The Hooded Hawke: An Elizabeth I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  It was somewhere near ten of the clock when they arrived and Jenks hid their horses, tethered far back in the thick stand of oaks. No lights emanated from the church, but she wasn’t certain they would show anyway with the thick ivy over the window. Still, somehow Lord Sandys and others in town must have known when outsiders were meeting here at night.

  “Jenks and Clifford, time for you two to get inside,” she ordered. “Go quietly and carefully, lest someone else has gone in before you, and remember, I said the wooden door leading up from the crypt into the church shrieks like the very devil.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Jenks said. “I have the kitchen grease right here for the hinges so’s you won’t make a sound when you open it later to hear what’s going on.”

  “Good. Though we can use no lights, perhaps the full moon will help. Conceal yourselves behind Sandys’s parents’ effigies, the ones in the corner. Should our visitors hold some sort of service, it’s conceivable that they might use the lectern or baptismal font, however good listening posts those would be. Remember, voices echo in there, so you must keep silent, but I warrant their words will carry to you.”

  Clifford and Jenks nodded. She had instructed them in all this before, but she wanted to make certain nothing could go wrong. She, Drake, and Ned watched the two of them disappear down the pitch-black tunnel, where they would have to feel their way along. Drake closed the door behind them.

  “At least they won’t get lost in there,” he whispered in her ear. “It’s a straight shot.”

  “I wish you hadn’t put it that way,” she countered, hoping her voice sounded brave, for her heart was thudding so that she kept thinking she heard hoofbeats already. She almost tripped over the dead tree trunk that Sandys had mentioned he was oft tempted to roll across the entryway. It would be useful if they did need to trap the conspirators inside.

  The three of them hid in the graveyard behind the tallest, straightest headstones they could find. Drake was quite close, Ned a bit farther away. Elizabeth knelt so she could peer over, but her left calf muscle threatened to cramp, so instead she sat on the ground with her back against the stone.

  She glanced at Ned, huddled with his arms around his bent knees and his head down. She knew he balanced on the edge of despair. How much he had meant to her over the years she’d been queen. Loquacious but loyal, too full of himself, but finally able to admit he loved Meg so that he found domestic joy as well as accolades for court drama—and then to lose so much, his son, and for a time his wife. She prayed all would go well to recover Piers for them and Sim for Jenks. Jenks, too, had been with her from the first, her bodyguard once in bitter exile and now—

  She jumped and strained to hear each time a new noise came to her ears. The hoot of an owl, the breeze in the branches, even the cry of a cuckoo in the oak trees. Four headstones away, Drake jolted at what sounded like the scream of a hawk, which sent shivers up her spine.

  Time went by. Why didn’t someone come? If this plan went for naught, at least she was soon heading back toward her own protected palaces, but she could not bear to leave all of this unsolved and unpunished. And with that rebellion brewing …

  A horse whinnied nearby. Could the sounds of their own mounts carry this far?

  She twisted around and got back on her knees. Mounted men—she couldn’t tell how many—reined in near the woods. Just two of them? Then she heard more hoofbeats, coming from the direction of the town. Yes, at least three more. How long had she and her men been here waiting? It could indeed be just before midnight, for, as the moon had risen in the sable sky, it had shrunk and faded to palest, coldest silver.

  She accidentally clunked the chest piece of her armor against the gravestone. She froze, but the men didn’t seem to hear it. The sibilant sounds of their whispers floated to her on the night breeze, but she could not pick out distinct words. Another man arrived, a lone rider in a cape and hood, who seemed to emerge from the woods.

  “Ah, our hawk’s here, too,” someone said, as the lone man dismounted. Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath; her eyes widened, trying to pierce the darkness. She saw he did not wear a cape but rather a doublet with padded shoulders and flowing sleeves so that it seemed he had wings—and he sported a hood, one that, like the ones her own stable of falcons wore, completely covered his head but must surely have slits or holes for his eyes and mouth. He was about Robin’s height and build and, as he dismounted gracefully, his moon-silvered silhouette showed he carried some sort of bow and bore a quiver of arrows on his back.

  The group of men—six of them—lit candles and quickly vanished into the mouth of the tunnel as if the graveyard had swallowed them.

  Meg couldn’t bear the waiting. Ned had said the men they went to find tonight could know something about Piers, like who had taken him, where he was held.

  If that was so, why had she been left behind again? This time, not even to stand in the queen’s stead but to be shuffled aside when the one who needed her most in the entire world was out there, missing her—or, if worse had come to worse, she would be missing Piers, like her little baby Ned, forever.

  She glanced across the small room at Jenks’s wife, Ursala. Holding her little Bessie on her lap, she’d fallen asleep from exhaustion, slumped over on the stool with her back against the wall. Meg could see her friend had been crying, but what good did that do? Meg had cried herself sick when little Ned died, but that did not help. Only action was worthwhile, even if that action was to follow her boy—her boys—in death.

  After all, the queen always acted. She might fume and fuss, rant and rave, but she always acted. Nor did she do what men advised her. Despite the danger, she did not stay here when Cecil told her to. Though she was queen and Meg just an herb mistress, Elizabeth of England set the tone for all women, if they only heeded her ways. Yes, discretion could be good, but decisions and deeds were what got results, that was the lesson Meg had learned.

  It wasn’t a long walk into town, she thought, trying to buck herself up even more, and she knew that the Church of the Holy Ghost was on this side of little Basingstoke.

  Meg stood in one slow motion and took a step to see if Ursala would awaken. She and Bessie did not stir. Meg walked toward the door. Lifting her cloak off the hook on the wall, as a last thought, she took with her the bow and quiver of arrows by the door that Ned had used in his Robin Hood play. They were no doubt just for the stage and show, and she’d never shot such a thing, but if she had to, she would.

  Elizabeth waited only a few minutes, lest someone else should come who could trap her between him and the others. She was anxious to go inside, to hear what was being said. Motioning to Drake and Ned to follow her, she stood and moved toward the mouth of the tunnel.

  She was prepared for it to be absolutely black inside, but she was surprised to see that a candle had been wedged in the clay floor just inside the door and another farther on. Did that mean someone else was coming, or just that the men inside were used to lighting their way out? Should she leave Ned behind as a watchman? No, she wanted both Ned and Drake with her. Everyone had been so prompt here, she decided they were all inside.

  Bending to avoid scraping the low, earthen ceiling—some of it with tree roots sticking through like gnarled fingers—they hurried down the length of the tunnel. Their good luck held! The men inside had not closed the door to the Sandys crypt but had left it wide open, as well as the door to the stairs. They were not whispering inside, either, but evidently talking full voice.

  Were they speaking Spanish? she wondered, and stopped so quickly in her tracks at the bottom of the narrow steps up that Drake hit into her, then steadied her with his hands.

  “Ave Maria, gratia plena,”everyone was chanting in a dissonant, singsong melody she had not heard since her royal sister had forced her to attend Mass years ago. Not Spanish but Latin. Were they only here to have a Catholic service? They kept repeating that single phrase over and over.

  Then a voice cut in, “Hail Mary, the next queen of
England, too!”

  Drake’s hands tightened on her shoulders before he evidently realized he should let go. She was regretful he did, because she was tempted to charge up the stairs, shouting at the traitors that she was their God-given queen, not their beloved Mary.

  “Best we get down to business,” another man said.

  Their voices carried well, though they echoed strangely. She knew she’d have trouble recognizing them with the reverberations in here, so she was going to creep up the stairs to look through the effigies to catch a glimpse of the men, especially that one garbed like a hooded hawk. She’d known he was no phantom, but who was he? Four candles flickered on the altar, but that hardly helped.

  “Everything is set to go within a fortnight,” the same man continued. “High and low will rise to fight under her banner as we sweep south toward London. Unless, that is, the Hawk and his—ah, his owner can swoop in for the kill soon, to save us all the trouble.”

  Several men laughed briefly, gruffly. She picked out one distinct snicker. How dare they jest about regicide—murdering their rightful queen!

  She peered between the head of the male effigy and the stone pillow on which he stiffly lay. The conspirators stood in a circle before the altar, all dressed in black, like a coven of warlocks. From here, by glancing along the wall, she could also see Jenks and Clifford, crouched behind the next pair of effigies, ready to spring. Yet she could not see the speaker’s face. If she could, the few candles they’d brought in with them would do little to illumine his features, anyway. It had been dim during the day in here, but it was all deep shadows upon shadows now.

  What she could see if she shifted slightly to the right was the Hooded Hawk figure, at least his mask, if that’s what it was. Could that be Norfolk himself, and he did not want to be identified even among these men? Surely—surely it was not Robin. If he would but speak, perhaps she could tell, or Drake could recognize his cousin Hawkins’s voice if that were he.

  As if the very stones in here breathed out chill breath, she began to tremble. Could the man wear the hood because his visage was as ruined as old Hern the Hunter had said? A stag had gored his face, so he always wore the hood. However the man’s face under there looked, he was the murderer, she was sure of it.

  “We shall ride to free Her Majesty from whatever castle in which they hold her,” a new voice said. “Then she will be well protected behind our vanguard as we move south, picking up new recruits for the cause as we go, those who will rise to throw off what the so-called new religion has spawned. We shall forge an alliance with the Spanish and return this land to its rightful faith and ruler …”

  It was almost too much for Elizabeth. She longed to scream at them, to seize from Drake the sword she had insisted he muffle with a cloth in its scabbard and attack them on her own, hacking them apart.

  “But you let me speak for zee Spanish, no?” came another voice, one heavily accented. “I give—ah, how you say—zee word of zee magnifico rey Phil-eep-ay Segundo to give sheeps.”

  “Juan means ships,” another voice put in. “We have here signed pledges of aid from the Spanish King Philip.”

  “Then all we need,” the first voice said, “is to hear how the current queen is holding up under the barrage of the Hooded Hawk to ruin her bold attempt to defy us on this summer progress to stir the hearts of the people, so—”

  It was the last thing that made sense. Behind her a strange voice bellowed, “Look out, men! You’re being watched from behind this tomb!”

  Chaos crashed around her. Another plotter must have come in through the tunnel. He scraped out his sword as Drake drew his to fight him off. Metal clanged; men shouted. As the traitors before the altar rushed to help their comrade, Jenks and Clifford, swords raised, leaped from behind the other effigies to take them on.

  In the resulting clash, the man who had shouted grabbed at Elizabeth. He missed as Drake shoved him away, but the stranger had her cap in his hand; her hair spilled free.

  “A woman!” he shouted. “A woman here!”

  In but a moment’s swordplay, Drake ran him through, then grabbed her wrist and shoved her down the steps behind him as he took the next man on.

  “Go!” Drake shouted in the clamor. “I’ll hold them on the stairs. Go!”

  She half ran, half fell down the staircase to the crypt and dashed in, only to hit her hip on the corner of the first lead casket. In the return of darkness after the candlelight above, she blindly felt her way along, past the other caskets, smack into the tunnel door she was certain had been left open. That man who gave them away must have closed it behind him. Where was the latch to it? Sandys had had trouble with it yesterday, and he’d had a lit lantern in his hand.

  At first when the paving stone over the top of the crypt shuddered and began to roll aside, she felt relief. Clifford and Jenks must have prevailed above, however badly they were outmanned, and they were opening the ceiling crypt to help her.

  In the dimmest of candle glow from above, which seemed so bright at first it almost dazzled her, stood two men. One went back to the fight, so only a huge, broad-shouldered, hooded figure loomed overhead, holding a crossbow and drawing a bolt from his quiver.

  The noise of a sword fight and the grunts and cries of men still sounded above her. Should she scream for Drake and give herself and him away, or would the others all charge him and her then? Besides, she could hear him still fighting on the stairs. Surely someone would see and stop this demon who bent his knees to peer down at her.

  He cranked the bowstring taut with his foot in the rachet stirrup, fitted a bolt, and aimed at her. She leaped aside, crouching behind the closest casket, pressing to the wall next to the escape door as he shifted his position above and let the arrow fly.

  It zinged at her, glanced sideways off the casket, then her chest armor, hit the wall somewhere, and skittered beneath her feet.

  “Like a hawk diving at a pretty little dove,” he said in a guttural, unearthly but taunting voice. “Or like fish in a barrel instead of a queen in a coach.”

  He knew it was she! Was he supernatural?

  As she heard him crank the crossbow again, she felt madly for the latch, found it, and lifted it as the second arrow pinged into the crypt with a clatter against a lead casket. Elizabeth yanked open the door and tore down the tunnel, praying not only that she would be safe but that her men and her dear Drake would somehow escape the overwhelming onslaught.

  Six of them to their four, Drake thought, now that he’d killed the one who had touched the queen. Not good odds, but he knew the queen’s men would be skilled with a sword, except perhaps that actor of hers, and if he ended up dead, poor Meg would be bound for Bedlam at best.

  He parried, thrust, moved, putting everything into it. Despite the fact the enemy had left four candles burning on the distant altar, it was so damned dim in here. Worse, he had to fight up the steps while his opponent leaned down to hack at him.

  He was quite sure this was the Spanish-speaking man he battled, and that fed his fury. He imagined he fought hand-to-hand combat on the Judith, that he had stayed to fight in the battle with the Spanish dogs, but he knew he had to get to the queen, escape with her to protect her. When their swords met and held for one moment, Drake heaved the Spaniard away, shoving him up the steps, where he tripped him and ran him through. He’d half expected it to be someone he’d recognize, but it wasn’t.

  “Jenks, Clifford!” he shouted. “Lights out! To the tunnel!” The two big men took his meaning. Jenks ran his weapon through the altar candles. When one rolled to the stone floor, still lit, Clifford, swinging his sword in a wide arc to hold off his attackers, stomped it out.

  Just before he fled, Drake thought that the full moon through the ivy-laced stained glass window looked like an evil eye glaring at him. In the dark, from memory, the queen’s men raced toward the tunnel to follow her out and, perhaps, to seal the others in here.

  Drake tripped over his opponent’s body and twisted his ankle on th
e steps, then bumped into someone on his way into the crypt below. “Jenks?”

  “Aye, Captain. Lead on. Clifford?” he bellowed.

  “Here!” the yeoman called, and evidently swung his way down into the crypt through its open roof stone to join them. Now how had that got open? Drake wondered.

  Their luck held, Drake rejoiced as they started down the tunnel, though it was now pitch-black. Had the queen snuffed the lights, or had the man who’d given them away done that?

  Drake hit into the closed door at the other end so hard he bit his tongue. “Ugh!” he woofed out. “I know she wouldn’t have closed it on us. Someone must have either followed her out or been waiting out there for her. Here, reach around me, one of you, to see if we can budge it.”

  He and Jenks tried. Again. Again, to no avail. By my faith, Drake thought, since it doesn’t have a lock, someone must have rolled that tree trunk in front of it, and the queen could not have managed that.

  He spoke again, though he tasted bitter blood in his mouth. “We’ll have to hope we don’t get sealed in here from the other end, that we can fight our way back into the church, then find a way out to reach her, and fast—for someone must have followed her outside.”

  “We’re good as trapped here if those men be waiting for us when we go back,” came Clifford’s voice.

  “We have no choice, no choice at all. If it weren’t for her safety, I’d have stayed to fight, not fled. Back, men. Swords raised, back.”

  Her brain going as fast as her feet, Elizabeth ran deeper into the woods. She wanted to flee toward the town, but who could she rouse to let her in at this late hour? The road to the Vyne was too open, and her horses tethered far into the woods.

  Her first impulse had been to take one of the conspirators’ horses, but they had shied away from her. No time. The Hawk pursued her. She pictured the hunting scene she’d witnessed many times: With talons outstretched, a hawk dove toward its hapless prey to rend it apart.