Murder at Hatfield House: An Elizabethan Mystery

by Carmack, Amanda

  He took a step closer, and held it up where Kate could see it. It was a cheaply made thing, with smudged ink and rough-cut pages, as if it had been produced and distributed in haste.

  It did not belong to Kate, but she knew what it was. She’d seen them after Jane Grey was killed, passed furtively around the neighborhood. It was a compilation of Lady Jane’s own letters and writings on the Protestant cause, along with a detailed description of her conversations with Queen Mary’s priest in the Tower. It was accompanied by an account of her execution, as well as a prayer for her written by John Knox himself.

  It was to all appearances a martyrology, for a martyr of the new religion. It was not known how all the documents had been unearthed, but it was rumored that the pamphlet was produced at Sir William Cecil’s estate on a secret press.

  And it was not at all a good thing to be found with. The death of young Lady Jane had blackened the queen’s name even more than the Spanish marriage had, and surely Mary wanted her cousin forgotten. Her priests condemned such memorials to a girl who was to them an avowed and passionate heretic.

  But what was her father doing with it?

  Braceton smiled. “Do you know what this is? Perhaps you agree with your father that this deluded, treasonous girl was a saint?”

  “Nay, she knew nothing,” her father said. His face had turned an ill greenish color and he slumped down on his stool.

  “You worked in the household of Dowager Queen Catherine, did you not?” Braceton said. “Surely you knew Lady Jane in the queen’s household. Perhaps you have fond memories of them both.”

  Kate had no answer to that. She did remember Lady Jane, though only vaguely. She’d only been a child then, and Lady Jane not much older. A small, pale, deeply serious and earnest girl who was always deep in a book. She conversed mostly with adults about very adult matters, such as religion. Her name hadn’t been spoken at Hatfield in years, yet lately she seemed to haunt them all.

  “Queen Catherine was a great lady,” her father said stoutly.

  “A lady who fostered heretic serpents in her household,” Braceton scoffed. “If old King Henry hadn’t died when he did, she would have been fetched to the Tower where she belonged. But you, Master Haywood, obviously long for those days to return. The possession of such writings is treason to the queen, so I am placing you under arrest. Since it’s clear no one here at Hatfield can be trusted, you will be sent to the village gaol until you can be brought to London for questioning.”

  Arrested? Kate watched in stunned shock as two of Braceton’s men grabbed her father by the arms and dragged him to his feet.

  “Kate . . .” he cried, struggling feebly. “Kate, what is this?”

  The sight of her father, her brilliant father, treated like the commonest criminal made a burning anger sweep over the chill.

  “Nay, let him go!” she shouted. “He has done nothing at all. He only sits in here working on his music; he knows nothing of the world outside. How can he have committed treason? He can barely walk! He has gout.”

  Braceton reached out and grabbed her wrist, hard. “Then perhaps you assist him? I’ve seen you tiptoeing about, Mistress Haywood, thinking no one can see you. Maybe I should arrest you as well.”

  “Let her go,” her father said, his voice suddenly calm. Kate twisted around to find him watching her. His eyes implored her to keep silent, to hold her temper. “She has done nothing. She’s just a foolish girl. Take me to your gaol, and I’ll tell you what you want. Whatever you want.”

  “Father, no,” Kate insisted, deeply afraid. The gaol was a small, cold stone structure, damp and dismal. It usually held only ale-shot fools who caused fights at the tavern or petty thieves. One man had died of a lung-fever after being held in its drafty cells too long.

  “My father is ill; he cannot be left there,” Kate insisted, more afraid than she had ever been.

  “Then he had best talk quickly,” Braceton said abruptly. He pushed Kate aside, and got between her and her father as they bundled him out the door.

  Her father went quietly after Braceton’s threat to Kate, but Kate could not keep silent.

  “He does not even have shoes or a cloak,” she cried, desperately trying to reach her father. “Is this the queen’s justice now? To kill an ill, innocent old man with the ague?”

  “The queen’s justice?” Braceton shouted. “A slew of murders have been committed here, and you dare speak to me of justice, mistress? I will find out what treason lurks here—”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Elizabeth suddenly said, her voice calm and cold, but easily floating over Braceton’s fury.

  Kate strained up on tiptoes to see into the corridor. Elizabeth had obviously just been roused out of bed, as they all had. She wore her fur-trimmed robe, and her hair was hastily braided. Penelope stood behind her, watching with wide, frightened eyes.

  “This man has been found to possess heretical writings,” Braceton said. “After you protected him. He is being taken to the gaol for further questioning. And I will tolerate no more interference in this matter. Not after the queen’s church was so befouled.”

  “My lady, please!” Kate beseeched, terrified for her father.

  “I will write to my sister this instant and tell her of your atrocious behavior,” Elizabeth said. She sounded just as angry and confident as ever, but Kate could see the flicker of uncertainty in her dark eyes. The terrible events of the last few days had taken their toll on everyone, and now matters were running over them all like a sudden winter blizzard.

  “Do that, my lady,” Braceton said with one of his cold smiles. “But I will question this man. And anyone else who might know of the plots that are afoot in this very house.”

  He and Elizabeth stared at each other in tense silence for a long moment, before Braceton gave a loud snort and pushed Kate’s father farther along the corridor.

  “He will not go without warm clothes,” Elizabeth called out.

  Braceton slowly nodded. “Very well. But his daughter will not gather them. Who knows what she would slip into the packing.”

  “Go, Penelope, and fetch some garments for Master Haywood,” Elizabeth said, without taking her steady, cold stare from Braceton.

  With a sob, Kate ran over to throw her arms around her father. The confusion and fear had faded from his eyes, but Kate could feel how frail he was in her arms.

  “Don’t be afraid, my dearest girl,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss to her brow. “I was a fool to forget about that pamphlet, but we are innocent of any wrongdoing and the truth will always come out.”

  “But you will be ill in that place,” Kate protested. “Your leg . . .”

  “The princess will see to it I am comfortable. And she will take care of you. Stay very close to her.”

  Kate shook her head, still afraid. “I will find who has done this, Father, I promise,” Kate said, though she wasn’t sure how she could do that. What little knowledge she had gathered seemed so jumbled up and senseless. She only knew she could do it; she had to.

  “Nay, Kate,” he said, suddenly fierce. He took her face between his hands and looked down into her eyes. “You must take care of yourself now. Promise me that. I can bear anything if I know you are well.”

  That was how it ever was with them. One was well if the other was. “Father . . .”

  “Promise me! We haven’t much time.”

  Kate slowly nodded. “I will take care, Father.”

  Penelope came back with a bundle of clothes, as well as a cloak, a pair of stout boots, and a walking stick. She handed them to Kate’s father, and suddenly reached out to kiss his cheek. He laughed in surprise.

  “The princess will have you back here very soon, Master Haywood,” Penelope said. “Before nightfall, I would say.”

  Without giving anyone the opportunity to say another word, Braceton hurried Matthew away. Elizabeth whirled around and followed them.

  “Stay here, Kate,” she called back. “I will see to this.”
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  Penelope put her arms around Kate’s shoulders, and Kate was glad her friend stood there to support her or she was sure she would fall. Tears of grief and rage choked her, yet she knew she had to stay strong for her father.

  She had to stay strong for them all.

  *

  “I am sorry you could not see him.”

  Kate smiled at Penelope as they walked home from the village gaol. Penelope had stayed with her all morning as Braceton tore the house apart, including Kate’s own rooms. She’d helped Kate gather a case of belongings to take to her father and walked with her all the way to the village in the cold wind, waiting with her as the gaoler went through the clothes and books and declared that Master Haywood could have no visitors. Penelope was quiet, but always there, and Kate was grateful for her company. She needed a friend with her now, to help her be strong.

  Because she needed strength now more than ever before.

  “At least they took the things to him,” Kate said. “If he can stay warm, and distracted by the books, he should be well enough for a time. And they agreed his meals should be delivered from the Rose and Crown.”

  “Thanks to the coin you gave them.”

  Kate gave a rueful laugh. The money had been all she could scrape together so quickly, which was not much. “Needs must, I suppose. But he won’t be there long.”

  “You agree that Princess Elizabeth can have him out soon?”

  “I know she will do everything she can, but Lord Braceton is furious with her. He will thwart her at every turn.” Kate remembered the way Braceton looked at Elizabeth, with the burning hatred of a general about to order his legions to charge an age-old enemy. “And I fear he is the one with the power at the moment. While Queen Mary lives . . .”

  “Which could be for some long time yet. She has recovered from illnesses before.”

  Kate sighed. Waiting, not knowing, always being afraid, had been their lot for such a long time. It had been grinding, exhausting. Now it was desperate.

  “There is only one thing to be done,” she said.

  “Break your father out of the gaol in the middle of the night?” Penelope said, a hopeful note in her voice.

  Kate laughed, knowing that she had to restrain her more impulsive nature. “That could be rather exciting! Like something in a play. But I fear it would only cause us more trouble in the end.”

  “Then what will you do?”

  Kate stopped next to a gray stone wall encrusted with moss, and leaned against it as she stared out over the empty windswept fields. She had been thinking about just such a question on the walk to the village, and it was a vexing one. She’d spent so long—her whole life, really—wrapped up in music and her own small world. The greater concerns had always been there, all around her in the people her father worked for and the places they lived. Politics, intrigue, danger, power and its loss—she knew of it, heard of it, was interested in it, but now it had come so close and become so real.

  She knew she had to leave the cozy familiarity of her lute and her manuscripts to be a true part of it all. If she wanted to save all she held dear, her father and the princess, she had to.

  The cold wind tugged at her hair, and she tucked the unruly brown strands into her cap. She wished for the fine fur-lined cloak given to her by Elizabeth, but a sense that Penelope, who was Elizabeth’s close servant, would be hurt knowing of the rich present had kept her from wearing it while her friend accompanied her. “I am going to find out who is truly committing these crimes. Then Braceton will have to see it has nothing to do with us at Hatfield and release my father.”

  “Kate, nay!” Penelope cried. “It is too dangerous. Look what happened to Ned.”

  Kate closed her eyes as a spasm of pain rippled through her. “Aye. Poor Ned. I must do this for him, too. And I know to be cautious.”

  Penelope leaned on the wall beside her, and Kate could feel how stiffly her friend stood. Kate glanced over to find Penelope watching her with worried, shadowed eyes. “We could not bear it if we lost you as well. So much horror all around . . .”

  “All the more reason to do what I can to stop it. No one else must be hurt.”

  “If you insist, I will help you however I can, of course,” Penelope said earnestly. “We must keep the princess safe, no matter what. But how can we? Do you know something the rest of us don’t, Kate?”

  “I know very little, I fear,” Kate said. She thought over the few things she had gleaned since Braceton came storming into Hatfield, bringing the darkness with him. What the cook at Brocket Hall told her about the estates. The play about Jane Grey, and Master Cartman’s strange behavior surrounding it. The pamphlet in her father’s possession. Ned clad in the vestments of a priest.

  The only connection seemed to be religion, and Jane Grey, who had made religion the focus of her short life. But faith was always around them. It bound them together and tore them apart, as people had to grapple with faith to the monarch and the country versus faith in their immortal souls. It caused arrests and burnings. But what about it tied the terrible events at Hatfield together?

  And what did it have to do with the attack on Braceton before he arrived? Did he covet someone’s land? Whose?

  “Very little indeed,” Kate murmured.

  “I doubt there is much to know,” Penelope said sadly. “The world has gone mad and that is all there it to it. We should take care not to get drawn into that madness. It would surely drown us.”

  “But we are already involved! Ned is killed, my father in gaol, old Cora attacked by Braceton. Braceton’s manservant murdered on our own doorstep.” Kate pounded her fist on the wall. The rough stone hurt her hand, but that pain was as nothing compared to the fear in her heart. “Aye, we are involved, whether we will it or not. We must do our best to see it finished.”

  Penelope was quiet for a long moment. They stood there together, listening to the whine of the wind, the faint echo of noise from the village down the road. Life seemed to move on as usual there, but Kate sensed it was merely a facade. Like the kitchen maids at Hatfield kneading their bread, or the laundresses hanging out the wash, the princess reading, Penelope sewing. The things they did every day now seemed like playacting, a pretense to keep the wolf from the door.

  But the wolf was already there.

  “Your father is your only family, is he not?” Penelope said.

  Kate nodded. “My mother died when I was born, and I have no aunts or uncles living, no cousins.”

  “I lost my mother long ago, too.”

  Kate looked at Penelope in surprise. They had been friends ever since they both came to Hatfield. They were close in age, and interested in plays and fashion. Kate could laugh with Penelope as she could no one else in the house. But they had never really shared such deep confidences.

  “Did you?” Kate said. “I am truly sorry. I don’t remember my mother at all, but I think of her often.” And she missed her when she played her mother’s lute.

  “I do remember mine. She was so beautiful, so kind. Too kind, perhaps.”

  “‘Too kind’?”

  Penelope gave a sad smile. “It was her soft heart that made her too good for this world, I think. After I lost her, Princess Elizabeth took me into her household as a kindness. But I miss my mother very much. Loyalty to family, to friends, is so important, is it not? The most important thing.”

  “It is,” Kate agreed, hating the sadness in her friend’s eyes. The ache of loneliness that never quite went away. “It is all we can really know there is in this world. All we can trust.”

  “When you were talking to the gaoler, I met Master Johnston, innkeeper at the Rose and Crown, in the lane,” Penelope said. “He said that Ned’s father has disappeared.”

  “Ned’s father! But that is terrible.” Kate recalled the last time she saw the man, frantic and wild with grief in the church, vowing vengeance. Then there was his empty house, the sister who had come and taken him away. “No one knows where he has gone at all?”


  Penelope shook her head. “Master Johnston says he was quite ale-shot in the tavern before his sister arrived to fetch him, and was promising to find Ned’s killer and flay him alive. Then his sister came, and no one has seen him since. The door to his room was open, but the bed was not slept in.”

  “How strange,” Kate mused. Could the poor, grief-struck man be responsible for some of what had happened? Could he have been somehow involved, and was that why his son became the target of a murderer? The neighbor woman had said Ned’s father was once a soldier and served with Lord Braceton, until drink took him over.

  “Perhaps he really has gone to seek his revenge,” Penelope said.

  Before Kate could answer, she heard the rattle of wheels in the road. She turned to see Rob’s cart slowly creaking toward them, Rob at the reins.

  In stark contrast to how they had appeared on the way to Hatfield, all bells and drums and bright colors, today the players were silent, saddened. Most of them trudged along the lane, muffled against the cold, and Kate could hear a woman sobbing loudly inside the cart.

  “Master Robert,” Kate called out as they drew near. “Did your uncle return? Are you leaving for Leighton Abbey?”

  Rob pulled up the horses and the cart lurched to a halt. He looked tired, his handsome face sharply drawn beneath his cap, and Kate could see the glint of blades hidden beneath his short cloak. It reminded her that he was not to be trusted.

  “We are going to Leighton, aye,” he said. “But my uncle has not returned. We couldn’t wait for him any longer.”

  “You couldn’t wait, you heartless varlet!” the woman in the cart cried.

  Rob didn’t glance back. “My uncle’s leman disagrees, of course, but it wasn’t safe for us to stay. Not with all that—well, all that was happening this morning. People have a tendency to blame players if they can.”

  “My father being arrested, you mean?” Kate said.

  “I’m sorry for that, of a certes,” Rob answered solemnly. “How does he fare now?”

  “We were allowed to bring him some comforts from home, so he is well enough for the moment. But I must get him out very soon. He has done nothing wrong.”