The Fyre Mirror: An Elizabeth I Mystery: 1 (Elizabeth I Mysteries)

by Karen Harper

  To get away from the warmth of the late-afternoon sun, she went to stand in the shade on the eastern side of Lavina’s tent. As she gazed up at it from this angle, her eyes widened. What appeared to be a scorch mark, walnut brown, perfectly round, was on the sloped roof just below where the tent pole emerged.

  Elizabeth circled the tent. She saw only that one strange spot. As she circled Heatherley’s, peering up at his roof but seeing nothing amiss, Cecil and Dee came out to inquire what she was doing.

  “Look!” she told them, motioning them to her earlier vantage point. “That mark up there. What is it? Could a candle or flame have been thrown on this tent roof, too, but failed to ignite? Strange that it seems so perfectly round.”

  “But for your keen eye, it would have been a perfect crime, Your Majesty,” Dee said, so quietly that it was if he spoke to himself. “With the bright morning sun and the angles of refraction, I should have thought of it myself.”

  “Thought of what?” Cecil said. “You don’t mean something like a—a spot of sunlight started that fire?”

  “Have you ever heard the story of how Archimedes burned the Roman ships that were going to attack Syracuse?” Dee asked, folding his hands across his chest and tapping an index finger over his mouth. “Your Majesty, if you will come to visit me at Mortlake, I can demonstrate for you how that mark—and perhaps the deadly conflagration of the nearby tent—could have happened.”

  “Wait,” she commanded, pressing her hands to her temples. “As I recall, Archimedes used a huge concave mirror to catch the sun’s rays and burn the canvas sails and ignite the ships. But here?”

  “Even a small mirror would do,” Dee said, nodding as he bent his knees slightly and lifted his hands to peer through them at the circular stain. “A small mirror, that is, in the hands of a very daring and determined killer.”

  Chapter the Fifth

  “MY DEAREST! KATH-ER-INE!” JOHN DEE SANG OUT AS HE hurried into their hastily pitched tent on the other side of the encampment from the scene of the fire. He saw she’d been scrubbing at the dirt spot on her skirt, for her ministrations had turned a circle of the dark green damask black. Besides her wash bucket, around her lay scattered items from their four saddle packs, so she must have been unpacking.

  “What is it?” she cried, looking up. “I’m hungry. We are to be allotted some fine fare while we’re here, aren’t we, I mean, considering your status? Why, you seem at her beck and call every bit as much as her secretary Cecil.”

  “Good news!” he told her, chortling. “Your wish has come true, my dearest.”

  “To meet her? Now—with my best gown all blotched up?”

  “Ah, better than that. The queen and a small retinue are coming to visit us at Mortlake on the morrow.”

  “Tomorrow?” she cried, and leaped up from the single stool in the tent. “But—but—I’m here, and Sarah won’t know to clean and to prepare food and to—I can’t leave here without meeting her, why, coming all this way and not so much as laying eyes on her. Surely we’ll go ahead of her to Mortlake, so she won’t be walking in with us when I haven’t been there, didn’t know … .”

  Dee sighed and sank into the stool she had just vacated. He was aching from the ride to Nonsuch, then from running hither and yon to examine corpses, tents, and scorch marks. But he was honored to be in the thick of things with Elizabeth Tudor and William Cecil, the two brightest and most powerful people in the kingdom. Though, God as his judge, he couldn’t see why Katherine had to fuss at him when she was being given the desire of her heart. All he’d heard was queen, queen, queen, and now …

  “Let me explain it to you clearly, my dear,” he said, tugging Katherine down on his knees. “It’s actually an important trip for Her Majesty as well as for us. She wishes to see some things in my laboratory which tie into the investigation here of that fatal fire.”

  “In other words, she is coming to work with you,” she said, sitting stiffly, almost warily, in his lap. “Whatever is she thinking caused that fire?”

  “Never mind all that, my love. We must send for our horses and set out so we can be home before sunset tonight. You see, that will give you all evening and part of the morrow to prepare things for the royal arrival.”

  “But just one night? Well, I shall do what I must, of course.”

  “There, you see, and you can talk mirrors with Her Majesty, as you favor them, and she is very interested in them now, especially my concave looking glass. Ah, I think we shall set up the demonstration in our garden in full sun. Now what?” he asked, seeing her stricken expression. “Don’t be vexed, for everything will go well.”

  “Mirrors?” Katherine demanded, seizing his sleeve as he headed out to send for their mounts. “What about mirrors? I mean, you’ve many mirrors, so why that special one?”

  “Ah, it is your favorite, is it not? She may wish to take it with her for a while,” he said ruefully, for it was his favorite too. The mirror was fearfully expensive. He’d bought it in Venice, where glassmaking guilds on the islands of Murano guarded the secrets of their craft, he’d heard, on pain of death. The Italians were that way, apparently effusive but actually as defensive as their city-states.

  As for his precious mirror, he’d spent hours studying its angles, its ground surface, its silver backing, its pinpoint focusing power, and especially its distortions. He cherished it because it had taken him a long time to discern its mysteries. But not, he feared, as long as it was going to take him to understand his wife.

  “What’s keeping that boy?” Elizabeth muttered as she and Cecil awaited Gil in her audience chamber.

  “Perhaps Clifford couldn’t find him,” Cecil said, stacking the bills and grants she had just signed.

  “Which reminds me, how did you find Lord Maitland in your meeting this morning?” She rose and went to stand in the splash of sun through the window, resting one arm on the deep ledge and soaking in the warmth. “You know, my lord, he’s the only Scot I trust in this subtle struggle with Queen Mary. I truly believes he fears her wildfire actions as much as we do.”

  “Agreed. He says Darnley’s already throwing his weight around, acting arrogant and insulting her longtime counselors right and left. With that sort of help from her betrothed, the queen may soon alienate all who have been loyal to her, the Protestant lords of Congregation like Maitland and Murray anyway.”

  “She’s been content to let them advise and nearly rule, but will Darnley allow that, especially as her husband?” She hit her fist on the windowsill. “This covert policy of ours to plant him in her life has been a gamble, my lord. Yet I still believe their marriage will weaken both of them, just the opposite of what they are expecting. Dr. Dee’s report on her mania for mirrors shows she is rash enough to make public that she covets my throne.’S blood, we don’t need my northern Catholic subjects joining hers in a rebellion to topple me.”

  “Your Grace?” a voice called from behind them.

  She started when she saw the boy simply standing in the door, for she hadn’t heard it open. “Oh, Gil! Enter, then. I did say they should send you straight in. Ignore what we were saying if you overheard, or I shall have to have you put under lock and key.”

  When the lad’s eyes widened, she smiled to assure him she was jesting. “My lord Cecil is going to take a few notes,” she said as Gil dipped a bow to her. “We are most anxious to hear everything Italian you have to share.” She sat at the table again. “Will you sit or stand, Gilberto Sharpino?”

  “May I walk a bit, the way you do when you’re thinking, Your Grace? It will help me remember. I dared write nothing down.”

  “Of course. My lord Cecil, do you have a particular thing you would ask Gil first?”

  “How tight is the court of Urbino to Rome and to Spain?” he asked as he poised pen over a fresh sheet of paper.

  “Very close ties, my lord, to Rome especially. And correspondence is exchanged—ambassadors are too—with King Philip of Spain. He buys artwork and, I don’t doubt, i
nformation too from Italy. They think our queen’s father and she herself are heretics of the worst order, of course.”

  “Of course,” the queen clipped out, “and I’ve no doubt I’ll be excommunicated by the so-called His Holiness someday. But my people will rally behind me—that is, the ones who don’t take that as their battle cry to rebel or try to kill me.”

  Cecil and Gil both gaped at her. “’S blood,” she cried, “I am not some innocent ninny lost in the woods!”

  “Hardly that, Your Grace,” Cecil said. “To carry on your conceit, I just want to be certain we always see the forest for the trees, that is all.”

  “Meaning not to let our enemies like Mary of Scots, King Philip of Spain, and the pope himself cause us to react instinctively instead of calmly, without viewing the broader picture? I can’t help it, Cecil. After all, politics and history hang greatly on the personalities of the participants.”

  “I cannot argue with that, Your Grace, for you are England.”

  “But I meant not to digress. Gil, tell us about the art school there, about people—you see, there we are again—people making policy. Who is the most interesting person you met?”

  She and Cecil listened raptly while Gil painted word pictures for them of the Italian painter Titian’s genius, especially of Gil’s favorite masterpiece, the Venus of Urbino.

  “Naked?” the queen said when he described it. “He painted his Venus quite naked, but she looks to be a real woman, not the goddess?”

  “Oh, she’s real, all right,” Gil vowed. “And I’ve met a woman, Dorothea, who looks a great deal like Titian’s model. Dorothea’s a model too. I’ll sketch her for you sometime, Dorothea that is, as I’ve drawn her before—with clothes on.”

  “This Dorothea is Titian’s model?” Cecil asked, frowning as he looked up from taking notes.

  “No, my lord, she poses for my maestro, Giorgio Scarletti.”

  “But were we not speaking of Titian? Forget this Dorothea unless she is of import here.”

  The queen noted that Gil looked crestfallen. Because of Cecil’s scolding tone or because this woman evoked sadness in the boy? His face had lit like a Yuletide candle but a moment ago. But she’d broach that subject later.

  “Anything else of import about Titian?” Cecil asked.

  “He’s painted for King Philip of Spain,” Gil said, his voice quiet now. “Religious paintings, mostly of saints.”

  “And who knows what else Titian sends him.”

  “I doubt that, my lord,” Gil said, seeming to perk up again. “He’s obsessed with his art. He doesn’t even sell his own works, because a patron manages it all for him, keeping him in the eye of the nobles who would commission him. And so his fine reputation is spread far and wide on the Continent.”

  “Who is this patron promoter?” the queen asked.

  “One Pietro Aretino, a big bully of a man, but he keeps Titian’s name and reputation and work disseminated everywhere.”

  “Hm,” Cecil mused, “a genius of another sort, to make and sway public opinion.”

  “As I mean to do through my portraits and appearances over the years. Tell us more of Italy, Gil.”

  He described Terra del Duca, the town of Urbino with its massive fort and ancient palace on the tops of two hills. “In truth,” Gil confided, glancing out the sunstruck window as he passed it in his pacing, “the landscape of Urbino reminds me of this area with its gentle hills and mix of meadows and forests. Both places have scattered remnants of stones or bricks, a few foundations hidden in the grass from buildings which came before, places where other people lived and died.”

  “You’ve become a poet as well as a painter, Gil,” the queen pronounced, and then they fell silent for a moment. She watched Gil’s eyes glaze over as if he saw Italy even now, built upon the ruins of its past. She’d never given much thought to the demise of little Cuddington on this site, but she’d seen the few surviving stones. In a way, it was sad that her father had built his fantastical Nonsuch on someone else’s beloved manor and town.

  “And, Your Grace,” Gil’s eager voice interrupted her thoughts, “women are important in the Italian city-states, for the men are oft gone to war, sometimes as mercenaries, sometimes for their own or the pope’s cause. Dukes’ wives rule when they’re away and even make laws, receive ambassadors, and oversee the education of their daughters as well as their sons.”

  “We educate women with their brothers here,” Cecil proclaimed a bit too loudly, as if he’d had enough of Gil’s extolling another country. He tossed his pen on the paper, flecking ink spots across the page.

  “Those Italian women are not comparable to me,” the queen said. “I don’t rule in the place of a duke or king—a man—and never shall. Though I do recall when my father went to war in France late in his life, he named my stepmother Katherine Parr as regent in his stead. And she took all of us—his three children—to await his triumphant return home at Oakham Manor in Rutland.”

  “Times,” Cecil said, “were different then.”

  “I meant not to reminisce,” Elizabeth whispered, turning away from both of them as she, like Gil, gazed outside into the blaze of sunlight. Curse it, she fumed, but the tent fire here kept resurrecting her terrible memories of that fire at Oakham. It was there, the very day she so proudly presented her stepmother with her gift, that she got in trouble, not only for her choice of a gift but for the nearly fatal fire itself.

  Cecil cleared his throat and shifted in his chair. “Gil,” he said in the stretch of silence, “pray tell who else you saw in Italy of import to us.”

  “Well, Dr. Dee, of course, when he passed through. He told me some of the latest news of home and made me yearn to be back all the more.”

  “Cecil, did you know John Dee passed through Urbino? Why did he not tell us?”

  “Hm, perhaps he did and I forgot to say.”

  “Too many things churning in that brain of yours,” she agreed.

  “Dr. Dee didn’t stay long, then went to Venice,” Gil put in, “though not when I was there observing techniques in Titian’s studio to compare them with those of my own maestro Scarletti’s.”

  “What techniques have you learned, Gil?” she asked, though her mind was still on Dee. He should have reported, written at least, about how the boy was doing in Italy. “Gil, what techniques?” she demanded when Gil, after being so talkative, said nothing.

  “Just brushstrokes, that’s all, the vibrant use of color, perspective and the depth of shadowing—things like that.”

  But the boy had stumbled through that answer; she could sense he wanted to say more. He looked as if he’d been caught at something, just the way her brother used to, like that time he brought a pregnant dog into his bed and could hardly hide the mess—or six new puppies in the morning.

  “After my lord Cecil and I return from Mortlake late this afternoon,” Elizabeth told Gil, “perhaps we shall use the warm glow of the sinking sun for our first portrait session here—outside. And then we shall see what techniques you learned in Italy, Master Gilberto Sharpino. You just be certain, my young man, you paint your queen fully clothed.”

  The lovely early-afternoon ride toward the tiny Thames-side enclave of Mortlake calmed the queen. The river glittered in the sun as they rode the rutted path which followed its south bankside contours. She usually took her royal barge up and down this, the greatest waterway of her realm, but today it felt good to ride. It reminded her that she had hoped to go hunting at Nonsuch—though for deer, not for a double murderer.

  Her entourage consisted of Robin, who had been tutored years ago by John Dee and who had originally introduced Elizabeth to the learned man; Cecil, who hardly had the time or the inclination for a ride, but wanted to see Dee’s latest experiments; one of her ladies, Rosie Radcliffe; and four guards, including Jenks and Clifford. She had been to visit Dr. Dee’s home and laboratories only once five years ago, for her 007 usually came to court or was abroad in her secret service. When he was home in
Mortlake, Dee still lived with his elderly mother, who doted on him and his genius, but now he had to contend with a young wife the queen had only briefly glimpsed from afar.

  As the royal retinue approached Mortlake, it was apparent that someone had spread the word she was coming. Men with children on their shoulders lined the river path; women waved tablecloths from front yards or upstairs windows. Two lads had climbed one of the cottages and sat waving from its thatched roof. On the fine old Riverside Inn, which the queen had often noted from her barge, bunting made from skirts and cloaks was draped from sills, while makeshift flags flapped in the breeze.

  “I can’t believe Dr. Dee told people,” Elizabeth said to Robin as she smiled, nodded, and waved amid the cheers. “He’s usually so secretive.”

  “I’d wager an entire week’s primero winnings,” Robin said, “it wasn’t him but his new little bride.”

  Dee, looking as surprised at the noise and fuss as the queen felt, came out with his stooped mother, walking with a cane, and Katherine to greet them. The pretty blonde wore a forest green damask gown and curtsied so low and grandly that she almost sat down on the grass. After pleasantries, introductions, and a few more waves to the lingering crowd of several score, the queen’s party went inside.

  “I regret the swarm outside, Your Majesty,” Dee whispered to her. “It seems Katherine only told one person, and then—”

  “I understand. It is ever my joy to greet my people, but it will make your mirror demonstration difficult, will it not?”

  “Though we have an enclosed garden, I set it up in the larger courtyard away from prying eyes,” he told her as Katherine came in with plates of food and a serving girl with a ewer of wash water. Dame Dee, whose age must have been near Kat’s, retired to a chair by the hearth, so Mistress Dee was obviously overseeing things here. She looked quite nervous, Elizabeth thought, and her heart went out to her. To calm her, the queen remarked, “You are a fortunate woman, Katherine, to have wed a man with so many mirrors, are you not?”