The Thorne Maze (8 page)

The queen fought back a grin. “Let me know how things proceed, Jenks. Perhaps Meg will, too,” she added and shot him an encouraging smile as she returned to her waiting retinue.

The entire world was falling in love if they weren’t already in that hopeless state, she thought, entirely frustrated, though she made conversation and responded to her ladies’ chatter. Cecil was fretting for his Mildred; Bettina and Templar, though apparently mismatched, seemed to be quite suited. Jamie Barstow had evidently found the chink in Rosie’s armor. The queen herself was attracted to both Robin and Chris Hatton, however much younger Chris was.

And then there were the politics of love. Cecil, her counselors, and her Parliament had more than once requested that she wed, though she had managed to put them off yet again. Hell’s teeth, Mary, Queen of Scots was looking for a second husband already, and Elizabeth must play a part in that to be certain she wed someone who could be trusted. Someone ambitious but malleable to the will of the Protestant, English queen even when he bedded with the Catholic, Scottish one.

She strode the rest of the way to the gardens, hardly hearing the chatter and giggles about her. But the moment they reached the flowers, she decided to toss out her bait. “Look at these pretty gillyflowers, everyone. I can smell them from here.”

“A spicy smell, rather too strong,” Anne Carey put in, wrinkling her pert nose.

“I like it myself, and so does our queen, even tucking gillyflowers in her bodice or her hair,” Kat declared, stooping to behead a flower and thrust it at Elizabeth. For once she was about to correct Kat when the old woman continued, “Queen Catherine Howard may be too young for your father, lovey, but he’s so enamored of her, that, just like other old husbands with flibbety-gibbety wives, he’d do anything to please her.”

“You must take your sister riding while she’s here, as she won’t come out of her chamber for me,” Elizabeth told Robin as they walked toward the vast brick and wood stable block.

“Mary does ride out, sometimes even alone like last night. I would have gone with her, but I couldn’t leave the foaling and she wouldn’t hear of a guard going along.”

“At night? Last night? And alone?”

“Don’t fret,” Robin soothed. “She said she’s likely to go mad cooped up. You know she’s always glad to see you, but just can’t abide anyone else around. Enter my realm, my queen,” he smoothly shifted the subject, and swept Elizabeth a bow as they stepped into the long corridor of slatted wooden stalls.

Despite her delicate nose, Elizabeth had always loved the smell of the stables, well-tended ones, at least. Once one adapted to the undercurrent of animal smells, the nostalgic ones were discernible: straw, leather, soap, and polish—men. And sounds like the creak of saddles, the snorts and stomping of the big beasts. It all reminded her of the few happy times she’d shared with her father. She had become an excellent horsewoman to please him above all else.

“What do you think of our new arrival?” Robin asked her and pressed her hand on his arm close to his solid ribs as he swung open a stall door with the other.

The white mare Fortune, the queen’s favorite mount before the animal’s belly swelled, stepped forward to nuzzle the gloved royal hand and crunch down the offered apple. Robin smacked Fortune’s flank and she sidestepped to reveal her gangly foal, who went noisily back to suckling. For one rapt moment, the queen and her Master of the Horse just grinned and stared at the new stallion.

“What shall you name him then?” Robin asked.

“Destiny, I believe.”

“Ah, Fortune and Destiny, names after my own heart, but it is truly you who are after my own heart—or I wish you were,” he teased, his voice rough with the sudden passion that could flare from him without warning.

Though her stomach cartwheeled, she decided to ignore that. “You do a fine job with all of this, Robin.” She gazed around the vast stable block with grooms busy at their tasks. “And I hear your implication about your fortune and destiny, which I am certain will be on the rise.”

“Meaning someday you will not rip to shreds my patent for the peerage as you did before everyone when you were—were angry? Someday you will actually give me the earldom you have promised?”

“Yes, Robert Dudley, yes! I had to be certain I could trust your loyalty to me, even if I asked you to wait—to sacrifice or take on some task that seems dangerous or difficult.”

“Such as what now?” he demanded. He closed the stall door and leaned against it with his arms crossed and his brow furrowed.

“We read each other well yet, do we not? The earldom of Leicester will yet be yours, for I would raise you high.”

“My queen!” he cried and went down on one knee in the straw, head bent.

“Do not thank me overmuch. And put from your mind that we shall wed, my lord. That is not why I will create you earl when we return to London this autumn, though I do have a queen in mind for you.”

His expression looked both ravaged and raptured when he raised his face. As ever, she could see his mind working to catch up to hers. “You don’t mean to offer me to Mary of Scots?” he cried, exploding to his feet. “Hell’s gates, I know you’ve wanted to push her toward someone you can trust, but she’d never have me.”

“She will if I find a way to convince her, coerce her.”

“Not with your Master of the Horse whom she will see as your cast-off, former favorite.”

“I must find a way, my lord. The last thing I need is the Stewarts dangling Lord Darnley before her with his Tudor ties and noble Scottish blood. I cannot abide or allow an alliance between my cousin Margaret and Mary of Scots, damn them, connivers both.”

“But—you cannot ask that of me, not when I will always love you, and I know you would never command me to—”

“Shh,” she said and pressed her gloved fingers to his lips. “We will discuss it privily later. Besides, when has love ever had a thing to do with royalty and realms?”

Fighting tears, she turned slowly, sadly away, and he hurried to keep up. They walked from the stables into the blazing afternoon sun. He’d fallen silent, and she ached to think that she had broached the subject with him—or that she would ever actually send him away, and to the woman she feared and detested more than any other.

For, despite their problems, Elizabeth had always felt better with Robin around. And to think that Cecil had said once Robert Dudley was just waiting for a chance to rattle her so that she would realize she loved and needed him—even as a husband, a king.

She nearly lurched to a stop, and, thinking she had stumbled, Robin’s hand shot out to steady her elbow. Surely, she thought, Robin could not have been the one who laid hands on her in the maze. No, as she had reasoned out before, his future hung on her good will. Besides, the foaling gave him an alibi. Unless after that, while he was supposedly changing his clothes, as Jenks had mentioned, he’d waited in the hedges for her. Thinking just to shake her up, he’d not known his own strength. He’d meant to rescue her himself before Bettina came charging in …

She pulled free of his touch. Her attacker had been at least partly victorious if he could make her believe even her closest friends could be guilty. She shoved down another stab of panic when she recalled Mary Sidney had been abroad last night. Of course, her dear friend wanted only the best for her brother, so did that entail forcing her into Robin’s arms? Or worse?

No, the queen told herself, Mary had no motive for harming her sovereign and friend. Surely, surely she could not blame Elizabeth for the fact that she had caught the pox from nursing her queen. Friendship overcame such trials and tragedies, didn’t it?

“Devil take it,” Robin muttered, startling her again, “but would you look at that!”

“What’s wrong with that horse?” she asked, following his gaze. Around the far side of the stable block, a groom led a limping roan with what appeared to be long cuts across its throat and neck.

“I’ve warned him, but I’ve a good nerve to beat that spoiled, sadistic bastard Darnley to a pulp for whipping every horse he rides,” Robin muttered, as he smacked a fist into a wooden gate then kicked it open. His sudden shift to violence upset the queen as much as the sight of the poor horse. “He whips his hunt dogs, too,” Robin raved on. “The little priss is not quite twenty, so he’ll only get worse. He looks like such a handsome, graceful lad, then acts like a brute in private.”

“Then I must admit I hardly know him—and he sounds like his mother’s boy indeed,” Elizabeth said and tucked that new bit of knowledge away for dealing later with the Stewarts and her Scottish problem. For first, in the moonlit maze tonight, she had her own to solve.

Chapter the Fifth

“IS YOUR HEAD PAIN BETTER, MY DEAR?” CECIL ASKED his wife, as he hurried into their small suite. It consisted of a bedchamber and outer room, the latter which, when Mildred was not here with him, was filled with his own scriveners and secretaries. The household maid they’d brought from London peeked her head out of the bedchamber, saw it was him, and dosed the door to give them privacy. Mildred turned slowly toward him from where she’d evidently been staring out the casement window.

“Like you, my head pain comes and goes,” she said, standing her ground. “I didn’t want any of that elixir, even if it is from the queen’s herbalist. It makes me sleepy, and I don’t want to sleep. There is much too much to do around here.”

He assumed she was being shrewdly flippant, for he’d not spent much time with her since they’d arrived. He’d been late to bed, risen early. He’d left for the Privy Plot Council meeting last night and would be back out in the maze after dark tonight, none of which Mildred could know about.

“This evening, let’s go over our plans for building Theobalds,” he proposed with a smile, as he dropped his leather satchel on the table and gave her a quick hug. “It will have to be before dark as I have a meeting later.”

“You’re the one who loves poring over the minutiae of measurements on those diagrams, Will,” she protested as she weakly returned the hug. Mildred was a hardy, vigorous woman, so her apparent feebleness dismayed him. He needed some better tonic for her and soon. “When they become reality,” she went on, “I shall advise you on furnishings and ornaments on little Robert’s behalf.”

“Since the house is to be his inheritance, I thought you’d be pleased to contribute even in the planning stages.”

“If you put one tenth of the funds and time into Theobalds as you have into expanding and refurbishing your family’s ancestral Stamford home for your Tom, I’ll be eternally pleased.”

“The queen may visit Theobalds soon, and I’d like to have Templar come see that water maze, too,” he said, bending over the table to roll open a parchment diagram of the ground floor. “They’ll be excited to see it early.”

“Ah,” she said, remaining at the window while he poured himself a glass of ale, “Bettina will be excited to see it, too, I suppose.

“I’m not certain, but the Suttons seem to be inseparable.”

Glancing up, he could tell she almost said “lucky them,” or something of the sort. His hopes fell that being here at court would buck her up. Mildred’s mental malady baffled him. She had once been so calm and confident, so sure of him and proud of his achievements. But since Robert had been born lame with a bent backbone, icicles could have hung from her, though that was better than her occasional fiery outbursts.

Surely, he agonized, as much as she knew he admired Elizabeth Tudor, it couldn’t be jealousy for the time he spent with his royal mistress. She wasn’t
that
sort of mistress, and he’d never been untrue
that
way in all their years of marriage.

“Her Majesty only mentioned she’d drop by because she’d be nearby,” he rushed on, letting the parchment recoil itself. “She’ll be staying at Hatfield en route to a visit to Cambridge.”

“Cambridge? Your old stomping grounds, as they say. After all, she did name you Chancellor of Cambridge when you didn’t even finish a degree there, but of course, Her Majesty must know that and why. Your only grand mistake, you once said and yet you risked all for it, your family’s wrath, all your plans, all your dreams.”

He smacked his goblet down. He did not need to be reminded of those days when passion and not prudence ruled his life.

“After all,” she went on, “I rather think—”

A rap resounded on the hall door. Mildred nearly leaped to answer it as if she welcomed the excuse to say no more. It was Jason Nye, one of his most trustworthy assistants.

“Lady Cecil, milord.” He greeted them with a nod. “You said, milord, to tell you if Matthew Stewart came back to court, and he just rode in. Don’t even think his countess or son knows he’s back yet.”

“I’ll be right there,” Cecil said and rushed to seize the correct leather satchel from his array of them in his brass-bound coffer. “My dear, let’s dine here and go over the plans … .” he began as he spun around to bid farewell to Mildred.

She was not in the room.

“Her ladyship went out in a hurry,” Jason said, standing wide-eyed in the open door and gesturing into the hallway.

“So I see. She needs a breath of air, I believe.”

“Aye, that’s it. Saw her walking in this very corridor late last night, too.”

“No,” Cecil corrected him as they dashed out and Jason closed the door behind them, “Lady Cecil was not herself last night and kept to her bed.”

“Must have been someone else, milord,” he amended, but it was Cecil’s own words which echoed in his head. Mildred was not herself, so who was she of late? He obviously needed more than a single servant girl to watch her. Thank God he had her away from the children for a while. He was actually starting to fear that in her strange moods, she might do damage to herself—or to someone else.

“We’re going where, Your Grace?” Rosie asked. “The kitchens?”

“The flower garden was one thing,” Anne Carey put in as the two of them stretched their strides to keep up with their royal mistress, “but the kitchens? The hearths will make this hot day absolutely stifling in there. Your Majesty, are you certain you meant the kitchens?”