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

by Karen Harper

  Elizabeth shifted slightly in her chair. Only she and Kat were seated; Floris stood behind them. Yes, she could see Gil’s face from here. He was with Jenks, positioned just as she’d wanted so she could see the lad; then Jenks would bring him forthwith to her apartments for further questioning. Perhaps this nostalgic view of Italy would shake something loose from the stubborn boy.

  “And now,” Ned went on, “we shall present a few speeches and scenes from the new and fashionable Italian comedy A Potion of Pleasure. Drink up and dream you are in sunny Italy and have found such a magic liquor there as to make anyone who drinks it fall in love with you …”

  Gil started visibly at that. Because of the mention of sun or liquor or falling in love? the queen wondered. It was a charming, lighthearted play, but the stricken Gil looked as if he hardly heard another word.

  Feeling sick as he faced the queen in her council chamber after the evening’s entertainment, Gil stood as mute as he used to when he was dumb.

  “You’d best answer each question Lord Cecil and I put to you,” Elizabeth ordered. “After all, I’m the one who sent you to Italy, I’m the one who paid your passage!”

  Gil knew the queen had been watching him during the play. Now he was so scared his knees were knocking. He dared not tell her he had a mirror. Or that it had gotten him not only into romantic trouble but deadly trouble, too.

  “You’d best talk, lad,” Cecil put in. They were the only two with him; the room echoed slightly when they raised their voices. “What Her Grace didn’t put up for your purse, I did.”

  “I—yes, there were things I didn’t tell you,” Gil stammered, staring at his feet. “Things of the heart.”

  “Do you mean you came to love someone, or that you shifted your allegiance elsewhere?” the queen demanded. Her words frightened him further. Surely she did not think he would ever be part of some sort of spying against her. Was that why she and Cecil had questioned him about Catholics and Spaniards in Urbino? Maybe Dr. Dee, after his brief visit there, had reported to them that Gil had been working against her when he had merely tried to find out things for her.

  He decided to tell part of the truth, hoping it would be enough. “You see, I came to adore Maestro Giorgio Scarletti’s mistress, though I didn’t know she was at first. Just one of his models, I thought. He was married, of course, though that doesn’t seem to stop Italians from—”

  “Or men in general,” the queen clipped out. “Say on, Gil.”

  “She let me paint her … let me fall in love with her—I didn’t know about her and the maestro.”

  “And when he learned you adored her, he cast you out in disgrace? Is that why you came home two years early?” she pursued.

  “I—not exactly.”

  “What exactly, then?”

  “I am not certain I can say.”

  “Gil, we are not just playing at guessing games of secret trysts here,” Elizabeth explained. “Because of the attacks on my artists and their works of me and because the Scottish queen has been making remarks to her mirrors which hint she intends soon to be the next English queen—”

  “No!” Gil cried.

  “There are numerous reasons,” Cecil put in, “that you must come forward with all you know, and now.”

  “But I know nothing of that, of—women and mirrors,” he got out before he lifted both hands to his head. “Except I did a painting—of Dorothea with a mirror … . Has Heatherley told you of it? Pure happenstance, Your Grace.”

  “Yes, I have heard about the painting—your favorite, he said, when you told me quite another thing. Jenks!” she cried over her shoulder. “Bring in the work in question!”

  Gil gaped as Jenks appeared through the door to the queen’s rooms, holding the painting of Dorothea which he’d had secreted in his tent. In the work, she looked to the side toward a young man—a vague, idealized rendition of himself. And that poor, demented lover was holding an exquisite framed mirror behind her.

  Gil start to shake even harder, from within. “It’s more or less a copy of a Titian,” he said. “See, Your Grace? As I told you, she looks to the side and has blond-red hair. But I put in Dorothea’s face and her mirror. We were allowed—encouraged—to copy favorite paintings, to use the same models the masters used to learn their techniques. If the works were good enough, they belonged to our master to sell.”

  “But you left hastily with this favorite work—and without your master’s favorite Dorothea, I take it?” Cecil asked, his voice quiet now.

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Is this technique of copying what you alluded to before?” the queen asked, her voice also kind now. “You became distraught each time you mentioned the Italian master’s techniques, especially of copying, because it reminded you of Dorothea?”

  Gil nodded, not looking into her sharp gaze again, but at the filigreed pomander of sweet herbs she kept fingering at her waist. He held his breath, praying that his clever queen would not ferret out the lies from his half-truths.

  “’S blood, but first loves are hard,” she muttered. “And to have to leave before you wanted to, fearing you’d disappoint me …”

  He nodded again. Thank God, she had not asked him if he had the mirror. If her goodwill toward him got him off scot-free from what she might have caught him on, he vowed silently, fervently, he would never commit another sin in his entire life. Besides, he tried to convince himself, his silence might protect her as well as him.

  Elizabeth slept fitfully that night. In her dreams, her face exploded in fierce flames, then the tent around her whooshed red-gold in the conflagration. They were trapped in it, trapped, all three of them.

  It had been a cloudy, chill day at Oakham Manor, and they had thought to make a little fire to warm themselves in the gay tent in the back gardens. Her father’s sixth queen, Elizabeth’s fourth stepmother, was regent while their royal father fought in France, and so was busy with her council, signing documents, writing letters. Elizabeth’s loyal Kat Ashley was the only adult with them when she and Edward scampered away that day, and their older half sister Mary Tudor tagged along. They had thought a fire would feel good on their hands, so at Edward’s bidding, Elizabeth had lit his gathered sticks with a lantern she’d snatched from the gardeners’ shed.

  She had been so grateful to be with her sister and brother again, though Mary did not care for her, and she seldom saw Edward. More than once under her father’s different queens, “Young Bess” had been sent to the country for asking about her mother. Or worse, off and on, she’d been declared a bastard. This queen, the strictly Protestant Katherine Parr, was kind, but she had not approved of the surprise Elizabeth had given her for a gift.

  It was a translation from the French—in her dreams, Elizabeth could see it yet—a book bound in blue cloth and adorned with silver thread, a twenty-five-page poem, The Mirror of the Sinful Soul, written by Marguerite of Navarre, sister of King Francis I of France. Queen Katherine had said it was unseemly reading matter for a young girl, for it talked of false lovers sharing beds and torment and pain.

  A false lover, her poor Gil had suffered that, Elizabeth thought as she thrashed in her bed, half awake. She had wanted to protect him as she had once tried to protect her dear brother Edward that day of the pavilion fire. But the flames caught the light material and the tent went whoosh … .

  They barely escaped, and it was not her fault, but she took the blame, when she so wanted to please the queen, but she had to protect Kat, the only real mother she’d ever known … .

  Drenched with sweat, Elizabeth sat up in a cocoon of twisted covers. Across the way on a pallet, Rosie Radcliffe breathed regularly. Elizabeth was grateful she had not cried out in that dreadful dream.

  She shoved her hair back into her nightcap and thought again of Gil’s portrait of his Dorothea and of his vibrant painted outline of his queen. She could not bear to believe that Gil had anything to do with the fires or scorch marks, any more than she really believed that the boy Niles had
been the target of the tent fire. But she was appalled that neither she nor the members of her Privy Plot Council had so much as thought of that—and Flora Minton had.

  She slid to the edge of the high bed and dangled her feet until she found her woolen mules. Thrusting her feet into them, she wrapped herself in a coverlet over her night rail and went out into the hall, thoroughly startling her half-dozing yeoman night guard there. She wished it were Clifford, but the man had to sleep when she did.

  “Nothing,” she murmured and waved him back. She padded down the hall to Kat’s door. Lifting the latch slowly, silently, she peeked in.

  A single fat candle lit the room in what seemed brightness after the dim chamber and hall. Kat lay, breathing heavily, in the big bed, but Floris was not in her trundle one. She sat at the dressing table, combing her long, loose brown hair, apparently staring out the black window—which may have acted as her mirror—into the tent-packed privy garden. The wan candle flame threw the shadow of her moving silhouette upon the walls and ceiling.

  “Floris.” Elizabeth barely breathed her name.

  The woman gasped to see the queen and came quickly toward the door. In her long white night trail, she looked pale as a ghost.

  “Your Majesty, is all well?” she asked with a curtsy.

  “I couldn’t sleep, that’s all. How is she?”

  “Resting well, as you can see. The sweet Surrey air does us all good. It’s—inspiring.”

  “Floris, a favor.”

  “I am yours to command. Anything, of course, for you or Kat.”

  “I valued your suggestion this morning about looking into the boy Niles, though he seems a bit of a cipher.”

  “Some servants seems such, but you never know.”

  Elizabeth pondered that a moment. Floris was deeper than she seemed, and the queen was certain she could use her services, not only to protect Kat, but to help them ferret out the fire demon—a term Floris herself had first used and Elizabeth had now adopted.

  “With Lord Cecil and some close servants, hardly ciphers, as you say,” the queen went on, “I am personally looking into the attack on my artists and their art. And hence on me.”

  Floris clasped her hands between her breasts. “You believe it is truly a threat to your own person? But I cannot think how.”

  “There is much to tell which I will discuss with you tomorrow, if you agree to help us.”

  “Of course, in any way, though I will not commit Lady Ashley’s care to any other, a charge you gave me when you took me on, Your Majesty.”

  “And a charge I will hold you to.”

  “Who then is in this group? I would wager a guess on Mistress Milligrew, your Ned Topside and Jenks, perhaps your guard Clifford and your Lady Radcliffe, too.”

  “You are a godsend in more ways than one with your sharp wit and discerning eyes. Kat does not have nightmares, does she?”

  “To tell true, she does, Your Majesty. Ironically, I have discovered it is something about a fire—and not the recent ones, for she’s had them from the first day I came. Something in her, or your, past perhaps?”

  “Yes, but I did not come to unburden myself to you of that. The night and lack of sound sleep do strange things. I shall see you on the morrow.”

  “Good night then. My own mother always used to say not the usual adage, ‘Don’t let the bedbugs bite you,’ but ‘Don’t let your nightmares fright you.’”

  “Did she? Is she still living then?”

  “Dead. Long gone from here—from this life.”

  “But still living in your memories, no doubt.”

  “Oh, yes. Very, very much alive that way,” Floris whispered, and closed the door quickly and quietly, even before the queen could.

  Chapter the Eighth

  “I HOPE YOU WILL ENJOY YOURSELF TODAY, BUT BE EVER vigilant for our covert purposes,” the queen told her Privy Plot Council members as they met briefly in her large second-story room in the Riverside Inn at Mortlake.

  Her trusted group did not include Gil or Dr. Dee this time. But Floris, who had brought Kat with her, was present for her second gathering, as the group had met the last four days to lay strategy. Blessedly, nothing else amiss had occurred at Nonsuch, but the queen hadn’t posed outside or allowed anyone to camp outside the palace walls either.

  “And,” Cecil urged, “watch for anyone with a mirror, besides Dr. Dee, that is.”

  “But remember,” the queen added, “Dr. Dee’s wife is to be observed, since she supposedly lost that mirror I told you of.”

  May Day in Mortlake was as lovely as the other country weather. The queen had brought her closest courtiers and servants along and housed them in the inn, while most of the others of her entourage had tagged along on their own.

  She had been tempted to order her three artists to remain at Nonsuch, but eager to see the celebration, they had made the sixmile journey. Lavina and Henry Heatherley had found housing in the village; Meg and Jenks were to discover exactly where and keep close to them. Gil was staying with the Dees. Kat and Floris were in the room next door to Elizabeth at the inn. Everyone was eager to see the torch-lit Maypole dancing and, as the queen had overheard it called, “Dr. Dee’s fantastical reflections of fire.”

  When the other Privy Plot Council members had filed out, Cecil closed the door and lingered by it. Elizabeth motioned for him to join her at one of the diamond-paned windows set ajar to catch the breeze. The spacious chamber took most of the second story, with sweeping views in four directions: the river just outside to the north, the village green to the south, Dee’s home to the west, and a charming thatched cottage, owned by the innkeepers next door, to the east.

  Like everywhere the queen visited in her kingdom, her chamber, which in this instance had beds for herself, Rosie Radcliffe, and two other of her ladies, smelled of a hard scrubbing and fresh whitewash. The noontide sun on the Thames was so bright that reflections of the water danced in wavering patterns on the ceiling. The effect was mesmerizing but discomfiting, too: it reminded Elizabeth again of mirrors throwing light.

  “Your Grace,” Cecil said, “are you not going out to enjoy the early revelries? Those who didn’t see you when we rode in are hoping for a glimpse of their queen.”

  “I can see that,” she said, gazing out the window, beneath which a country fair was blossoming. Standing beside the window, Cecil watched with her.

  People were pouring into the village, and small groups waited below; occasionally, someone stooped to a child or pointed at the inn to a friend, all the while talking and nodding. Their happy voices carried easily to her ears. Arrayed in finer garb than the villagers, her retinue strolled the area too.

  She was relieved that no one was pitching canvas tents, though hastily erected booths offering varied wares and food were sprouting everywhere. The owner of the inn, an elderly man named Simon Garver, who had once worked at Nonsuch, had told her that her presence had made the festivities larger than ever this year. In the springtimes when Dr. Dee had been abroad, old Garver the Carver, as she’d heard him called, had put up the Maypole, but without the display of the mirror.

  Across the green from this lofty vantage point, they could see the Queen’s Country Players erecting a scaffold of planks for an afternoon performance. Elizabeth was not surprised that they were here. Giles Chatam had claimed they’d gone from town to town in Surrey the last fortnight, but this was obviously the place to be today.

  “There is quite a clear view of Dee’s house from here,” Cecil observed.

  “Indeed. And before we join the others, what would you say to going one story higher?”

  “But there’s only the attic—ah, you mentioned that someone in that attic could have seen into Dee’s garden, where Mistress Dee says she lost the mirror. And since only our male servants are upstairs for this night, and they should all be outside already …”

  He followed her out into the hall. They could hear the voices of her ladies and yeomen guards downstairs in the common room, wa
iting to accompany their queen outside. The door to the attic stood ajar, and Cecil opened it farther. “Shall I go first, Your Grace? It seems bright enough up there in daylight that we don’t need a lantern.”

  “Go ahead, since someone may yet be up there in half dress, though I warrant they are all outside. Despite the true reasons I have come to see this merrymaking with Dr. Dee’s mirror, it will do everyone good to have a respite away from that lurking hunt park.”

  Cecil proceeded her up the creaking stairs and into the dustysmelling garret with its crooked floor. He sneezed as they stood at the top of the staircase, surveying the slant-roofed, irregularly shaped single room, now cluttered with the pallets and gear of grooms, secretaries, and body servants. Jenks and Clifford were bedding up here, while Elizabeth had asked Ned to stay wherever his former troupe of players was this coming night.

  “It’s that one over there, I warrant,” she said, and gathering her skirts closer, she walked toward the narrow window overlooking Dee’s property. Each of the four thick-paned windows up here was set widely ajar. “Yes, a clear view of even the garden bench from here.”

  “And Mistress Dee is a comely woman,” Cecil said.

  “Rather like King David spying on Bathsheba at her bath, you mean? Hm, and was that why she was named Bathsheba?”

  He merely shook his head at that lame pun. “We must inquire who had access to this room the day her mirror was taken.”

  “I already know. Simon Garver, our host here, mentioned that he had to turn out an acting troupe for a night to accommodate our men.”

  “Aha!” Cecil said, shifting to see the players’ scaffold better. “Circumstantial, but—”

  “There is more, Cecil. Floris told me privily the young woman—Katherine Dee—asked many questions about me when she was at Nonsuch. Evidently Katherine was taking a walk just after the Dees arrived while Floris was getting Kat some fresh air.”