Elizabeth I - 05 - The Thorne Maze

by Karen Harper

  “My Lord Cecil, I hope Mildred slept through all of this, so as not to upset her.”

  “She was still asleep this morning, Your Grace, so I haven’t even had the opportunity to tell her this tragic news.”

  Steadily, almost defiantly, his eyes met his queen’s stare. They both knew Mildred did not like Bettina. Perhaps, Elizabeth thought, as she broke their gaze first, if Mildred was dangerous, she should send her to Theobalds as she’d requested. Had she actually asked to go because she wanted to flee a murder she knew about before anyone else? But to think that the staunchly moral Mildred would harm someone was as insane as blaming the befuddled Kat.

  “What did the local authorities say when they came to claim and examine Bettina’s body?” Meg asked.

  “I meant to begin with that but was distracted,” Elizabeth said.

  “I’ll bet they declared it murder outright,” Ned put in, “especially when they heard her husband was recently dispatched in a maze, too. And if they knew about your attack, then—”

  “I did not tell them any of that. Besides, we don’t know for certain,” Elizabeth challenged, “that Bettina was murdered or that it was in the knot garden, and it’s not quite the same as a maze.”

  Everyone’s heads had snapped toward her, even Cecil’s. Ned’s jaw dropped before he closed his mouth. Obviously, they were surprised, but once again, she had not been impressed with the rural bailiff and his men. Nor did she want it noised far and wide that she had been attacked, probably by the same murderer. And truth be told, she’d do anything to protect Kat from being questioned.

  She was beginning to panic. She was going to lose control. Even to be considering those dearest to herself and Cecil as people with motives to eliminate the chatty, promiscuous Bettina terrified her.

  “I want an independent investigation of Bettina’s body,” Elizabeth explained further, “without the authorities being swayed by what happened to me or Master Sutton. We must see if they can discern a natural cause of death, or if it must indeed be poison. I gave them permission to bury her in St. Alban’s, and they will report to me soon, but I—we—cannot wait for their findings.

  “So, let us turn our thoughts toward the relationships between Bettina and her husband’s former students—his younger students, I mean, of course, my lord,” she added with a nod at Cecil.

  “I believe,” Cecil put in, “other than Lord Darnley, Chris Hatton and Jamie Barstow are our best bets for a culprit.”

  “You are no doubt right,” Elizabeth said. “In the hall last night, Bettina immediately blamed Chris Hatton for gossiping about her and even declared she’d get him for that. Perhaps she went looking for him, they argued … though I cannot believe it of him.”

  “But he’s ever with Master Barstow,” Ned put in. “And it’s obvious Barstow’s been his guard as well as valet and tutor at times, so he’s probably the man to question, too.”

  “I am suspicious of the young men,” Cecil said, “Darnley too, because of the cut-off clothing and the clippers stuck in the ground as they were. It seems to me to be the work of some randy young man who wanted to insult Bettina for her carnal and seductive nature. Not that I believe her murderer actually ravished her, for then, why bother with that bold display?”

  “So you aren’t implying she was ravished?” Elizabeth asked.

  “I certainly have no way of knowing that. It could be that the mere message of the clippers and exposed legs were the assault on her person.”

  “Then that hardly rules out a woman murderer,” Ned said. Elizabeth saw Cecil glare at him, though she too would have liked to order Ned from the room.

  And, Elizabeth thought, though she agreed with Cecil’s smooth reasoning, the sexual innuendos from the way the corpse was displayed hardly pointed to a woman assailant—unless it was a woman who wanted to publicly punish and shame Bettina for her promiscuity.

  Across the table Meg hugged herself and shuddered. “At least the murderer didn’t cut the poor thing up with the clippers. If I only hadn’t left them there the day before …”

  “Don’t blame yourself,” Elizabeth said. “But, needless to say, we are looking for the bottoms of Bettina’s skirts. They may be merely hidden or someone may have kept them for a sort of trophy. Meg, I want each inch of that overgrown knot garden searched for them.”

  “We can at least trace this,” Cecil said, producing from his satchel the goblet they’d recovered from the murder site.

  “But it’s plain—commonplace,” Ned observed, “like a hundred others I’ve seen. Maybe it was even Bettina’s. Have we considered suicide? I mean, she was emotionally volatile, bereaved, and then made distraught by Kat’s claims which shamed her with courtiers and her queen looking on.”

  “I believe she was too strong and clever to take her own life,” Elizabeth said, though she realized that solution would solve so many problems. “But, if that goblet did hold poison, I vow I will find whether it was hers or someone helped her die. Her room has been sealed, but tonight—when a hundred eyes won’t watch me—I will search through the few possessions Bettina brought with her to Hatfield.”

  “Well,” Meg said, “I can’t see the Countess of Lennox or Lord Darnley having a goblet plain as that, though that hardly lets them off the hook.”

  “But I can still see this whole thing amusing Lord Darnley,” Ned said. “He’s wily and slippery as an eel, and I believe it pleases him to play games. Perhaps, like Templar used to, he fancies puzzles or conundrums.”

  “He has not half the wit Templar Sutton had, though he’ll be thoroughly questioned again,” Elizabeth declared, hitting the table with her fist. “I’ve had my yeoman guard Clifford watching him, and he says Darnley took an evening stroll late last night, after the hubbub with Kat and Bettina.”

  “Though,” Ned added, “with Darnley’s proclivities for late night assignations, he may have been meeting a man.”

  “But,” the queen countered, “if Bettina was out wandering the grounds and Darnley ran into her, he could have killed her to plague us all again. ’S blood, I didn’t mean to say it like that.”

  “Clifford didn’t follow Darnley when he went out?” Cecil asked.

  “I had told him to stay put in the hall of their wing and note all their comings and goings, which he did faithfully.”

  “I will do anything I can to help,” Cecil said with a fierce frown that contorted his features, “but if I begin to interrogate courtiers, it will get out we’re investigating on an official level.” He looked so tired and careworn that Elizabeth’s heart went out to him despite her own inner chaos.

  “And, I suppose,” she added with a deep sigh, “if I go after everyone broadside, they will whisper that I am trying to pin both Templar and Bettina’s deaths on someone else to protect Kat. But we must persevere, and I am the one most able to get away with an inquisition, at least of Chris, Jamie, and that damned Darnley. I swear, as soon as I can discern Darnley is not a murderer, at least, he’s going to be sent straight to Scotland!”

  She sighed again as everyone headed for the door. “Did you reclothe poor Bettina properly?” Elizabeth asked Meg, the last one to leave the room.

  “Yes, Your Grace, with an extra black skirt of Mildred Cecil’s her lord brought me. One Lady Cecil won’t want, he said, as it was stuffed in a rag bag, but he had their servant steam it out. It’s a good, somber black, not fancy but of good stuff. It had some snags in it, a hole too, but I made sure that was under her. You know, maybe it would be best if the coroner declares she took her own life, though that’s a vile sin and …”

  But Elizabeth had not listened to Meg after she mentioned the hole in Mildred’s black gown, one she’d evidently hidden away. Yes, without telling Cecil the real reason, she must send Mildred, as she’d asked, to Theobalds, then go there herself to question her forthwith.

  Chapter the Thirteenth

  “BUT THAT’S DREADFUL ABOUT BETTINA,” MILDRED told her husband as they ate a private dinner together.
“First Templar, then Bettina. Who could have held such a grudge against the two of them, my lord?”

  “All I can say is that the local authorities have been summoned. As for grudges …”

  His voice trailed off, though Mildred could tell he had something to say. Her stomach in knots, she bided her time, forcing herself to keep eating the fine pigeon pie which might as well be filled with sawdust.

  “Grudges,” Will began again, “especially those that are long-festering, can come out in strange ways, I warrant. Mildred, I realize that since Robert’s birth you’ve been fretting about how he compares to Tom—”

  “Fretting? More like foaming at the mouth, like some sort of mad dog, isn’t that what you really think?” she challenged, clinking her spoon against her pewter plate. Yet she was relieved the conversation had not taken another turn, for this was familiar jousting ground.

  “And I was wondering if what might be bothering you, too, could stem from the fact that I wed his mother in the rashness of youth, when it was ill-advised, yet I persevered.”

  “Indeed you did,” she said, rising and walking to the window to gaze out over the sunny grounds of Hatfield. “Your tutors at Cambridge were appalled, I hear, that their brilliant student was ruining his reputation, and I know your father nearly disowned you.”

  “True—that’s true. Because I went through such a bad streak, you think I’d countenance Tom’s caperings, but I’ve been so hard on him, not wanting him to make the same mistakes.”

  “Caperings? Seducing virgins from respectable families and stealing from his tutor’s money box when you sent him to study on the continent is mere caperings?”

  “Do not sway from the subject at hand this time. I’m admitting I made mistakes back then. But can it yet vex you that I wed Mary Cheke against all odds?”

  She knew she would lose control, but she couldn’t help it. “Does it bother me that I know full well she was the great love and passion of your life?” she screeched.

  He looked astounded and appalled. Had the man, one of the most able in the queen’s kingdom, never considered that his love for his beloved first wife produced a strong son and his mere duty with his second respected wife a dead son and then a sickly one?

  “You are much mistaken, Mildred, but I—I see your reasoning,” he stammered at last.

  “It’s not reasoning, my lord, as educated as I may be. It is my heart talking, not my head. How you yet must long for her, the woman who—though she was an innkeeper’s daughter—made you risk your entire future for her.”

  “But Mildred,” he said, getting up from the table so fast his chair knocked over onto the floor. He left it there and came toward her, arms outstretched, palms up. “Mildred,” he began again, “all I knew was a wild beating in my blood then, and the foolish defiance of my youth. I may have lusted once for Mary but it is you I chose with much forethought, you whom I respect, honor, and deeply admire.”

  “Respect and honor, even admire?” She smacked her hands on her skirts so hard they bounced. “Templar supposedly had all that from you, too, and Bettina had—”

  She bit off her words and raced to the door before she could say more. But when she opened it to run out, the queen’s fool and principal player Ned Topside stood there, hat in hand.

  “Pardon my lord and Lady Cecil,” the actor said, sweeping off a plumed cap. “Her Majesty has decided that Lady Cecil may go to Theobalds if she wishes, and she’ll provide an escort. But she needs you, my lord, to stay here on state business.”

  Mildred noted that Ned lifted his eyebrows as if in some signal to her husband. “Though it pains me and my lord to be apart,” she said before Will could get a word in, “tell Her Grace that I shall gratefully obey and be gone within the hour. No doubt, my lord, Her Majesty has need of you right now.”

  “As a matter of fact …” Topside said and gestured toward the hall.

  “It heartens me you will have some time there to appreciate the place and to see that the manorhouse is in order for the queen’s visit,” Will said as he grabbed his satchel and his hat. He was no doubt relieved to ship her away so there would be no more outbursts. That suited her, for she wanted out of here.

  “I’ll be over to Theobalds to see you as soon as possible,” Will added, “and I’ll bring the building plans.”

  Mildred could see his usual cool control was ready to boil over. “By all means, bring the building plans,” she said, and closed the door a bit too hard behind him.

  But he opened it again. “I forgot to tell you that we needed a good but sober black skirt with which to clothe poor Mistress Sutton to face the coroner and then for burial, so I took a black one you had evidently cast off. I didn’t think, since the poor wretch was dead, that you would mind.”

  Fortunately for him, he closed the door quickly, because she heaved a pewter plate at it as hard as she could. But when she realized which black skirt he meant, she shouted for her servant and began to pack in earnest.

  Jenks’s hopes fell. The Inns of Court looked as deserted as the rest of the city. Worse, just a few doors beyond the sprawl of Gray Inn’s buildings and courtyards he spotted a tell-tale bundle of straw hung from a window to signify an infected house. Quickly, he ducked down an alley that ran beside the main building of Gray’s. A black rat darted across his path, then veered back toward him. He kicked at it, then turned through the first door he found open into the paved central courtyard.

  “Halloo! Anybody here?” he called out only to have his voice echo off the walls. “Halloo!”

  The silence and solemnity of the place impressed Jenks. The Inns of Court, including Gray’s, Lincoln’s, and Middle and Inner Temple, were collectively called the Third University of England for the learning of law. Twice he’d been with the queen’s party when she’d been entertained at Gray’s, one the day she’d plucked Chris Hatton out of his student life here. The place was usually aswarm with students. He couldn’t believe they’d all fled since it seemed so safe and sheltered here.

  As the sun set, he found a lantern, but not a bite of food. He wandered through the wilderness of brick or timber-and-plaster walls, his feet echoing on slate, stone, or oaken floors. He looked in the dining hall, the chapel, and the library, wondering if Templar Sutton’s books were part of this massive sea of them, maybe half a hundred, all told. He felt crushed he’d not find anyone to question and no food either but at least he had a light.

  As he headed out of the library, a dark figure blocked his path. Tall, thin, the man raised a cudgel.

  “Hold there!” Jenks cried, crouching to spring or flee.

  “State your name and business,” the crisp voice cracked out.

  “Ned Jenkins of Norfolk, a friend of former student Chris Hatton. He told me I could put up here while passing through.”

  Jenks amazed himself. It was always the clever actor Ned who invented people and played parts, but it was too late now to take the straight and honest way.

  “Passing through plague London?” the man challenged. Then he added, “Certes, I remember ‘Handsome Hatton,’ as they dubbed him.” He stowed his cudgel back in his belt. “Name’s Hugh Scott, night porter here, pretty much the only one left to keep an eye on things with bands of thieves and ransackers about and all. So, how’s he doing at court—and that friend of his went along, too?”

  “Jamie Barstow, you mean?”

  “Aye, Jamie Barstow. He was more my style, one foot firm on the servants’ rung of the ladder, but the other leg up. Hey then, I was about to go mad as a Bedlamite, alone in this big rabbit’s warren of a place, so what the deuce, I’ll put you up one night.”

  Maybe there was some benefit to lies, Jenks thought. This man might not have believed him if he’d said he came for the queen, and in a way, he hadn’t. Elizabeth Tudor would have his head for sure if she knew he’d disobeyed her to come into off-limits London—unless he could get what she needed out of this man.

  “We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for,
do we?” Meg asked the queen as they searched Bettina’s goods in her tiny, slant-ceilinged room under Hatfield’s eaves late that night.

  “Another wretched surprise, I suppose,” Elizabeth muttered as she ransacked the single, small coffer while Meg stripped the bed down to its web of supporting cords so she could probe the mattress and sheets.

  “I hate to say this,” the queen admitted, “but I’d give a country castle to turn up a suicide note, saying she murdered her husband and couldn’t live with the shame so she killed herself. But not with those hacked off skirts and those clippers, she didn’t, and the murderer wanted us to know that. He—or she—lives by his own set of perverse rules, as in some hide-and-seek-in-the-maze game we’re supposed to be playing.

  “Look,” she went on, delving deeper into the coffer. “She brought Templar’s garments and goods here with her. I should have known she had a certain affection for him—unless she just kept them to sell later.” She flipped through a law book in Latin in case something were secreted within; she couldn’t believe her good fortune when a piece of paper fluttered out.

  “I don’t think she’s the bookish sort,” Meg muttered. “That’s probably Templar’s notes.”

  “No,” the queen said as she skimmed it, “it’s a note to Chris Hatton, and, I warrant, in Bettina’s hand. It must be very recent or at least she’s hidden it here recently. Otherwise Templar could have found it.”

  “‘I never meant to shame you or tarnish your new path here at court,’” Elizabeth read. “So, she wrote it either here or at Hampton. ‘But I cannot keep from wishing you would smile on me, instead of her—Her Majesty, I mean.’”

  “So she did have a motive to attack you,” Meg cried.

  “Enough of one to strangle her sovereign? I wonder why she didn’t send this note, or if this is just a copy or draft. That is probably the case as there is no more, and that can’t be the end of it.”