonged to no ghost. Who knew she was here, and would want to chase her down and do her harm?

  Kate pushed her hair out of her eyes and twisted around to peer up the dim stairway. It was empty now, of course, her attacker vanished.

  She tried to stand up, to run back up the stairs and find whoever did this, but her bruised body gave a great spasm of pain and she fell back again.

  “God’s teeth,” she cried, using one of the queen’s favorite curses. Gritting her teeth, she carefully moved her arms and legs, and realized nothing was actually broken. Her gown had protected her from the worst. Her neck was intact. For the moment.

  “Senora!” a woman screamed. Kate turned to see a maidservant at the foot of the stairs. The girl dropped the tray she held and ran up the stairs, panic written on her plain, olive-complected face. Kate could barely make out her features in the flickering light of one torch high in its wall sconce. She knelt beside Kate amid a flurry of Spanish words, so swift Kate could only make out a few.

  “No, I am well enough,” Kate said in her own halting Spanish. “I was going to the jakes and took a wrong turn. I fell. . . .”

  The girl tried to help her to her feet, but she was as small as Kate herself and they tumbled back down to the hard floor. Before she could suppress it, Kate cried out at the burst of pain.

  “I will fetch my lord de Feria,” the girl sobbed. “Or Senor Alvara.”

  “Nay!” Kate cried through her gritted teeth. She knew she was in no condition to face Feria or that stern-faced majordomo Alvara and conceal her real purpose from them. She thought quickly, and remembered a familiar face she had glimpsed in the great hall.

  “Could you find Senor Hardy, an Englishman at the banquet?” she asked the girl carefully, desperate to be understood. “An older gentleman, with white hair, with a handsome young friend who has green eyes?”

  The girl obviously remembered Anthony Elias. Her olive cheeks flushed. “Sí, sí,” she said. “I will bring them. . . .”

  “Gracias,” Kate muttered. As the maid dashed away, Kate fell back against the cold support of the wall to wait. And to hope desperately that her assailant wouldn’t return.

  She was quickly finding out just how much she hated the act of waiting.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Mistress Haywood! What has happened? Do you need a physician?” Master Hardy cried as he glimpsed Kate from the foot of the stairs. She watched, deeply relieved, as he hurried toward her. His fur-trimmed robes swirled around him, and his lined face was creased even more with worry.

  Anthony was right behind him, his eyes wide and dark, his movements quick and graceful as he ran up the stairs two at a time. Kate couldn’t help but remember the last time she saw him, in the middle of Master Hardy’s ransacked office in Hertfordshire, when he’d touched her hand so sweetly. She still recalled how it felt.

  “The queen sent me to play for the count’s gathering,” she answered. Master Hardy took her arm to help her to her feet, and she bit back a moan as all her new bruises screamed. “I took a wrong turn somewhere and slipped on the stairs.”

  “You should not be wandering alone in such a place as Durham House,” Master Hardy fussed. “What can Her Majesty be thinking of to send you here all by yourself, my dear?”

  Kate steadied herself against the wall and shook her tangled hair back from her face. She couldn’t quite bring herself to look at Anthony, though she could feel his steady gaze on her, studying her closely. It seemed ridiculous to worry about a man she had known for so long seeing her all a-mess, especially with the fact that someone had just pushed her down the stairs at the Spanish embassy. But oh, she did wish that Anthony of all people couldn’t see her with her sleeve torn and her hair a snarled tangle.

  Kate almost laughed at herself. Surely she was becoming just as silly as Catherine Grey and her friends, giggling over handsome courtiers!

  But then again, maybe Catherine Grey was not quite as featherheaded as she seemed. Not if she was whispering openly with people like Feria.

  “I daresay Queen Elizabeth sent me because she thought it would be a diplomatic gesture,” Kate said carefully as she brushed at her crumpled skirts. “She said the Count de Feria much enjoys music. But you are quite right, Master Hardy, I should not have wandered off by myself. This is an old and confusing house.”

  “Are you sure we should not call for a physick, Mistress Haywood?” Anthony asked. “You may have injuries you are unaware of.”

  Kate looked at him and shook her head, touched that he would be worried. But he had not been so worried that he could send her a message in the weeks since they had last seen each other. “I am well enough, just feeling foolish. I need to get back to the palace, but I’m not sure I can ride. . . .”

  “We shall see you back by boat,” Master Hardy said. “Anthony can see that your horse is returned.”

  Kate studied the old lawyer in the dim light. The torch in its sconce on the wall flickered; it would soon go out. They had to go soon, but Kate remembered her earlier doubts. Why would an English lawyer like Master Hardy, a man who had s
uffered much under Queen Mary, be at Durham House?

  “Thank you, Master Hardy,” she said. “It was very fortunate for me that you happened to be here. But you must be conducting important business of your own, and I should not take you away from it.”

  Master Hardy and Anthony exchanged a long glance over her head. “Nay, nothing of import, Mistress Haywood,” Master Hardy said with an overly hearty laugh. “Merely an errand for a patron of mine, Anne, Dowager Duchess of Somerset. Perhaps you know her at court.”

  Anne Somerset—mother of Edward Seymour, who was said to be wooing Catherine Grey, who was involved in some dangerous flirtation with the Spanish. The tangled doings of England’s nobility were making Kate’s head ache. She did want to go back to the palace, to find her own bed, but she feared her whirling thoughts would keep her awake when she did finally lie down.

  “I have only heard of her,” Kate answered. “She seldom comes to court.”

  Master Hardy patted her arm with an indulgent smile. “Her health is not the most robust, but she still has her small business matters, of which I can sometimes assist her. Nothing for a lovely young lady such as you to worry about. Can you walk, Mistress Haywood? Shall we go now?”

  Kate carefully tested her ankles and knees. They creaked alarmingly, but she was sure she could walk. “Thank you, Master Hardy. You are very kind.”

  “Here, lean on me,” Anthony said. He held his arm out to her and she let him support her as they slowly made their way down the rest of the stairs. His body was warm and strong against hers, holding her up so she would not fall again.

  “What are you really doing at Durham House?” she whispered to him.

  A crooked smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Master Hardy told you, Kate—merely a small errand for the dowager duchess. What are you doing here?”