The Thorne Maze (3 page)

The handsome, tall Tom looked as if he would chase and harass her the more. But when he saw his stepmother, he halted and, crossing his arms nonchalantly, leaned in the doorway as if to flaunt his fine face and athletic form.

“I’d admonish you, Thomas,” Mildred said, “to torment someone of your own size and sex, but I know that you do that too in your caperings and scrapes about town.”

He shrugged. “She’s the one who begged me to play with her. I can’t help it she darted into the privet hedge. And don’t bother to give me a dressing-down, as I’m sure Father will when his little Tannekin tells him I’ve been picking on her.”

As charming a young man as Thomas could be, Mildred marveled that he could make himself so disagreeable. From the first, no love had been lost between them, for he oft placed on a pedestal his dead mother, who died when he was so young he could surely not recall her. Mildred sighed inwardly again, wanting to say something to soothe and forgive, but that’s not what came out of her mouth.

“Your hard-working, disciplined, God-fearing father,” she declared, “is driven to distraction by your wastrel ways, as am I. Here he was this past winter, trying to make a fine marriage match for you while he sent you to the Continent to study, and you—”

“And I spent his coin and chased other sorts of doxies besides this one, eh?” he said with a sharp laugh and wink at his stepsister.

“Mother,” Tannekin cried, “I’m not a doxy, am I? What’s a doxy?”

“Go downstairs and have Cook give you something cool to drink,” Mildred ordered the girl, who obeyed, though she flounced from the room most unladylike.

“I’ll give you good day and a view of my backside, too,” Tom clipped out before she could scold him. “I don’t need a pious lecture from you if I’m in for another drubbing from Father. Of your growing brood, we all know his precious little Tannekin is still the favorite, do we not?”

And he was gone. Mildred stood staring at the empty door, wanting to ward off his sly stab that Cecil preferred Anne to their heir Robert. Mildred had the strangest urge to run after the boy and choke him. She was too busy, that’s all, so much to do here, so much to oversee. She wanted just to run away for good. How did her husband manage to keep his sanity with all his burdens of queen and country? He ought to be here more. The queen kept him away.

“Dearest, good news!” Her husband’s voice from the hall so surprised her that she thought she had imagined it at first so she could vent her spleen on him. Home unannounced. In the middle of the day. And from Hampton Court upriver, not just nearby Whitehall?

“I could use some good news,” she said, forcing a smile when he strode into the room and swirled his riding cape onto a chair.

“Since you are recovered from the birth,” he told her, clasping his hands in his excitement, “the babe is thriving, and our household is heading for Stamford, Her Grace has bid me fetch you to court for a few days.”

“That’s a wonder, after how I behaved when she was here.” She found herself resenting the queen’s meddling instead of being grateful for her goodness, but she tried not to let on. Though Mildred was strictly Protestant with a Puritan bent, she usually enjoyed the queen’s company. As two of the most learned ladies of the land, they delighted to speak Greek and Latin together. Yet, Mildred thought, to have all those people about, their eyes probing, their mouths moving as they talked and gossiped … mayhap about her carrying on the day of the christening …

“When shall we go then?” she asked, relieved at least to be escaping both London and rural Stamford and—God forgive her—her noisy, troublesome brood.

“Today, my love. I need to get back today.”

“But—all the packing. The planning …”

“Don’t fuss. There will be no real frivolity at court, so the tenor of the times will suit you,” he added, putting his arms around her. “And Templar Sutton’s visiting, so the talk’s all been very scholarly.”

“And his wife, too?” she clipped out before she could stop herself.

“I thought you’d be glad to go with me.” He tilted her back to study her face. “I had hopes it might lift your spirits.”

Mildred wanted to scream at him that her spirits felt scraped raw, but she forced a stiff smile. “I shall pack my things while you look in on Robert and the babe. Oh, and your Tannekin’s downstairs. And Thomas is in his usual choleric disposition.”

“Instead of to Stamford, I’m sending him to join the Sidney boys at their Penshurst for a while, hoping their gentlemanly ways will rub off on him. I swear, I’ll make him a man worthy of his heritage yet.”

“Or one of us will die trying,” Mildred whispered as she turned away to summon the servants.

Chapter the Second

“I HOPE NOT ONLY TO VIEW AND WALK YOUR MAZE, but to discern its pattern, Your Majesty,” Templar Sutton said as he and his wife followed the queen into the maze the very day of their arrival at Hampton Court. “Ah, I heard it was of vintage hornbeam, but I see it’s been patched with other shrubs, too,” he observed, looking as delighted as a child.

“It is a bit of a hodge-podge and probably needs replanting and moving farther out into the gardens, too,” she told her guests.

Behind the Suttons, Christopher Hatton and James Barstow, two young men of her court who had studied law under Templar at Gray’s Inn, brought up the rest of their little party. Cecil was not here, for he had gone to fetch Mildred for a few days at court at the queen’s express invitation.

“My father’s advisor Cardinal Wolsey had this maze planted a good thirty years ago,” Elizabeth explained. “They say that pompous priest used to chide lovers who tarried too long within. Since those are my state apartments,” she said, turning to point, “I now have this view, though the hedges have grown so tall I can see naught but the entry and first fork in the path.”

They all gazed briefly up at the sweep of windows that marked the royal rooms within the palace’s rose brick facade. Set like a jewel in vast parklands, the moated palace was one of Elizabeth’s favorites. Topped by a tangle of twisted chimney clusters, parapets, and flapping pennants, the sprawling Thameside edifice was built around a hundred nooks and crannies. It was a city in itself which could house nearly one thousand courtiers supported by hundreds of servants. Yet the orchards, gardens, gravel walks, and glinting river made life here seem rural, a mere half-day’s barge journey from teeming London.

“I do not know,” she admitted, “what other sorts of shrubs have been patched in here, but we enjoy this maze, Master Sutton, and I order it kept in good trim.”

“Pardon Your Majesty,” Jamie Barstow put in, pointing out the vagrant varieties of bushes, “but that one is yew and this one’s privet.”

“You may recall, Your Grace,” Chris Hatton added, “that Jamie’s father is my family’s steward, who oversees our fields and forests. Jamie knows a little about a lot of things, whereas I know a lot about little.”

Everyone laughed. The two young men, both twenty-four, had come to court at the same time, or rather, the queen had brought them. She had been quite taken by Chris Hatton’s skilled dancing, deep voice, and striking appearance—and his well-turned legs—at a Yuletide masque she had attended at Gray’s Inn. As her court was ever in need of engaging young men of good stock to escort her maids of honor and learn the intricacies of daily royal business, as well as for masqueing and dancing at night, she had summoned Hatton and gained Barstow in the bargain, too.

Fast friends, the two men had been educated together since grammar school in Northamptonshire. Sir Christopher Hatton, the second son of a fine old family, had entered Oxford and the Inns of Court as a gentleman-commoner, though he earned a degree at neither school. He was a lofty step up the social ladder from Jamie, who was a
pleb. fil.,
or commoner’s son. Yet they were the most democratic and amiable of comrades, both obviously grateful to their queen for their promotions to court when others of their ilk never got so much as a booted toe in the door. They were so attentive that Elizabeth had found them also useful to make Robin fret and fume.

That the two young men were quite different from each other in appearance and demeanor made their firm friendship even the more remarkable in the queen’s eyes. Chris looked to be a knight errant from an old romance: his thick, straight hair shone so black it looked nearly bluish in the sun, and roguish green eyes lit his countenance. Sleekly attired, classically handsome, he was of tall and manly form. Skilled at gentlemanly pursuits, he was a favorite with her maids and ladies as well as with his queen. Her Majesty had seen more than one of her women hang on Chris’s every word and nearly tilt into him, as if they were metal filings drawn to a magnet.

Jamie Barstow, on the other hand, was not a flashing comet in the firmament of courtiers, but a bright-burning lantern.

Chestnut, wavy hair framed his hazel eyes and open, sun-browned countenance. Whereas Chris always made an entrance, Jamie’s strength lay in the fact he seemed to be ever-present and properly prepared when needed. His riding and sporting skills were as fine as his friend’s, but he had to work at dancing and courtly conversation. Stalwart of limb and steady of mind, Jamie emanated a warmth of character if not the heat of personality which flared from his friend.

“I shall follow your lead to see if you can discern the convoluted pathway here,” Elizabeth told Templar, indicating he should step ahead of her at the first curve of hedge walls despite his somewhat doddering pace. The queen came next, then Bettina. The leaf-walled pathway occasionally came to a dead end, and one had to backtrack, the clever Templar included. Though the maze was currently getting the best of Templar’s fine-honed mind, she intended to use his skills and knowledge to help Cecil advise her court lawyers.

For now, she tried to keep their conversation lighthearted. Yet the fact that Kat was ailing and the plague seemed to be spreading in her capital had kept her from allowing much frivolity lately. Even the masque she had commanded for tonight was from a sober Bible parable and not a raucous classical fable.

“I shall judge, Master Sutton,” the queen declared, “whether your fine reputation as protector and teacher of England’s common law has given you the talent to discern puzzles such as this, when one finds oneself in the midst of the maze instead of merely observing it from afar or advising others—or playing with a child’s wooden toy.”

Templar chuckled as he found himself again in a dead end and waited for the others to back out behind him. Elizabeth heard Bettina giggle. Though overmuch lightness in a woman oft annoyed the queen, she had seen that Bettina cheered her husband, and even, at times, seemed to counsel him circumspectly, as he evidently had trouble hearing. Taking her cue from that, the queen—whose ringing tones could make a bell seem mute—spoke loudly to him.

“One thing I’ll tell you of maze mythology, Your Majesty,” Templar told her as they began on another path, one she recognized as also wrong, though she’d not correct him yet. “In the pagan past they used to believe that evil spirits were unable to turn corners, hence, one was always safe within a maze.”

“I shall remember that, Master Sutton.”

“Though these corners seem as slanted as sharp, so that shouldn’t help here,” Jamie said, only to have Chris elbow him to silence.

“I thought you were going to tell Her Majesty the story of Fair Rosamund in her Bower, hiding from the queen,” Bettina prompted her husband.

“Ah, yes, poor Rosamund,” the queen said, piqued the woman dared think she did not know that tale. “When she discovered her royal husband’s
affaire de coeur,
King Henry II’s queen finally found her way into the maze His Majesty had made to shelter his mistress and forced the poor woman to drink poison.

“Bettina portrayed Fair Rosamund in a small tragedy we staged at the Inn, Your Majesty,” Jamie piped up again.

“A woman on the stage?” Elizabeth inquired, though the idea rather pleased her. If females could be part of private masques, why not the more public stage?

“I bound up my breasts and everyone thought I was a lad,” she explained.

“Well, perhaps not everyone,” Chris teased and, this time, elbowed Jamie.

“She’s quite skilled at playing parts,” Templar put in.

“Though I admit my complexion is the olive hue of my mother and not that of a fair-faced woman like Rosamund,” Bettina said with a fetching little shrug. “If I ever played in that masque again, I should take the part of the evil poisoner, Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine.” Both hands flew to Bettina’s mouth. “I mean, I am not worthy to play a queen, Your Majesty, but she was a French queen, and could, therefore, never shine as bright as you, pardon if I have spoken amiss.”

“Not amiss, but it reminds me that a friend who was to be in our masque this evening is indisposed, and I believe you might do the part justice. It is no speaking role, and all ten women portraying the wise and foolish virgins will be costumed, wigged, and masked to look the same.”

“Oh, the greatest honor,” Bettina said, pressing her clasped hands to her breasts.

“Play-acting indeed to portray a virgin—after years of marriage to our mentor,” Jamie put in with an impish grin.

The queen smartly smacked his arm with her folded fan. “One more comment about virgins, and I shall banish you where you can no longer make eyes at my Lady Rosie, for I have observed she has caught your eye. But I wager you a good gold crown—a coin, I mean, not a royal one,” she added tartly, “that you’ll not breech Rosie Radcliffe’s well-defended bastions, Jamie Barstow!”

More laughter but from Templar, who might not have heard. He was already headed around the next turn, and on the wrong path again. But then the queen herself had been lost more times in here over the years than her pride would allow her to admit.

“‘Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meett him!’”
echoed to the vast hammerbeam roof of the great hall at Hampton Court. The audience stirred as Chris Hatton, playing the bridegroom, strode toward the ten virgins waiting with their silver lamps.