The Thorne Maze (10 page)

“Met by moonlight in the maze,” Ned Topside declared in his velvety voice. “I believe I shall use it as the opening of the play I am writing for the courtiers.”

“Leave off, Ned,” Elizabeth ordered, though Meg Milligrew looked thoroughly enchanted. “As soon as the Suttons arrive, we have work to do. And I told you, we do not need a play with a huge cast but only the suggestions of one so you can collect all their handwriting.”

“I’ve been doing that, Your Grace, and have nineteen samples already, none of which seems to match the note we have as evidence.”

Elizabeth frowned. She had dearly commanded that she and Cecil would assess the handwriting, but what was important now was getting through this re-enactment of her attack.

“’S blood, I think the moon’s in the same spot, so we shall start without the Suttons,” she announced. “Much happened before Bettina came on the scene, though I’d covet Templar’s helping us to reason it all out.”

“I saw him today, busy as a bee, talking to some courtiers,” Meg put in from her position between Ned and Jenks. “Overheard him telling Sir Chris Hatton he should be ashamed of himself for not studying harder, not using the brains God gave him to go with his external trappings, as he put it. That’s a good one—external trappings.”

“I shall ask both of them about that, but let’s begin,” Elizabeth commanded. “I wasn’t going to mention this for modesty’s sake with you three men here, but we can hold nothing back in turning up our villain. I first paused under that oak out there and then again right here because those garters kept slipping. So, I bent over like this,” she said, and mimed fussing with them.

“And bent your knees and your back to do so,” Cecil observed.

What he implied hit Elizabeth with stunning force. She’d been insisting on a person tall enough to reach garters held taut between two hands over her head. “Good point,” she admitted, though she could see Ned, Jenks, and Meg didn’t follow. “The trouble is, it only broadens the range of possible attackers again. And besides, stooping or bending to care for the garters, I also bent to adjust my mask, then leaned like this to begin to run back outside the maze.”

“Then it is possible,” Cecil said, “that your attacker was shorter than we surmised or that mistaken identity was indeed a factor.”

“In other words,” Ned put in, “the strangler could have been after someone else who was shorter than Her Majesty.”

“And,” Meg added, “in that flowing costume, one with bigger breasts.”

“So, the intended victim could have been Bettina,” the queen concluded. “Someone saw her go outside and followed her. Dear God in Heaven, where is she now, for we must question her about possible enemies. Even if Templar walks slowly, Bettina knows she is needed here and now!”

“What if someone was after her before and got her now?” Meg whispered.

“Sh!” Elizabeth ordered as she, with all of them, turned toward the distant sound of flying footsteps on the gravel walk, then softer on the grass. The queen recalled her waking nightmare in the haunted corridor, for she was suddenly certain this could bode only evil, too.

Chapter the Sixth

INSTINCTTVELY, JENKS AND NED DREW SWORDS AND stepped in front of the queen. Cecil moved to buffer her, too, while Jenks pulled Meg behind him.

“Speak of the devil,” Ned said in a stage whisper, “it’s Mistress Sutton. Did she think she was supposed to come swooping in to save you as she did last night?”

Elizabeth stepped from the maze as Bettina came closer, running, panting. She held her skirts off the dew-wet grass, and her breasts bounced.

“Oh, I’m so sorry I’m—we’re late—Your Majesty, but I can’t find Templar anywhere.” She skidded to a stop; her curtsy went so far off balance she almost fell. Ned reached out to steady her.

“My herb woman saw him this afternoon,” the queen tried to assure her. “Have you seen him since?”

“At supper in our new chamber,” she said breathlessly. “We changed rooms today, thanks be to you and William Cecil, and I thought Templar was still somewhere between the two locations, but he never would have been late to help Your Majesty. He said he’d meet me, and we’d come out here together. I—I believe he was doing a great deal of thinking about your plight. But with what happened to you last night, Your Majesty, I fear for him. Perhaps he came out on his own to look around or wanted to see the maze again …”

She began gasping. Tears matted her lashes, that much the queen could see in moonlight, though her face was mostly in shadow.

“We shall find him,” the queen promised. “If he was walking out here in the dark, perhaps he fell. I hope he didn’t ignore the rope to come into the maze. Ned, fetch my yeomen guard with torches. Those will be brighter than lanterns. And do not send out a general hue and cry yet. No need to embarrass Master Sutton with much ado when we find him. Jenks and Ned, bring us torches here too, and we shall search inside the maze while the others look outside.”

“I’m so grateful,” Bettina cried, wringing her hands. “He loved—he loves this maze.”

As word of the search spread, some courtiers appeared among the queen’s guards. Even Kat showed up, trailing after Rosie. Elizabeth nearly ordered the two women back inside, but let them stay. With torches, Ned and Jenks were ready to lead the way into the maze. Templar’s fascination with it and the idea he might try to visit the spot where she’d been attacked made the queen believe it was worth inspecting. Besides, he was hard of hearing, so if he had come inside on his own before dark, then fallen, he might not hear the searchers to call out for help.

“Jenks, Ned, lead on while the yeomen search the grounds. Meg, you and Rosie stay here at the entrance with Kat to be certain others don’t enter. We don’t need a crowd in here, too. My lord Cecil, best you return to your wife and assure her so she does not become agitated or alarmed if she sees or hears this hubbub.”

“I am ever grateful for your concern and care for her, Your Grace. I’ll look in on her and be back out directly, for we must find him. His mind may be steady, but his feet are not. Keep a stout heart, Mistress Sutton,” he added and was gone at a half run.

As they entered the maze with flickering torchlight, the hedge walls seemed to swallow Jenks, Ned, the queen, and then Bettina. Sharp shadows leaped from each turn. Shifting shapes were starkly illumined, then devoured by blackness. The little entourage went on, methodically inspecting each turn and dead end as the queen commanded. Suddenly from somewhere behind, Meg’s voice jolted them.

“Your Grace! Wait, please!”

Meg and Kat appeared around a turn more than halfway in.

“Meg, I told you to wait at the entrance.”

“But, Your Grace, Kat recalled something to tell you. She says she saw Templar go into the maze when the sun set.”

Elizabeth turned toward Kat, taking both of the older woman’s shoulders in a firm grip. “Are you certain you know which man Templar Sutton is, my Kat?”

“I saw him at the masque, didn’t I? Lord Cecil was nearly the only one without a mask. But after everything was ended, Master Sutton took his off too, and kept looking around the room.”

“Mayhap for me when I took my walk,” Bettina put in with a sniffle. “But he’d said he was going straight to bed.”

Elizabeth only nodded, but she recalled well that Bettina had said he was already up in bed—reading, though Templar had later remarked that he was working, as usual, on debate topics for his students. No significant discrepancies in all that, she reasoned.

“Exactly where were you to see Master Sutton when the sun set?” Elizabeth asked Kat.

“I was in your bedchamber, gazing out over the grounds and distant river, just enjoying the view. I’d been resting in the trundle bed by yours, though Rosie and Meg had actually locked me in, didn’t you, girl?” she asked, turning to Meg with a flash of anger. “But I decided to go out to discover why Master Sutton was lingering at the entrance to your maze—he moved the rope to slip in, too, so I went down to tell him not to.”

“But if you were locked in …” Meg said.

“Do you think I can’t use the privy escape entrance King Henry put in all his palaces?” Kat demanded. “It’s bolted only from the inside and didn’t have a guard on it.”

Elizabeth realized she’d have to put a guard outside to keep Kat from further wandering. A heavy arras covered that locked doorway in her chamber. She had used it herself, as had several members of her Privy Plot Council in the past, though not for several years.

But when Kat had mentioned Elizabeth’s father, her hopes fell; Kat was going to plunge into the past again. “So I went down,” Kat continued, “and followed Master Sutton into the maze a ways, just inside the entrance, and saw he was stooped over as if he were looking at each leaf. And he’d just plucked off a small, dark piece of cloth from a branch where it must have snagged.”

Elizabeth felt furious with herself that she hadn’t thought of searching the hedges so precisely. At least she’d been careful to keep Kat from the distress of knowing her royal mistress had been attacked in that very place last night. Though Kat was not a totally credible witness lately, all she had said seemed probable.

“And then?” Elizabeth prompted.

“I said he had no right to be in the maze, roped off as it was, but he said he was working with you to care for it—that it needed tending, cutting or some such.”

Clever Templar. He had not broken his pledge for secrecy and had evidently known not to unsettle Kat.

“There’s not much else to tell,” Kat went on, sounding suddenly exhausted. “Since he had your permission, I let him walk farther into the maze, and I went back up to bed.”

“You’ve been a big help, Kat, and Meg will take you back to the palace.”

“I’m not leaving you, lovey. I never have, and I won’t now!”

Tears blurred the queen’s vision, and she blinked them back. Kat Ashley had once known never to call the queen her childhood sobriquet before anyone else, but what did that matter now? Elizabeth prayed that, despite Kat’s sinking health, she would never leave her, but she knew better and it scared her. Since she’d nearly died of the pox two years ago, the thought of death—anyone’s death—frightened her dreadfully.

“Stay tight with Meg and come along,” she told Kat, against her better judgment. “Ned, Jenks, on!”

The two men evidently recalled the maze pattern well from their search of it last night, but Elizabeth knew it best. Increasingly impatient, she took Ned’s torch and walked just behind Jenks, who displayed both torch and sword.

“By broad daylight tomorrow, you will search each leaf and twig in this maze, as well as look for anything significant which might have been dropped,” Elizabeth whispered to her men. “And that includes searching the grass underfoot, though, sadly, footsteps do not make imprints there. Templar must have found a tell-tale piece of cloth, and it wasn’t from my costume, not a dark piece. Many at court that night wore some dark garment, but for the ten virgins, and who knows but the cloth wasn’t snagged there some other time. It may signify nothing.

“All right, we’re nearly to the goal,” she announced more loudly, referring to the finishing place at the back of the maze. It was the spot where one knew he’d conquered the labyrinthine paths, but must now turn around to try to find the way out. The compact, square space boasted a stone bench and an old sundial—her father had ordered the latter placed in many a garden—though it only told the time around noon when the sun’s rays could reach it within the depths of these living walls.

Nothing unusual in the goal, she thought, when their torch light illumined it. But Kat pointed behind the bench, and sang out, “There he is! I told you he came in here!”

The queen saw the fallen form and rushed to the body.

Templar indeed, sprawled facedown!

“My dearest, my dearest!” Bettina cried, sobbing and throwing herself upon him on the ground. “Templar. Templar!”

The queen knelt beside her and tried to tug her away from her husband. “Meg, you’ve seen bad falls and sudden paralyzing ailments,” Elizabeth said. “Is he badly hurt?”

But as Bettina rolled the old man over and Meg felt for the pulse at his neck, Elizabeth knew he was not breathing. With her index finger she touched his wrist—cold but not rigid. The torches thrust closer revealed a huge, bloody bruise on his forehead, and the queen glimpsed a thick glaze of blood on the pedestal of the sundial.

“He tripped, maybe on the bench foot—and hit his head there,” Jenks said, pointing. “I’ve seen death afore, and he’s—bless his soul, he’s gone.”

Templar Sutton’s unblinking stare silently testified to that truth.

Though she hated to do it, the queen finally ordered Ned to lift the sobbing Bettina from her husband’s body. She also regretted having to send for the local authorities, because she didn’t want anyone else probing this tragedy, nor declaring it a murder—which she feared it could well be. Two attacks in two days in the maze, one on her person, the other fatal. It was certain her attacker had not erroneously believed she was Templar Sutton, then finished the job this evening—nor had Templar, evidently, been strangled. ’S blood, even though she must send for the parish bailiff and coroner, she was going to get to the bottom of this double outrage on her grounds and on her terms!

“Your Majesty,” Jamie Barstow cried as he appeared with another torch, “I came when I heard crying in here, no matter what Lady Rosie said at the entrance. I just wanted to help to—oh, no! Master Sutton?” he cried, gaping at Bettina, then the body. His usual calm crumbled; he looked for a moment as if he’d sob right along with the new widow.

“Mistress Sutton, I’m so sorry …” he managed before his voice broke.

“That’s right, you’ve known each other for a time,” Elizabeth said, much relieved. “Jamie, escort Mistress Sutton to her chambers. Take Rosie with you and do not leave her. I will be there when I can, but much must be seen to here, including summoning the local authorities.”

“But it looks like a dreadful accident,” Jamie observed, bending slightly closer to study the corpse of his former teacher. “And since this is on crown property, and you, Your Majesty, are the crown …”