The Queene's Cure (13 page)

“And is this gift from you or from Robin too?” the queen inquired cautiously, as she took the box.

“From my lord and me, though Robin's seen it and approved.”

“Very prettily said, worthy of Cecil's political answers,” the queen remarked as she lifted a finely tooled, gold and gem-encrusted pin from the box. “Ah, a mermaid! How exquisite!”

“I knew it suited you, for like you, a mermaid is beautiful and luring and yet men know her not,” Mary said. “But you must come outside to the fountain in your privy garden now and see the rest of the surprise we have planned.”

“Mary, I thank you, but I've called Cecil, Lord Hunsdon, and a few others to a privy meeting—a discussion of policy.”

“But this will only take a moment, Your Grace,” she wheedled. No wonder, Elizabeth thought, Sir Henry Sidney had wed Mary and made her Countess of Pembroke and lady of the great estate and house of Penshurst. Henry had declared Mary the most beautiful woman in the kingdom, after his queen, of course.

“All right then,” Elizabeth said, pinning the mermaid on her bodice and rising. She waited until everyone stood
so she wouldn't have to pick her way through the puddles of skirts to the door. “The Lady Mary Sidney says a surprise awaits us in the privy garden,” she announced to the others.

Knowing smiles, rolled eyes, and titters told Elizabeth that they were all in on it. Probably, she thought, some little play or masque about mermaids, or a new madrigal for all to sing around the fountain. If they thought she would abide another water battle like they had staged a few weeks ago where everyone ended up laughing and drenched, they were much mistaken. If so, they had misread her mood. She wanted no part of frivolity this night, for she was dying to know what her Privy Plot Council had uncovered.

When she saw her male courtiers awaiting them in the gallery, she realized they too were in on the covert charade. They trooped down the grand staircase and outside together into the large, walled garden with its grassy lanes, fruit trees, and thirty-four high, painted columns topped by gilded, mythical royal beasts and flapping pennants.

Ned Topside appeared and, as she emerged into the evening air now greatly cleared of fog, began to recite a poem about Venus emerging from the sea.
But e'en Venus is ne'er so fair as our fair queen
, went the chorus as everyone joined in. Passing the sundial they approached the central, triple-tiered fountain.

Reading their minds, she refused to go closer. After
all, it was she who had oft secretly signaled her gardener to turn up the force of the water to douse courtiers and even Cecil when it pleased her. Did they think she would fall for her own trick, especially when they were deeming her a mermaid this night?

But two half-walking, half-swimming human mermaids emerged from the crowd, both Mary's servants, if Elizabeth recalled aright. Lightly draped in gauze and most comely, they made graceful, undulating motions with their bare arms, but they had trouble walking, encased in satin fish tails from their waists down.

As the mermaids broke into song, everyone began to laugh and clap while Ned recited the same words loudly so everyone could hear. The water did indeed spout stronger, though not full force, to play airborne rivulets above their heads. Six other Dudley and Sidney servants emerged with torches to light the scene as others flapped long bolts of blue, green, and white fabric to mimic the waves of the sea. Entranced, Elizabeth came closer as the mermaids sat upon the slick lip of the fountain, still singing.

The crowd edged closer. Evidently on some sort of cue, the mermaids lifted their tails into the fountain and stood there as if they would sink into the depths. Torches held aloft on either side of her, the queen stepped forward to thank her dear Mary for this double gift. To her surprise, Mary's husband, Sir Henry, took one of the royal hands and Robin quickly seized her other.

“I knew you had a part in this,” Elizabeth mouthed to Robin. “But if you think to throw me in with them, you had best think again.”

“I live only to adore and protect you,” he whispered.

His smile was so ravishing she almost slipped on the damp paving stones where the mermaids had sloshed water out. Mayhap, she thought, she'd been wrong to hold Robin off so, to punish him so long for the scandal they'd barely survived when his wife had died so mysteriously. She knew he longed for her to rely on him as she had once, turn back to him and—

“Hell's gates!” Robin shouted, looking down into the torchlit, roiled waters of the fountain between the two mock mermaids. He loosed Elizabeth's hand and threw out his arm before her as if to keep her back. “Mary, was there a third one?” he demanded, pointing between the mermaids. “What's this?”

Surely this, too, was part of the fantastical surprise, Elizabeth thought. She leaned over Robin's restraining arm to gaze down through the shifting surface at a naked woman drifting, faceup, eyes and mouth wide in the halo of her gold-red hair, as if swimming, floating forever free.

For the second time in three days, Robin stood at her side in a crowd to pull her back when she found what appeared to be a corpse.

THE SIXTH

T
HIS TIME THERE WAS NO WAY ELIZABETH COULD
keep everyone from seeing the prone female form. Pushing forward, then jumping back in horror or awe, ladies shrieked and men cursed. The queen did not scream as she had when she saw the effigy, but she struggled not to show the fear that racked her.

“Guards,” she cried, not trusting Robin with this, “to me!”

Six big yeomen, halberds in hand, came clattering through the cluster of courtiers. “Send everyone inside
except the Sidneys and Lord Dudley but keep the torches here. We need more light.”

As the guards hastened to obey and the two mock mermaids were assisted from the water, Elizabeth forced herself to gaze down upon the body again.

A complete stranger. A slender, young blonde, so pale and—dear God in heaven—with tiny, round pox marks on that face, each limb, and over all of her body.

Elizabeth shoved past the hovering Mary, Henry, and Robin and was sick upon the grass with her back to the fountain. As she wiped her mouth with her handkerchief, Mary came to her aid, but the queen shook her off. Her friend had led her to this with everything so planned. Could she trust even Mary Sidney now?

“Your Grace,” Mary said, her voice choked with emotion, “I swear by all I hold dear I had naught to do with this. My Lord Henry and Robin—none of us did.”

“They will have to answer for themselves,” Elizabeth insisted. “Another poxed body—this one real.”

“But this one is not tricked out to look like you,” Mary protested. “What if someone heard about the other, then with cruel intent and forethought aped the first perpetra-tor's filthy work?”

Elizabeth rounded on her. “In other words, these two bizarre events were not masterminded by the same villain? No, Mary. Too few saw the other, and this one mimics the effigy, which mimicked me. That dead woman is of an age with me and fair of face—or was!”

“Your Grace,” Robin said, sidling closer and taking Elizabeth's arm, “you must not let this shake you.”

“A woman's poxed corpse appears in my fountain in my walled, privy garden you three lure me to as if on cue, and I should not let it shake me?”

“But, my queen,” Robin went on, “the entire court knew of this—of our plans for a little masque to cheer you. It is naught we alone planned or knew of.”

“And you, my lord,” she told him, pulling her arm free of his grasp, “just happened to be at my side when I found that dreadful image of myself in the coach, did you not?”

“I long to ever be at your side, my queen! I beg you, never suspect nor punish me for that.”

“Your Grace,” Mary said, her tear-streaked face slick in torchlight, “my Lord Henry and I—Robin too—wish you only well.”

“We shall sift this out later,” Elizabeth declared. “I warrant this act is the doing of a deformed mind, and I want from the three of you by sunset Monday a complete listing of everyone—courtiers, servants, seamstresses, gardeners, musicians, whomever—who knew of my coming to this fountain this evening. If the three of you had naught to do with this, you will find who did. Now leave me!”

“Here with that—that drowned soul?” Mary cried. “I'll not desert you.”

“Go!”

Mary fled in sobs with her lord hard on her heels, while Robin dared to linger. “Go from me,” the queen repeated, almost afraid she would break down and throw herself into his arms. She suddenly longed for someone else to shoulder her burdens, to take on this threat to her composure, health, and life.

Finally, Robin obeyed even as Elizabeth turned to her guards, grateful to see one had fetched a sheet to wrap the poor wretch in.

“Put the sheet in the water to fetch her out wrapped so none will directly touch her pox sores nor gaze upon her nakedness in the open air,” Elizabeth ordered them. As they did so, she stood back in the shadows, her gaze skimming the palace windows and seeing there silhouettes of her curious courtiers. Surely none of them could be behind the appearances of the effigy and the body, these implied deadly threats to her person. Not those with whom she mingled freely, daily. Not those she trusted, who needed her even more than she needed them.

She turned to gaze at the dark line of fruit trees standing before the outer brick wall. That was the only side of the garden not enclosed by buildings. If someone had invaded her palace grounds from that direction, could that someone still be watching? Racked by an icy shudder, she wrapped her arms around herself as if to buffer the chill night wind.

“Clifford,” she summoned the guard closest to her,
“go inside and find Stephen Jenks, Ned Topside, and Gil Sharpe and send them to me forthwith.”

He hastened to obey as four guards lifted the ghostly, shrouded form. It dripped water as they shuffled toward the palace. Like a hired mourner in a funeral cortege, Elizabeth walked behind them, followed by other guards with torches.

G
LAD YOU HAD US STAY TO SUPPER,” NICK COTTER TOLD
Meg and gave a hearty belch. “Good chine of beef.”

“Bett shopped for the food and prepared it so I could finish the grace plasters before the mix went hard, so no reason you shouldn't enjoy it with me,” Meg assured him.

She rose wearily from the table in the largest room above the shop. “Besides, Ben's long overdue and has probably settled into some tavern for the night with his old bridge shooter companions.” She'd sent him on a very special errand, one he'd readily agreed upon for once. And she knew he'd taken enough coin to get over his distasteful task afterward.

She touched Bett's shoulder as she rose from the table, and Bett patted her hand in return. Bett saw Meg's predicament with Ben and, Meg knew, felt deeply for her. The thing was, did Bett know how deep the pain cut of losing her former life at the palace? Did she sense to what lengths Meg was willing to go to get that life back?
Though Nick and Bett worked for her, they were sent out now and again to gather information for Her Majesty. That was a good one, Meg thought, perversely amused: Meg Milligrew and Bess Tudor sharing servants.