by Karen Harper
His voice trailed off and he fidgeted in his chair. It flickered through Elizabeth’s brain that Harry had once wanted to be the brilliant lutenist’s sponsor and mentor. But he never would have dared to think he could help his queen find happiness by dispatching Amy through Felicia. Surely he would have seen the ramifications of that. But did he sympathize with the girl perhaps knowing she was the result of one of King Henry’s brazen liaisons? Those rumors Harry himself was King Henry’s bastard never seemed to die.
“I brought Geoffrey’s shirt I been keeping,” Meg piped up in the awkward pause, pulling out the garment from her lap under the table. “Ned, Jenks, and I think it proves that he was pushed, at least that someone else was on the roof with him.”
“How so?” Elizabeth asked, strangely relieved to put off talking about Amy’s death.
The girl flapped the garment open on the table and everyone craned or leaned forward. “This red stain is from the malmsey that you thought was a sign of his drinking. Don’t you think it looks like someone threw it on him? See this burst of stain, not like he dribbled his own drink, ’cause this is right over his heart, not down under his throat. And since he left the musicians’ gallery in a clean shirt with only his own flask of sack like always, because we looked into that, someone else threw this on him for spite or—”
“Or lame proof he was drunk and fell of his own accord,” Jenks added, frowning. “And we learned a bottle of your personal malmsey was pilfered from the wine cellar that very night, from the ones marked with your name.”
“Not her whole name but just E R,” Meg prompted him.
“I am indeed impressed with all you have done,” Elizabeth admitted. Jenks sat up even straighter on the bench he shared with the other two. Ned beamed, but Meg’s eyes filled with tears again.
“You know, Bess,” Kat said, resting her broken, splinted arm on the edge of the table, “I thought some of your food and drink was filched more than once. Besides, that would fit the pattern of Katherine Grey mayhap wearing your clothes and using your bathwater.…”
Everyone stared at the old woman, who blinked back owlishly at them. Though stricken with amazement that Kat had somehow not realized they were all thinking the culprit they would investigate was Hester-Felicia, Elizabeth reached for Kat’s good wrist and clasped it. “We are going to focus first on Hester Harington. But I do believe, Kat,” the queen said, “that Katherine is a problem and may be in league with the Spanish ambassador.”
“I believe so too,” Cecil agreed. “I warrant he has had one or two spying for him here at court, and it is possible Felicia Dove, alias Hester, was one of these.”
“Ah,” Elizabeth observed, “then you have been keeping an eye on him—and on the court—even from afar.”
“I have,” Cecil declared a bit testily.
“At any rate, Kat,” Elizabeth went on, “I cannot fathom Katherine doing de Quadra’s dirty work for him, if it entailed either spying or murder. She’s too spoiled and haughty to stoop to either, even if she’d like to see the deed done or to replace me as queen. But we are going to try to link Hester Harington to all three crimes. Do you see, Kat?”
“Of course I do. That’s what I meant,” she insisted.
Elizabeth expected people to speak up, but no one so much as moved. They too seemed disturbed that Kat had drifted far afield. It was the first time Kat had been more than just forgetful or slightly befuddled. If Elizabeth lost her support on top of Robert’s, she would never make it through this.
“Bess, I believe you had an assignment for Ned and Jenks,” Cecil urged.
“A key one of the utmost importance and secrecy,” she said, grateful for his lead. “I want the two of you to ride to Cumnor tomorrow, pretend to be players just passing through to Oxford.”
“To covertly keep an eye on the inquest and investigation there?” Ned asked, looking even more somber and important.
“You are to steer completely clear of that,” she ordered, pointing a finger in each of their faces, “or you will implicate me in something of which I am innocent, except perhaps of bad judgment.”
Silence slammed into the room. No one breathed. Did they think she did not partly blame herself? She cleared her throat and said, “You are to work closely together to circumspectly discover whether or not a traveling lutenist—male, female, or eunuch—was in the vicinity of Cumnor House recently. Gil will draw from memory two more sketches of Hester Harington, which you may show around with the story of a runaway sister or some such. Meanwhile, the rest of us will sit tight but try to discover more about Geoffrey’s and Luke’s … murders.”
Everyone reacted differently to that pronouncement from their queen. Meg and Ned looked triumphant and Jenks solemn. Kat nodded, while Cecil and Harry frowned, and Gil began to sketch Hester-Felicia’s face from memory. They hashed over much else before the queen sent them all to bed, Ned and Jenks with coin for their journey and permission to pick sturdy mounts from the stables since Lord Robert was not here to choose for them. She told Meg to take Kat to Mary Sidney to sleep in her ladies’ rooms tonight because she could not bear to see her as distracted as she was. Cecil was the last to head for the door.
“My lord, I want you to visit Robert Dudley at Kew after our council meeting tomorrow. I do not want you to leave me now, but you are the only one to do it.”
“To comfort him?” he asked, astounded. “I?”
“I know you don’t get on with him, but I trust you to tell me true. My master lawyer, you must accuse Robert Dudley—the fortune-hunting gypsy, others call him—and tell me if you believe he could be … could be guilty, and I then have loved—do love—a murderer, who has done me in too when he had someone kill his wife. He’s hired Felicia to sing his songs, and I must know if he’s paid her to do—his other bidding,” she choked out before she felt the last remnants of control desert her.
Elizabeth sank sobbing to her knees. William Cecil knelt with her, holding her as a father might while she soaked his shirt and shook against him like a thin reed in the harsh wind.
Chapter the Fifteenth
The dread of future foes
Exile my present joy
And with me warn to shun
Such snares as threaten my annoy.
For falsehood now doth flow
And subjects’ faith doth ebb.
Which should not be if reason ruled
Or wisdom wove the web.
But clouds of joys untried
Doth cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rage of late report
By changed course of minds.
The tops of hope suppose,
The root of rue shall be
And fruitless of their grafted guile
As shortly you shall see.
The dazzled eyes with pride,
With great ambition blind
Shall be unsealed by worthy men,
Who foresight falsehood find.
— QUEEN ELIZABETH
THE NEXT MORNING, THE QUEEN MET PRIVILY with Ned and Jenks, garbed for their ride to Cumnor, and with Dr. John Dee, who had recently arrived. “Has Dr. Dee made it clear to you how you can use the signaling mirrors he is lending us?” the queen asked again. “And if you break that precious observation glass, I shall break your skulls.”
“We will not harm a thing nor get caught,” Jenks vowed, “and be back to report to you as soon as we can—if Ned can keep up a fast pace.”
“If you can keep up with posing as a traveling player,” Ned put in, affecting an educated London voice.
“And that,” the queen said, seizing both their wrists in a hard grip, “is what I mean by you must get on with each other for this trip. No lording it over him, Ned. And, Jenks, no gibes about your outracing or outfighting him.”
When they went down the back way as she had bid, the queen turned to Dr. Dee again. “I cannot thank you enough for your help and the use of your brilliant devices, doctor. I would reward you with a sinecure or coinage, bu
t I do not want it noised abroad that you are in the service of the queen. I regret to tell you there are spies about my court who would proclaim that to their hostile foreign masters.”
His eyebrows hiked higher. “It will ever be honor enough for me to be covertly in your employ, Your Majesty.”
“But I have something else yet to ask of you.”
“You mean you will dare to use the flying rig again?” he asked, glancing at the big bag of ropes and harness he’d hauled in with him. “Since you didn’t send it with your men, I surmised so.”
“I would speak of that, but come with me now, and I shall show you the drift of my gratitude from one bibliophile to another.”
“Bibliophile?” he said, sounding puzzled for once, though she realized full well he knew what that word meant.
She led him from her privy chamber down the short hall to the small, wainscotted room that served as her library when she lived here. His swift intake of breath when he glimpsed the rows of volumes was reward enough for her.
“I bring only a small portion of the royal library with me on progress from London but have numbers of books at all my palaces,” she explained, waiting for him to follow her into the room. “But I want you to select three books for yourself from these, one for each of your clever devices you have entrusted to me so that I might climb from the pit my enemies think I have fallen into—or mayhap we shall call it a book apiece for the three deaths we must solve.”
“Oh, Majesty, choose from all these? I said it is my joy and honor to serve you,” he said, staring at the books instead of her.
“And serve me you shall. But this will be our coinage, good doctor. You shall build a fine library over the years and tell no one its source, and if either of us needs to borrow aught from the other—books or ideas, intelligence, as you say—we shall.”
She left him staring at those crowded shelves with the same intent expression on his face she had seen on Robin’s when he’d gazed upon her with her skirts up and stocking down.
THE FIRST THING CECIL NOTED IN ROBERT DUDLEY’S SMALL manor house at Kew was that no lamps nor tapers were lit and the draperies were pulled closed. He nearly stumbled in the front hall when Dudley’s steward closed the door behind them. One would think it were night outside instead of broad afternoon.
“Ah, some light in here at least,” Cecil observed to the queen’s prisoner in this velvet cage as the steward led him to the short walking gallery. Hand outstretched, Dudley hurried to greet him. Though there was a row of windows here, the sun did not enter in late afternoon, and the gallery too seemed muted and grim.
This manor the queen had given Dudley—it had once been the dairy house of a fine estate—had no more than twenty chambers and was tucked away under a slant of hill. Still the land gave him tenants, rents, and men to draw on in his climb back to respectability. But that, Cecil thought, might be all water over the mill dam if Her Majesty learned that Dudley had betrayed her. That was what he was here to discern, yet the man looked actually glad to see him.
“How fares Her Grace? What is her feeling toward me now?” Dudley began to pepper him with questions as soon as they shook hands. He sounded desperate, but was that a mark against him? As ever, his focus centered on his own status and only the queen’s welfare as it served his own.
“Her Majesty is endeavoring to stay purposefully busy about the realm’s business and prays that all will be settled by the coroner’s jury of inquiry,” Cecil told him as they fell into stride together down the length of the old flagstone floor.
“She is stronger than I,” Dudley murmured, folding his arms across his chest.
“Stronger than most of us, if the truth were known—and it must be known, Lord Robert.”
“Through the inquest, you mean?”
“Yes, but I am sent to ask you straight if you had any foreknowledge that your wife would come to harm.”
“That she would try to harm herself, you mean? And did I encourage her suicide?” he asked, acting either intentionally or obstinately dense. “No, Cecil, and believe me, I could have. With the tumor in her breast, she was, of course, in pain and deeply melancholy at times.”
“But you were hardly pained nor melancholy to hear of her death, I take it,” Cecil threw at him. “You would see that as clearing your way to the queen, I have no doubt.”
Dudley stopped walking. His chin lifted. “No, my Lord Cecil, I was not saddened by her death, except the loss of life of one so young and that she suffered greatly alone these last years when I was absent to earn my family’s way back in the world. I will not—cannot—pretend to grieve for her loss in my own life. Amy and I burned our flame out long ago and had little in common after that, but she was my wife. I sent condolences but not false feelings to her family and do not express them now. But as to your original question,” he said, his voice rising again, “I would not doubt the shallow, spoiled woman could kill herself just to spite me!”
Cecil stared straight into Dudley’s steady gaze. A frown—perhaps a perpetual one now—furrowed his high brow and his eyes blazed. But in them, the seat of the soul, lurked not deceit but flamed raw self-serving arrogance. The blatant honesty was a mark for his innocence, Cecil decided, however much it condemned him as a dreadful husband.
Cecil cleared his throat, uncertain he could find his voice for once. “You realize the evidence, such as we know of it now, looks suspicious for foul play,” he told Dudley as they began to walk again. They changed directions often as the corridor had nothing of the length of the queen’s galleries or even the one he and Mildred walked in inclement weather at Stamford or in their small country seat at Wimbledon. Suddenly Cecil pitied as well as detested this man: He’d never had a wife capable of comforting him and had been through hell for his family’s fierce ambition. And Cecil, of all men, understood ambition.
“As for suspicious evidence, I heard,” Dudley was saying, ticking things off on his long fingers, “that her neck was broken and her head at an odd angle, yet her cap was not awry. Two, her body bore no discernible bruises. Three, that Amy had insisted everyone but Mrs. Owens, the doctor’s old widow who gets about only with a walking stick, leave for the fair. Bowes also said they questioned Amy’s lady’s maid, Mrs. Pirto, and she said Lady Dudley had a strange mind. Hell’s gates, I could have told them that!”
“That she had a strange mind or all the other details?”
A muscle kept working in Dudley’s jaw, Cecil observed. “No one but my brother-in-law in a letter—he sits on the coroner’s jury—has told me aught of her demise, I swear it,” Dudley insisted, his voice rising in pitch to sound nearly hysterical again. “I have lost my wife, my position at court, my reputation, my hopes, my men … my queen. I went to the Tower once and nearly faced the headsman, Cecil, and cannot bear to again.”
“But if you are innocent—”
“If! Does Elizabeth not believe me—believe in me? Then I am doomed indeed!”
“Keep calm, my lord. Since you are innocent, once things are settled, you will be returned to court, I believe.”
Dudley clasped Cecil’s hand and looked intently into his eyes again. “If I can but believe that—that she will take me back …”
Cecil gently pulled away from him. “But if she does, it may be only as Master of the Horse, Lord Lieutenant of the Castle, and not as her favorite. I believe you are clear-sighted enough to see all the ramifications of that reasoning. I leave you to contemplate them, as I must be heading back now.”
“You know, I entertained her here once when she was at Richmond,” Dudley said, almost as if talking to himself. “All glittering and happy, she came riding in for dinner with her ladies and praised all I had done for her, our friendship. Her voice rang out here and her very presence lit this quiet tomb of a place like a torch.”
Dudley’s voice drifted off as he stared dazedly around the gallery, no doubt seeing, hearing the ghosts here. Cecil shivered.
“I can only pray your name—and hers too
—will be soon cleared, my lord,” Cecil said. Strangely, he found he meant it. Though he had often wished to run Robert Dudley through with the sharpest sword, this living death, suspended in dark exile, reminded him too much of his own recent plight. And made him almost, but not quite, regret the lengths to which he’d gone and would yet go to keep Dudley from ever being king.
“Cecil, I am deeply grateful you came to see me, even if she commanded it, and that you have listened to my side. Tell Her Grace I am innocent of all but adoring her. If I come back …” he said, and his voice drifted off again as he turned away to stare down the length of flagstone floor.
“If you come back, we must find a way to work together for the common good—her good,” Cecil said. Though he didn’t want to, he clapped the man on the shoulder before he headed for the door.
“Are the guards treating you well enough?” he asked, turning back. “You said you’ve lost your men, but they may be returned to you. Do you have a word for them, then?”
“I command they see to the royal stables in my stead, but there is one close groom I may indeed have lost. He disappeared even before any of this happened. I trusted him but fear he might have pilfered the pearls I sent by him to Amy and disappeared with the profit. I long favored and trusted him, one Edmund Fletcher. So if he turns up, tell him I demand an accounting of where he’s been or I may send him permanently packing.”
“I’ll pass the word along,” Cecil said, intrigued at how Dudley could do unto others what he did not want done unto him. That hardened his heart for the whole of what he had been sent to do—to confront, not comfort. Hoping it seemed an apparent afterthought, Cecil waited a moment, reopened the door to the gallery, and stuck his head back in.
