by Karen Harper
“I understand what you were thinking and fearing when we mentioned the Hooded Hawk,” she said. “It is hard to make out the lines clearly in the wax imprint of his signet ring, but I do see.” As she looked up, her wide gaze met first Cecil’s, then Drake’s.
“Yes,” Cecil observed, “this hawk could be a pun on Hawkins’s name, and so harmless enough, even as the note could be read in a guiltless way. And the hawk is in no way hooded.”
“I rather thought,” she said, as Cecil passed the note to Lady Rosie, “that the hawk’s head is nearly shrouded by the sails of the ship and so could be considered hooded in that regard.”
“Yes, a bit far-fetched, but I guess that could be,” Drake said. Both Cecil and Rosie nodded.
“At any rate,” Elizabeth plunged on, “it would align with the theory that your cousin Hawkins—through a hireling—could be behind these attacks, which then would be focused on you. But since the bolt and the arrow missed you, does that mean Hawkins thinks I would send you away because you are some sort of target? More like he should worry I would find out and have him hanged for endangering my life—and he needs my goodwill!”
“Perhaps, Your Grace,” Drake said, “he means in a way to reenact the battle of San Juan d’Ulua. He taunts or dares me to flee as I—I did during that battle.”
“Too devious for a blunt, straightforward man like Hawkins,” she insisted. “It’s a trait of you west country seafarers, I warrant. Though that wax seal could represent a hooded hawk.”
“But he’s oft at sea,” Drake insisted, “so how could he know to take advantage of a myth local to this spot? I doubt if he’d hear of it either in London, where the note came from, nor when he was in our home port of Plymouth to the west, where he’s ordered me to go.”
“Ned,” she said, “tell everyone what you reported to me about Hern the Hunter and this Hooded Hawk legend, and without another clever wordplay on shrouds or hoods, either.”
“Yes, Your Grace. Meg and I learned Hern’s a real man,” he began, “maybe almost in his ninth decade of life now, and lives in the forest east of town.”
“Which could be the forest we came through,” Jenks said, “the one where we found the finger tab after the arrow was shot. But a man of nearly ninety years could hardly shoot so well anymore.”
“Yes, I warrant it’s the same forest,” Ned went on, “but closer to Fareham than in the heart of the forest from whence that last attack came. Anyway, Hern used to be an excellent bowman, a longbowman even, but in the last forty years or so, before he got too weak or his eyes went bad, a shopkeeper told me, he was a bowyer and a fine one.”
Clifford, who seldom spoke at these meetings, put in, “Not many make quality bows and arrows anymore, not for battle e’en if for hunting. That’s why poor Tom Naseby’s death back in Guildford dealt a double blow.”
“So this Hern has bad eyes,” Cecil said. “Then it’s hardly been Hern placing that bolt and that arrow so precisely—if it was precisely, and he didn’t actually miss his target.”
“I also learned” Ned said, “that longbowmen have powerful shoulder muscles, and I warrant that old man hardly does.”
“So,” the queen said, “can we link this Hern in any way to the legend of the Hooded Hawk?”
“A legend he may be,” Ned said, “but many folk hereabouts seem to believe he either was or is real—reborn or some such nonsense. A fine marksman, they say, both with the crossbow and longbow, but he seems to have a mean, destructive streak of late.”
“How late?” Cecil asked. “Someone’s seen him recently?”
“Seen his cruel handiwork, at least, off and on this summer. He’s rumored to be the one who shot and killed a few sheep for fun, poached deer from Southampton’s forest, and put flaming arrows into a thatched roof or two.”
The queen’s gaze snagged Drake’s again. “Like fire arrows,” she said, “shot at a ship in battle, a Spanish trick. So,” she added, turning to Ned again, “the reasons we should find this Hern are to see if he could name someone who might still shoot a longbow in these parts and to inquire what he knows about the so-called rebirth of the Hooded Hawk.”
“My thoughts, too, Your Grace,” Ned said with a little bow as if his part were finished and he awaited his usual accolades.
“I’m desperate enough to want to visit him myself,” she vowed, “for all else seems to lead to dead ends, and that is not a pun.”
She jumped as someone rapped on the door to the room. “Why,” she said, lowering her voice, “each time we sit down for a privy meeting, must we be interrupted? And who, this late, would know?”
“A message could have come from London,” Cecil said. “I’ve kept Justin Keenan here for now and put him in charge of the couriers. I told him if something key came up—namely anything from my man who is watching the Spanish ambassador de Spes—to fetch me. I’ll see to it,” he added, and started to get up.
“Let Rosie go,” Elizabeth ordered. “If it isn’t Keenan, I don’t need someone else knowing that anyone but her is with me at this late hour.”
As Rosie went to the door, the queen said to Cecil in nearly a whisper, “I think we could use Keenan on this covert council. He’s back and forth, here and there. I know you repeat things to us from your intelligence, but he’s observant and, I wager, closemouthed, which is exactly what we need.”
“Your Grace, I really can’t spare him, if you mean to have him work directly for you, but …”
He let his voice trail off as Rosie opened the door and stepped out into the hall, then came back in. She closed the door behind her, walked a few steps in and said, “Master Secretary Cecil’s right, Your Grace. It’s his man Keenan with a letter in his hand for the master secretary only about—about what you said, my lord.”
“Cecil,” Elizabeth said, “I will not gainsay your wishes on this to allow him entrance, if you don’t trust the man, but you have shown that you do, and therefore I do, too.”
“Very well,” he said. “I will need to retain him in my employ, but I believe he should be able to report directly to this group, if there is some need.”
Rosie nodded and went back to the door to escort him in. Elizabeth could tell that Keenan, however stiff-faced Cecil’s aides had learned to be, was surprised to see the mix of servants and their betters sitting with the queen. For one moment, he nearly lost his poise and gripped the letter he held in his hand so hard that he bent it. He started to bow to Cecil, then realized he must bow first to the queen, which he managed a bit jerkily.
“My correspondence from London and other parts of the realm is always sealed,” Cecil said, “but I know full well the men I pay to pass it on to me through relays sometimes pass on what they know man to man. Right, Keenan?”
“Yes, my lord,” he said as he hastily advanced and laid the letter before his master. “I am to speak straight and fully here?”
“You’d best or your queen will have your head, man. Say on.”
Keenan cleared his throat and backed a few steps away from the table again, facing Cecil and the queen before he spoke. “The man you have in London, my lord, that is, the one who watches the new Spanish ambassador, de Spes, has discovered—in a way—the whereabouts of the crossbowman recently arrived from Madrid.”
“In a way?” Elizabeth repeated. “Explain.”
“That letter may have more complete details, Your Majesty,” Keenan said, as Cecil broke its seal, “but I hear that the bowman was sent out of London almost as soon as he arrived, with an escort who can speak good king’s—ah, queen’s English.”
“Sent where?” Cecil demanded, as he unfolded the letter.
“Sent south, that’s all your man could learn. South, not only with his weapon but with an ornate leather quiver full of Spanish-made missiles called something like quadros.”
“Quadrellos,” Drake spoke up, “not shot from a crossbow but from a longbow, if you want sticking power and good distance a shortbow cannot give.”
�
��A longbow?” Keenan said. “So he could be skilled at both crossbow and longbow? But no one shoots the latter anymore, Captain Drake, though I saw it demonstrated once when I was young.”
“You’ve done well, Keenan,” Cecil said, “but you may keep childhood memories to yourself, as well as all you have said, seen, and heard here. Is that understood?”
“Perfectly,” he said with a smooth bow that showed he had fully recovered his composure. “Secrecy and quickness are, after all, my lord, thanks to you, my stock-in-trade.”
Chapter the Eleventh
She needed this glorious day, the queen thought, as her entourage’s horses clattered through Fareham and headed toward its harbor. The sky was blue; the salt-scented air was crystalline. The sun was warm but gentle. And again, her people cheered.
This was not a planned parade, but those working or walking along her route bestowed upon their monarch their spontaneous fervor, which made it all the better. Surrounding her and Drake rode seven guards, including Jenks and Clifford. So as not to overtax Drake’s hospitality, she had brought only two of her ladies-in-waiting and Robin. Let Norfolk and Southampton fume and do their worst, for she’d left them behind—being covertly watched by Meg, Ned, and Keenan.
Elizabeth ignored how Drake’s armor bounced against her hipbones when she rode, for it made her feel secure, even as his own protective arms would. She blushed at that wayward thought and shook her head. He was a man newly wed and her captain, who served her purposes nationally, not personally—and yet, though no one would ever know, he did move her that way. Maybe Robin had been right to instinctively dislike the man. Perhaps he had sensed that to which she had paid no heed at first—that Captain Francis Drake, in many ways, social class aside, was a man after her own heart.
“There she is, Your Majesty,” Drake said, and pointed into the distance. He grinned and added more quietly, “The other ‘she’ in my life beside my wife and my sovereign.”
She laughed with him but felt her face grow warm, and not from the midmorn sun. It was almost as if he had read her mind.
“Why are ships always referred to in the female gender?” she asked, keeping her voice light.
“Forgive me, Your Grace, but ships, like females, may be beautiful, yet they can be difficult to control.”
Robin laughed too loudly at that, but it reminded her that he was here, watchful as ever. She lifted herself slightly in the saddle to see the place on the wharf Drake had pointed. Evidently thinking she was responding to their cheers, the crowd of sailors, vendors, and workers bellowed louder.
She knew then that she’d like to come again, without all the din and danger. If only she could be a woman friend of Drake’s just dropping by the Judith without this entourage in tow …
“She’s much more of a sight at sea, Your Grace,” Drake was saying. “When she’s bare sticks and rigging like this without her sails full of wind, without breasting the waves, she’s hardly what she’s meant to be.”
He wasn’t looking at his queen now but at the ship as they reined in where it was tethered to huge mooring posts. Yes, Elizabeth thought as both Robin and Drake helped her dismount, she’d like not only to come again but to see this ship in all her glory out at sea.
The crew, wearing sky blue shirts and caps, lined the deck railings and clung to the highest riggings. When their queen smiled up at them, they waved their caps and huzzahed with three crisp cheers: “The queen! The queen! The queen!”
It was a thrill for her to walk the gangway to board the ship. Why must a ruler be land-bound? Her father had sailed more than once to France. Was not the water lying beyond this pretty river and the broad bay called the English Channel, so was not she queen there, too?
Drake introduced her to his beaming first mate, Haverhill, then took her on a tour of the ship, pointing out places where his men had fallen in the battle with the Spanish, showing her numerous patches in the sails and the plugged holes where quadrellos had pierced a mast or the deck.
“Driven deep, just like the one in my coach,” she observed.
“Driven deep if they weren’t first stopped by flesh and bone.” He frowned, evidently recalling the horror of the battle—and yet, she thought, it had made him dedicate himself to fighting the Spanish, and she needed him for that. Didn’t his cousin Hawkins, who seemed so jealous of and angry with this steadfast, younger man, realize they both needed men like Drake?
The only part of her visit she did not like was eating in the small, crowded captain’s cabin, though the food was adequate and the wine surprisingly good. She felt closed in, however safe. She wanted to walk the deck again, to crank the windlass he had showed her that hoisted the anchor, to push the capstan herself to raise the topmasts and cargo, and to take the helm in her own hands to steer this ship.
As she prepared to leave the table, Drake slipped her something wrapped in a linen napkin. At first, she wondered if it could be some sort of private gift, but he whispered, “One of the quadrellos the blasted Spanish left aboard as a token of their deceit and destruction. You can compare it with the other one.”
She nodded her thanks. Though she was eager to look at it, she put it up her sleeve and carried it out that way.
At the bottom of the gangplank when she was ready to depart and the others couldn’t hear, she asked Drake, “Is there any reason—excuse—for you to put briefly out to sea in the next few days?”
“You mean, Your Grace, besides obeying my cousin, who does not realize he cannot command me to leave you when you sent for me?”
Cannot command me to leave you when you sent for me echoed in her head, as if they were hurried words between two lovers.
“Just for a short while, I mean,” she said, feeling her face heat up again. “To show me how it is at sea. Perhaps to check the sails or some such.”
“Of course, if that is your desire. How many should I plan to take out, then?”
“In these times, I would not come as the queen,” she told him, speaking even more quickly since she saw Robin coming their way. “I would be in plain garb with but one woman and four guards.”
His eyes widened; his lips parted.
“There have been times of need,” she rushed on, “when I have briefly traded places with my herb woman, Meg. She stays in my rooms, then, of course …”
“What’s this about a course?” Robin asked, wedging his shoulder between the two of them.
“We were discussing,” Drake put in before she could answer, “the course the ship must take when I sail her out of the river and into the waves of the deep.”
“Soon, I hope,” Robin said, as he offered the queen his arm and she took it. “For a sea captain should be guarding our shores against those Spanish dogs, eh, not riding ahorse through forests and towns. The sea must remain your realm, Drake, not the queen’s terra firma.”
All the while he spoke, Robin slapped his leather riding gloves, held in one hand, against his thigh. He’d drunk a great deal of Drake’s fine wine, so she hoped there would not be some sort of scene. Drake stood as if made of stone with one hand on his sword hilt and his other in a fist at his side.
“The queen’s terra firma,” she said to break the palpable tension, “will too soon hurt her feet in these new boots, and I am ready to ride back. Are you coming, then, my lord Leicester? I believe Captain Drake has work to make his ship seaworthy again, but years ago I put you, man, in charge of my horses.”
She pulled her arm from Robin’s and walked away, but he quickly caught up with her and, before Jenks could, linked his hands to give her a boost up into her sidesaddle. When Jenks left to get his own horse, Robin said up at her, “You hang on his every word, that is all, my queen.”
“I would hang on yours, too, if you would stop talking of such petty concerns as—”
“Petty?”
“Do not interrupt me,” she whispered down at him. “And let go of my foot!”
“If it indeed hurts, I could tend to it, rub it until it feels mu
ch better.”
“Stop!” she hissed. “Both the queen and her captain need your help and support in these tense times.”
“The queen and her captain?” he muttered, as if he hadn’t heard her order to desist. “It sounds like a romantic drama, perhaps one your master of revels, Ned Topside, could write and stage.”
She yanked her foot from him. “Keep away from me unless you amend your topic and your tone, my lord. I need support and protection from those who would harm me with arrows, so if you are not for me, I will assume you are against me. And the others are starting to stare!”
“My queen, the only darts I would ever shoot at you are Cupid’s arrows, and you deflect those—perhaps to others. You don’t think that I had aught to do with the attacks on you—or on your Captain Drake?”
“Why would I think that? Because you are madly jealous and can neither control your temper nor take orders from your queen? Because you’d like to scare Drake back to sea or worse—or frighten me back into your arms?”
She moved her horse away, and Robin scrambled to mount and keep up with her. He was sullen and sulky all the way back, but she couldn’t have heard him over the cheers and sporadic shouts of “God save our queen!” anyway.
Yes, she thought, please, Lord God, save the queen. Save her from the dire possibility that someone she cares for, someone she trusts, someone she is even kin to could want to take her throne and her life.
Late that afternoon, the vast halls and many chambers of Place House echoed only with the footsteps of servants, for, at the queen’s insistence, her hosts and her courtiers had gone hunting. Keeping Lady Rosie with her, Elizabeth was supposedly lying down to rest. The truth was, she, disguised as Meg Milligrew, was going hunting, too—hunting for Hern the longbow maker. Meg stayed behind with Rosie in the royal suite, guarded, as it were, by Cecil, who was working on business in her outer presence chamber.
