by Karen Harper
“But she died a whole week ago,” Sally put in.
“Yes, but with the inquest, they held her body for a while. Besides, the coroner and constable had to be called in … So sad,” he added, and shook his head, looking mournful.
“Is that where my parents went?” Marie asked, gripping her hands together. “I know they argue about her—my real mother—sometimes.”
“Oh, no, they had separate errands, I believe. They wouldn’t go there. I doubt if anyone will, so it will be a sorrowful and lonely burial. Frankly, before your mother left, she warned me most sternly not to tell you about the graveside service, but I thought you would want to know anyway. I believe you spoke privily to your aunt when she was here in this very courtyard, pleading for money …”
Again his voice trailed off, and he shook his head. So that was why her mother had scolded Badger this morning. He had always been so kind to her, and her mother had resented his familiarity. Worse, just this morning, she had pried out of Marie the truth about sending letters to Hannah through Badger and Celia and no doubt blamed Badger for that favor. Oh, dear, she had probably partly caused the tonguelashing Badger received, though he didn’t look the worse for wear over it—much better than she herself took her mother’s lectures.
“I would love to attend the service in my aunt’s honor,” Marie admitted, “but after all the trouble I caused last time I ventured out, I just don’t know.”
“Oh, I understand you wouldn’t risk a scolding just to honor your dead mother, as well as her sister. Celia, who was willing to help you before, and I will go in your place,” he said, indicating the side gate to the street. “She awaits me there. We’ll be back soon, before your parents return, so that we don’t get in trouble. It’s not far, as we’ll go over the bridge, right past the shops with all the pretty goods for sale.”
“But surely St. Saviour way across the river was not Hannah von Hoven’s parish church,” Sally said.
“Ah, no—I believe the queen has paid for things, arranged them there, though she’ll be too busy to go, of course. At least the two of us, myself and Celia, though not related to poor Hannah, will be there, and we’ll tell you all about it, secretly, of course, when we return.”
“You’re sure you won’t be gone long?” Marie asked, pulling her cloak tighter around her as a chill swept her, along with a wild idea.
“Not over an hour. Out that door and back in it soon.”
“Sally, will you go with me?” Marie pleaded, turning to her frowning friend. “I so long to go. I will never be able to visit my mother’s grave—too far, and they wouldn’t let me. It would mean so much to me to go to my aunt’s resting place!”
“Do you dare disobey them again?” Sally asked. “I, too, promised the queen that—”
“You vowed you’d stay with me and watch over me,” Marie argued, “and that’s exactly what you would be doing. Master Badger, will you take the two of us?”
“Only if you’re ready to go right now. As I said, Celia awaits, and time is fleeting for us to get there on time.”
“We’re dressed warmly enough, but we don’t have our purses.”
“Do not fret for that, for Celia and I will pay for any need and you can reimburse us later.”
Badger edged away, toward the side gate. Marie made to follow, but Sally tugged her back. “You know,” Marie said to him, “I longed to go with you to Celia’s shop and with her to my aunt’s starch house. I—I think that’s why I must have gone there alone the day she was killed.”
“I sensed that,” Badger said. “I always knew how much you cared not only for your aunt but for your real mother.”
Marie now pulled Sally along. “If you’re certain we’ll get back quickly. No time to shop on the bridge,” Marie said, “though I’ve thought about that, too, when I was cooped up—so dearly protected here, that is.”
“Don’t give any of that a thought now,” Badger comforted as he swept open the gate for them. Celia was standing right outside as he had said. She looked happy to see them. Marie had never had a chance to thank her for passing on the letters, but she’d tell her now.
Suddenly, down the length of the outer walls of the large house, Marie saw a group of horsemen pulling up in the front street with a great clatter, at least six men.
“Who could that be?” Sally asked. “They’re all dressed alike.”
“Some foreign visitor’s entourage. A diplomat to see the exchange today,” Badger said as he motioned them on to where they could cut down an alley. “They’re evidently confused about meeting your father here instead of there. Let’s move sprightly now, if we intend to be on time. Come on now, stick close to Celia and me.”
Elizabeth took Clifford and Rosie, in simple garb like herself, along with their horses and commanded that the working barge be put in as close to Gresham House as possible. If she’d taken the one with her coat of arms, cloth of gold, and crimson velvet seats, she would have drawn a huge crowd when swiftness and secrecy were what she needed now.
“The landing’neath London Bridge be closest, but too dang’rous with this high tide right now,” the head oarsman told her.
Elizabeth gazed ahead at London’s only bridge as it spanned the broad Thames. The twenty arches made a cauldron of the current, which only trained boatmen called bridge-shooters dared to challenge. Unfortunately, it was a place of suicides, demented souls who leaped into the foam and whose battered and bloated bodies were found miles upriver where the tidal surge spent itself, or, if it was going back out to sea, were lost forever in the Channel. Worse, she’d heard terrible tales of untended children dropping from the back windows of the houses above the shops. They were sucked down, battered, and drowned against the wooden platforms called starlings that protected the piers and arches.
“All right, then,” she called to him over the roar of the river and the noise from the busy shops and houses on the bridge itself. “Put in at Old Swan Stairs near the bridge, and we’ll ride straight up Fish Street to Gresham House.”
After disembarking, Elizabeth, Rosie, and Clifford went on horseback from the river landing. When she was half a block from Gresham House, she saw her yeoman Bates riding toward them, waving.
“I am surprised you spotted me!” she told him.
“I was in that side street. No other woman sits a horse like you, Your Majesty.”
“Have you put a cordon of safety around the house?”
“Best brace yourself. When we arrived at Gresham House, it was too late.”
“For what? What has happened?”
“The two girls are missing, or at least the household staff has not turned them up yet. I was just starting to search the area.”
“’S blood! Do you know aught of Nash Badger?”
“The maid who cleans Marie’s chambers says he was ordered to leave the house today—that she saw him leave.”
“He left alone, I pray.”
“Yes, but he must have returned shortly, for she saw him in the gardens, speaking with Marie and Sally but moments ago. I’m sure that’s who she said, the one who took a terrible scolding from Lady Gresham today.”
“You are certain they are not in the gardens now? It’s a large area with much autumn overgrowth.”
“We looked, but the girls went out with him, the maid says, evidently that same gate we used at night, the one I guarded for you. The maid rushed downstairs to tell the man who oversees the household staff to stop them, but by then they’d vanished into thin air.”
“He’s taken them somewhere, and I fear for their lives. Let the household staff continue to search in the house, but order the guards to send out a hue and cry for them in this immediate vicinity. Someone must have seen two girls with a man in broad daylight!”
“You don’t think he’d take them to the van der Passes?” Clifford put in. “That Dirck van der Passe could be involved.”
“We’ll send someone there in case that’s true. I don’t know where else—unless Badger di
scovered Meg’s jailed and talked the girls into a visit to her or some such, but I still don’t know where that could be. Wait—Cecil said Nigel Whitcomb used to be head of the Skinners’ Guild. Send someone to inspect their guildhall. It’s not far from here on Dowgate.”
Bates clattered on ahead as the queen, Rosie, and Clifford followed. They rode around the vast walls of Gresham House and dismounted at the side gate where the girls and Badger were last seen. It was locked.
“Shall I pound on it until they let us in, Your Majesty?” Clifford asked.
“No. Just let me think a moment.”
Elizabeth stepped back into the arched shelter of the doorway and looked up and down the side street and then into the alley that cut off almost directly across from the gate. Would they have gone into that, to disappear quickly from possibly being spotted from the upper floors of Gresham House? Unlike when Meg had chased Celia down an alley, there were no coins or drops of blood to follow.
Chapter the Fifteenth
MEG LOST THE LAST REMNANTS OF HER PLUCK when Constable Whitcomb’s big guards forced her neck and wrists into the stocks. It was not a public pillory but one set in a large stone cellar beneath the chamber where she had been questioned before.
She wasn’t even certain where in town she was, since she had been blindfolded shortly after they dragged her away from Ned near the palace. At first, she’d feared they would put her in one of the city prisons. But, she’d reasoned, Bridewell was for political prisoners, and Newgate held felons, while the Fleet, Marshalsea, and the Tower were under the ultimate control of the queen.
No, Constable Whitcomb didn’t have her in a regular city or state prison. That was news as bad as it was good, because it would make her much harder for the queen to find, if—in all the chaos of the murders—she was even looking for her. But Ned would try to find her, wouldn’t he?
The building in which she was being held looked more like someone’s place of business, the kind that had the living quarters overhead. Surely she wasn’t being kept in the constable’s house. And nothing was stored in this spacious cellar, so it probably wasn’t a shop above. A meeting place, perhaps?
All she did know was that the wooden O of the stocks hurt her neck and the smaller holes pinched her wrists as, bent over, she was forced to face the chief constable again. One of his louts pulled up a chair for him and he plopped himself in it.
“Perhaps I have your attention now, mistress,” he said.
It hurt Meg to look up, so she stared down. The two support posts of these stocks were stuck in holes in the stone floor. She could see Whitcomb’s shoes and the white ceremonial cane of his office resting across his knees. Why, he even wore his red cloak in this cellar. Surely he didn’t mean to beat her while she was trapped and bent over in a private place like this, and him in all his fancy garb—or judge her, either.
“Any more of your failure to address or answer me courteously,” he went on, “any further back talk, and I will have your pretty little ears nailed to the stocks. Do you hear and heed me, Mistress Milligrew?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, Constable.”
“Yes, Chief Constable,” he corrected. “Then listen carefully, because after having one’s ears nailed, the next step is their being cut off. Why, I had a servant girl here, oh, about a fortnight ago, it was,” he went on, stretching out and crossing his legs, “who got off quite lightly for giving her masters and her household poison. Both her ears were cut off, and she was branded on the forehead with a P for ‘poisoner.’ But you see, she cooperated fully, and her victims did not die. Now here, Mistress Milligrew, I find a more dire tragedy, one in which, under my aegis, the full penalty for poisoning must be brought to bear. Do you know what that penalty is?”
“No, Chief Constable.”
“My, but you are ill informed. It’s burning at the stake, to be precise—especially, no doubt, for a double murder. Now, to business,” he went on when she gasped. Her throat went dry, and she began to sweat in this chill place. She had to force herself to listen as this vile man droned on.
“I’ve had a bit more time now to examine the circumstances under which the second victim of the same murderer—or shall we say, murderess—died. Are you quite ready to answer my questions, then?”
“Y-yes, Chief Constable.”
“How pleasant to find you so helpful, so obedient. Would that your royal mistress were so. Do you know you greatly resemble her? Do you?”
“I would not p-presume to say so, but, yes, Chief Constable.”
“So perhaps I shall imagine I have her here instead of you, doing precisely what I bid, all meek and mild.”
This man, Meg thought, was mad. Her knees began to shake so hard she could barely stand. She feared for her very life—but not that she would burn. Whitcomb could never afford to let her get that far, carted through the streets to a place of public execution. He could hardly let her escape to tell the queen the things he had just said, though, she supposed, he could deny it. However bad this got, she’d just concentrate on her beloved Sally, cared for and safe at Gresham House.
Marie saw Sally’s eyes were as big as plates, though she kept her hood pulled close about her face. Cutting through back alleys that Celia seemed to know well—Badger had said this was her part of town—they soon went back onto Fish Street with the grand London Bridge in sight directly before them.
This time of day, shoppers crowded its two-cart width, and drovers with their flocks and herds streamed toward them into town. As they neared the bridge, Marie thought it looked as if it writhed with people. Beyond its other end, across the river, rose the large Gothic church where her Aunt Hannah would be buried. Marie’s eyes misted at the mere thought of honoring her mother’s sister as she was laid to eternal, silent rest.
Meanwhile, life here was suddenly so exciting! Her gaze darted from face to face as people hurried past. Even the sound and scent of the captive sheep coming at them, baaing and bumping their way toward Smithfield and slaughter, was astonishing.
“Oh,” Sally cried, tugging at her cloak and pointing, “why does the water foam up by the bridge?”
“It’s the tidal river rushing through the arches,” Marie told her, proud she knew all about it though she’d seldom seen it.
“Are these shops or houses, hanging out over the edge?” Sally asked as they made their way along the bridge itself.
“Both,” Celia cut in before Marie could answer. “Some of the best haberdashers in town, and the place where I work now, too, a real nice glover’s.”
“Oh, you’re not at the old place?” Marie asked, but Celia must not have heard her in the noise. She saw Badger shoot Celia a frown, though.
From time to time people came to a complete stop, packed like salted fish in a barrel, but Badger soon shoved folks aside. Marie and Sally followed him farther out over the water, with Celia pushing from behind.
“Will we make it in time in this crowd?” Marie shouted to Badger. “You said we’d only be gone one hour.”
“No worry!” Badger yelled as they neared the center of the bridge. “Now don’t look up, you two.”
Of course, they both did. There above them, stuck on pikes, glowered the rotting heads of criminals. Marie felt sick to her stomach. She remembered overhearing the housemaids tell how Sir Thomas More’s daughter had paid someone to drop her beheaded father’s skull into her apron, so it could be buried with his body. Yes, Marie was risking getting caught, too, honoring her mother’s memory at Aunt Hannah’s burial today.
Instead of staring at the heads like Sally, Marie looked out through one of the breaks in the buildings. She felt less shaky if she just stared at the fine view of the river and the town.
“In here,” Badger said suddenly, and produced a key to unlock a door. Above it, in the biting breeze, swung a sign shaped like a yellow glove. When the girls hesitated to enter, Celia pushed them in from behind and shut the door. That muted the bridge noise
, though Marie could still hear the roar of the water through the back windows of the shop.
“Why are we stopping?” Marie demanded. “We’ll be late. Is this Celia’s new shop?”
“It is,” the woman said, securing the latch and banging closed the shutters to the street. “The master goes home for two hours in late afternoon each day, and I watch things. Now don’t you fret we’ll be late, Mistress Marie, as there’s a cut-corner way out the back to where you’re going.”
At last the search paid off, for one of the queen’s guards had reported to Bates that a woman had seen two girls with a man—but with a large woman, too.
“Then perhaps it wasn’t Marie and Sally,” Elizabeth said, her hopes dashed.
“It sounds like them, Your Majesty,” Bates insisted. “They were cloaked and hooded, but the size of the children was a match.”
“The one girl in a blue cloak and the other—the smaller one—in a brown one?”
“So the woman said. Saw them cutting from an alley off Fenchurch but then heading down Fish Street toward the bridge.”
“The bridge? Perhaps they are being taken out of town, but why would they go willingly?” she asked, thinking aloud. “Badger could be going to hold them for ransom, but if he is the one who already drowned two women and is now heading for the river … Remount! We’re riding for the bridge!”
Rosie, Bates, and Clifford went with her, and the other guards clattered behind. The bridge was packed at this hour as everyone rushed to do late-day shopping and the last herds of beasts were brought in for the big Wednesday sale of meat on the hoof at Smithfield tomorrow. She’d been learning much more about that place and the dubious legality of its sellers and traders, for it might be one way to imprison Dauntsey.
“Halt!” Elizabeth cried as they neared the north gate to the bridge. She raised herself in her saddle to scan the shifting swells of people and animals. “We’ll make no headway en masse without harming someone,” she called to her party. “Bates, take two guards and ride the bridge, looking for the four of them—or two hooded girls. Call out to those in the shops lest this is quite harmless and they’ve simply sneaked out to go shopping, but Sally should never have allowed that.”
