by Karen Harper
“So what did you do?” Elizabeth asked.
“I went in, across the floor, trying not to slip on those brown flower bulbs—like Flanders flower bulbs, hyacinths and tulips.”
The cuckoopint herbs that must have been spilled in the struggle, the queen surmised. She was about to ask another question when Marie went on in a clear voice, “Only she was there, in the starch bath with her mouth open in a scream and her eyes wide and staring up at me. Since no one was there, I was terrified I’d done it, but I couldn’t have … or I’d remember that, wouldn’t I?”
“Of course. No, you couldn’t have done it.”
“But I killed my mother when I was born!” she cried, reaching out to grip the queen’s wrist so hard her hand tingled. “But I didn’t murder her again then, did I, when I was floating in the white liquid of the birth? I saw puppies born once—in white stuff like that starch bath.”
The girl sounded delirious, and yet the jumble of images—and fears—made dreadful sense.
“Marie, listen to me. No, your mother’s death when you were born was not your fault. The childbed fever killed her, kills many, but it was not your fault. My brother’s mother died like that, but it was not my brother’s fault any more than it was yours. No one blamed him and no one blames y—”
“I do!”
These cries of anguish were the first time Marie had made much noise. What if her parents heard and came running? But she had to stay; there was more to know. The queen recalled that when she’d seen Hannah’s body, the starcher’s eyes and mouth had been closed, as if she’d died at rest. Had whoever plucked the corpse from the starch cared enough to arrange her features in repose before the stiffness of death set in? Who cared for Hannah that much and had the strength to lift her out? The same someone who might have had a tryst with her, one that went very bad?
Elizabeth’s stomach began to cramp even more. Not Thomas! His signet ring had been in the starch bath. Or could Hannah herself have had it from him as some sort of pledge? Or had his lover Gretta had it, and Hannah inherited it? She must face him down on it tomorrow at dawn, as soon as she saw her Privy Plot Council again.
“Was the large window always open above the starch vat?” Elizabeth asked the now silently sobbing girl. Marie nodded, then just hugged Sally hard.
“Though my physician found no bump on your head, did you hit it somehow?” the queen asked, touching Marie’s shoulder. She knew she should leave her alone now, but she felt so close to answers, to knowing.
“Ran,” she choked out. “I ran and fell down the stairs, I think, but I’m not sure. Maybe I hit my head—I don’t know.” She looked at Elizabeth again. “Did her killer go out the window? I ran outside and watched it, but—but … that’s all I recall now.”
Desperately Elizabeth hoped the murderer had gone out the window, because then it surely could not have been Thomas Gresham, not with that bad leg of his. She whispered to Sally, “Tend her close, and let us know how she is when Master Topside comes calling tomorrow. I pray she doesn’t slip back, for she’s made great strides. I must go now.”
“If she don’t recall,” Sally said, “should I tell her you been here, e’en if her parents ne’er know?”
“If she believes that it was a dream, let it be,” Elizabeth urged, scooting off the big bed. “If she recalls the truth, tell her the queen is on her side, no matter what befalls any of us, in mourning all those we’ve lost.”
She squeezed Sally’s shoulder and slipped out into the anteroom. Two ghostly women’s forms were all she saw, until Ned and Clifford emerged from the dark.
“We must go now,” she whispered, and indicated Clifford should ascertain the hall was clear. He looked out, then poked his head back in and nodded, so they all streamed out and hurried down the staircase to the door where Bates awaited.
As they emerged into the street near her coach, Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief that tonight’s plans had been both fruitful and smoothly accomplished. If what Marie had said was fact, though, a rough road lay yet ahead.
Elizabeth convened her Privy Plot Council before dawn the next day. Bleary-eyed, they stood around the long table, no one sitting since she remained standing. “We need to move quickly,” she told them. “Marie Gresham has recalled enough of what occurred that, should the murderer learn how much she knows, her life could be in danger.”
“Then Sally’s, too!” Meg cried.
“I will find a way to protect them,” Elizabeth promised. “I believe she is safe for now, because she evidently did not actually see the killer, so, I pray, the killer did not see her. But I have summoned you now because early this morning, these are the things that must be done. I am relying on each of you, for I have another meeting in this very room about the possible unrest in the northern shires.”
Looking worried, everyone nodded. How much they meant to her, this stalwart mix of her servants of all kinds, her friends, indeed. “Jenks and Meg,” she went on, “I want you to return to Hannah’s loft and examine it both outside and in, specifically to discern whether her killer could have escaped out the window over the starch vat. Also observe carefully where someone could have hidden within the loft while Marie was in the room and thought no one was there.”
“Maybe the same place he later hid the body,” Ned said. “On the shelf behind those rolls of fabric.”
“But those rolls would have been very difficult to place once one was already on the shelf. You two, should Hugh Dauntsey still be about the place doing his inventories, wait until he leaves so he doesn’t see what you are doing. Also, I have a purse of coins for you to give to Ursala and Pamela for their help yesterday.”
She looked at Jenks, who looked immensely pleased, then at Meg. If her herbalist thought her queen had not noticed how upset she was yesterday when Ursala was the center of attention, she didn’t know her monarch after all these years.
“Ned,” she said, turning to him, “I must ask you to try to trace this perfumer of gloves, Celia, though I doubt that she has returned to her place of employment after leading Meg such a merry chase.”
“Yes, Your Grace, with pleasure. I’d like to give her a bloody nose for how she hit Meg.”
“If you should find her, bring her here. I’ll send Bates, too, so that the two of you can control her. If you cannot locate her, at least try to learn her full name, so you can find and visit her home. And if there is no trace of her from the original glover’s at Eastcheap and Abchurch, using Meg’s description of her, try other glovers in the area to see if she’s been in for further employment. We must have it verified that Marie’s notes went from her to Hannah—and learn why she refused to convey more.
“My lord Cecil, I would not have roused you so early on a day when we have national issues at stake, but I need you to do two things.”
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“First, send a message to Chief Constable Whitcomb saying that I have personally interrogated Meg Milligrew and believe she is innocent of all his suspicions.”
“Oh, Your Grace,” Meg blurted, “I thank y—”
Elizabeth held up her hand. “Second, my lord, everyone is to take a good look at the diagram of possible murderers you have been keeping—and then you are all to keep your mouths shut about the fact that the Greshams themselves could be guilty and must yet be watched. I’ve summoned Sir Thomas here forthwith for further questioning.”
“But Sally’s at their house!” Meg cried. “And what if their own daughter recalls that she saw or heard one of them?”
“We must move quickly, but both of them love their adopted daughter desperately. And I tell everyone here, just as I would bet my life that Meg had naught to do with Hannah’s death, surely neither did my honorable, rational Thomas Gresham.”
“Where’ve you been?” Jenks demanded when Meg joined him at the back gate to Kings Street just at dawn. “You’re late.”
“I had to check the herbs in my drying shed,” she told him, out of breath. “No t
elling how long we’ll be out today.”
They hurried to Hannah’s loft but saw by the lights above—and by glimpsing him through the large window they were to examine—that Hugh Dauntsey was upstairs, even at this early hour, so they headed for the nearby laundry with the sack of coins for the twins. Jenks was so excited to be the bearer of such riches that Meg’s heart went out to him. She knew what it was to be in love, though never with Jenks. And she had Ned where she wanted him now—didn’t she?
Her heart overflowing with love for Ned, she could let Jenks go with her blessing. How protective Ned had been of her when he was assigned to find that glove perfumer. She couldn’t hold out against him much longer, and, after all these years of fighting him, she didn’t want to. She only prayed he felt the same—and that the queen would want a marriage between her two longtime servants.
“It’s still so early,” Jenks said. “Bet Ursala’s women aren’t even there yet. Ursala said she usually stays in the shop’til they come. Meantime, Pamela stakes out bushes and grass in the field to dry the linens.” He bounced the purse once in his big hands. “Ursala’s the practical one. She’ll divide these coins up proper.”
“And maybe save some for a dowry?” Meg teased, and even laughed to see him blush as the first hint of sun slanted westward into their faces through the narrow street.
They knocked on the shop door and entered, blinking in the darkness until their eyes slowly adjusted. The shutters Ursala had opened the morning they were with her were still closed.
“Ursala?” Jenks called out.
“They’re probably still all asleep out in back.”
He shook his head. “Not with the street door unlatched—I told her to keep it secure. Besides, if they don’t have their spots staked out by now in the field, she said, they’ll have to dry things in here and it takes forever.”
“So they’ve all gone there today, that’s all. Oh, look. There’s some laundry sticking out of that tub—” Meg got out before she realized what she was looking at. Not linens but a woman’s body bent over with her head and shoulders in the tub. Jenks lunged across the room to lift the woman out.
Limp, heavy, sodden. Dead?
“No! Ursala! No, oh dear God, no!” Jenks cried.
The sack of coins spilled, sending shillings all over the floor as he cradled the sopping body in his arms.
Chapter the Twelfth
“IS THERE SOME CRISIS WITH INTERNATIONAL financial matters, Your Grace?” Thomas Gresham blurted the moment he straightened from his bow. Also standing, the queen and Cecil faced him across the width of the long table, Her Majesty directly before him with her secretary of state on her left. When they said nothing at first, he went on, “To be summoned so quickly, I just assumed—”
“Did you not think it might be something about finding Hannah’s murderer?” she demanded, leveling a look at him that would have frozen the Thames solid.
It was obvious that Elizabeth was fighting to control her temper. He’d seen it unleashed before, but never, thank God, at him. Two days ago, when she’d confronted him, he’d escaped with a smack of her hand on the table, though he knew she was capable of so much more. She’d vowed then that they would work together to solve Hannah’s murder, but he sensed she was against him now. He did not have the gall to simply stare back but had to say something. He felt as tautly strung as an archer’s bow, ready to snap, but he must speak up for himself.
“I—having been your money man, as you have called me, for years, and having served you well—”
“I know you have served me well, and I need no reminder of your genius or loyalty to me. I have summoned you here to return to you some property you have lost and of which you cannot possibly deny ownership.”
With that, she smacked not just her hand but a gold ring onto the table between them. His eyes widened as he leaned forward to look closely at it. He instantly knew—feared—what it was but took his time picking it up. It appeared to be coated with some sort of paste, which sat in the engraved lines and seemed to glue the grasshopper’s wings together.
“Ah, my signet ring. I have several of them,” he declared, his voice just a bit too defiant to sound natural. “Four, I think. Where was this found, if I may ask?”
“It must have slipped off your hand in the liquid,” she said.
He frowned; his pulse began to pound. “When I washed my h-hands?” he stammered. “Did my wife or the girls find it and give it to you for some reason?” He got that much out before he realized that Anne indeed might have given it to the queen. He’d thrown such a ring at her in their bedroom.
“I am asking the questions here,” she said.
He told himself to keep quiet, but he plunged on anyway. “Did Sally find it—or Nash Badger?” His mind raced. He’d dispatched Badger to inspect the progress of the exchange. “I think, Your Majesty, the ring was lost in my house, to tell the truth.”
“To tell the truth,” she echoed, her tone almost mocking. She gripped the back of one of the tall chairs as if to brace herself. “Thomas, the girls did not send it to me, nor did your wife or Badger. This was discovered at the bottom of the starch bath in which Hannah died, so I am assuming it will help me get to the bottom of the mystery of her cruel murder—with your explicit help.”
His knees nearly buckled. He leaned so heavily on his walking stick that he swayed before he regained his balance.
“Well, my lord?” Cecil spoke at last. “How could it possibly have gotten there?”
“May I sit down, Your Grace?”
“I try not to parlay at my council table with those I cannot trust or those who mean to do me or my people harm,” she countered. “Pray tell me that could not possibly be you.”
“No, Your Majesty. That could not p-possibly be me.”
But, he thought, could Anne intend to implicate him with the ring? Surely she was not still that jealous or hateful, but if he were executed for a murder, she would have the rest of his fortune and Marie all to herself. Yet when and how could she have put the ring in the liquid in which Hannah had drowned?
“Jenks,” Meg cried as he continued to hold the drowned woman in his lap where he’d collapsed onto the floor. “Jenks! We have to go for the queen before word gets out. It’s too much like Hannah’s murder. We have to tell the queen!”
He only nodded, sucking in great breaths and sobbing. Jenks never cried, never collapsed under duress, never lost his mettle. How much and how quickly he must have loved this girl. Meg’s heart truly ached for him.
Jenks was getting soaked now, too, as if he were drowning in his own tears. With Ursala’s sopped hair flat to her head and her clothes clinging to her, she looked much smaller than Hannah had with her hair and garments stiffened by starch.
“You stay here with her, then, but lock this place up till I get back,” she said, bending down to grip his shoulder. “Jenks, shouldn’t we look in the back room to be sure we didn’t corner the one who did this?”
Nodding, Jenks laid Ursala carefully on the floor. Not only had a lot of water sloshed out there and his coins spilled, but, Meg noted, several bulbous roots lay about. Her cuckoopint stolen from those sacks at Hannah’s? That would mean the same murderer, indeed.
Swiping at his tears with his wet sleeve, Jenks drew both sword and knife and headed for the back rooms where the family lived. Meg prayed he wouldn’t find other bodies there, but if the culprit were hidden within, she could tell from the set of Jenks’s shoulders he was a dead man.
Crouching, weapons at the ready, Jenks banged the door open with his booted foot, then leaped inside. “Don’t see anyone,” he called to her. “Help me look around, under beds and the like.”
“And on shelves,” she muttered, starting to tremble. Every time she was sent to find someone, catastrophe struck: first Hannah; then that horrid glove perfumer, Celia; now this.
She helped Jenks search the three small rooms in which the family lived. Ursala had evidently inhabited the smallest chamber,
one with no windows, while Pamela and her husband had the one on the other side with the common room between.
“Nothing,” she said, straightening from peering under the last bed while he stood ready with his weapons.
“Nothing but my hopes dashed,” he whispered. He seemed to wilt before her eyes as he resheathed the sword and knife. “Yes,” he said, “hie yourself to the queen, before the constable is summoned.”
Meg shook all the harder at the thought of having to face any constable, the local one or the chief man, who seemed to dog her so. Everyone knew constables were laughingstocks, so maybe he was too inept to find Hannah’s real killer. And he was part of the Parliament that wanted to give Her Majesty much grief until she agreed to wed. At least, Meg prayed, the queen would—she must—get to the bottom of all this.
“Jenks, I am truly, truly sorry,” she said, turning back at the outside door only to see him lean against the wall, then sink to his knees beside the body again. Had he even heard her? “I’ll find someone to fetch her family from the field, too,” she added, and slowly opened the street door, peeking out to be certain no one suspicious was lurking. But when she stepped out, Pamela, rushing toward the door, bumped into her.
“Oh, Mistress Milligrew!” she cried. Meg seized her shoulders to halt her entry to the laundry, but she had no idea what to say to prepare her for what lay within.
“You been talking to Pamela?” the woman asked, confusing her even more. “No’fense, but I been hoping Her Majesty would send Jenks. So’s I told Melly—that’s my name for her, and she calls me Lally—I’d stake out our ground this time. Peter’s guarding it’cause Pamela weren’t feeling too good. Sour stomach, but we’re hoping she might be with child and not really ailing.”
Jenks came to the door, barring her way before she could see inside. “Pamela,” he said, “I’m sorry, but …” His voice trailed off, and he gaped at her. “Ursala?”
