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

by Karen Harper

  “Need of you at least. I want to know flat out with no thespian flourishes or spouted lines, what in heaven or hell is your relationship to Dench Barlow?”

  “The dwarf? I can probably get him to come with us if you’d advance me some money, though he’s a bit addlepated. I’ve had him merely beat the drum for us off and on to draw a crowd in these rustic rubbish piles where we’ve had to play, but I could teach him to act the fool at court if you wish.”

  “And what is your relationship to Katherine Dee? Have you ever tried to sweet-talk her, to put it politely, man?”

  He frowned and tapped his index finger against his lips as if he were actually trying to recall, but then he’d probably left a line of swooning women in his wake. “She’s fetching, I’ll admit that, but I’d never dawdle with the magician’s wife, if that’s what you imply.”

  “You fear him?”

  “No, for I warrant he’s all noise and show in his performances,” he said, gesturing broadly. “In a way, he’s an actor like myself, with his own brains behind the effects rather than someone else’s script. But I want to keep him on my good side. Someone who’s that brilliant with winches and rigged ropes to fly scenery and mirrors and lights for special effects, why—” He stopped speaking for one moment. “What about Katherine Dee? She told me she thought I played a wonderful role on May Day, but—Your Majesty?”

  Though she was dealing now with a consummate actor, unlike Katherine Dee, something told Elizabeth that the rogue, too, was telling the truth. Not that she had not been hoodwinked by liars before, for she had. But Giles Chatam believed he could get by on his looks, charm, and sweet speech, so why would he ever turn to murder? And he had seemed so honestly distraught when he had confessed to her that he was an actor because he wished to be anyone but himself after his parents died in that tragic fire in his youth, a fire he passionately claimed he did not start. Then too, his version of events matched Katherine’s down to the least detail: she had used exactly the same word—wonderful—to describe how she’d praised his performance.

  “You two wait here,” she said, and ran inside. Her heart was pounding, her mind racing. If they weren’t lying, she suddenly feared she knew who was.

  “How is he?” she asked as she rejoined the others in the kitchen tending Gil.

  “Resting better,” Katherine said. Gil’s leg had been rebandaged, and the young woman had taken over wiping his feverish brow.

  “Dame Dee,” Elizabeth said, “could you tell me what you recall of the Mooring family of Cuddington? The heir Percy died—I’ve seen his tomb at Cheam’s church. But are the other Moorings indeed deceased too?”

  “I heard so,” the old woman said, trying to stand. Dr. Dee helped her to her feet. She made a shaky bow to the queen, then went on. “’Tis said the master of the manor, Lord John, drank and wagered away what means they had after the demise of their estate. I do recall hearing that. He took sick and died. That left Mistress Malinda and her daughter on their own. Some say they took in washing and stitchery, that beautiful woman and that golden-haired girl,” she said, shaking her head.

  Golden-haired girl. Her words echoed in Elizabeth’s brain. But the hair of such towheads often turned nut-brown as they aged. “And the girl, Malinda’s daughter?” she asked Dame Dee.

  “Why, I heard she died about two or three years ago. Flavia, I think her name was. Forgive me, Your Grace, but however good my old ears and eyes are, my legs hardly hold me anymore.”

  “Yes, please sit,” Elizabeth urged, and reached to help her.

  “No, that wasn’t what I meant,” Dame Dee protested, though she sat anyway. “I must admit I heard you questioning our Katherine about speaking on our doorstep with that actor Giles during the May Day festival. The only ones I saw outside here that day were two women peeking round the corner of the house, and neither of them Katherine.’Twas your Lady Ashley with that friend of hers who tends her.”

  “Floris Minton,” Elizabeth stated, instead of asked. Her pulse pounded harder; her stomach knotted. It couldn’t be. But if Katherine and Giles were telling the truth, then it must be Floris who’d been lying. Perhaps it was no coincidence that both Floris and Flavia had the initials F. M. Dear God in heaven, their ages would be about right, their hair color could be …

  And Elizabeth had always sensed how deeply Floris had loved the land around Nonsuch. It’s the most beautiful view in the kingdom! she had gushed from the castle roof. And, too late, she feared, the queen now recalled how, on the grounds of Nonsuch, Kat had once claimed that Floris had told her she used to live there. Since Kat was confused about places and people, Elizabeth had ignored that, evidently at her peril.

  “Can you recall anything else about little Flavia Mooring?” Elizabeth asked, bending over the old woman. “Anything at all?”

  “’Twas said she wasn’t a very proper young lady. Didn’t want to learn stitchery or embroidery but wove together chains of flowers for everyone.” The old lady laughed, though no one else did. Dr. Dee, his face in a puzzled frown, leaned intently closer. “Instead of proper feminine amusements,” his old mother went on, “I heard she used to play with her brother and climb trees and—”

  The queen cried out as if she’d been struck. Everyone turned toward her.

  “Dr. Dee,” Elizabeth said, “do you know anyone near who has a watercraft? It will cut my time back to London by half.”

  “No, but there must be someone who—”

  Gil seemed to rouse himself again. “Send Jenks to a house a mile east of here, ask for Lem, the lighterman. He brought me this way, and you’d be with the current—”

  “I’ll ride there with Jenks,” the queen cried.

  “Your Grace,” Gil’s voice cut in again, “Cecil thinks I set the fire that burned my chamber and your portrait, but I didn’t, I swear it.”

  She turned back momentarily at the door. “I know you didn’t, and I know who did. Everyone puts too much emphasis on the male heir, but it’s sometimes the sister who is strong.”

  She ran from the house and, using the stone mounting block, was up onto her horse before Jenks could react. “Leave Giles and come with me!” she shouted. “We’re heading back to London now, though we may already be too late!”

  Chapter the Sixteenth

  BY THE TIME THEY SET OUT ON THE THAMES FOR LONDON it was late afternoon, and each moment seemed an eternal agony. The sun sank swiftly behind their backs, but at least the current and stiff breeze were with them.

  While Lem steered, Elizabeth and Jenks sat in the front of the small barge, which was rowed at an even faster speed by two oarsmen. The lighter crew did not know who she was, or if so, did not let on. Perhaps the expression on her face or the gold crowns she paid kept them from asking questions as they bent to their tasks. Staring into the quick current, Elizabeth went over everything in her mind again.

  She was indeed dealing with a sort of ghost, she realized, a haunting from the past. Flavia Mooring had evidently returned from the dead—her demise, no doubt, her own intentional fiction—and had resurrected herself as Floris Minton. Through fakery and fortune, she had managed to become caretaker of her hated enemy’s beloved Kat. Worse, she no doubt meant to make Kat and Elizabeth suffer as Flavia’s own family had been, as she saw it, tormented by the Tudors.

  Elizabeth had no doubt that Floris had been building toward a grand, ghastly finale, all the while secretly reveling in the queen’s mounting frustration and fear. Floris Minton had seemed so skilled with Kat that Elizabeth hadn’t seen or sensed the woman’s sick motives. With a perverted passion, Flavia, alias Floris, hated Elizabeth and those the queen loved or merely employed. If people could be burned to death because they had once helped to adorn Nonsuch, what would Floris do to her beloved Kat?

  More than once, Elizabeth had played into the wily woman’s hands. She had so wanted to take Floris into her confidence and her inner circle, while all the time she was, indeed, being taken in by Floris. Even worse, she was terrified that
Floris meant to harm not only Kat. For if Whitehall Palace caught fire, it could spread to the entire city, especially with this brisk western wind.

  “At least it’s been a cloudy day and dusk is falling,” she said to Jenks as she frowned into the turbulent Thames. “Floris won’t be starting any fires with her precious mother’s mirror today.”

  “No, my lady,” he said, “but it was night when the Garvers’ cottage burned. But see,” he said, pointing ahead, “the city’s in view. Coming back so fast like this, we’ll surprise and stop her.”

  “But she’s already set that trap for me too,” Elizabeth told him. “At her clever request, I made Meg and Cecil promise to tell Floris the moment we returned, so she and Kat could greet us. But I fear she intends to greet me with my chambers—or Kat’s—in flames as she flees.”

  “So we’re going to sneak in?”

  “I will have to send you in, since guards on all the doors report to Cecil—who is supposedly with the queen. They might send word to him the moment they glimpse me. Besides, I don’t need everyone to know about my disguise and deception.”

  “We could put in at the palace’s royal barge landing so I can go up the back staircase into your apartments by that privy door your father built. Bet I could surprise Floris that way.”

  “I ordered it locked and guarded. Besides, she asked me who was going with me, so if she so much as glimpsed you … No, I’m afraid you’re going to have to get in by going around through the kitchens. Then you must get to Cecil by the servants’ stairs and back halls and have him seize Floris—and be careful Lady Ashley is not hurt. I want to be there to confront Floris myself, but I can’t bear to have Kat so much as vexed. If she sees a fire, I don’t know what she’ll do.”

  As the outskirts of London, then the spired silhouette of Westminster slipped by, her voice and thoughts merged with the rush of the river again. Her nursemaid, her governess, her first tutor, Kat had tended her through thick and thin. She could not recall a time without the dear woman who had gone to the Tower once for her and once with her. How Kat used to fret when the princess Elizabeth was given cast-off clothes and a paltry allowance. How much it meant to Elizabeth when she was crowned to have a fine, warm wardrobe for them both and to put Kat in charge of it all as mistress of the royal robes and first lady of the bedchamber. Kat had become her confidante, her friend, almost her mother. But now, old age and mental ailments had made Kat slip away, like this river.

  As dusk deepened, they put in at the crowded public dock just west of Whitehall Palace. A fine mist floated in the air; scattered puddles from an earlier rain dotted the cobbles. Surely this weather could help fight any fire that tried to spread. As Jenks gave her a hand to disembark, she pulled her hood up over her head.

  “I’ll be waiting under the Kings Street gateway,” she told him. “Come for me yourself if you can, or send Cecil, but see that you catch Floris first at any cost—and keep her away from Lady Ashley no matter how much either of them protests. Mistress Minton is skilled at convincing lies, so trust her not!”

  He was off at a run, darting around the last of people and carts on the street. Elizabeth paid the bargemen the rest of their fee and walked briskly to wait under the arch of the gate which spanned the street. She pressed her back against the carved stone and let the mist which was not quite fog cool her face.

  How calm and solid and safe her palace and her city looked as darkness slowed its pace. Thank God, that demented, vengeful woman had not lit the palace as she had feared, not yet at least. If only they could surprise her before she did more damage or killed again.

  It seemed to take Jenks forever. Shadows blackened before torches were lit along the street and on both sides of the arch. Their flickering flames turned the puddles to pools of light like eerie mirrors. The torches bothered the queen, but she could hardly step forward and order them put out. As it was, a few folk stared at her, though most just pushed past, hurrying home, some pulling children along.

  Her stomach knotted tighter. She shuddered as she pictured Dench swinging on that rope to kill himself against a tree. How loyal the little man had been to Flavia and her brother.

  She gasped when she saw a figure rush past as if hurrying away from the palace. Even in the fitful light, she saw it was Lavina Teerlinc: there was no mistaking her yellow hair, height, and form. Elizabeth peeked around the edge of the arch. Gilded by torchlight, Lavina paused before the Ring and Crown Inn just down the way. She looked nervous, almost furtive.

  Then, from the other direction down the street, came Henry Heatherley with his unmistakable swagger. Elizabeth knew he lived near Whitehall but not where; she was hardly surprised he frequented a tavern—but Lavina, too? As the queen squinted to see better, their silhouettes merged in a crushing hug.

  “Hell’s gates,” she swore as her two artists, arms around each other, went into the Ring and Crown. Surely those two had not been in collusion all this time, and she was somehow wrong about Floris. And what was keeping Jenks? At last she saw him darting toward her through the traffic.

  “Did you catch her?” she cried the moment he was within earshot.

  “You won’t like this, Your Grace,” he said, out of breath. “She’s gone, but she left you a note.”

  “And Kat?”

  “Missing too. Some of your women said Kat walked somewhere with her, but that happens all the time. Secretary Cecil was going to have the palace and grounds searched, but a guard said they walked out into the city.”

  Elizabeth almost wavered on her feet. Jenks touched her elbow to steady her. Her hands were shaking as she took the note. As soon as she read it, she would send Jenks to hold her two artists in the Ring and Crown for questioning.

  “Secretary Cecil said,” Jenks told her as she broke the wax seal and opened it, “whatever Floris wrote, you’re to come inside by the back privy staircase. He’ll unlock it, but meanwhile he’s gathering guards.”

  She turned her back to a torch on the gate to read the bold script:

  O GREAT AND MIGHTY AND WISE QUEEN WHO SITS FOR ROYAL POR-TRAITS—WHICH THEN EXPLODE IN FLAMES—COME ALONE UPSTAIRS TO THE RING AND CROWN. WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU, AND THERE WILL BE ONE FEWER—AMONG MANY OTHERS—IF YOU DO NOT HASTEN TO OBEY.

  Elizabeth’s insides cartwheeled. The Ring and Crown? But Heatherley and Lavina’s meeting but a moment ago had seemed a lovers’ tryst, and it was Floris who had walked out with Kat. She’d never seen the handwriting of any of them, so that gave her no clue. Surely this could not be a larger conspiracy than Floris and the dead Dench.

  As she skimmed the letter a second time, Elizabeth fought to keep her face calm so she would not alarm Jenks, for she was determined to go alone. The mocking inscription in this note—it could have been written by Floris or Heatherley, if he was drunk enough. We are waiting for you could mean Kat and Floris, or it could mean two illicit lovers who had been so angered by Gil’s inclusion among the royal artists that they had staged all this. No, she would still wager her very life that Floris wrote this—but had she brought the artists into her conspiracy?

  “What does it say?” Jenks asked.

  “That I may reclaim Kat tomorrow, tied to a tree in the hunt park, while I watch Nonsuch Palace burn,” Elizabeth lied. She hated to mislead Jenks, but for once she needed her loyal man to desert her. “Run back to tell Secretary Cecil,” she ordered, “that I’ll be waiting at the privy door as he suggested.”

  “But I can go with you. He’ll have it unlocked by now.”

  “No, you go ahead. Tell Cecil I’m coming. No, wait. Just so you feel better about your queen being on her own for a few minutes, let me have your sword and dagger.”

  His mouth and eyes opened wide. She actually thought he would argue or defy her. But he unsheathed and handed her his sword and then his dagger. He started to say something, then turned away. Assuming he’d look back once, she feigned starting toward the river. When an empty cart passed between them, she stuck the knife in the back of her belt
and secreted the sword in the folds of her riding skirt. Then she darted down the street and into the covered doorway of the Ring and Crown.

  What memories this old place held, for it was here she had first found Gil and his mother, Bett, trying to steal goods with a long angling hook. But now it looked only brooding and foreboding.

  She glanced upward again to assure herself that what she recalled was true: yes, the roof of the old inn was stone shingles. And, unlike canvas or thatch, they would not burn.

  Elizabeth hesitated just inside the door. The smell of the place hit her before the noise: smoky hearth fire, cooked meat, onions, stale beer, too much humanity packed tightly in the common room. A raucous laugh came from inside. Holding her hood tight around her face, she scanned the twenty or so in the common room—all men. Heatherley and Lavina were not among them, so they must have gone upstairs. Come alone upstairs, the note had read, but someone meeting for an illicit lovers’ rendezvous could be upstairs too, where the private chambers were.

  Before someone saw her, she hurried up the stairs she’d once climbed to pursue Gil and his mother. But she’d had others with her then, and felt so naked and alone now. For no one else in the kingdom but Kat—or Cecil—would she risk this.

  She assumed Kat’s captor or captors waited in one of the upper rooms and would make her bargain for the old woman’s life. Worse, Kat and the queen could be locked in while the inn was set afire. If it was Floris, perhaps she would demand a public promise that Nonsuch be torn down and Cuddington rebuilt. Her quest for revenge had obviously driven her to the depths of desperation. But if her artists were in collusion …

  A stair creaked; the queen jumped so hard she tripped over the sword and almost fell backward. Steadying herself again, she felt behind her back to be sure Jenks’s knife was still stuck in her belt.

  A lantern with a cheap tallow candle nearly gutted out hung at the first landing, and the flame from another lantern wavered in a draft of air at the top of the narrow stairs. Yet that wan light in her eyes almost blinded her. She hesitated. Should she start to knock on chamber doors, or call out for Kat? She had no illusions that she could simply surprise her enemy. She—or they—may have been watching out a window and would want some sort of elaborate show, one preferably with fire. She had to find Kat quickly and—