The Queene's Cure (28 page)

“She misses you, Your Grace,” Ned said. “She is clearly frustrated by being sent away from your service for something she believes Sarah Wilton—her former self—got her into. The marriage with that lout, I mean.”

Elizabeth gripped the arms of her chair. “Yes, nothing worse than that, I'm sure. She'd lied to me, and I thought she must repair her marriage, but mayhap it is broken beyond repair.”

“Oh, it always looks so beautiful in its autumn garb!” Kat Ashley cried. Elizabeth swung around to see her dear Kat pointing at vast, pink-bricked Hampton Court Palace set in its parkland and orchards. “So romantic,” Kat enthused about her favorite place.

“By that, I hope you mean,” Elizabeth called to her ladies, clustered a short distance from her own canopied seat, “that the view is exquisitely fair and you do not refer
to the fact my father brought five of his six brides here to honeymoon.”

Though she had meant it as a jest, everyone quieted. It was common knowledge that the queen's mother's initials, once entwined with King Henry's, had been chiseled off when she was beheaded to be hastily replaced by Queen Jane Seymour's. Still, Elizabeth loved the place and felt close to both her parents here.

The infamous Cardinal Wolsey, who had presented the building and grounds to the king as a gift that was really a bribe, had chosen this site because the air was so salubrious. The cardinal had been obsessed with good health, so Elizabeth was doubly glad to be here. God forgive her, she wanted to distance herself from those poor souls afflicted with the scarring of the Queen's Evil and get miles away from poxed effigies and dead women's bodies. She wanted to shake off the cloying scent of the Scots queen's gift of bloody-hued powder offered by the wily Margaret Stewart, the odor of intrigue all around her.

She shook her head to clear it of too many disturbing images, like the face of that poor girl who had kneeled in the aisle at the Abbey. Mary Sidney had inquired where she had lived and found it was in some dreadful place called Gutter Lane. Yet when she and Harry had tried to take an angel there, the landlady claimed she'd never heard of the girl or the man with her. Then Elizabeth recalled again Meg's face as she stood behind the ill girl and her doctor, fearful, hopeful.

“Ned,” she said looking down him, “when this barge returns to London to fetch more of my things, bring Meg Milligrew to me on it. Just Meg, not Ben Wilton. Say only the queen has need of some of her favorite strewing herbs, personally delivered. And do not set yourself up as Meg's interrogator on your own.”

“Of course, Your Majesty, I wouldn't.”

“Ha,” she said only, as she turned her eyes toward her safe haven of Hampton Court.

T
HE FIRST TWO DAYS IN THE COUNTRYSIDE, ELIZABETH
tended to state business but also led her courtiers on constitutional walks and pulse-pounding rides through the surrounding forest. On her way back to her royal apartments, she passed through Base Court, then under the Queen Anne Gateway, named for her mother, and into Clock Court. With everyone close around her, she looked up at the ornate astronomical clock above the arch.

“
Tempus fugit
, my queen,” Robin whispered, but she ignored the fact he dared to add, “and for a beautiful young woman, adored by one particular man, who has loved her always,
carpe diem.
”

Elizabeth was thinking that she must indeed seize each day, hold to each moment she was queen. She must protect her realm from all plots that would do her person and her people harm. Staring at the intricate copper dials she read the hour, the sign of the zodiac, the month and
day, and the number of days since the beginning of the year. Even the moon's phases and the time of high tide at London Bridge were clearly marked. It was a brilliantly conceived, ornate machine, a far cry from Peter Pascal's physicians' timepiece, and yet it could not give her the answers she must discover and link.

“I have much to do,” she said only and walked briskly upstairs with everyone scurrying behind her. But she paused at the top of the stairs to catch her breath. She had perhaps overdone her exercise lately, for her back hurt even more. If truth be told, she ached all over. Her heart pounded, and she was perspiring overmuch.

“Mayhap I should lie down for just a moment before my next meeting,” she told Kat quietly as she reached her privy chambers and went in. She walked directly to the windows and threw the casements open to look out over the fading evening sky that silhouetted the twisted chimneys, mazes of rooftops, and the proud statues of heraldic animals called the queen's beasts. As if she dozed standing, disjointed images danced through her tormented mind: queen's beasts, queen's evil, queen's cure, queen's kingdom.

T
IME?” ELIZABETH SAID, SITTING UP IN HER BED, WHERE
someone had pulled a coverlet over her. Darkness had descended. Only a few candle flames flickered. “What time is it?” she demanded.

Kat came close with Mary Sidney. Dr. Huicke, with two other household physicians, appeared over their shoulders.

“It's near morning,” Kat said brusquely, pushing Elizabeth's shoulders back so she lay down again. “You were running a slight fever from all your exertion yesterday, so we thought it best not to disrobe you, and just let you sleep, though Dr. Huicke plans to bleed the fever out of you.”

“No bleeding,” the queen commanded. “I am fine and—'S bones, Kat, you let me miss my meeting with Cecil and the others last night!”

“My Lord Cecil thought this best too,” Mary put in. “Please, just lie back, Your Grace.”

“Stuff and nonsense! I have much to do!” she protested and sat up again until the rush of dizziness hit her. “Give me something to drink. If I have a little fever, I need to replace the liquid I'm sweating out, don't I, doctor? I'm parched. Well, do not just stand there. Someone fetch me ale or beer!”

Mary instantly offered white wine, which the queen drank straight down. The aftertaste revealed some sort of medicine was in it. She realized her hair was loose and matted to her forehead; her gown felt clammy. Oh, hell, she'd caught a chill on the river or hunting. Perhaps she had best sleep this off. How had it come on so fast?

“I need to make a diagnosis, Your Majesty,” old Dr. Huicke muttered, daring to swipe at her wet throat then
smell her sweat as if she'd given him leave to do so. “I fear something more than fever.”

“Just let me sleep!” Elizabeth shouted, but her own voice sounded as if it came from far outside her. “I'm just fine!”

I
'M SCARED TO DEATH,” MEG ADMITTED TO NED AS THEY
alighted from the royal barge on the landing at Hampton Court. She was also thrilled to death, merely to be in Ned's company. She carried the smaller sack of her crushed strewing herbs, and Ned, bless him, hefted the one that was nearly as big as a woolsack. “I prayed for this, Ned,” she bubbled on, “dreamed of it—that she'd summon me for strewing herbs or for anything!”

“Don't get your hopes up too high,” he warned as they walked up toward the sprawling palace together.

But Meg could have danced across the moat and not even used the bridge. “Even when her Tudor temper blows,” she told him, “she does seem to get over it. But it's taken her so long to want to see me, mayhap to ask me to serve her again.”

“Hell's gates,” Ned muttered, “she still cares for Robin Dudley, too, but she's never quite let him back in her heart, so stop this silly prating!”

“But he's a man, and you know the queen with men …” Meg went on, then let her words trail off. The moment they entered the palace proper, she could scent something amiss. Messengers ran to and fro while
courtiers stood in clumps whispering. No one smiled or laughed. Ned, too, picked up on it.

“I'll bet bad news has come about the Scots queen,” he confided, keeping his voice low. “Up in Edinburgh, she is, just biding her time to cause trouble. Why, if she weds again before the queen and has an heir— Look, there's Jenks.”

Meg was dismayed when Jenks's face did not light to see her. He barely slowed his feet as he went by. “The queen's sore ill,” he muttered, keeping his voice low as if Her Majesty would overhear and cuff him.

“Of what?” Ned called after him, but Jenks didn't turn back.

“Come on,” Ned said. “I've always been able to cheer her when she's low, even with one of her headaches, and I wager she'll be glad to have your strewing herbs too. What's in them, did you say?” he asked, bouncing the aromatic bag he carried for her.

“Mostly meadowsweet and woodruff,” she said, then added calmly, however hard her heart was pounding, “and I've something else to tell her of, though it's back in London. You know how she always fusses about her complexion. I've something good to hide scars or blemishes, should she ever need it.”

F
ACES. SOLEMN, SAD FACES LEANED OVER HER, CAME
and went. Kat's, Mary's, Cecil's. Beloved Robin's. And someone else, a doctor, more than one, prying in her
throat and probing with needles to draw blood before she cursed them away. Which doctor was that? Surely Cecil would not let Pascal or Caius near her.

They spoke darkly of diagnosis. No matter. She wouldn't let them bleed her, screamed when they tried to use a lancet. “And no leeches,” she was sure she told them. “No leeches and don't you dare tie me down or I'll have your heads!”

But those familiar faces merged with dreadful demons. The faces of beasts, queen's beasts. And a loud ticking, ticking of a gigantic clock, her mother's clock or that evil doctor's, dropped in the mud when he tried to kill that old woman.

“Lovey. Lovey, you have a rash of little spots. You must let the doctors treat you. It could be the pox.”

“Get away from me! Just let me sleep!”

Kat is an old woman. Kat is ill and doesn't know what she says. Call that foreign doctor. The doctors of the realm cannot be trusted. Don't let Kat die.

“Do not let Kat die,” she ordered them.

Or was someone trying to kill her, Elizabeth, the queen?

Sounds and senses slowed, dragged. Dizziness sat on her chest and poked in her head. She seemed to be spinning, even when she clung to Kat, even when she thought she must be lying still and exhausted on her bed.