The Poyson Garden (16 page)

She heard the buzz of voices before she saw the crowd, nearly twoscore folk strung out along the far edge of the moat. Thomas Pope was haranguing them to go home. When they caught sight of her, wild hurrahs drowned him out. Caps flew and someone threw dried rose petals into the air.

Tears stung Elizabeth's eyes. She smiled and lifted her hand to wave--but then she felt it again, the fear.

Someone in the crowd ... she was being watched by someone who might be cheering ... but hated her. She reined in Griffin and narrowed her gaze into the sun, squinting to peruse their faces. Sir Thomas strode to her across the patch of grass and seized Griffin's bridle.

"Her Majesty will not be pleased to hear of this, my lady. You are not to be showing yourself to crowds-- flaunting yourself to incite unrest."

Elizabeth tore her gaze from the women's faces in the crowd. She looked down her nose at the man. With her other worries he suddenly seemed a pesky fly she could crush under her boot, yet she had to heed him. His words found their mark. Her temper flared, though she fought to stem it.

"I have hardly summoned these few folk, nor have I incited unrest, my lord. I would merely ride out--was

"I am now dead set against it, because the queen would be likewise. And when she hears of this in her delicate state, she will no doubt rescind her permission for you to be here in this hotbed of ... of misguided loyalties in Kent from which your ... some of your ... people sprang."

She blinked back tears. How foolish she had been to expect she could act openly here, she who had no power but dangled by a thread hoping for safety in the future. But she had to act now against the poisoner, and evidently in secret. She nodded to the crowd again but did not dare to wave. Still they cheered as, stony-faced, she wheeled about and rode back in through the iron jaws of old Ightham Mote.

Chapter the Eleventh

"Thank God--and Penelope Cornish--that Sir Thomas and Bea's rooms are around the other side of the quadrangle."

Elizabeth's voice came muffled as Kat helped her tug the man's shirt down over her head and laced it for her. Since Jenks was so much bigger, she had borrowed Ned's good one--besides, it didn't stink of horses. Elizabeth shoved the tails into her boy's breeks and cinched the whole thing in with a broad belt. They tied her heavy hair back in a tail and shoved it up under a black felt cap. Lastly, Kat swirled her fur-lined cape over her, for the night was chill.

Kat stood back, tapping one finger against her pursed lips. "If someone sees you three about after dark with extra horses, they're likely to think smugglers came up from the coast again with fine Frenchie goods," she observed. "Lady Cornish's maid Bett's been telling me this area used to be full of them before the Tudors put wardens in the Cinque ports on the channel."

"We are smugglers," Elizabeth declared. "We're going to somehow smuggle ourselves into a moated, gated--mayhap guarded--manor house and discover exactly why the queen gave my ancestral Boleyn home to Sir Edward Waldegrave for a pittance last year, as Cecil put it in his second letter. Since Waldegrave's so tight with Ambassador

Feria and her Spaniards, he's doing something special for her here, or why would he live away from court? And that something could be to give sanctuary to a nest of poisoners who are targeting me. If that girl Nettie came from Kent, the mastermind behind the poor wretch probably did too. Oh, where are the others? I told them ten of the clock!" she said, smacking her palms on her breeks.

Kat returned to wringing her hands, but Elizabeth was relieved she had given up arguing. It had not been Cecil's second secret missive about Waldegrave that had convinced Kat. Rather, it was her intimate view of her royal mistress's face when she had ridden back into the courtyard earlier today after her first aborted attempt to get to Hever. Besides, poison clover and dead rabbits in the front

meadow of Hatfield had finally persuaded Kat that Elizabeth might not even survive to become queen if she didn't fight back somehow.

A flurry of light knocks sounded on the door, and Kat flew for it. Meg entered with Ned hard behind.

"Jenks holds the horses beyond the moat," he said, out of breath. He wore a thickly padded jerkin and a cape, but carried his cap and gloves. "And may I present to you the fair Princess of England--at least for the night," he added, nodding at Meg.

The girl was dressed in one of Elizabeth's night rails and robes. She nodded slowly, almost elegantly, without shifting her stance or slumping her shoulders. Some progress here at least, Elizabeth thought. It was much like gazing in a looking glass.

"Your Grace," Meg said solemnly as if she spoke set words, "I vow I shall not fall to pieces if Sir Thomas comes insisting he speak to you while you're gone and it's me in your bed."

"I in your bed," Ned interjected. "Kat will see that doesn't happen," Elizabeth assured her. "You are here only for a surety that someone like Bea doesn't cause trouble. If she does, pretend to be in a foul temper, keep your head covered, and moan that your toothache has come back with a vengeance."

"But then they'll send for me, and I'll be you, so--"

"Hush," Elizabeth insisted but gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. "We must all pray that our risks will be worth the rewards. Meg, this is your maiden voyage impersonating me, and I believe Ned has launched you well."

She turned quickly to hug Kat farewell, but not before she saw the look of longing Meg shot Ned. He missed it, fiddling with his dagger in its sheath.

'So blood, Elizabeth swore to herself, all she needed in this maze of problems was for Meg to be yearning for that sort of regard from Ned. But no, she only wanted his approval, as any scholar wants to please a tutor. Anyhow, she had no time for such maudlin tripe from her people, not now, not ever.

She and Ned tiptoed down the servants'

stairs that led to the back hall with its pantry, buttery, and bolting room. Though only dogs dozed by the low kitchen fire and no one worked this late, it seemed to Elizabeth that a fine flour dust hung in the air. She jammed her finger under her nose to stop a sneeze. Then they were out the back door, through an autumn herb garden, and across the eastside bridge where Jenks, already mounted, held five horses.

As they mounted, Elizabeth glanced back. A second-story window showed the silhouette of a woman's shape. She sucked in a breath of crisp air. That would be at the top landing of the central stairs, wouldn't it? Had Kat or

Meg come round to this side to see them go? If it was Lady Cornish or Blanche, she could probably deal with it, but if it were Bea ...

"Let's ride," she said.

They spelled two horses each hour on the way, a good fifteen miles wending through roundabout roads. Elizabeth's heart thudded faster than their hoofbeats. The forest floor was dark, but Jenks had done a good job getting directions, and she hardly feared they'd meet someone abroad this late. Few could be so brazen or desperate as she.

When pale moonlight revealed the painted, faded facade of Hever Castle, tears wet her lashes, she who never cried but deep inside. Not even, she thought, suddenly awash with emotion, when she lost Tom Seymour in his betrayal, not even when she faced Traitor's Gate at the Tower over the Wyatt plot.

She fought for a happier thought so she would not lose her resolve. After all, this home had seen glad events and bold endeavors. One time, her Aunt Mary had said, Anne insisted she was ailing and dared to stay in her chamber the entire time her parents entertained their increasingly frustrated sovereign. If only she herself, Elizabeth thought, had that much power over men, to make them dance to her tune. But then, disaster oft came hard upon the heels of passion and power. Sometimes they seemed much the same to her, all twisted up.

"I said the drawbridge is up, just as you feared, Your Grace."

"Yes, Jenks. But no more "Your Grace" here, remember. You shall call me Robin in case we are overheard."

She had hardly pulled that name out of the air, but she hadn't explained it to them either. Robert Dudley, nicknamed Robin, had been her friend, and in his brown eyes she had tasted a man's adoration and first sensed a woman's power. His family had fallen hard, too, when his father led a rebellion against Queen Mary's right to the throne. Robin's father had illegally crowned Robin's young sister-in-law and Tudor cousin, Jane Grey, as queen. Their rebellion had lasted only nine days before Mary and her Catholic loyalists put it down, beheading some Dudleys and sending others to the Tower. Robin had still been there when Elizabeth was imprisoned. He had sent her flowers he'd picked on the parapet, and--

"Robin," Jenks's voice cut in again, "you sure I can't go in with you and not just Ned?"

She was grateful the darkness hid her flushed face. "No, Jenks. We need you to defend the horses, for if we lose them when we create a stir, we're trapped. Ned and I will be fast and light on our feet, once we can dart inside. Ah, I see what our diversion shall be to make them open the drawbridge and rush out so we can slip in." She pointed toward the barn in the sprinkle of farm buildings outside the moat.

While Jenks sneaked out of their forest cover to set the fire in the sole hayrick that stood outside the barn, Elizabeth's thoughts drifted again. She was in the strangest, detached mood, when she knew she must concentrate on everything here. But this place lured her so sweetly--

"Sit tight," Ned muttered. "The flame has caught. If someone doesn't see it soon, I'll yell. I've got the Kentish talk down flat."

"You'll not make a peep until Jenks gets back here to hold these horses. And not until you and I get in the shadow of that other outbuilding, away from where they will gather round the fire."

Jenks ran back; she and Ned fled to their post. "Do it now," Elizabeth urged him, breathing hard. Her heart seemed to pound in her ears. "We'll need all the time we've got to get inside and look around. Yell like it's doomsday."

"Fire! Fire!" Ned bellowed, his hands curled around his mouth like a trumpet. She could

see his breath puff white in the night air. "The barn will burn. What ho, the castle there. Help afore it spreads!"

"Enough," she ordered, gripping his arm. "I asked not for an entire prologue."

Voices. Noises. People ran from the outlying warren of buildings. Several rushed close past where they pressed themselves against a stone corner of the stable block. They saw a single lantern shining in an arched window of the castle. Someone shouted orders out another window. Then, after an eternity while the flames crackled higher, the drawbridge creaked down, its old chains rattling. House servants streamed out to join the others, finally followed by a big-shouldered, tall man wrapped in a huge robe, giving orders in a commanding voice. Another man and then a woman bundled in cloaks hurried out to watch as servants began to pass buckets of water hand-to-hand in a line from the moat.

Elizabeth noted that the lantern had finally disappeared from the corner upstairs room. A servant who had stayed behind or an elderly family member? She felt better when several others came shuffling out, robed and in nightcaps.

"Now or never," she told Ned.

They strolled behind the clumps of onlookers--a baby wailed nearby--then darted across the bridge into the castle. As Lady Cornish had mentioned, Hever was built much like Ightham Mote, with a quadrangle of buildings around an inner courtyard. Elizabeth wished she had asked her aunt to explain the layout of the first-floor rooms better, but of course, there had been no time for a full description as she lay dying. Elizabeth's belly cramped in foreboding.

"This way," she threw back over her shoulder. "And pray all Waldegrave's men and servants have gone out to see or fight the fire."

The timbered entrance hall lay in silent shadow, but six suits of armor standing at attention gave them pause. Crossed swords and pikes adorned the whitewashed walls. A board creaked underfoot.

Here, she thought, her grandparents had greeted guests; here her mother and father--but there was no time for that now.

Assuming that any dangerous information of a poison plot would be secreted in a privy chamber or bedroom above, they felt their way up

the staircase. When the household returned to bed, they could search the downstairs--if there was time.

Aunt Mary had told Elizabeth the original placement of the rooms on the inner side of the upstairs quadrangle. She wondered who had those rooms now. She was both relieved and disconcerted to see several fat tallow candles burning on a tall chest at the top of the stairs. They each needed to carry one, but they threw such shifting shadows on the walls and into doorways that Elizabeth could almost see ghosts here.

But not her mother's at least, she tried to buck herself up. If she haunted any site it was the Tower in London, where she was betrayed and beheaded --and the chambers of her daughter's heart.

"Which side do you want?" Ned asked. She jumped at his voice.

"The inner courtyard," she whispered. "That means you must be the one to glance outside now and again to see if they are heading back inside. Come warn me if we must secrete ourselves until they are back in bed. Go now."

She took the inner rooms because her aunt had told her those were the family chambers in her mother's day. The first one she entered, which had been her Uncle George's as a boy, was evidently now nothing more than a guest room, currently unused. The bed was not disturbed, and no items of clothing lay about. Still, she opened the heavy lid of the big, carved coffer at the foot of the bed. It smelled of common wormwood and pennyroyal to keep out fleas and moths. She thrust her hand down through old furs and velvets to be certain no correspondence was secreted here.

The next room had been Aunt Mary's-- smaller than George's, but then he was the male heir. How could her grandparents have known that the destruction of the third child and youngest girl, Anne, would pull George and the entire family down too?

Here, for the first time, Elizabeth felt shame at what she and Ned did this night. Destroying property and invading someone's privy chamber--their lives. But that's what She and whoever sheltered and supported her were daring to do to a royal princess, and Queen Mary had no right to give this heritage house of hers away to her own Spanish-loving lackeys. With a vengeance, Elizabeth stepped farther into the room and lifted her candle high.

The bed linens were pulled awry, for someone had slid off the high mattress quickly. A half-drunk goblet of wine winked crimson in the light of her candle. Trunk hose and a shirt on the chair and padded jerkins and cloaks in the coffers revealed it was a man's room, but surely Waldegrave would not sleep here alone. Cecil's second letter had said that he had wed his wife, Francis, daughter of Sir Edward Neville, only last year. Perhaps this house had been their wedding gift as well as a bribe so Waldegrave would help She rid the kingdom of a hated, Protestant royal sister. Still, sometimes Elizabeth could not believe Mary would stoop to such treachery.

This room had a writing desk under the windows. Elizabeth plucked a pile of letters from a cubbyhole and thrust them in the bolster cover she had brought along as if she were a common thief. She had not time nor light to read them here.

She forced herself on. This next chamber, she knew, with the big oriel window, was the master's suite, where her grandparents had bedded--and that was no doubt now Edward and Francis Waldegrave's.

She breathed fast and hard. Trembling, she went through the desk first, set under the window as the other had been. Only a few letters, but one with such a large wax seal, it could be from the queen. She stuffed them in her sack and looked around again. The room boasted a fireplace of its own. What conversations had it heard late at night over her grandfather Thomas Bullen's plans for his children? And had his ambition to rise far on the popularity of his daughters made him easily accept the fact that Anne had changed the old family name of Bullen to Boleyn, a spelling that the French-educated girl thought far more grand?

She ran her hand down into the black depths of coffers, fearing she was taking too long. She could not let anyone come back before she had visited her mother's girlhood room next door. But before she could close the lid, tallow from her candle splattered onto a brocade, fur-edged robe. She regretted that some poor servant would probably catch Cain for what a princess had done.

As she hurried to the last room she glanced down the dark corridor, hoping Ned would change chambers when she did, that she could catch a

glimpse of him to ask him how it went outside. How long had they been here so far? A quarter hour? Eternity?