The Fatal Fashione: An Elizabeth I Mystery (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  “Good, but never mind all that. Was there a dead woman in the vat?”

  “No—and yes,” Meg said, out of breath. “Someone had lifted Hannah out—”

  “It was Hannah von Hoven?”

  “Yes, I regret to say so, Your Grace. Between the time I fled and the time we got back, someone, perhaps her murderer, had pulled her from the starch bath and laid her out on a shelf.”

  “She looked—Hannah looked, not Meg,” Jenks put in, “like she’d been dipped and set out to stiffen. And she was starting to, in more ways than one.”

  Ned rolled his eyes and shook his head at Jenks’s dull-witted rendition of things. Cecil and Rosie moved to stand on either side of their queen as she sank into a chair at the head of the long table where her paperwork awaited in Cecil’s neat piles.

  But life wasn’t neat, wasn’t fair, Elizabeth thought. Hannah had been young, ambitious, and comely, just setting out on a great endeavor in England. Even before promoting her to Thomas Gresham, the queen had hoped to champion the young woman as a symbol of competition in the kingdom. Like Elizabeth Tudor, Hannah von Hoven was a woman making her own way despite the odds against her. After all, Hanna’s rival starcher had a husband, one who perhaps really ruled the roost.

  “Even if we might think she slipped into the starch by accident,” Elizabeth said with a half-groan, half-sigh, “we can hardly tell ourselves she got herself out and onto a shelf as if she were her own starched goods for sale. Yes, I wager we have a murder on our hands, unless, like Meg, someone else just stumbled on her, chose to pull her out, then panicked and fled.”

  She thought again of Cantwell’s prediction of a curse caused by starch and the results rippling through her kingdom. Pure coincidence, she thought, that one of the royal starchers now seemed to have been fatally punished.

  “Your Grace,” Cecil said, “are you quite all right? Shall I send for something, or do you need one of Meg’s calming potions?”

  “If so, I should share it with her for being the one who found Hannah drowned—or however she died. Were there marks on her throat or any other discernible bruises?” she asked the three of them.

  “I—she’s so slippery and sticky with starch,” Meg said, “we didn’t wash her off to look closely, but ran back here to tell you.”

  “Your Grace,” Cecil put in quickly, “do you mean to pursue this and not just turn it over to the constable and coroner?”

  “The men of my city’s criminal law enforcement will be informed in the morning, after we’ve had a good look around the place and at the body.”

  “We?” Cecil repeated. “But, Your Grace, surely you don’t intend to go there yourself to—”

  “The weather is cool,” she interrupted him, “and the body will keep a few more hours. Bates is still there, standing guard, is he not?”

  “Aye,” Jenks said, “and standing a ways off, like you said.”

  “Then we will go together at nightfall the back way and tarry but briefly. I can think of one or two who might fall under suspicion for this terrible deed, and I mean to look into it.”

  “Surely not Meg, Your Grace!” Jenks blurted. “And why then? Just because she and Hannah been arguing sore about prices for the roots?”

  The queen saw Meg shoot Jenks a look that could indeed kill. Jenks’s talents had always been for dealing with horses, not the intricacies of human reason. Still, Elizabeth knew he was utterly faithful, not only to Meg but to her.

  “No, of course, Meg is no more under suspicion than any of you. I mean Dirck van der Passe, my other starcher’s husband—and who knows who else,” she added, thinking again of Hosea Cantwell’s probable desire to make his curse come true.

  “Are we to have a meeting of the Privy Plot Council to solve a murder, then, Your Grace?” Meg asked, wringing her hands.

  “I warrant we are having one now, so all of you are sworn to secrecy on this. As soon as darkness falls, all but Cecil are off for Hannah’s. Then first thing tomorrow morning, here is how we will proceed. Ned,” she said, looking at him, “will ask Hannah’s neighbors if they saw anyone suspicious lurking about today. Meg, you will speak with the women Hannah employed, if they arrive for work, and if not, you must try to track them down. Why was she evidently alone when they all should have been there, with the demands on their time?”

  “I can also talk to the laundresses and whitsters who frequent that area to ask if they noted anything amiss,” Meg said. “Hannah had that friend Ursala who might know if the poor woman had been courted by anyone—or more than one, fair as she was.”

  “Yes, of course,” Cecil said, folding his arms. “That sort of passion possibly gone awry could be a motive for murder, too.”

  “Jenks,” Elizabeth went on, regarding him now, “you will stick close to me when I venture out tonight to visit Hannah’s. Then, from when we arrive at the starch house until the time we summon the authorities and they arrive, you will help Bates guard the door to Hannah’s rooms so that no one else enters or leaves.”

  “Which reminds me, Your Grace,” Meg put in, “I’m sure the intruder—mayhap the murderer—took some of my roots with him. Two sacks of them were missing, and one of those emptied out. The thing is, if cuckoo-pint roots are ingested, they are deadly poison.”

  “Hell’s gates, that’s all we need,” Cecil said. “Poison starch, a unique weapon, I’ll say that. One murder’s bad enough, let alone the means for more at large somewhere in London.”

  “Which is another reason we must look into this, and quickly,” the queen said. “Later tomorrow, Meg, you and Clifford will go with me when I visit Hannah’s rival, Dingen van der Passe, and speak with her husband, too. But Rosie, first thing in the morning, you will take two guards and ride to Gresham House to inquire how the search for their child goes and to keep me well informed of any progress.”

  “And I, Your Grace?” Cecil asked.

  “You, my advisor and friend, will remain here lest decisions need to be made—or the fact the queen is going out dressed as a market woman on the streets needs to be hidden from my courtiers. And, as usual, my lord, you will fret for all these dire and dangerous doings, but I wager you will help me to think them all through, too.”

  The girl stood staring up at the blood-red windows set in the tall brick walls of yet another building. The sun was setting, gilding the already russet bricks and reflecting its face in the glass. The palace of the queen, she’d heard someone say, pointing it out to his companion. Whitehall Palace of the queen.

  She knew she wanted to get through a tall window like that. To get past the stonework and wood and brick. To remember. But all she could recall was a surprised face staring up at her, the mouth open in a silent scream filled with gray … a face with open glassy eyes, a lovely face marred by swirling white, floating, then sinking into the depths of memory …

  In her dreams she saw her mother’s face, a mother she could not recall …

  A face in the shadow of a hood floated into her vision. A scarred face. Under the pox marks, perhaps pretty. And yet young. She stared into that puckered visage, and it stared back at her. Was this girl a part of herself, her reflection in the glass? Did this other self know what must be remembered?

  “Hello,” the girl, younger and shorter than herself, said. “I come from the country, but my mother lives here, and I needs find her.” She pulled her deep hood closer about her face, as if to hide. Perhaps they could hide together. The girl was speaking again.

  “But they told me to get’way from this gate.”

  Get away, get away. Yes, those words sounded like ones she had to remember. She reached out and took the younger girl’s hand. They were both trembling.

  “Could you please tell them for me?” the scarred girl went on in her slow country drawl. “Tell them my mother’s the queen’s herbal woman? My name’s Sally Downs, really Sarah Milligrew. Her name’s Mother Meg, Meg Milligrew. My other mother said Mother Meg told them to tell me the truth’bout my poxed face, bu
t they didn’t’til now. Ten whole years, so I ran’way. Why did they have to hide it all from me? They told me years ago I wasn’t their daughter but’dopted.”

  That, too, struck a chord. Adopted. And something was hidden. They should have told her, told her, but she went to find out for herself …

  This girl had said she ran away. Those words echoed. I ran away … get away, get away … No, no, don’t! screamed in her head. She wanted to hold Sally’s hand and run away, but again her feet wouldn’t move. Why hadn’t she called for help when someone screamed, Get away, get away?

  She couldn’t swallow the jagged pieces of fear in her throat that choked her voice, even her breath. Her knees shook, and she crumpled against Sally and slid down her to the cobbled street, but she did not let go of her hand.

  “Help!” she heard Sally scream. “Help, this lady’s ill! Stand’way! Give her some air, then!”

  The small crowd near the palace entry shifted slightly, but not, she could see, to give her air. They backed away from a thunder of hoofbeats, the thud-thud as a skull struck the wooden tub. No, there was no wooden tub here. Men, at least six of them on horseback, and one of them gaping down at her and Sally.

  He reined in and shouted, pointing right at her. “My lord, hold there! Look, that girl with the other!”

  The party of riders reined in, strung out toward the guarded entrance of the palace. She felt Sally start to tug free of her, but then she felt the younger girl’s arm go around her shoulders to prop her up.

  “Badger, I owe you my life, my life!” a man was shouting. He sounded as if he were crying—a man, crying. “Yes, it looks like her …”

  Sights and sounds swirled around her as she held hard to Sally and stared straight up. The sky, the tall palace walls sinking into shadows … the wooden, slanted walls of a loft somewhere … a woman, sinking.

  “Marie!” the second man cried. “Thank God, Marie!”

  He managed to slide off his high horse, but he almost crumpled when he hit the ground. The man who had seen her first helped him, a short, quick man with eyebrows that came together like a dark stroke of a pen. The taller man who nearly fell took a long stick from the one he’d called Badger.

  She went still as death as the stranger fell to his knees and grasped her to him, breathing hard, choking back sobs that shook him. She wanted to scream, Get away, no, please don’t … stop, but she was too weak.

  “Men, haste to the queen and say we’ve found my daughter!” the man cried. “One of you, ride to tell my wife that Marie has been found. Dearest girl,” he said, bending back over her, “your mother is beside herself—I, too … whatever happened?” He tried to free her hand from Sally’s, tried to lift her to break their grasp.

  “No, don’t!” she cried, with great effort. Had he said her name was Marie? “She is—with me!”

  She saw the man who was her father turn to Sally. He saw the girl’s face and shuddered slightly.

  “Yes, yes, of course,” he muttered. “She will come with us. You’re tired, sweetling, hurt, too, or hit your head.”

  Had she hit her head? Was that why she could not swim up through the slippery, suffocating press of stairs and windowpanes? Was that why she kept hiding, so afraid to scream or flee?

  Still holding tightly to Sally’s hand as her father held to hers, the girl he had called Marie surrendered in his arms to sudden, drowning sleep.

  Chapter the Fourth

  “YOUR MAJESTY, THEY HAVE FOUND GRESHAM’S daughter, just outside the palace!” Ned Topside called to her. With the others, he had just left her to prepare for their foray this night, but he’d darted back in even before the door was closed behind Cecil.

  “Here? Had someone taken her?”

  “I know naught else, but she’s being carried in, quite dazed.”

  “Fetch Doctor Forrest—but first tell them I said to put her in Mary Sidney’s rooms, as they are empty now. And that I want someone to bring Lady Gresham to the palace. Where is Sir Thomas?”

  “I heard he’s the one found her, so I assume—”

  She waved him away and hurried out into the hall herself. Ned was already running toward the stairs. With two guards falling in behind, Elizabeth went down the central staircase. Leaning over the bannister, she could hear the hubbub coming from the entry by the Kings Street courtyard.

  Ned must have done as commanded, for she saw Sir Thomas coming up the staircase, laboriously limping, though he would hand over the child to no one else. Flanked by three of the queen’s men and two of his own, his awkward progress rocked his daughter to and fro as if they had set sail upon a windy sea.

  Marie Gresham, the queen saw now, was hardly a child, but a young lady. Ned said she looked dazed; her eyes were open and fixed on nothing. Pale and pretty, she did not cling to her adoptive father but rather to another child whose hand she held, pulling the smaller girl along. Marie’s blue cloak would have dragged on the stairs and tripped her father had not her companion, in a mud-splattered brown cape and large hood, lifted Marie’s hems with her free hand as if she carried her train. Perhaps Marie Gresham had run off with a servant girl. The queen paid the smaller child no more heed as she waited for the men to reach her around the turn of the stairs.

  “Your Majesty!” Thomas cried, perspiring and panting. “The lost sheep is found, but frightened or stunned. Your man said we could tend her here, so—”

  “Yes, follow me. I’ve sent for one of my physicians.”

  The queen led Gresham down the corridor away from the royal apartments toward the wing overlooking the kitchens. With the court in residence here, it provided the only empty rooms she could think of, though the area made her uneasy. Not only was this hallway supposedly haunted by the ghost of one of her stepmothers, but memories of her dear friend Mary Sidney, who had been so ill here, seemed to cling to the place. Now another patient, Marie instead of Mary, would be cared for in the same chamber and bed.

  Elizabeth hesitated at the door, then opened it herself to usher them in. She motioned Thomas through the first chamber, where his entourage waited, into the bedchamber within.

  “Put her on the bed,” she said, her voice wavering. Before she banished the image, she could yet imagine her friend lying ill here.

  Mary Sidney was the sister of Elizabeth’s dear Robin, Earl of Leicester. How the queen missed her at court, her laughter, her loyalty—and the way she used to serve as gobetween with their love letters.

  But after tending Elizabeth when she nearly died of the pox four years ago, Mary had been ravaged by the disease. The queen had escaped with a few permanent pocks on her face and arms—and with the burden of guilt for infecting her friend. For beautiful Mary became horribly disfigured, and now kept mostly to her husband’s seat at Pembroke Castle. The queen could seldom entice her to court or get away to visit her, and she missed her sorely.

  Elizabeth turned toward the bed and gasped. All shadowed, Mary’s face peered at her from within the mystery child’s hood! It was as if her friend yet stood here, poxed and scarred, desperate to hide her ruined visage.

  Those in the room turned to the queen as she stared at the companion of Marie. But before anyone glimpsed her face, the child curtsied as low as she could with Marie still gripping her hand.

  “Your Majesty, whatever is it?” Gresham asked. Two yeomen were instantly at her side. For one moment, Elizabeth thought she might faint.

  The child in the hood rose from her shaky curtsy and exploded in tears, murmuring something about her mother, or was it two mothers?

  “Is this Marie’s maid?” the queen asked Thomas, though her voice still shook.

  “I never saw her before I found Marie outside. Sally something, but they seem most devoted,” he muttered, as Dr. Forrest bustled into the room so quickly his black gown flapped and the strings of his cap fluttered.

  As most attention turned toward the doctor, Elizabeth reached over the corner of the big bed and touched the hooded girl’s shoulder. “It’s all right
,” she whispered. “You simply surprised me by reminding me of a dear friend. Who are you, then?”

  “Your Maj’sty,” the child choked out between sobs, “I met you once—on the heath years ago—with Mother Meg.”

  “Meg Milligrew’s Sally? But how you have grown! And to find you here in London … I’ll take you to your mother in a moment, if your friend Marie will let you go.”

  “But she won’t,” Sally said with a sniff. “She’s holding on so tight it hurts, but I’d best not leave her.”

  Elizabeth stepped to the doorway of the bedchamber and spoke quietly to her yeoman guard. “Clifford, find and fetch my herb mistress, Meg Milligrew. Say her daughter has come for a visit.” As she turned back toward the bed, she saw Dr. Forrest lean over his patient and put his hand on the girl’s forehead.

  “Forgive my wretched tears, Maj’sty,” Sally whispered when the queen returned to the bedside. “I’m so mighty joyous to be here. Ran’way from home, I did. And I know I caused much grief, but I was so o’erturned.”

  Countrified or not, Elizabeth thought, the child had natural wit, grace, and much heart. She had questions for both girls, but Marie’s health—and Hannah’s death—must be seen to first. The doctor was running his hands over Marie’s scalp.

  To clear the crowded outer chamber, the queen sent Gresham’s party down to the great hall for food and ale, though she saw that one man hung behind, peering through the doorway. She recognized him as the fellow who had stayed close to Gresham when she toured the exchange, the quick, wiry watchman with the solid slash of eyebrow across his sun-browned face. For all she knew, the man was Gresham’s bodyguard. Once again, she smelled that acrid scent about him, which she’d once thought was from construction supplies.

  Thomas must have seen her staring. “Your Majesty,” he said, “that is Nash Badger, the man who noted Marie in the crowd. I owe him much.”

  “Then I do, too,” she said with a nod at Badger as he bent to a quick bow, then backed away. “At least perhaps the quiet here will help Marie—”