The Poyson Garden (11 page)

She swept from the room with Blanche in her wake. In Kent she could search for the poisoner, Nettie's background and her ties to the master herbalist. Unfortunately, to send Jenks with that missive, she'd have to do without him when she went to Bushey Cot. At least he could also get a letter to her cousin Harry at William Cecil's house, because she had some questions for both of them too. And since Meg had not been positive about the dried tincture on the arrow point, Jenks could take it to them to have it studied.

"Oh, it looks like the storm's quite let up," Blanche observed as they made the turn on the grand staircase and looked out the window on the landing.

"I pray so," Elizabeth said only and hurried on.

By ten of the clock that night, skittish moonlight had replaced the rain clouds. Holding her breath, in boy's garb that was now all too familiar to her, Elizabeth tiptoed down the narrow back servants' stairs. The house lay silent but for a few inward creaks from age and outward moans from the wind, but Meg's and Kat's protests still rang in her ears.

"But you can't go there at night unchaperoned--with just that player," Kat had insisted. "You hardly know the man. Can he ride or handle a sword like Jenks?"

"And why," Meg had chimed in, "must I stay here in your bed? I'm not a player. They'd know it wasn't you if they looked close."

"Hush your caterwauling," Elizabeth commanded, "or I won't have either of you privy to my needs. This is something I must do, for my family--for my own sake. If I cannot trust you and depend on you to help me, I will send you both away." She had even quoted the Holy Word to muzzle them: "He who is not with me is against me."

"Or she," Meg had muttered with a scowl. "You just beware of that one we call "she.""

They took two lanterns yet unlit. Elizabeth blessed the moonlight, but she had to lead the way because she had just been this route and it was new to Ned. She could tell he was eager to please her, yet this night ride to a place where Meg had prattled a witch might live did not sit well with him.

"A witch? Stuff and nonsense. Village superstitions," she assured the dark-cloaked man as they crested the hill above the village. "Of course I believe in demon possession, but untutored rustics go overboard dubbing any old hag a witch."

"This woman is old, then?" he asked. He'd annoyed her at first with his spate of questions, but he had a sharp mind and it had helped her hone her own thinking. They must search and perhaps seize things from Bushey Cot--the woman herself if they could.

"I do not know if she is old," Elizabeth admitted as they turned their horses to skirt the village itself. "That is hearsay and what we must learn. I can only pray she does not expect a visit--that there is no one in my household who could warn her. That is partly why I wanted us to come tonight, so the woman could not be warned in time even if someone overheard me speak to Kat or Meg."

"Meg," he said, almost to himself as they turned off the road into the fringe of forest. "She seems to live in fortune's star, stumbling on that news about the girl Nettie and that sampler that sends us here."

"It's all logical. I think she's proved herself true. And you, too, have stumbled into this," she reminded him, hisby being there to save my cousin and then perform at Wivenhoe. Life is like that, Ned, happenstance."

"And that is why you stand next in line to the throne?" he dared.

"Little things are happenstance," she corrected herself. "The vast, life-changing ones are God-ordained and comguided."

"Aye, Your Grace, as you say."

He had annoyed her now, but this was no time to quibble, as they had to concentrate on keeping low branches out of their eyes. "Can you use that sword of yours if need be?" she whispered as they searched the moon-washed woods for the cot.

"I warrant so," he answered. His deep,

commanding voice almost convinced her until he said grandiosely, "But if some old hag tries to get the best of me--witchcraft or not--I will make such a fine sword-fight scene, I'd convince her I was Alexander the Great come back from the dead."

"Very comforting," she muttered. "Pray keep your voice down, Alexander." She had decided years ago, after her adored father had betrayed her by killing her mother and naming her bastard, that she would never trust another man. And yet in these hard times she had found a few with whom she must cast her precarious lot: Cecil, Jenks, and this man. Perhaps.

Desperation began to devour her. In an hour silently traversing the windy forest, they had found no hut or cottage. She would skin Meg if she had believed a folktale or some rural rumor. Time was fleeting before they must return to Hatfield ere the dawn.

Then it emerged before their eyes, as if of its own accord. They could glimpse the shake roof of a cottage with rough, light-hued stone walls. The whole edifice seemed etched with a shaft of moonlight by the darting, skeletal fingers of the trees.

She heard Ned's swift intake of breath. "I thought we were just through here, and I didn't see that," he whispered.

"It sits in a clearing. No wonder it can have a garden, though plants would be shaded but for high noon."

As they walked their horses closer, her heart began to thud beneath her boy's shirt and leather jerkin. For again as if from nothingness, an opening in the wall appeared to show them faint lantern light emanating from a window--surely that was not merely reflected moon.

"Dismount," she whispered, gesturing and pointing in case he could not hear her in the sigh of wind and rustle of dry leaves. "We'll tie up over there."

They double-knotted the reins and took the two unlit lanterns from the saddle packs. Ned had the flint box. Each holding a lantern, they shuffled closer through knee-deep drifts of leaves. As her eyes became more accustomed to the wan window light, Elizabeth could see the silhouette of something draped or perched on the

tops of the stone walls, which stood high as a man. She thought at first it might be heaps of cloth, but it was thick, drooping vines. And some strange and fetid smell reached out to suffocate her. ...

The high-pitched screech stabbed deep into her. She screamed, her voice drowned by the second screech. "Eee-raugh! Eee-raugh!"

Ned scraped his sword out of its scabbard and dropped his unlit lantern. He tried to place himself between her and the wall, but she darted for the protection of it, pressing her backbone hard against its rugged surface. The screech sounded a third time, searing her soul with its hellish pitch.

Elizabeth drew the dagger from her belt. She shook so hard it bounced before her face. Though Ned froze at first, sword raised, he threw himself against the wall just across the opening to the yard from her.

They stayed that way, breathing hard. When nothing else happened and all seemed still, Elizabeth ignored Ned's shaking his head and holding up one hand to warn her to stay where she stood. She stooped to put her unlit lantern down and stayed crouched low. With her dagger held tightly in both hands, she stepped toward and darted through the gaping gate.

Chapter The Eighth

Ned slid around the corner, close behind her, his sword a dull glint against the inside of the wall across the gate from her. The next thing Elizabeth saw was--she thought--a ghost, rising from the ground with a huge blooming, monstrous head ...

"'So blood," she whispered, "a white peacock. They are as good as watchdogs at some great houses."

She heard only his low curse and then a sigh of relief.

They both stayed still as statues, waiting for it to screech again. It only fanned its bounty of iridescent tail and strutted out the gate between them.

"If anyone's inside," Ned hissed, "they're up or fled now."

"Unless there's only one way out of here." He joined her on her side of the gate, but they still did not step farther into the enclosed yard. They even stopped talking, instead miming their meaning by holding their noses and shrugging at what the

mysterious odor could be. Sickeningly sweet, rank, cloying, it made Elizabeth's stomach clench. When they spoke next, their voices sounded stuffed and nasal.

"We must look inside the cottage. There's no light in the window now--it must have been the moonlight--a mirage."

They nodded agreement and set off with a shuffling slow step. Moonlight flitted in and out to guide them closer to the cot. Irregular flower beds with the frost-struck corpses of plants impaled on wooden stakes impeded their way almost as if they entered through a maze. The door to the cot was not visible from this side with the gate in the wall.

She gestured they should separate: she around one way, he the other way. He shook his head, then --perhaps when the moon caught her expression-- obeyed.

She found it even darker around this side of the cottage. The walls were rough and crude; the wind wheezed through some cracks. She tried to peek through a chink, but something covered it inside, just as the single window had a curtain. She wished she'd brought her lantern, but it would make her too clear a target. She edged around a rain barrel that must collect water off the roof and tiptoed on. A moment ago the stench had seemed stronger here, but now it didn't, or else she was becoming accustomed to it. She unpinched her nose so she could breathe better; she clenched her dagger only in her right hand.

The wooden door was just around the next corner and stood ajar inward, so she could see in. She meant to wait for Ned, but she peeked in and gasped.

Someone had just been here. A glass container in a metal rack barely bubbled above garnet embers on a clay hearth. Only that glow lit the small, single room, but it was enough to see sumptuous fabrics on the walls, a deep bed with a satin coverlet, and one fine, carved, high-backed chair and table. Some sort of food and drink was laid out there--no, it was a wooden rack of glass vials, much like the one Nettie had carried with her.

Elizabeth carefully shoved the door the rest of the way open to assure herself no one hid behind it. It creaked, then bumped back into the wall. Mesmerized by the scene, she took a single step in.

Then she remembered Ned.

She edged back out and started around the way he should have come. And stumbled right over his dark, unmoving form huddled against the cottage wall.

"I thought at first you were dead," she told him when he came to his senses, propped up against the wall of the house. She had used rainwater from the barrel to wash his face. Already a huge bump rose on his skull above the nape of his neck.

"This your ... idea of a clown's ... role?" he muttered.

"Stash the jests for now. Did you see anything?"

"Naught but stars."

"That peacock tipped someone off. I have to go out and check on the horses to be sure they didn't bolt. Or get stolen."

"Not on your own. Here, I can walk."

She helped him to his feet and steadied him. They retrieved their lanterns and mounts and led them back toward the small yard of the cot. Both horses balked and whinnied at being brought in, and they had to drag them inside by their reins.

"Smarter than us," Ned muttered. "Hellfire, something stinks to high heaven here, in more ways than one."

Ordinarily she would have appreciated his spirit and wit, but she could only nod. "Are you sure you are all right? Just stand guard here and cut a few samples from these plants. I'll get some from inside. We can't stay long."

"That's the best news I've had all day." She didn't need his chatter now, but then, what did she expect? Her father's jester, Will Sommers, had been the only one who had ever dared impudence with him, but he gave good counsel on the sly too.

They lit one lantern, and she went back inside with it while Ned gathered samples by moonlight. The interior of the crude hut looked like an opulent, draped campaign tent arrayed for a joust, she thought--or a scarlet funeral shroud. It lay flat against the four walls and close in the corners, at least, so no one could be secreted between it and the wall.

Elizabeth boldly shone her lantern under the narrow bed, then went through the small coffer she found there. The few but fine-made garments indicated a woman shorter than she, but heavier with larger

breasts--but then, few were so slender, especially there. The single pair of slippers looked terribly worn and might not even belong to the "she," as Meg always called her. Her foot seemed long and narrow. But what disturbed Elizabeth was that this was the place and inner trappings of someone of means or rank, not some poor wretch like Nettie. Despite the pigsty exterior, the inside befitted a queen herself.

She sucked in a breath at that last thought and at what lined the bottom of the coffer. She could not believe her good fortune--or had she been led to the next knot in the noose by someone setting snares? She lifted it gingerly and stared at a piece of partially embroidered handwork: entwined, twisting leaves of some sort and the beginning of the now familiar curse, For I see that you are poysoned ...

Again the verse haunted her, whispered from her past. Then she remembered. It was what her sister had screamed at her that day she had sent her from court. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, she wanted no links to her sister in all this. She must not think it.

Rather, this must merely mean that the Wivenhoe mastermind must be the old hag who was here. It had to be pure chance that the queen had quoted that to her. Quickly, as she stood, she snatched one of the empty vials--fine, blown venetian glass-- and dropped it in her sack along with this piece.

Now the array of drying herbs hanging in the recesses of the room drew Elizabeth's attention. Pulling her gloves even tighter, she plucked down random samples of plants as if taking laundry from a bush. Some of the leaves smelled smoky. Had the hag been preserving them that way, or had the hearth just smoked? She could not stop to be sure, but the hand that had tied the bunches could have been the same that sent that poison nosegay of meadow saffron to kill her aunt.

She stopped gathering herbs at the sight of a long, cluttered bench against the far wall. Slowly, she walked to it, squinting to make out what instruments lay there. But it was weapons: several daggers, their steel blades blackened by some sticky substance. Two iron carding combs with their sharp tines smeared with the same pitchlike mixture. And six arrowheads coated in the same hellish stuff that had no doubt killed Harry's Will Benton.