by Karen Harper
CECIL'S MAN BANGED THE ORNATE BRASS KNOCKER ON the front door of the Royal College of Physicians, then stood back as he'd been ordered. Cecil straightened his shoulders and spread his legs to a wider stance. When the door was swept open by Dr. John Caius himself, Cecil didn't budge nor speak.
“My Lord Secretary,” the doctor said, sounding not one whit riled, which, in turn, riled Cecil even more, “what an unexpected visit, though, of course, not an unwelcome one. No doubt you've come to explain more fully about some effigy discovered in the queen's coach that we've been able to glean from rampant rumors and street gossip.”
“Do you always answer your own front door, doctor?” Cecil countered, rather than answering. He swept past the man with his two secretaries in tow. Two other men stayed with the horses in the street as the fog thickened and daylight fled. At least Cecil saw that lamps were lit in the front room.
“I happened to be in the council chamber and glanced out to see you,” Caius countered, following him in. “How fares our dear queen after that unfortunate incident in the street as she took her leave yesterday, and what might we do for you—or her?”
Cecil turned into the council chamber Caius had indicated and sat at the head of the long table. He brazenly gestured to his men to take chairs on either side of him. It was then he noted Dr. Peter Pascal in the dim corner of the room, where he'd been either trying to hide his great bulk or had been squinting sideways out the window to watch the street.
“Pascal,” Cecil intoned, “I haven't seen you for years and would hardly recognize you with that shiny pate.”
“Lost so much hair, I shave it now.”
“Ever thought of wearing a wig?” If Pascal thought he was making light conversation, Cecil thought, so much the better.
“I used to, but it's not worth the bother—and I am not a vain man.”
“Have a seat, won't you, while Dr. Caius sends someone for the college account books. No good purpose served by lurking in corners.”
“It wasn't that,” Pascal declared defiantly. “I misplaced something dear to me. It's simply vanished.”
“So that the remnants of my patience does not follow suit, sit here,” Cecil said, pointing across the table.
“But—the college account books?” Caius parroted, making Cecil turn to study him again.
“Aye, man. 'Tis by the queen's goodwill you have your charter and your power and by my goodwill you aren't all marched to prison to be questioned for what you know about what she found in her coach outside your door.”
Pascal grabbed the tall, carved back of a chair, while Caius blanched at that frontal assault. Over the years Cecil had learned that might did not make right, but it could produce fright and that made even wily and wicked men blurt out the truth. He had nothing against these two—yet—but that they'd dared to treat their queen shabbily and had both means and motive to try to scare her with that damned, poxed dummy. He worked hard to keep Elizabeth Tudor on an even keel and didn't need her being distracted or distressed.
“Outrageous,” Pascal sputtered. “We only do our duty against disease and death. As Sir Thomas More put it,” he went on, hooking his thumbs in his broad belt, “ ‘We never ought to look on death as a thing far off.’ We, Lord Cecil, the queen's loyal physicians, should not fall under any sort of suspicion for merely trying to help Her Gracious Majesty and her people.”
“Very grand, doctor, but fetch the books. Geoffrey,” he told the clerk on his left, “take down Dr. Pascal's comments. After all, that effigy in the queen's coach seemed a harbinger of ‘looking on death as a thing not far off,’ not far off indeed from this very council room and college.”
“Now, see here,” Pascal insisted loudly enough to drown out the noisy scratching of Geoffrey's quill, “I oft quote my beloved mentor, Thomas More, so I meant naught. But what has that to do with our books?”
“Let's just say,” Cecil said, picking his words as carefully as he chose his quills, ink, paper, and sandpot from the satchel his other secretary offered, “that when one wants to know what people are plotting, one looks at their books or the refuse they throw out, and I prefer books to refuse. John,” he said, addressing his younger assistant, “please accompany Dr. Caius as he calls for all the college's latest accounting records, say going back one year.”
“We are plotting naught but our God-given—even queen-given—duties to cure and heal. And we would be happy to come to the palace and speak with Her Majesty about anything she wants to know,” Pascal insisted, all the while looking as if he'd swallowed some vile elixir.
“I fear we may have upset her,” Caius put in, “with our request for corpses for study to improve our—”
“Some sort of inquiry on that may come later,” Cecil interrupted. “And to quote Sir Thomas More's wellknown words when he was climbing the steps of the scaffold, ‘Help me up with your hand. As for my coming down, let me shift for myself.’ We all must shift for ourselves, doctors, and I am always shifting to be certain the queen comes to no harm. Questions about that effigy will come apace, but for now, your books of purchases and payments quickly,” he said, calmly folding his hands over his papers on their table.
He saw the two men shoot each other helpless glances before Pascal sat and Caius hastened to obey.
EH, NICK, I TOLD YOU TO KEEP STIRRING THAT WHILE it boiled! It'll stick to the bottom if you're not careful. Laws, I'd better do it, even if I can't stand the smell.”
Listening to Bett scold her husband, Meg smiled as she cut different shapes of thin linen for the skin of the grace plasters. Nick Cotter had vowed he'd stir the medicinal plaster of betony, verbena, and pimpernel leaves mixed with wax and sheep's suet, but his wife, Bett, was a stickler for things done right. That, Meg thought, and Bett's sharp nose, were two things the woman had in common with the queen.
Meg envied Bett that the big, muscular Nick willingly did as his petite wife bid him, turning the wooden spoon over to her care. Ben would have probably smacked his own wife with it for ordering him around like that, but Nick, big bruiser that he was, seemed always amenable. Besides, he and Bett were still far gone in love and that cut Meg to the quick.
She sent Nick out on two deliveries, which Ben could have done since they were both down by the river, but she didn't want to even ask him to lift a finger. It didn't take much for him to lift a fist against her anytime she irked him, the sot.
“All right,” Meg told Bett, as she laid out the first linen piece on the counter and smoothed it open, “put a spoonful of that here, and I'll show you how to spread and roll them. Then when the customer steams them, the grace plaster is moist again to cure anything from the ague to chest cough.”
Bett Cotter, nee Sharpe, was of slender but sturdy frame, with flyaway blond hair and pale eyes. Whenever her temper flared, like at Nick just now, the jagged, puckered scar on her chin reddened, and the bigger scar on her thumb where she'd had her “T” brand for thief burned off by a surgeon several years ago was always hurting her. Bett indeed might just be the first recipient of Dr. Clerewell's Venus Moon mixture.
Bett laid a good dollop of the thick medicinal plaster on the linen, and Meg adroitly spread it over and through, however much mess it made on the counter. “You've got to work quick with this or it hardens fast,” she explained, “and then you have to heat it again.”
“Mm,” Bett said, as she hung over Meg's shoulder, then jumped back to stirring. “Gil signaled something about wanting to learn to paint on plaster, but it couldn't have been this mushy kind. He was a bit secretive about making some gift for Her Grace.”
At that scrap of knowledge, Meg forced herself to roll up the linen carefully, then spread out another. She tried not to cross-question Bett overmuch about the queen because she didn't want her to suspect how sad—and furi-ous—she was about being dismissed.
“Her Grace hasn't been sick or out of sorts, has she?” she asked, keeping her voice calm. “Here, you do this next one, but get that pot off the flame first.”
As Bett plopped another glob of plaster between Meg's caked hands, a shadow filled the doorway. Meg jerked so hard when she saw who it was that she ruffled the linen into sharp folds. Why in heaven's name did she always have to look out of sorts the rare times Ned Topside came calling? At least Ben wasn't here, but who knew when he'd be back?
“Good day to you, Master Topside,” Bett sang out as she took the mixture off the small cauldron fire and plunged her hands in the mess Meg had made.
Meg tried to scrape off what she could and plunged her hands into the bucket of water, hoping to wash off the rest. Working with plasters always dried her hands. She thought longingly of Dr. Clerewell's soft skin, but then Ned never so much as took her hand.
“Ned, how are you—and everyone?” she inquired, hoping that sounded nonchalant as she rolled her sleeves back down in place.
“I'd like to talk with you privily,” he said only and didn't smile.
“I guess I don't mind,” she replied, hoping he wouldn't note her bad case of trembling. She dried her hands on her apron and walked as slowly as she could to the door. Damn the rogue. She'd never yet seen a man with such a fine turn of leg, ruggedly handsome face, and clever mouth to boot, and he knew it.
“Gracious, it's gone foggy out,” Meg said, peering past him into the street. Weather was always a safe topic.
“Take a little walk with me, then, to cool off.”
“Cool off?” she challenged.
“You were working hard in there, weren't you? I thought I saw steam coming from the counter.”
She breathed a bit easier. Always fond of wordplay, he could easily have meant that she was angry with the queen or him, or that he made her go hot as a brass kettle when he looked assessingly at her like that. “I could use a bit of air,” she said, grateful to get away from the shop in case Ben came back. Bett knew not to squeal about her being with Ned.
They strolled down the Strand toward the palace, past Ned's horse a hired neighbor boy was holding. “How is she then?” Meg blurted, unable to hold back.
“Her Grace?” the jolthead asked, knowing full well that's who she meant. “Better now that Kat's cured, but busy as you know, going hither and yon to keep folks' spirits up and keep a sharp eye on things. But then you know that too, especially with your knowledge of her trips by barge or horse, maybe coach too.”
“Meaning what?” she asked as they walked around a puddle of refuse someone had just heaved out of an upper window. Instinctively, they moved closer to the shops and houses, beneath the overhang of second and third stories.
“Meaning Jenks and I see you now and then as you are seeing her.”
Tears burned her eyes, but she blinked them back. “Everyone likes to see her. Oh, Ned, I wish things hadn't exploded so bad between Her Grace and me. I'd risk all to have her take me back.”
“Would you now?” he said as he studied her askance.
They stopped before a group of children playing a game with pig knucklebones, then turned around and started back toward the shop. “But taking her clothes like that, Meg,” he protested, “then impersonating her with—”
“What do you think you trained me to do and she asked of me more than once?” she demanded so loudly he glanced both ways and tugged her back into a narrow alley.
“You'd never do such a thing again, would you?” he demanded, “I mean, borrow one of her gowns and such?”
Her stomach flip-flopped. Could this mean he'd been sent to ask her to return?
“I may be some knock-headed girl she took in and you taught to read and write proper, but do you think I'm demented?”
“Fine, fine,” was all the usually loquacious actor would say.
Her hopes of a palace reprieve shattered. “I've got to go,” she said, however much she cherished each moment with him. Each time he turned tail to return to the world and woman she cared so for, it nearly killed her. “No good to be seen in alleys with the likes of you,” she added, hoping that sounded lighthearted.
“It's a good place to observe others from, though, isn't it?” he countered as he glanced up and down their narrow hiding place, his voice dark with unspoken accusations again.
She stared him down. “Spit it out, Edward Thompson, alias Ned Topside, queen's fool and favorite player. I'm no fool, so don't play your clever games with me.”
“I have it on good authority you were in an alley on Knightrider Street yesterday morn, covertly watching Her Majesty.”
Caught, she thought, but she spit out, “On whose good authority? Jenks's?”
“Meant to stay hidden, did you?”
“I was part of the crowd there and crowds don't covertly watch Her Majesty. They do it loudly and publicly. Yes, I was out in the area doing deliveries because Nick Cotter took sick, and you can ask him about that. And I don't need you playing inquisitor any more than I need Ben Wilton doing it!”
She turned on her heel, but he seized her arm and spun her back hard against his chest. She pressed both hands flat to him until he let her go. They stared deep and long into each other's eyes while her stomach turned another flip-flop or two.
“Yes,” she said, her voice nearly breaking, “I watch her when I can. I love to watch her, be near her. Like you, like all of us, I love her.”
He but nodded when she was expecting a bitter scolding or long speech. “It's just that someone in that crowd put something in her coach that shouldn't have been there,” he said, his voice more kindly now. “Were you present when she screamed?”
“Screamed? Elizabeth Tudor screamed? No. What caused it?”
“Suffice it to say it was something stuffed with your— and her—favorite sweet-smelling herbs,” he told her, and she saw he was again watching her face for any reaction. But if the man was too much of a lackbrain to know how she adored him, she wasn't worried he'd uncover her passion for him or much else.
“Then that's all?” she asked, hand on hips. “If you're going to blame me, you're barking up the wrong tree, royal lapdog.”
“By the way,” he said, “Lord Robin's not even that anymore, so she's taken a turn from all men. The queen uses Mary Sidney as a sort of escort, a chaperone when Lord Robin's around, and it irks him to no end, however much he doesn't let on. And, by-the-by, speaking of herb stuffings, I was in a discussion the other day as to whether saffron is good or bad for one's health— headaches and all,” he inquired in an obvious change of topics.
She studied his shifting expressions with a keen eye. “Saffron is good for many cures,” she told him, relieved to be on solid ground again. “It seems to help in diseases like measles and yellow jaundice, not that a mere herb girl grown to an apothecary is allowed to prescribe a thing these days with the vulture doctors hovering over our shoulders. But, as in life, too much of a good thing can be bad, even fatal. If you take more than ten grains of saffron at once, it can hurt your heart.…”
She stopped talking. His allure was so great she almost tilted into him. “Ned,” she blurted, before she lost the courage to say it, “I'm asking you not to come to the shop again. Not because you came with questions today, but because of Ben. He's real jealous, not just of you but of—”
“Of Nick Cotter too?” he asked, frowning, one hand gripping his sword hilt so hard his knuckles turned white.
“Well, no, not since he thinks Nick's so thickheaded, but …”
“Which brings up Jenks.”
“Ah, Jenks—just a little.”
“Surely he's not disturbed by Gil's dropping by. Or do you mean he's jealous of customers?”
“Ned, leave off. A pox on it!”
He seized her arms hard, pressing her back against the wood-and-plaster wall. His sword hilt hurt her hipbone, his leather jerkin flattened her breasts. For one wild moment, she thought he meant to kiss her.
“Don't say that—a pox on it,” he ordered, giving her a little shake. “And, yes, I'll stay away unless I need to come back with more questions or even accusations about your tryi
ng to get even with Her Grace for sending you away in disgrace.”
She was so appalled that she burst into loud sobs. To her amazement, he pulled her into his arms, rocking her slightly. “I'm sorry, Meg—Sarah. I didn't mean it like it sounded,” he murmured, his mouth in her hair against her flushed forehead. “I know you long to come back to serve her, and if I had a way to achieve it for you, I would.”
“Truly?” she asked with a sniff and wiped her nose on her sleeve as he set her back. He fished out of his jerkin a linen handkerchief, fine as any courtier's. She took it and blotted her nose, then tucked it down in the folds of her gown, hoping he'd forget it. In case he heeded her plea and never came back again, she'd have something to remember him by beyond her crazed dreams at night and daydreams by morning light.
“I've got to get back,” she said. “Fare-thee-well, Ned Topside. And if you see me staring from the crowd someday, don't you go thinking the worse of me.”
“I won't,” he promised. “I understand. But Meg,” he added as she started away, “would you mind then if I take a lock of your hair to—just to remember old times?”
She almost cried again. Ned did care. He wanted a keepsake, a token of their friendship. Afraid to trust her voice again, she nodded and stood still while, from her pinned tresses under her kerchief, he adeptly loosed a curl and cut it cleanly with his penknife. His early days of playing women's parts and years since working with lads to paint and primp and dress them like ladies for the stage made him smooth as silk with things like that.
She grasped his fingers as he took the tress, and brushed a kiss on his hand before she rushed from the alley. At the door of the shop, she nearly ran right into her husband coming up from the river.
I HAVE A SURPRISE FOR YOU, YOUR GRACE,” MARY SIDNEY said with a gleam in her bright blue eyes as she sat next to the queen on the oriel window seat. Her other ladies were grouped about the presence chamber playing primero, giggling, or fussing with their lapdogs or parrots, for the queen had sent the men away early after supper. “You've been overly distracted with all this worry, and I want to cheer you,” Mary insisted with a pretty pout.
