Penelope laughed. “Dear Kate. Nay, I don’t think to marry again. I don’t speak of my husband because there is little to say. I married him too young out of desperation, before I knew him or myself very well. It was a mistake. But luckily he died before much harm could be done.”
Kate didn’t know what to say to that, just as she was left speechless when Elizabeth warned against the perils of marriage. She had so little experience with such matters, she felt foolish.
“Perhaps you think of getting married yourself, Kate,” Penelope said, refilling their goblets. “What of your friend from the village? The lawyer?”
Kate thought of Anthony, of his green eyes, the way his hand felt on hers, and she felt even more foolish. Despite his help at Leighton, there were still insurmountable barriers to their ever making a match. “We are only friends. He needs someone to help him in his future career, someone happy to keep a fine house and raise children without being distracted by the music in her head all the time.” Someone with a good dowry.
“Just as you will. It is very true that sometimes we have other, more important matters to attend to than romance.” Penelope flashed a smile. “But it doesn’t mean we can’t have fun sometimes. Even Princess Elizabeth thinks once in a while of matters of the heart.”
Kate laughed. “Does she indeed? And who here, pray tell, would any of us have to think on? The stable boys?”
“You know who I mean,” Penelope said with a wink. Of course Kate knew who she meant—Robert Dudley, whom Elizabeth had known for years. They were in the Tower together after Wyatt’s Rebellion. But his name could not be mentioned these days. “The way he used to look at Elizabeth when they met at court—it’s rather like the way your handsome lawyer looks at you.”
Kate could feel her cheeks turn warm, and it wasn’t from the fire. She looked away and shrugged.
“As you will, then,” Penelope repeated. “As I said, these are no days for romance. Or surely you would be gone from here all night on an assignation, and not on some royal errand.”
“I would rather have been on a romantic assignation,” Kate said. She shifted in her chair, her body still sore from all the running and falling and chasing. “I wish this was all over and done, and all of us safe.”
“Oh, Kate, my dear. I fear we will never be safe. Not living so near royalty as we do. Surely you’ve learned that, wherever you were last night.”
Kate studied her friend. Penelope was a smart woman, one who had been at court as long as Kate or even longer. She had experience of people Kate did not. Perhaps Penelope could be of assistance, could help Kate sort everything out in her mind.
“I was sent to Leighton Abbey,” she said. She gave Penelope a quick summary of the events of the night, of the journey to Leighton Abbey, the play, the letter, the veiled woman. Penelope listened in quiet thoughtfulness, turning the goblet around in her hand.
“It all sounds like a dramatic sonnet, I know,” Kate said. “I wouldn’t have believed it all if I wasn’t there.”
“So Lord Braceton was even worse than we thought,” Penelope said. “He deserved his fate for trying to steal people’s estates, when all the time he was conspiring to have innocents unjustly murdered.”
“But the people who are caught up in this matter do not deserve it! My father, the princess, Anthony’s employer, poor Ned—”
“Quite right,” Penelope said. “One injustice should not lead to another. You say the letter is still at Leighton? I think—”
The door suddenly flew open, making Kate sit up straight, startled. The wine sloshed in her goblet. A frown flickered over Penelope’s face as she turned to see who had burst in on them.
It was Peg, breathing heavily from running, her plump cheeks red and her hair falling from under her askew cap.
“What is it, Peg?” Kate said, nervous. “Is someone ill? Has word come about my father?”
Peg shook her head. “Nay, ’tis the princess. She has a visitor.”
“God’s teeth, but not another one,” Kate cried. “An officer of the queen? Are we all to be arrested?”
“Come see for yourself.” Peg spun around and ran off again, leaving Kate and Penelope to follow.
They made their way upstairs to one of the windows overlooking the courtyard. Peg pushed it open, and they leaned out to peer down at the arrivals.
It was a woman on a fine white mare, accompanied only by two grooms who wore no livery. Her garb was plain but very fine, a black velvet doublet and riding skirt of black wool trimmed with gold braid. Her face was hidden by a black plumed hat, but as one of the grooms helped her from the saddle she glanced up, and the light gleamed on golden curls.
Kate heard Penelope gasp, a sound that matched her own surprise. They looked at each other and cried, at the same time, “Jane Dormer!”
Kate glanced back to see the lady take a small case from her saddlebag and turn toward the house. It was indeed Jane Dormer, Queen Mary’s favorite lady-in-waiting and the fiancée of the Count de Feria. What was she doing at Hatfield?
Kate had the sinking feeling it could be nothing good.
CHAPTER 21
“How are you feeling today, Father?” Kate tucked a blanket around her father’s shoulders and pulled her own cloak closer around her. It was the fine red cloak Elizabeth had given her, but even it couldn’t keep out the damp chill of the small cell.
“I am quite well, Kate dearest. You needn’t worry,” he answered, patting her hand. “I daresay it’s quieter here than at Hatfield, and I can concentrate on my work. And the gaoler is not such a bad man. Of an evening we play a bit of primero, and he tells me about his son, who is taking an interest in singing.”
He gestured to the small table, spread with his music, inkpots, and quills. And to the cot piled with blankets and bolsters Kate had brought from Hatfield. A brazier glowed at his feet, but it didn’t warm much of the space.
Kate studied her father carefully. He looked thinner, his skin grayish under his silvery beard, and his eyes were bloodshot. When she changed the bandage on his gouty foot, it looked even more swollen. He stared up at her, and as he tried to smile it faded into a sharp cough.
“We must get you out of here very soon,” she insisted. She poured him a goblet of the wine Elizabeth had sent for him and stirred in a measure of Cora’s special cough syrup concoction.
“I daresay I am better off here for the time being,” he said again. “Is Her Grace still confined to her chamber?”
“She is allowed to take a bit of exercise, but she is much restricted. Queen Mary sent one of her husband’s Spanish officers to look into Braceton’s death.”
“But you are allowed to leave?”
Kate shrugged. She wouldn’t tell him of how she had crept out of the house when no one was looking, or about her adventures at Leighton Abbey. He had enough to worry about. And as Jane Dormer was still with the princess, not even Elizabeth knew Kate had gone. Penelope had gone off into the secret passageways to see what she could overhear.
“I am quite insignificant, Father,” she said. “No one bothers with me.” And that was a good thing. It meant she could go places most young ladies could not.
“Ah, my dear. If they only knew your true depths.” He sipped at the wine. Outside the stout door, there was a sudden clamor, a shout, and a great banging noise.
“I must be getting a new neighbor,” Matthew said. “The alleged blasphemer was sent off to London yesterday.”
To London—to be burned? And her father’s supposed crime was to be in possession of heretical writings, another burning offense. Yet he had not yet been sent away. She still had time, a little time, to piece it all together. And the queen’s lady’s appearance at Hatfield could be a good sign—or a very bad one. It could mean the queen was more ill than ever and had sent her favorite lady to give word to Elizabeth, the queen’s heir. Or it could mean the queen had just sent more spies into her sister’s house.
The man outside screamed incoherent words befo
re the cell door was slammed on him. The gaoler’s heavy footsteps faded away, and everything was quiet again.
“How does your work progress, Father?” Kate asked, determined to be cheerful for him in the time they had left today.
*
When she left the village, the afternoon was growing late and she knew she had to hurry to get back to Hatfield before dark. She glanced toward Master Hardy’s law offices. A candle burned in one of the upstairs windows, a tiny, solitary glow in the gathering gloom, and for a moment she wanted to go back and knock on the door. To talk to Anthony, go over her ideas of the murders, share her fears.
But she remembered how confused she was when they had parted at the gates of Hatfield, and she didn’t need to cloud her thoughts now. She turned away and quickened her steps toward home.
The wind grew brisker and colder as she made her way down the lane. She wrapped her cloak tighter around her and pulled up the fur-edged hood, glad of the dagger she had tucked into the purse tied at her waist. The darkness past the trees seemed even heavier than usual, filled with the potential for watching eyes. Waiting eyes.
Kate walked even faster, and thought of the murders that had already happened rather than what might be lurking in the twilight. It still seemed so elusive, the connection between all the victims. Ned, Braceton and Braceton’s servant, Master Cartman—how were they linked beyond Hatfield? It all kept coming back to Jane Grey.
Yet half the nobility of England had once been allied with the Greys. They had been at the very center of the elite of the new religion. And the other half had held them as enemies. She would have to trace all those connections. Try to remember all she could about her young life at court, which was not much. She had been such a child then, only vaguely aware of alliances and plots and families.
Kate turned a bend in the road, and glimpsed a rider ahead of her. Thus far she had been the only traveler abroad, as the day was chilly and everyone kept in hiding while the queen’s men searched the neighborhood. She was startled to see someone else, and for an instant thought about hiding in the trees until they passed by.
But then she noted the horse, a sturdy brown cob that seemed familiar. She had last seen it drawing a brightly painted cart. And the rider had bright blond hair under a plain knitted cap.
“Rob,” she called, and hurried to catch up with him. “What are you doing here?”
He turned in the saddle and watched her as she came toward him. Beneath his cap, his handsome face was drawn into stark, sharp lines, and dark circles were etched under his eyes. But he gave her a quick smile, and didn’t seem surprised to encounter her there.
“I came to see what I could find out about my uncle,” he said. He swung down from his horse and wrapped the reins around his gloved hand. They continued slowly on together down the road.
The wind had become even more biting, and Kate was glad of the fine cloak’s warm hood, shielding her face and keeping the breeze from tearing at her hair. She was also glad not to be alone now, though she worried about the way Rob looked. The angry light in his eyes.
“What of your friends?” she asked.
“They have returned to London for the time being,” he said. “We have no further performances until the holiday festivities, and my uncle had a house there where they can stay for a time. I owe it to my uncle to find out what happened here.”
Kate nodded. She understood family obligations, even when family members weren’t of perfect form, as Rob’s uncle had not always been toward him. “How do they fare at Leighton now?”
“Well enough, I suppose. Lady Eaton wanted us to stay for a few more days and present more plays, but her husband refused her. So she took to her bed.” Rob ruefully shook his head. “They are a strange household indeed. Lady Eaton seems most eager to confide in someone, anyone, but her husband keeps her locked away. They are certainly hiding a great deal.”
Like a woman in a tower? Letters, papers, refugees from the queen? Kate looked up at him. “Did you find—”
Suddenly her words were cut off by a high, thin, whining noise through the air, like a flock of insects. She half turned to see what it was, and was driven back by a sudden blow to her shoulder. It felt as if someone had pushed her hard, and she stumbled, confused.
Then pain shot as a bolt of fire all through her body and she cried out. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, burning and freezing all at once, numbing. She fell to her knees and her hand flew up to her shoulder.
Her fingers found the wet, warm stickiness of blood. And the thin shaft of an arrow.
A thick cloud of tight pain closed around her mind.
“Kate!” she heard Rob shout. “God’s blood, Kate, nay!”
She felt his arms close around her and lift her up before she could fall into the dirt, but then the darkness closed in and she didn’t feel anything else.
*
It was the wrong woman.
The archer stared between the trees in astonishment. How could such a mistake have been made? The Lady Elizabeth wore that cloak so often, a fine red beacon on a gray day. But as the hood fell back, it was dark hair that tumbled free and not red.
Dark. How had the last piece of the puzzle slipped away so quickly? And why did it have to be her?
The figure watched in mounting anger and chagrin as the actor caught the girl in his arms. Her head fell back over his shoulder, her arms limp as if she was unconscious—or dead. He snatched a blanket from over his saddle and spread it on the ground before he laid her carefully down. He was much too busy with her to go chasing after the shooter.
The man certainly seemed to be good for something beyond spouting pretty verses. He drew out a dagger and rolled the girl to her side. The arrow had gone straight through her left shoulder. The aim, then, was true, even though the real prey had used a decoy.
Yet another mark against the Boleyn whore’s spawn. The girl would never have been hurt if Elizabeth hadn’t sent her out in her own place.
The actor cut off the pointed arrow tip and swiftly lowered the girl onto her back. He grasped the feathered end and drew it out, slowly and smoothly, in one long tug. It came free, and the girl’s back arched in a swift convulsion. He ripped off the hem of the pretty cloak and tied it around her in a makeshift bandage. It was quickly stained an even darker red.
So much blood. There had already been so much blood. And now there would have to be more.
The figure backed away from the view of the wounded girl and slipped into the woods.
CHAPTER 22
“Kate. Kate, can you hear me?”
Kate heard the soft voice, but it seemed to come from a very long way away, like whispering in a dream or as words spoken through a tapestry. She tried to struggle up toward it, but her body felt as heavy as a stone. She couldn’t even pry her eyes open. She started to let herself tumble back into the comfortable darkness, but a cool hand grabbed onto hers and squeezed it tightly. A ring bit into her skin, jerking her to wakefulness.
She pried open her eyes, and for a moment she could see nothing but the canopy of a bed above her, dark red and full of shadows. Then a pale heart-shaped face swam into view, peering down at her with wide brown eyes. Red-gold hair, untidily pinned up, glowed like a torch.
“She is waking up,” the face said with a smile, and Kate realized it was Princess Elizabeth. “Kate, can you hear me? Are you in much pain?”
“She shouldn’t be,” another voice said, one Kate recognized as Peg’s. “We dosed her with Cora’s syrup in wine after she thrashed about so much when we tried to clean the wound. Perhaps we should send for the doctor and have her bled, my lady.”
“Nay!” Kate cried. She remembered the last time she was bled, the horror of the leeches. She couldn’t bear that again. “No bleeding.”
She tried to sit up, and pain shot down her side, making her whole body contract.
“Don’t move around so, Kate,” Elizabeth said. “You must be still or the wound will open again.” She gently
urged Kate to lie back down again and tucked the blankets around her. “Just be quiet now.”
As the pain slowly ebbed away, Kate remembered all that had happened. Meeting Rob on the road. The arrow that flew out of the woods. The blood. The blackness. And now here she was, in her own chamber with no memory of how she got there.
She glanced down to see that she wore one of her old smocks with the left sleeve torn away to make room for a bulky bandage and a sling that bound her arm to her side. She could smell the feverfew and chamomile of a poultice, and the smoke from the fireplace. How long had she been there? Hours—or days?
“Rob,” she whispered. Her mouth was dry and it was hard to force the words out. “Was he hurt?” She remembered the shock on his face as he leaned over her, and she knew for sure, for the first time, he could not have done these terrible things.
“Young Master Cartman?” Elizabeth said. “Not at all. He carried you all the way back to Hatfield when you were injured, and now he’s waiting most impatiently in the kitchens. Do you remember what happened?”
An arm clad in gray wool appeared in front of Kate, holding a pottery goblet. She slowly turned her head to see Lady Pope. Her face was as pinched and disapproving as ever beneath her old-fashioned gable hood.
And Kate suddenly wondered what the Popes thought of the Greys and Protestant estates. They were vassals of Queen Mary, of course, given the task of guarding Elizabeth, but they had not been overtly hostile like Braceton or Souza. Kate realized their motives needed to be examined as closely as everyone else’s. If Lord Braceton had been about to give a bad report of their guardianship to the queen . . .
“You should drink this, Mistress Haywood,” Lady Pope said. “It will help the pain.”
Kate did want to escape the pain that throbbed in her shoulder, but she didn’t want to fall back into that sticky darkness again. She had to think, think.
She shook her head, and Lady Pope pressed the goblet closer. “Drink it, girl. You need to heal.”
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