by Karen Harper
“Maybe you would not have to play sneak thief yourself, Your Grace, for any of us would do it for you.”
“It’s probably hidden in Norfolk’s wagons far back behind us, or even in his saddle packs right under his bouncing bum!”
Rosie chuckled, then cried, “Ouch! Stuck myself, and there’s a drop of blood on the silk now.”
“Somehow,” Elizabeth said with a sigh, as she sank back on her bolster, “that seems appropriate. But your suggestion’s a good one, Rosie. Even before this pillow is done, it’s possible that Meg Milligrew should take more healing salve to Norfolk’s chamber at the inn. The point would be to go when neither he nor his servants are there so she could search for that pillow.”
“I suspect you could occupy him easily enough, but his servants, too?”
“I’m thinking. Rosie, take a respite from all that dim, rocky sewing, for I think we’ve struck on a plan. That is, if there is a safe place for the court to play fox and geese this evening at the inn, where an arrow can’t come flying at us. Yes, fox and geese, I think, with Norfolk as the fox.”
Their stopping place for the first night, Waltham Chase, was a charming village, where everyone gave her a warm welcome. It was obvious from their garb that farmers had come fresh from their fields to cheer her arrival. Welcoming speeches were, thankfully, short. She was heartened even more to see that rooms awaited them in the obviously scrubbed and newly whitewashed wayside inn called the Bramble Bush. It boasted a tile roof, which could not catch fire, although many of the retinue had to scramble for beds in the village or pitch their tents on the town green.
Also, the queen was pleased to see, the Bramble Bush was built in a big square with a grassy central courtyard where tables of food were set out. Once those were cleared away, it would be the perfect place for a game of fox and geese. Though she was going to make Norfolk the fox, it was truly Elizabeth, with Meg’s help, who would be the sly one tonight.
Her courtiers were so relieved to see their queen in such good spirits that they probably, she thought, would have agreed to play the game in a dirty barnyard. Though fox and geese was oft played as a board game, it was most fun when played lifesized in the snow or where the pattern of the chase could be laid out on a lawn. Here, Ned and Jenks drew chalk lines on the cobbles while the queen appointed the geese first. The courtyard now looked like a giant chessboard with added diagonal markings where persons would become the moving pieces.
Though she strove not to give away her nervousness, Elizabeth glanced up at the inner windows of the inn. Norfolk’s room was directly across from hers. It meant that Meg could glance out to be certain the Duke of Norfolk and his servants were here in the courtyard and could not catch her upstairs where she shouldn’t be.
“All right, now!” The queen clapped her hands to get everyone’s attention. “Remember to beware of the fox.”
“What fox?” Robin asked, annoyed at being chosen one of the geese. “You haven’t named a fox, so I volunteer.”
“You would be a good one,” she said, forcing a smile, and keeping her voice light, “but I have another fox in mind. My dear coz, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk!”
He looked as if he would protest at first, standing stiffly with his arms crossed over his chest and a sour look on his face, but the others pushed him into the center of the squares and X’s along which he would pursue the geese.
“I haven’t played this since I was ten,” he muttered, but she could tell he liked being the center of attention. “Run the rules by me again,” he said to her.
“Rules?” she told him. “How nice of you to want to play by the rules, my lord. All right, everyone! The geese can move only sideways, downward, or diagonally forward, but the fox can move in any direction. You can also jump over a goose and capture it, my lord, as in checkers, and multiple jumps are allowed in a single move. The geese only win if they pen you up so that you cannot move, and the fox wins by capturing all the geese. All right, now, Secretary Cecil is going to cast the dice and call out the numbers.”
As she had recited the rules, Norfolk’s long face had taken on an increasingly wary expression. He must have realized she was setting him up, perhaps even warning him as she had done both indirectly and directly before. She held her breath for a moment, praying he wouldn’t take offense and stalk off to his room.
As she left the queen’s quarters and headed down the crooked hall toward the Duke of Norfolk’s chamber, Meg clasped the small stone jar of broad-leafed dock tincture to her stomach, hoping to still the fluttering there. The queen had invited all the servants to come down to watch the games tonight, and Meg could see with her own eyes from peeking out the queen’s windows that Norfolk and the three servants he kept with him were below in the courtyard.
Still, she felt on pins and needles, like the ones the queen had said must have been used to embroider such an intricate message and puzzle on the pillow she sought.
A floorboard creaked underfoot; she hesitated. She’d never liked the Duke of Norfolk and was kind of afraid of him, too. If he caught her here, she knew well to say that she had a bit of the salve left and wanted him to have it lest his stinging nettle rash returned. But, ever since he’d jumped out at her in Southampton’s wilderness gardens, she’d thought of him as the beast of the forest. Yes, she didn’t put it past him to be behind the Hooded Hawk rumors, in league with the Earl of Southampton.
Of course, Norfolk was not the shooter of the lethal arrows, for he’d been in plain sight twice when they came flying in, but it could be one of his servants, she reckoned. She only hoped she could make it up to the queen for being seen by Norfolk and Southampton at the window the day the queen went sailing. This had to work.
After the next turn in the hall, she counted three doors on the left, just as Ned had told her. Once Norfolk went up to his chamber to bed, Ned and Jenks were going to keep an eye on him. Jenks would guard his horse in the stables, and Ned would sit at the top of the staircase to be sure the duke didn’t sneak out for some mischief, especially once he saw his precious pillow was gone.
If she could find it and get it to the queen. Meg thought it would be best just to examine it, leave it there, and tell the queen what was on or in it, but Her Majesty wanted to see it herself. Wanted, she’d admitted, to see what Queen Mary had slaved over, to see her handiwork to know more the depths of her desperation.
The depths of her desperation. That was exactly what the queen had said, when Meg was so afraid her beloved mistress was mired in those depths herself of late.
She knocked lightly on the door, hoping that didn’t draw anyone from a nearby room. Nothing. No sound, no movement. Perhaps the queen’s invitation for food and fun had cleared out the entire inn.
“Now, you are not to take time to search overlong for the pillow if you cannot find it,” the queen had said.
“But what if I spot a crossbow or longbow or more of those bolts or quadrello arrows?” Meg had asked.
“Then, if the coast is clear, bring those to my chamber immediately,” she’d said, her voice excited. “But no heroics, that is my point, Meg, though if you do not spot the pillow at first—without disturbing his things—you might look around briefly. Briefly, for I do not know how long I can hold him.”
Meg lifted the latch and pushed. With a creak, the door opened.
“Hello?” she said quietly. “Just brought a bit more healing salve for the duke’s poison nettle rash.”
Silence within, but cheers and laughter outside. She darted in and closed the door behind her.
The fox quickly gobbled up geese, including Drake and Robin. Elizabeth had been hoping Norfolk would get hemmed in so she could give him a cryptic warning, for the man had always loved intrigue. He was well suited for Mary of Scots in that respect, for she also planned and plotted, with her enigmatic Your assured Mary and the puzzle of the truncated vine on that pillow. Surely Lady Southampton had not made any of that up, for it was far too clever for her. That pillow existed, an
d Elizabeth must get her hands on it to read its implications clearly before she confronted or imprisoned Norfolk— or let him snare himself even more with the rebellious northern lords before she trapped and punished them all.
“I can’t believe,” Norfolk said to her, “you condescended to be a goose and let me possibly catch and devour you.”
“It’s just a game, Master Fox,” she said, and forced a laugh. “Or, in your mind, is it more?”
He laughed. His teeth shone bright between his nut-brown mustache and beard.
“You see,” she said, “you haven’t caught me yet, and, with my friends and allies, I may yet surround you. Your move!”
She managed to evade him once again, though he captured Rosie.’S blood, he was going to win this time, when he said he hadn’t played in years.
Her next move, then, must be to keep him here after he’d won, and as a goose next time—though maybe she could make up a new rule that if the fox won, he played the fox yet again.
When he turned away, she glanced up at his chamber window. No sign of Meg, of course. Then she realized that where Norfolk’s three servants had been, looking on and laughing off to the side, only one remained.
The pillow wasn’t on his bed, where Meg had first looked. Nor was it in the tooled leather coffer at the foot of the bed. Men’s garments there; she hoped she hadn’t pushed them awry in her quick search. More coffers and boxes were stacked in a corner, seven of them, which must have been unloaded from his personal wagon. It would take her too long and more strength than she had to lift and go through them all.
Think! Think!
She opened the saddle packs she saw on the floor near the door and rifled through them. Nothing. At least she could hear the raucous game still going on full force outside.
When she moved away, she accidentally kicked the jar of salve where she’d put it on the floor beside her—hurt her toe, too. She was not to leave the salve, of course, unless she was caught and had to say that’s why she’d come. Let him wonder who had taken his pillow.
She got on her belly to reach for the salve under the bed. His sword was here in its scabbard with his belt. How she wished she’d found a crossbow or longbow, even though Her Grace said not to spend extra time looking for such when they knew the pillow was a surer bet. But behind his sword was another saddle pack.
She stretched out to reach it and dragged it toward her and felt inside. Something soft, but not silk. Many courtiers on progress followed the queen’s lead and brought their own bed bolsters or pillows, but in his saddle pack and under the bed?
When applause and cheers exploded from outside, she jumped so hard, she hit her head on the side of the bed.
She pulled out the pillow. Plain linen, that’s all. No—no, this was a cover for another one within.
Her heart thudding in her chest, she opened the linen case. Green! Pale green. But it wasn’t what Lady Mary had told the queen was on it. Meg saw some sort of embroidered bird within a wreath. Could this be the wrong pillow? Another pillow, a mate to the one the queen wanted?
She turned it over. Yes, on this side was the very thing she was sent to get.
Meg thrust it back into its linen case. Then on second thought, she took three shirts out of the coffer at the bottom of the bed and stuffed those in the place of the pillow in the leather saddle pack before she shoved it back under the bed. Holding the pillow down at her side as if it were something unimportant in a sack, she hurried out the door.
She was just around the turn in the hall when two of Norfolk’s three valets passed her. Her legs almost turned to butter as she merely nodded and went on her way. Their voices floated to her as she picked up her pace toward the queen’s chamber.
“Don’t see why he gave us the high sign we can’t stay down wi’ the others,” one groused.
“Funny, though, to see his lordship playing the fox, eh? Good choice, I’d say.”
Meg hesitated, thinking they might say something incriminating, but their voices faded and she heard a door slam. That was close! Wait’til she told Her Grace she just missed getting caught.
She rushed into the queen’s chamber, closed the door behind her, leaned against it, and finally exhaled. Then she recalled she’d left the jar of salve under the bed where it had rolled when she accidentally kicked it.
Chapter the Fifteenth
Look how the woman sewed her signature,” Elizabeth muttered as she, Meg, and Rosie bent over the pilfered pillow. “Not elegant but grandiose, not bold but brazen.”
She ran her fingertip over the stitches of Your assured Mary, but she did not touch the green vine or the knife cutting it. All the raised work was done in a slightly darker green than the pale silk background.
“How dare she be so intimate with a man she must have surely never met!” Elizabeth exploded. “She gives no title, no family name here, just Mary, as if it is a simple vow to give herself to him, body and—and conspiracy, for I swear, the woman has no soul!”
She jumped at the sharp rapping on the door. “The lord secretary awaits, Your Majesty,” her yeoman’s deep voice came through the old oaken door.
“Send him in!”
“Did you get it?” Cecil asked the moment he entered and Clifford shut the door behind him. “Ah, I see you did. Good work, Mistress Milligrew!”
“But one thing,” Meg blurted, wringing her hands. “As I told Her Grace, by chance, I kicked the stone jar with the curing tincture under his bed where I found this, then left it behind, the poison nettle tincture, I mean. If the duke figures out what it is, he’ll know who was there.”
“Yes, well,” Cecil said, “let him fret that we are onto his machinations. It will either sober him up to behave, at least for a while, or push him over the edge, then we’ll have him. Jenks and Ned are at their assigned positions?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth said, as she turned the pillow so he could see it right side up. “I told them to man their posts as soon as darkness fell, and that is now. I wonder how long it will take Norfolk to miss this. If he sleeps with it every night, the blackguard, it may be soon. If he doesn’t put it on his bed, Meg stuffed shirts in the saddle pack where he carries this, so he may set out with us on the road and believe he has it yet.”
“The E-shaped vine is just as Lady Southampton said,” Cecil observed, “cut off at the head. Yes, I read this as a personal threat against you, Your Grace. Leave it to wily Norfolk and an even wilier woman who has been twice wed—not counting her liaison with Bothwell—to be so clever at a seductive and subversive sport between them.”
“Beyond that, do you think any of this is some sort of cipher they’ve developed? And look, here on the back …”
She turned the pillow over; she and Cecil moved closer to the lantern on the table. Rosie and Meg hovered on either side as Clifford’s voice sounded through the outer door again, “Captain Drake here, Your Majesty.”
“He may enter.”
Clifford opened the door for Drake, then said, “Can’t find the courier Keenan yet.”
“Keep looking,” she said, and, as the door closed, turned back to their study of the pillow again.
“Whatever is this?” Cecil asked, stooping closer to the small bird in flight embroidered on the back of the pillow in the lower right-hand corner. Its outline and eye were done in black thread, but its beak, legs, and feet were gold. Surrounding it was a wreath, seemingly attached to the beak as if the bird carried it or wore it as a halo. “Could it be a falcon—or a hawk?” Cecil inquired.
“And could that wreath be intended as a hood?” the queen mused. “I warrant this is as much of one as the sail surrounding the head of the hawk in the wax seal on John Hawkins’s letter to you, Drake.”
“It—it couldn’t be a duck, could it?” Drake asked. “A male one, a drake, meaning I’m to be cut off, too? Could that weirdlooking wreath be a sort of noose?”
“No one knew before ten days ago I would summon you to accompany me on this progress,” Elizabeth reason
ed aloud. “It seems highly unlikely that the Scots queen could have learned you would be with me, then had time to sew this and have it sneaked out past her hosts and delivered to Norfolk in that amount of time. Granted, the lethal archer seems to be taking aim at you also, but I cannot fathom how this could symbolize your name.”
Rosie put in, “I rather think it’s a dove, like the symbol of the Holy Ghost coming down from heaven. I realize she didn’t embroider its body with white, but, you know,” she went on when no one responded, “the dove descending on the Lord Jesus when he was baptized in the River Jordan.”
“She’s right,” Elizabeth said. “And God spoke the words from heaven, This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased. But I can’t see how any of that relates to the current situation with the Scots queen.”
“Queen Mary has borne a son, in whom she is no doubt well pleased,” Drake put in. His gaze met Elizabeth’s over the bent heads of the others. Did he recall their discussion of how much he wanted a child, when he knew she did, too?
“At any rate, that son is hardly hers now, as the Scots lords took the boy to rear when she fled with Bothwell,” Elizabeth said. “This bird does resemble a dove more than anything, but maybe it’s the dove Noah sent out from the ark after the flood to see if there was dry ground yet—if they could rebuild. That concept seems more on the mark with Queen Mary’s current state and her hope to rebuild my kingdom with, as she believes, God’s blessing.”
“Yes,” Drake said, “but a reference to the ark could be a covert reference to a ship—one under attack as ours have been by the Scots queen’s Spanish allies. I’m trying to recall the rest of that Noah story. He sent the dove out twice from the ark, and the first time it returned with nothing.”
“And the second time,” Elizabeth said, “it came back with an olive branch to let him know the flood was receding. Since the times of the ancients, an olive wreath has meant not only peace but—”
