The Thorne Maze (6 page)

“But, I admit,” she plunged on, gripping her hands on the table, “the fewer our numbers, the better for secrecy now. I do not want this attack noised about. And who knows,” she added, her voice breaking, “what Kat would blurt out if she were privy to this now, so this group must needs probe this diabolical deed.”

At last she took a breath and glanced around the table. Cecil had looked grim since she’d shown the marks on her neck. She also had a purplish bruise coming on her forehead—fortunately one her hair could hide—and scratches on her right cheek from being thrust into the maze hedges, not to mention grass stains she’d displayed on her mask and the gown. She’d have to exchange those with another identical masque costume by tomorrow or Kat would know for certain that something dire had befallen her mistress. Her beloved First Lady of the Bedchamber still fussed with her gowns, though Rosie Radcliffe now bore the burden of Kat’s duties as Mistress of the Robes and kept an eye on her jewel cases, too.

Ned and Jenks leaned forward avidly. Meg looked flushed with excitement. Yet everyone seemed to hold back, waiting for whatever William Cecil would say.

“First of all,” he began, “forgive me, Your Grace, but I cannot fathom you walked out alone.”

“I admit it was to see Lord Robert Dudley privily after his time away. Just a walk in the moonlight.”

“Which went sore awry.”

“I’ll not have chiding or lectures, Cecil. You are not my parent, nor some prelate or preacher.”

“But I am ever your loyal servant and, you have said, your friend. Be that as it may, Meg mentioned,” Cecil continued, “that Lord Dudley had a note changing the assignation—”

“Merely a meeting,” the queen interrupted.

“A meeting,” Cecil amended. “And you have that note?”

She drew it from her lap and handed it to him across the narrow table.

“Perhaps from a woman with that heavy scent on it,” Meg put in, wrinkling her nose and fanning her face even from where she sat. “Gillyflowers. Your Grace, is that why you asked me earlier today about gillyflowers—no, you didn’t have the note then.”

“Hell’s teeth, what about gillyflowers?” Cecil asked, sniffing at the scrap of folded parchment, then sneezing into his sleeve.

She was not, Elizabeth thought, going to tell them the foolishness about Catherine Howard’s ghost and prayed that had not been some sort of harbinger of doom. The scent drifting up from the kitchen herb gardens was probably not gillyflowers at all, since Meg said none were there.

“Well,” Meg said, “no one wears that scent much anymore, though I’ve been using that kind of dried petals in some of Kat’s tonics with valerian and chamomile. It lends a spicy taste, and she always liked the smell of them.”

“Leave poor Kat out of this,” Elizabeth ordered.

“Probably not a woman who overpowered you anyway,” Jenks put in, hunching over the table. “Not to take you down and choke you like that. However slender your form, Your Grace, you are strong.”

“Jenks,” Ned said, his voice condescending, “the would-be murder weapon was two gauzy garter ribbons, the ones
women
wore tonight. It could well have been a woman, a strong one who had the advantage of surprise over Her Grace.”

Meg spun to face him. “What do you know about the garters Her Grace’s ladies were wearing?”

“Your Majesty,” Ned protested, gesturing grandly, “I oversaw the entire masque and knew what the women wore, that’s all, so …”

“Enough!” Elizabeth cried, smacking a fist on the table. “It could have been a man or a strong or zealous woman for all I know. Someone tall enough, however, to be able to lift these garters over my head. And tie this strange knot in them.”

“A common slip knot, used by sailors, farmers, even some falconers,” Jenks said. “We use them in the stables, when colts need tight control, even before we start with bits and harnesses. The more the colt tugs, the tighter the rope or strap gets, but it’s just as easy to loose, too. Let me show you.”

“No, not with these, as I mean to examine them closely in better light tomorrow,” Elizabeth said.

“What about Lord Robert?” Meg blurted. “He knew where you’d be, Your Grace, and must know those knots.”

“Impossible,” Jenks argued, though he didn’t raise his voice as he usually did when he defended his master. “I don’t care if some people still wrongly think Lord Dudley had his wife killed. I heard tell he was pacing back and forth in the stables, though they said he did leave after the foal was born to clean up and change his clothes.”

“It wasn’t Robert Dudley,” Elizabeth protested. “He has everything to lose if I lose my life. At any rate, whether my attacker—and perhaps, potential murderer—was man or woman, I was, as Ned correctly says, at a great disadvantage to be so taken by surprise.”

“Perhaps your attacker was, too,” Cecil said, leaning across the table to return the note to her. “Almost everyone was masked, including you, Your Grace. Perhaps we have not an attempt at a royal assassination but a case of mistaken identity. Your attacker erroneously believed he or she was strangling someone else. Even though it must have been dark in the maze, when your wig came off to reveal your red hair or your mask slipped, he or she ran, appalled.”

“If you ask me who I’d put at the top of the list,” Meg muttered, still looking upset from her dressing-down over her Robert Dudley theory, “it’s Margaret Stewart, the Countess of Lennox. I see her giving you snide looks all the time, Your Grace.”

Elizabeth and Cecil exchanged lightning glances. She could read that he’d been thinking the same. In these privy plot sessions, Elizabeth had always given her people leave to speak freely, and Meg had boldly done so. Margaret covertly championed Mary, Queen of Scots. Had Meg hit the nail precisely on its Papist plot head?

“And we all know,” Ned said, “that her husband, Matthew Stewart, is tall and—as the wily Scots say—a braw man.”

“He’s not at court right now,” Cecil said before the queen could reply. “But their lanky, nimble-footed son’s been lurking about and perhaps would only be too happy to do the deed for his mother. Margaret Stewart seems to command him with an iron hand, despite the fact he’s nearly twenty. Would that I could control my eldest that way,” he added, under his breath.

“I know the Stewarts have sent privy correspondence to Mary of Scots,” Elizabeth admitted, “even probably plotted against me over the years, so perhaps they are becoming desperate. Margaret was highly insulted I named her as one of the five foolish virgins, and her son was masked in the audience.”

“Then too,” Meg put in, “the countess is old enough to favor gillyflower scent yet, out of fashion though it is. I never get close enough to her to know what potpourri she carries in that gold filigreed pomander of hers.”

“Hm,” Ned interrupted, narrowing his green eyes, “the pomander studded with bloody-hued garnets which she swings on its chain as if it were an orb of the whole world.”

Elizabeth glared at him for his usual overblown bombast, but perhaps they had all leaped far afield. Surely, the Stewarts would not risk actually laying hands on their queen—or at least would have finished the job had they set out to do it. Yet in this search for a serpent in her court, they must look under every stone.

“Meg, you must discover what scent the countess favors,” Elizabeth commanded, “and that of other women who were at court tonight. Try offering them some new fragrance or potpourri you’ve concocted, and ask them what they’ve used before.”

“I could try to ingratiate myself with the countess—spy on her, Your Grace,” Ned suggested.

“Indirectly mayhap, for she would never trust you outright. And you must feign to plan another amusement where each person who will take part must give you in their own handwriting what sort of costume they would like to wear.”

“Why feign it? I could indeed create something for a large cast of actors—and suspects.”

“No, spend your time and effort on this,” she ordered, thrusting the small paper at him. “Then I shall examine those notes to compare handwriting. And be certain they include some of the key words here for comparison.

“Jenks, see if you can turn up the note my yeoman guard Stackpole said he had, or at least ask him if he recalled if it had a scent. Also, get a description of the strange linkboy who fetched the note to him and track him, if you can.”

Jenks nodded as Ned perused the note. “I’ll have Lady Rosie ask for all the women’s garments to be returned forthwith, their garters included,” Elizabeth continued. “She’s been helping Kat oversee the wardrobe, so perhaps she can account for or trace such unique garments.”

They gazed silently at the silvered ribbons wrapped with gauzy tissue, carefully knotted. Cecil drummed his fingertips on the table. He’d been frowning throughout, but now looked as if his countenance could splinter.

“My lord, are you quite well?” she asked.

“Hardly, Your Grace. I fear, at the least, we have before us an attempted murder on a mistaken noble victim on royal property. And, at the most, high treason against your most precious person. Could someone besides Robert Dudley have known where you would be and lain in wait there?”

“Only Mary Sidney and, for obvious reasons, I trust her with my life,” she said, gripping her hands on the table. “But when I told her where and when I would meet Lord Robert, Kat thought she heard someone listening at Mary’s keyhole. I looked out and—she was mistaken.”

“Then your attacker could be some random wretch,” Cecil said, “who merely saw you leave tonight and went out the same or a different door behind you. We can delve into that.”

“I first stopped under the big oak. I saw no one enter the maze, but I wasn’t always looking.”

“We’ll have a devil of a time determining a possible culprit, since nearly everyone in the audience was thoroughly disguised at your express command. And since you want this kept quiet.”

“Not so much because I don’t want gossip about me and Lord Robert again, but more to avoid inciting panic—nor will I give any satisfaction to my enemy who might be behind the attack.”

“Or,” Jenks put in, “your attacker could have been some random oaf who walked in from the road or river, then just spotted a comely woman alone.”

“In short,” Elizabeth said, “we may never know. But we are going to try desperately to.”

“Thank God, Bettina Sutton stumbled on you,” Cecil said, rubbing his eyes with thumb and index finger. “You must promise not to go off alone ever again.”

She was going to tell him that only she would decide what she did, that no one could frighten the Queen of England, no implied threat, terror tactic, or direct attack. But she knew he was right. The times had suddenly changed, for her, for all of them who were the crown or served the crown. And this was no time for a display of Tudor temper, no matter how effective a tool it could be at times.

“You must return to your wife, my lord,” she told Cecil as she rose. Everyone else stood, scraping back their chairs. The queen stepped away with Cecil. “How did Mildred fare in the short time she’s been here?”

“I am certain she enjoyed the evening, Your Grace. Yet her countenance hidden behind that mask made me so uneasy,” he admitted, “since I could not watch her expressions to read her moods as I have been wont to do, and even that desperate form of detection has not served me well …”

His voice trailed off again. Poor Cecil, she thought.

“This meeting is adjourned,” Elizabeth said, when the others still tarried. “Dear friends, I know I have enemies, some of them, as ever, my own courtiers and kin. But we must pursue and capture the murderer from the maze.”

Chapter the Fourth

“HOW IS KAT THIS MORNING, ROSIE?” ELIZABETH ASKED as the pretty young brunette bustled into the queen’s bedchamber without the older woman.

Picking at her breakfast of ale, manchet bread, and stewed carp, the queen was still in her nightrail and barefooted, for it was warm in the room. She did not wear her robe but had draped it about her neck to hide the bruises there. She’d pulled her hair down to cover her forehead bruise, and covered the scratches on her cheek with Meg’s concoction of alabaster face cream. Rosie evidently noticed nothing strange and proceeded to open the windows to let the July breeze chase the sunlight in.

“You’re going to be upset,” Rosie said, so dismayed that as she walked back toward the table she wrung her hands, “so I might just as well tell you straightaway.”

The queen’s goblet clanked against her breakfast plate. Rosie was never an alarmist. “Have you finally accepted Jamie Barstow’s attentions?”

“He’s very kind, honorable, too, Your Grace, but it has naught to do with Jamie.”

Elizabeth’s insides lurched. “Kat’s not failing?”

Rosie shook her head.
“I
failed you. Last night she drank that new tonic of Meg’s before I could stop her. I coaxed her into bed, though she kept insisting you needed her. When I went to use the garderobe, she slipped out. I finally found her, though.”

“Slipped out where? Is she all right?”

“Yes, but she had wandered around who knows where and ended up in the corridor outside Mary Sidney’s chamber where she was looking in each keyhole. Still, I think the tonic did her good as she finally slept without being haunted by her usual nightmares.”

Rising, the queen held out her hands to Rosie who rushed to hold them. “Do not take this amiss, dear friend,” Elizabeth told her, “but I see I must not put the burden of Kat’s care so much on you. Because you are so scrupulous and trustworthy, I fear I expect too much at times, and it is not fair to you.”

“I want to help. You know I do.”

“In the few years you have been among my ladies you have helped a great deal. The others smirk and gossip and giggle, but not you. I trust you with my jewels, my wardrobe—and with my dear Kat, but I shall have others, especially Mistress Milligrew, help you more. And having said all that,” she added, loosing Rosie’s hands with a deep sigh, “I do have one more favor I would ask of you.”

“To put off Jamie, Your Grace?”

“No, if he is behaving as you say, not Jamie. That is—well, I mean this not as it sounds, but, for now, that is your affair.”