Murder at Hatfield House (3 page)

Two of her ladies sat in the recessed window seat, also wearing bed robes over their chemises, with their heads bent over sewing. One was Lady Pope, the gaoler’s wife and the new Mistress of the Robes since Elizabeth’s faithful Kat Ashley, companion from her childhood, had been banished. The Popes were the queen’s lackeys through and through, always watching, watching, waiting for any small, fatal misstep. Lady Pope looked most harried to be kept awake so late again.

The other was Kate’s best friend at Hatfield, the young widow Penelope Bassett. She glanced up from her sewing and gave Kate a quick, conspiratorial smile. Her pretty, fashionably slanted, distinctive violet-blue eyes seemed to laugh at some secret, as they always did, but she sat quietly and decorously. She tucked a stray lock of blond hair back in her cap and went on with her embroidery.

Princess Elizabeth swung toward Kate and Peg as the door clicked shut behind them. Her dark eyes glittered in her pale pointed face, as if from some fever, and Kate knew it would be a long night. The princess’s vast energy always burned bright, even pent up here in her rooms, and she could outlast everyone.

“Kate, by God’s wounds, but I am glad you are here,” Elizabeth said. “This wind is driving me mad. I need your music to drown out its moans and soothe me to sleep.”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Kate said. Her music was all she had to offer Elizabeth for everything the princess had done for the Haywoods. It was certainly little enough, but Kate was glad if she could help at all.

Even if it meant she got little sleep.

Elizabeth sat down in the carved cross-backed chair close to the fire and drew the heavy folds of her robe around her slender body. She gestured Kate to a stool across from her, and Peg came to take the book from her hands. Elizabeth tapped her long fingers on the wooden chair arms, a light, constant pattering rhythm like rain. Her ring, a ruby surrounded by pearls said to have once been her mother’s, flashed in the firelight.

Kate tuned her lute, her head bent low over the strings. “What would you like to hear tonight, Your Highness? A lively volta or pavane to lift the spirits?”

“Nay,” Elizabeth answered. “I am in no dancing mood tonight. An old ballad, I think. Something sweet and sad. Aye, that would suit the mood.”

Kate feared “sweet and sad” was the last thing they all needed on such a night. The cold darkness seemed full of memories and longings, and old fears just lurking around every corner.

But her music was the princess’s to command. Kate lightly strummed a chord and launched into one of the old songs of King Henry’s day, a tune her father said had once been a favorite of Kate’s mother.

Was I never yet of your love grieved,

Nor never shall while that my life doth last;

But of hating myself, that day is past,

And tears continual sore have me wearied.

As she sang, Kate fell down into the music, and it was like diving deep into a summer pool. All other sound was completely closed away. She didn’t hear the wind or the whispers of the other ladies. Even her own worries were gone. She knew only the song.

I will not yet in my grave be buried;

Nor on my tomb your name fixed fast,

As cruel cause that did the spirit soon haste from the unhappy bones,

By great sighs stirred . . .

Kate glanced up to see Princess Elizabeth had ceased tapping on the chair. She sat perfectly still, her head turned to stare into the fire. Her white profile was sharply etched against the bright flames. One corner of her thin pink lips quirked in a slight smile. The music worked its magic again, and peace slowly descended on Hatfield House like a soft gray cloud obscuring the ugly world outside.

Until a crashing sound in the corridor outside tore that fragile peace asunder.

Kate’s fingers faltered on the lute strings and the princess sat up straight in her chair. Her hands tightened on the chair arms, and she looked to the door like a tense bird ready to take flight. A woman screamed, and Penelope dropped her sewing to the floor.

A thunder of footsteps rang on the wooden floor outside and someone pounded on the door. Even Lady Pope turned pale.

“Lady Elizabeth!” a man shouted hoarsely. “Open this door at once.”

“Her Grace has retired for the night,” a maidservant’s nervous voice said.

“I care naught for that!” the man answered, still shouting despite the quiet of the house. “I come from the queen, and I will see the Lady Elizabeth at once, even if she’s naked in her bed.”

The queen!
Kate clutched at her lute, feeling her hands shake and turn suddenly icy cold. This could mean only ill.

Elizabeth slowly rose to her feet. Her face had gone even whiter, but she was as still and calm as a statue.

“Peg, would you open the door, please?” she said softly.

“Are you sure, Your Grace?” Peg asked. “It is very late.”

“You heard the man. We must not keep my sister’s emissary waiting,” Elizabeth said, as the barrage of knocks went on sounding at the door. “No matter how unexpected he might be.”

Peg swallowed hard and nodded. Kate saw that she shook as if in a hard wind as she made her way slowly to the door. Peg drew it open and a giant of a man in a swirling black travel cloak pushed past her. He glared at them above his tangled black beard, taking in the warm domestic scene with one contemptuous glance. Mud and wet leaves trailed onto the floor in his wake, making Lady Pope, always a careful housekeeper, wince.

But Elizabeth refused to back away. She glared in return, equally contemptuous of such rude behavior. “I trust my sister is well?” she said. “Surely there is not some crisis in London that requires my attention at such an ungodly late hour, sir. I fear we are little accustomed to receiving guests and are ill-prepared.”

The man gave a snort. He tugged off his dirty black leather gauntlets and slapped them against his palm. The loud sound made Kate flinch, but Elizabeth moved not at all.

“I am Lord Braceton, sent by Her Majesty to examine this household,” he said. “I was greeted in your lane by a murderous villain, whose cowardly attack has left my manservant dead.”

CHAPTER 3

“G
od’s blood, but what is the meaning of this?”

The sudden shouting, ringing through the wood-paneled corridors of Hatfield, made Kate gasp and jump. The pile of clean, neatly folded linen in her arms went flying to the floor in a flurry of white. From somewhere below, the shouting—which she recognized as coming from Princess Elizabeth—was followed by the crash of broken crockery, a dull thud, and a man’s low, angry rumble along with the sound of scurrying footsteps.

Kate’s heart was pounding. She could hear the blood rushing in her ears, drowning out everything else. After Lord Braceton’s dramatic appearance last night with his wild accusations of murder and treason, Kate hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Even though Elizabeth had kept her icy calm about her like a cloak, never betraying so much as a flicker of fear or any emotion but annoyance, Kate had seen the tiny, split-second flash in her dark eyes, which said the princess knew very well the danger they were in.

It had been the same on that terrible day when they had only hours’ warning that Queen Mary’s agents were coming to take Elizabeth to the Tower for questioning about Wyatt’s Rebellion. The Tower—that terrible fortress that had swallowed up Elizabeth’s mother, her young stepmother, and even her scholarly cousin, Jane Grey. The Tower, which always lurked there by the river like a great stone spider.

It was thus the same that day. For the merest instant, raw fear flashed through Elizabeth’s eyes and her long, elegant white fingers clutched convulsively at her skirts. Then she launched quickly and coldly into action. Everyone set to work burning papers, even the most innocuous of letters and tradesmen’s bills, for no one knew what could be held against her. Then Elizabeth pressed a purse of coins into Kate’s hands, wrapped one of her own fine cloaks over Kate’s shoulders, and whispered fiercely, “Take your dear father and go now, while you still can.”

For one terrible instant last night, Kate was sure they would have to flee again. Run out into the cold, muddy darkness, even though her father could hardly even walk out of their chamber. But Elizabeth had merely ordered everyone but the Popes to leave her and faced Braceton with her chin tilted high, offering loud protests about his rude disruption of their household routine.

Kate had hurried from the room with the other ladies, all of them silent and white-faced. She barely had time to exchange glances with her friend Penelope before she rushed off to warn her father of what had happened, still clutching her lute tightly against her, as if it were a weapon.

She’d managed to persuade her father to take some more wine and go to his bed, but sleep had eluded her completely. She lay awake, listening to the rumble of thunder sound ominously in the distance. Waiting on a sword’s edge for the moment the door would be flung open and they would be dragged away.

But mercifully, that moment never came, and eventually the light of morning crept through her window. She’d gotten up as she always did, washed, pinned up her unruly brown hair, dressed, and gone to fetch her father’s breakfast from the kitchens.

Cora, the old cook, was kneading the day’s bread while the maids scurried around, just as they did every morning in the Hatfield kitchens. And yet things were not the same at all. No one spoke, not even a whisper. Cora didn’t shout and scold the maids as she usually did. She didn’t even look up at Kate, who piled a tray with bread, cheese, and a pitcher of small beer.

One of the maids whispered hastily that the princess was closeted with Lord Braceton and Sir Thomas Pope, and had left orders not to be disturbed, and that was all.

The whole house seemed poised on the rocky, fragile edge of a cliff, in that last breathless instant before it all tumbled down into the roiling sea.

Kate had managed to get her father settled with his new compositions, but she couldn’t focus on the Christmas madrigals at all. The flowing melodies, the tumble of notes that usually filled her mind when she worked, kept tangling up and flying away. Last night’s events kept coming back to her to take their place—Lord Braceton’s furious face, his poisonous words of murder on the road.

His accusations of heresy and treason, which Queen Mary had sent him to root out.

Finally she’d given up and put her lute aside to go in search of some chore that needed to be taken care of. The house had still been quiet, all the servants scurrying about their work with their heads down, but one of the maids had stopped for a moment to chat with her.

“They do say more men are on the way to Hatfield,” the maid had whispered, wide-eyed. “That Lord Braceton is so infuriated by the death of his servant he has sent for an army to back him up here.”

“I am sure it cannot be so large as an army,” Kate murmured, but inside she was just as unsure as the maid. It was impossible to predict what such a man would do. Many men had come from the queen in the past, trying to break the princess and her household, trying to get them all to conform to the queen’s changes, but so far none had been able. But Braceton seemed different. Higher ranking, closer to Queen Mary. Determined as steel to get his way.

And murder had accompanied his arrival. It had everyone most unsettled, including Kate.

“Even if it is only a few more men such as him, we will surely be in trouble, Mistress Haywood,” the maid whispered. “I did hear tell that he—”

“What are you two whispering about there?” the cook shouted from the kitchens, irritation and a thread of fear in her voice. “Get to work right now. There is much to do today, no time for idle gossip.”

The maid had shoved into Kate’s arms the stack of newly mended, laundered linen to take to Lady Pope and run away, her head down.

Now the clean laundry lay scattered across the floor. Kate knelt down and tried to gather it, but she found her hands were shaking.

“My sister, the queen, has no more loyal subject than I,” she heard Elizabeth cry, above the brittle sound of more shattering crockery. “I am sure Her Majesty would never countenance the peace of my home being so vilely disturbed.”

“My orders, madam, are to search every corner of this house, nay, of this whole foul county, until this heresy is rooted out,” Lord Braceton answered, his voice full of bitter anger. “I explained all this most thoroughly last night. The very fact that I was attacked so near to Hatfield proves I am close to some treason. I will search every room and box in this place—”

“And I say you shall not!” Elizabeth shouted, her Tudor temper obviously slipping free of her iron control. “My people are as loyal subjects to the queen as I am. They have been searched and questioned over and over, and no guilt has ever been found of them. I will not allow their peace to be so disturbed again.”

“You will find, madam, that your previous questioners were not as thorough as I am. I will not be swayed by clever or pretty words. The queen and her husband, the honorable King of Spain, are bringing this country back to the true church, and I will assist her in that holy work however I can. And no Boleyn whore’s daughter will stop it.”

“How dare you!” Elizabeth cried, only to have her words drowned out by a thunderous crashing sound that shook the wooden planks of the floor under Kate.

Kate dropped the few linens she had managed to pick up, her hands suddenly gone cold and numb. She felt the same anger at Braceton’s crude words as Elizabeth, the same fear wrapped up in fury. How dare such a man say such vile things! How dared he disturb their peace! Even the men who had come to interrogate Elizabeth after Wyatt’s Rebellion never said such things. The maidservant who gave Kate the laundry was right—there was something different about Braceton. Something they all had to be wary of.