Murder at Hatfield House (27 page)

“There is the queen, my sister, who hates me as no sister should,” Elizabeth went on. “Indeed, she has never even seen me as a true sister, but as her enemy, as our mothers were enemies, even when I was a baby. My cousin Mary of Scotland, safe in France, just waiting for her chance to pounce here in England. And my cousins the Greys. They are never truly defeated, even when they seem most down. Jane is gone, poor girl, but her mother is ever there, my clever aunt Frances, and her two precious girls. Her undoubtedly legitimate Tudor girls.”

She spun around to face Kate, her eyes glittering, but so still and calm. “We are a family that devours each other when we have the chance, Kate. I once had such affection for my brother, Edward, and he professed the same for me. We shared lessons and a faith, but he chose to disinherit me and raise Lady Jane and the Greys to the throne instead. And now they have something to do with all this trouble visited on my house. But what? Why now?”

Kate thought frantically back to every moment at Leighton, every word spoken, every glance, and still something eluded her. “I am sorry, Your Grace!” she cried. “If I could only have found the woman—”

“Oh, Kate, I am so sorry,” Elizabeth said contritely, the chill clearing from her eyes. “You need your rest now. You have put yourself in such danger for me, and now I am putting more troubles on you. You should sleep, heal. You will remember more in the morning.”

She hurried over to take up the abandoned goblet again and held it to Kate’s lips. “Drink this.”

“I’ve slept too much,” Kate protested, even though her arm was throbbing with pain again. “I need to think.”

“Nay, let me do the thinking right now. You rest. I’ll stay here until you are asleep.”

Kate took a few sips of the brew, and lay back against the bolsters. Slowly, the herbs spread their warmth through her veins, and her eyes fluttered closed. She felt the bedclothes being tucked closer around her, and the last thing she heard before sleep claimed her was the soft sound of the door closing.

CHAPTER 23

K
ate faced a long corridor lined with closed doors and filled with flickering torchlight that cast grotesque shadows on the walls and ceiling. Dark tapestries hung everywhere, woven with snarling beasts that seemed to leap and snap in the light. The low hum of indistinct voices filled the air, whispered words and mirthless laughter that came out of nowhere.

She whirled around to try to escape, to run from that place, but a solid wall had sprung up behind her and she was trapped. She pounded on the wall until her hands bled, screaming and screaming, but the voices just laughed at her mockingly.

She ran down the corridor, flinging doors open as she went. Every one led only to more blank walls.

“Let me out!” she cried. There was something she had to do, was driven to do, and every moment trapped in that place meant time was slipping away. Faster and faster, like a slippery skein of silk in her hands, and soon she would lose it all.

Kate ran even faster, but the quicker she moved, the louder the voices grew. She heard footsteps clattering close behind her, though she could see no one there. She pushed open the very last door and stumbled into a chamber.

Here there was no blank wall. A block stood there, its dark hulk surrounded by blood-clotted straw. A headless body slumped beside it, the clothes saturated with red.

And the head that stared up at her with glassy eyes was her father’s.

Kate screamed and spun away from the terrible sight, only to find her escape blocked once more. The veiled woman stood in the doorway, the handle of the ax in her hand.

“Don’t be afraid,” the woman said, a disembodied voice from the depths of the veil. “I mean you no harm. . . .”

As the woman lifted the ax, Kate tried to run. She lost her footing and fell on the slippery straw. She was falling and falling, into the waiting black heart of an abyss. . . .

A hand caught her arm and jerked her back. Her eyes flew open, and she found herself not in the haunted chamber but in her own bed. Her heart thundered in her ears and she couldn’t breathe, even once she saw she was safe.

Yet someone did hold on to her arm, a gloved grasp that was too real to be a nightmare.

Kate twisted around. Outlined by the firelight, standing right by her bed, was the veiled woman.

Kate tried to reach for the heavy goblet on the bedside table, reach for anything she could use as a weapon. The woman was surprisingly strong, though, and held her fast.

Kate opened her mouth to scream, and the woman cried in a hoarse voice, “Please! I mean you no harm; I vow it on my own mother’s grave. I only want to help.”

Her clasp loosened and Kate was able to pull free. She scrambled off the other side of the bed, ignoring the pain in her shoulder as she searched frantically for any sign of a weapon. “No harm? After you pushed me down and locked me in that tower at Leighton? After you crept into my room here? How did you even get past the guards?”

The woman stood very still, her gloved hands held out in a beseeching gesture. She wore all black still, and Kate could only just make out the faint pale outline of her face behind the opaque veil.

“I have learned how to go unnoticed,” she said. “I move through the world like a ghost.”

“A destructive ghost,” Kate said. Something about the woman’s very stillness was as eerie as any spirit. Kate reached for her shawl and wrapped it around her shoulders as she slowly backed toward the fireplace.

The woman shook her head, her veil rippling around her. “I never wanted to hurt anyone. I only wanted to be left alone in peace and quiet to remember. But every time I think I have a sanctuary, someone like
you
finds me.”

“Someone like me?” Kate reached back to wrap her fingers around the handle of the fireplace poker. It was solid and heavy to the touch, and it made her feel a little safer. She’d wanted to talk to the veiled woman, and here she was right in front of her. She couldn’t just let that go, not yet.

“Someone who thinks they know. Who won’t let us rest.” The woman’s hoarse, rough voice quavered. “I have been so tired for so long! But you follow, follow—”

“I do not follow you. If anything,
you
follow
me.
You always appear where I am—as now, in my own chamber.”

“I heard tell that you were hurt. I only wanted to explain that I had nothing to do with it.”

How could she trust the word of such a woman? If she had nothing to do with it, who did? “But you did lock me in the tower at Leighton.”

“Because I wanted to see no one else hurt!”

“Was that your chamber? The tower room?”

The woman sighed, her breath stirring the veil. “’Tis where I sleep, that’s all. Lady Eaton and I were once friends. She gave me a place when I had nowhere else to hide.”

Kate suddenly felt deeply weary, and she could no longer ignore the pain in her shoulder. She sat down in the chair by the fire, still clutching the poker. “When did you meet Lady Eaton?”

“When we both served the Greys. She was lady-in-waiting to the duchess, and I waited upon Lady Jane.”

“The Greys,” Kate whispered. Of course. “It always comes to them. Do you still work for them? Is that why Lord Braceton was killed?”

“I told you—I did nothing.” She sounded most agitated now, her gloved hands twisting in her skirts. “But I fear I caused it.”

“How?” Kate said, frustrated. “Was it the Eatons? Or Master Payne, who they say preaches now at Leighton?”

“God has truly cursed me! When my husband died and I was left alone with my poor child. When they sent me to the Tower. I knew naught of any plans to rebel against Queen Mary! I only read with Lady Jane, walked with her in the gardens, looked after her gowns.”

Kate sensed the woman was on the edge of tearful panic—and panicked people did wild things. Kate carefully rose to her feet, set aside the poker and held out her hand. She spoke quietly, calmly. “You were sent to the Tower?”

“I was caught there when Queen Mary overthrew the brief reign of my Lady Jane. But I was not allowed to serve her. I was locked in a small room, not given food or fresh air even though I could not answer their questions. That was why I sickened. Why—”

Suddenly, the woman threw back her veil, revealing her face. Surrounded by a cloud of faded blond hair, it must once have been beautiful, a finely drawn oval with a pretty nose and rosebud lips. But now it was ravaged with smallpox scars, deep lines and pits that marred the former beauty.

“I caught the pox there,” she said. “They threw me out when I recovered, but of what use was freedom then? My child was lost to me. My Lady Jane was killed horribly. I had nowhere to go.”

Kate’s heart ached at the tale. So many losses, so much pain. And still it went on and on. “But you did not take your revenge on Queen Mary? On the ones who did this to you?”

The woman shook her head frantically. “I could not. Just as I see in your eyes that
you
could not. You are too good, too kindhearted. So very loyal to your friends, as I once was. That is why I came to you tonight, even though I wanted only to hide.”

Kate shook her head in confusion. “Why did you come to me?”

“You serve the Lady Elizabeth, as I once served Lady Jane. I could do nothing to save my lady, but I know you can help yours now.”

That was all Kate wanted to do, but still she couldn’t see what the woman meant. “How? Tell me exactly, and I will do all I can to help the princess.”

The woman slowly sank to the floor, sitting amid the dark puddle of her skirts. “I could take no revenge. My heart would not harden enough to allow me. After all, I remember the days when Queen Mary was very kind to her cousins the Greys, when they visited her at Beaulieu and she sent Lady Jane a fine gown—which my lady foolishly rejected. Games of crowns bring everyone down in the end, and I know that. But my child—my child was born with a heart of stone. Only Lady Jane and her sisters could touch it. My child is cruel.”

Kate took a step closer, engrossed in the tale. She reached out and gently touched the woman’s scarred cheek.

The woman held on to Kate’s wrist and looked up at her with tears in her eyes. Eyes of a distinctive violet-blue color, almond-shaped and framed with sooty lashes.

Shock flashed through Kate, as painful as the arrow shot. “Your child is Penelope?”

The woman’s hand tightened on Kate’s wrist so hard she could feel it all the way to her injured shoulder. “She is mad! Just as my own mother was. I feared it was so when she was born, but then she was so beautiful. I dared hope she would do better than my mother, who ended by being locked up. I thought Penelope would do better even than I did. She fared so well in the Grey household—she rose so high with them, they found her a husband. He was older than her, to be sure, but a fine match.”

The husband who had not lived long. Who had been a soldier. Kate yanked her hand away and stumbled back from the woman. She was still so cold, stunned that Penelope had caused this insanity. “This husband—was he an archer then?”

“Aye, in the pay of the Duke of Suffolk. He went with the duke to fight the Scots and distinguished himself by his bravery in battle. He was so handsome, and seemed to love my Penelope so much. Yet she could not be happy with him.”

“I do see why she would kill Braceton, and why she went after Lord Ambrose,” Kate said, struggling to sort through all the feelings tangled up inside her. “But why Ned and Master Cartman? Why would she go after me?”

The woman sobbed in earnest now, tears flowing down her pockmarked cheeks. She turned away from Kate, her hands covering her face. “Because she can no longer see reality. She sees only Lady Jane and what happened to her. She sees only her friends the Greys in disgrace. She won’t speak to me. She won’t—”

“Then why come to me now? Why not sooner? You were here at Hatfield before Ned died—I saw you. If I had known before—”

If she hadn’t been so foolish. If she had only seen what was right in front of her. But she had been blinded by friendship.

“I thought I had talked her out of her anger,” the woman said. “I convinced her she could not imperil her place here, that she was fortunate to be with the Lady Elizabeth and have a living after we lost our place with the Greys. I thought she was safe here, and she sent me back to the Eatons’ with such protestations of affection, I wanted to believe it. But I was so very wrong.”

“Why then did you run from me? I am Penelope’s friend, too. I could have helped you.”

“I let no one see me now, not—not like this. I promised my Penelope I would never show myself. Yet I was wrong. And now more people are dead. I cannot help her now, so I beg you to do it for me, Mistress Haywood.”

A door slammed somewhere down the corridor, and the woman spun around. Her scarred face froze with panic.

“I must go,” she gasped, snatching her veil down again.

“Nay,” Kate cried. “There is still much I need to know. You cannot simply come here and tell me Penelope did these terrible things, and then run away again.”

“I have to!” the woman sobbed. “She would kill me, too, if she knew I was here. It is all in God’s hands now.”

God’s hands?
No, indeed, for the woman had tossed it squarely at Kate. “Stay, I beg you! You must tell me . . .”

She lunged forward to grab for the woman’s arm, but Kate was still slow from the potion she’d drunk, still spinning with confusion. The woman shoved her hard on her wounded shoulder. The pain was blinding, and sent Kate stumbling to her knees, stars shooting before her eyes. She curled into a ball as she gasped for breath.

By the time she could pull herself to the door and peer out into the dark corridor, the veiled woman was long gone. Kate stumbled to the door that led out to the garden, but it was empty too. Hatfield was deeply asleep and silent, like an enchanted castle in some country fairy story. Kate felt horribly alone, as if her chest was hollow where her heart should beat.