Murder in the Queen's Garden

by Amanda Carmack

  Kate smiled at her. She had come to like Violet very much on their travels, for they often found themselves in the same conveyances and sharing lodgings in the palaces and manors of the summer progress. She was one of the queen’s newest maids of honor, small and pretty, with blond curls and a quick smile. She enjoyed music and could help while away dull hours on the road talking of the newest songs from Italy and Spain. She was also a fine source of gossip about the court, conveyed in quick whispers and giggles. Who was in love with whom, who was seen speaking to whom.

  Information that seemed most frivolous but could prove deadly useful—as Kate often discovered lately.

  Violet seemed especially excited today, for her brother served as a secretary to Lord Arundel, and she would get to see him at Nonsuch.

  “And it is such a lovely, warm day,” Violet said. “Who can grumble about being out in the sunshine?”

  “I can,” Lady Anne muttered, readjusting her silk skirts around her. Unlike Violet, she was not often very merry. “My backside is aching from this infernal, jolting wagon. And your nose will grumble, too, Violet, when you get hideous freckles.”

  Violet just laughed and leaned out to see what was happening. Kate peeked over her shoulder to see that the queen had halted her carriage to call forth a man with a little girl in his arms. The child shyly held out a bouquet to Queen Elizabeth, who accepted it under Dudley’s protective watch.

  Kate felt a pang of strange wistfulness as she watched the tenderness Sir Robert always showed the queen, the affection that was always so obvious between them. It had been many weeks since she had seen her friend Anthony Elias, who worked to become an attorney in London. Yet she thought far too often of his smile, his beautiful green eyes. The safety she had found in his arms when she nearly died on the frozen Thames. If he ever looked at her as Sir Robert looked at the queen . . .

  But Anthony would not. And she had her own work to do. She had to cease to think about him.

  She sat back on the narrow wooden bench and made sure her lute was safe still. Music was all she ever knew for certain.

  Violet turned and gave her another smile. “Have you had your horoscope done by Dr. Dee yet, Kate?”

  Kate shook her head. “I have not yet had the time,” she said. She had seen Dr. John Dee’s bearded, black-robed figure hurrying around the court, his apprentice, the pasty young Master Constable, dashing after him with his arms full of mysterious scrolls and books. Having one’s horoscope cast was considered essential by many people at court in recent days. Dr. Dee had forecast the queen’s coronation date, as well as where she should visit on this progress. Queen Elizabeth relied on his wisdom entirely.

  But Kate was sure the hour of her own birth, which had been the hour of her mother’s death, could not augur well for the future. She had to learn how to make her future for herself. It seemed best not to know her destiny.

  “Oh, but you must!” Violet cried. “Everyone is doing it. Dr. Dee had no time to cast mine, so Master Constable did it. He said I was born under Saturn, and am thus of melancholic disposition. I should marry within the year, but never to someone born under Mars, or great misfortune will ensue. I must make sure all the humors are in balance.” She glanced toward a group of men on horseback nearby, and a small frown fluttered across her lips. One of the men was her persistent suitor, a certain young Master Longville, and Violet showed no signs of returning his favor. But she was soon laughing again.

  Kate shook her head. She thought of Violet’s frequent laughter, her love of dance and song. It seemed Master Constable wasn’t learning much from his apprenticeship.

  “I am surprised the learned Dr. Dee would even wish to return to Nonsuch,” Lady Anne said with a smirk. “Surely that would be a most bad omen for him.”

  “What do you mean?” Violet cried.

  “Have you not heard the old tale?” Lady Anne said. Her eyes were shining with the pleasure of gossip. “I know not much about it, but my uncle was there when it happened. It was in old King Henry’s time, when he was married to poor Queen Catherine Howard.”

  Catherine Howard—who had lost her head in the Tower when she was barely more than a girl. Kate remembered all too well the chilly feeling of dread that surrounded the Tower. She thought of that dark, cold night when she knelt on the stone floor of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower with Queen Elizabeth, sure that unseen eyes watched their every movement.

  “Oh, do tell us!” Violet urged. Kate said nothing, but she was intrigued.

  Lady Anne smiled. “’Twas on a summer progress just like this one. Nonsuch was the king’s then, and not yet finished, but he was determined to bring his new queen there. When Dr. Dee was very young and first at Cambridge, he was an apprentice to a man called Dr. Macey, and King Henry wanted Macey’s advice that summer and summoned him to Nonsuch.”

  Kate glanced ahead to where the queen greeted more of her subjects, smiling and holding out her hand to them. The radiance of the scene seemed so far away from when the old, mad king had come this way with his frivolous, flirtatious young queen. Had King Henry require some dark magic from Dr. Macey that year? There had been such frightening tales, of alchemy and spirits. . . .

  “What happened?” Violet whispered. Her eyes were wide, as if she, too, feared to know of ungodly arts.

  “A courtier named Lord Marchand accused Dr. Macey of—of treason!” Lady Anne hissed the last word. “He declared Dr. Macey predicted the king’s death and the queen’s black fate, which is a burning offense.”

  “Was he executed, then?” Kate said, appalled.

  Lady Anne shook her head. “That is the strange twist of the tale, Mistress Haywood. This Lord Marchand took it all back. No such horoscope predicting the king’s death or the queen’s downfall could ever be found, but poor Dr. Macey quite vanished. He was never seen again. Dr. Dee went abroad after he finished his studies at Cambridge, and they say he never speaks of Dr. Macey. Lord Marchand died soon after; they say he went mad or something of the sort. And it all happened at Nonsuch. What can Dr. Dee be thinking to go back there now?”

  “How terribly sad,” Violet sighed. “And Dr. Macey never reappeared at all?”

  “Never,” Lady Anne said with obvious relish. “My uncle said some people declared a demon spirited him away at his own conjuring.”

  “A demon!” Violet shrieked.

  “Don’t be silly,” Kate said. “How would a demon appear in the midst of a crowded court? Surely there would at least have been the smell of brimstone.”

  She laughed, but she couldn’t help shivering. The warmth of the summer sun couldn’t quite banish the old, dark memories of the past.

  The procession jolted forward again, and Lady Anne and Violet talked of happier matters—the latest style of ruff from France, the new Spanish ambassador, Bishop de Quadra, who was betrothed to whom, and whose heart was broken. Horoscopes and mysterious vanishings seemed forgotten, especially when they rolled over the crest of a hill and Nonsuch Palace came into view at last.

  Even Kate was stunned by the sight of it, despite the paintings and etchings she had seen. She had heard many tales of Nonsuch, of course—King Henry had begun building it the year his precious son, Prince Edward, was born and intended it to surpass in luxury and grandeur any châteaus of the French king. He had demolished a whole village, old Cuddington, to make way for it. It was to be the most lavish palace in Christendom. But he never finished it, and Queen Mary sold it to Lord Arundel. They said the last time Henry visited was when he brought his new queen Catherine Howard to show it to her.

  It was dazzling, all golden stone and rosy brick in the sunlight. It rose above the lush green parks and gardens like a palace in a troubadour’s tale. Gilded cupolas crowned octagonal towers at every corner, and crenelated walkways joined the two inner courtyards. The walls were decorated with enormous colorful stucco reliefs of classical gods and goddesses. Above it a
ll rose a marble statue of King Henry himself, looking out on all he had dreamed of and not quite accomplished.

  It was beautiful, elegant, joyful. Hardly a place where treason and dark magic could ever triumph.

  Hardly a place where anything as evil as murder could ever happen at all.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Kate leaned out of the open window casement, caught by the song that floated up to her from the garden on a warm, rose-scented breeze. She was meant to be on an errand for the queen, fetching a book from the royal bedchamber, but the sound was like a siren song she had to follow. She was always captured by snatches of music.

  The scene below her window was so wonderfully idyllic it could have been a painting or a tapestry. Queen Elizabeth sat on a marble bench beneath an arch twined with climbing roses in Tudor red and white. They perfectly framed her green satin gown and the pearl-twisted loops of her red-gold hair. Some of her ladies sat around her on cushions scattered over the ground, like flowers themselves amid petals of white and silver and sky blue silks. They passed around apples, sweetmeats, and goblets of wine, giggling and blushing over the romantic song.

  Or perhaps they blushed over the singer, who strolled among them as he strummed on his lute, and Kate could not really blame them. It was young Master Green, a secretary to the queen’s—and now Kate’s—cousin Lord Hunsdon. Master Green came from some obscure family in the North, and his fortune seemed merely adequate, yet the favor and employment of a royal kinsman could take him far. Lord Hunsdon often declared he could not do without Master Green’s services, his sharp wits and unflagging energy, and such a high patron was not an asset a young lady could discount.

  Nor could she discount his personal assets, for Master Green was a bonny lad indeed. Kate nearly laughed behind her own hand as she watched him sing, and giggling was not something she often did. She was far too busy for ogling young courtiers, but any lady would have to be blind not to look twice at Master Green. He was tall and elegantly slim in his fashionable dark red doublet and striped hose. He wore no cap today, and the dappled sunlight of the rosy arbor gleamed on his glossy curls.

  “‘Come, oh come, my life’s delight! Let me not in languor pine, love loves no delay, thy sight the more enjoyed the more divine. . . .’”

  Yet, for all his charms, Kate felt rather as if she admired a fine painting when she looked at him. She marveled that a real person could be so lovely. He certainly rarely took notice of her, and when he did she never felt that sudden fluttering in her stomach, the flight of all words from her mind, that happened when she looked at someone else.

  Someone she hadn’t seen in months.

  Kate frowned at the sudden shadow on the bright day. It seemed as if a grayish cloud suddenly blotted the golden scene as she was reminded of Anthony Elias and his green eyes, his all-too-rare dimpled smiles. The way it felt when his fingers, ink stained from writing out so many legal documents, folded around hers. Or the warm, perfect safety when he caught her in his arms after she feared she would die on the icy river.

  Yet she hadn’t seen him in so long. Not that she expected to. He had his work in London. Soon his apprenticeship with the attorney Master Hardy would end, and he would have to build his own career. Her place was here at court with Queen Elizabeth, as it always would be, and the queen’s summer progress had taken them all across the countryside. With her music, the banquets and masques, her compositions, and the secret tasks she had lately undertaken, she had no time to think of anything else.

  Except when she paused for a moment between duties, between banquets and hunts, and remembered. Then memories, both good and ill, caught up with her and tugged at her skirts again.

  Kate leaned farther out the window and took a deep breath of the flower-tinged summer air, so clean and green. Memories surely had no place in such a moment, at such a place. Not memories of feelings she wanted to forget, to push away. Certainly not memories of the fear and panic of that freezing night in January, when she had nearly died in the river at the hands of a madman. That was gone now, all of it. The summer was for merriment and frivolity, for rejoicing anew that Elizabeth was queen and had been for many months now.

  Not that everyone rejoiced at that fact. Mary, Queen of Scots, the new Queen of France, waited across the water for her chance, as did her mother, Marie of Guise, just over the border in Scotland, massing her armies. Spain lurked, waiting its chance, as did Tudor relatives much closer to home. Elizabeth refused to worry about such things, choosing to ride and dance and laugh as she had never been able to do before, but her chief secretary, William Cecil, looked more gray and worried every day.

  Kate studied the gardens, which rolled away in a perfect series of riotously colored flower beds, sweet-scented herbal knot gardens, white-graveled walkways, and emerald green meadows, peppered with the tents so many courtiers had to lodge in. On hilltops and in groves waited Grecian follies, just perfect for trysts and secret meetings. An ornamental lake, dotted with boats, shimmered blue and green in the distance.

  Nonsuch was beautiful indeed, built and lavishly appointed to be a place for summer joy. A place to forget the perils of the outside world, forget illness and war, and just—dance. Old King Henry had intended it thus, a pleasure palace to rival those of the French kings, when he showed it to his young and beautiful—and supremely frivolous—queen Catherine Howard, and Lord Arundel had made it even lovelier since he bought it from Queen Mary. It was said he thought to use its pleasures to lure Queen Elizabeth into marrying him, elderly and Catholic though he was.

  Yet there was little in its rare beauty that could truly protect a vulnerable queen, her throne still tottering beneath her. No high walls, no moats. Dreams could do so much, but they couldn’t keep enemies at bay forever.

  Kate swallowed hard as she remembered how very many enemies there were out there. Her own body bore the scars of some of them, and William Cecil’s lessons in reading codes and breaking locks showed her how very vast the web of wickedness was. So many enemies, both bold and hidden, did not want Elizabeth as queen, and they all had to be vigilant to keep England from sliding back into the chaos and fear it had known with Queen Mary.

  She studied the scene below her window anew, and this time saw more than the beauty of it. The silken petals of the roses concealed poisonous thorns.

  Standing behind the queen was her now-constant companion, Sir Robert Dudley. He leaned lazily against a pillar of the trellis, dressed in glorious counterpoint to Elizabeth in a pearl-embroidered green satin doublet. His arms were loosely crossed over his chest, and his foot, encased in a glossy black leather boot, tapped in time to the song. He smiled lazily, the very image of an indolent courtier at his leisure, but Kate knew now how deceptive that image was.

  Sir Robert’s dark gypsy eyes were constantly on the watch, past the queen and her laughing ladies, past the music and the wine, to see all that lurked in the shadows. His sword was strapped at his lean hip, and even here at fairy-tale Nonsuch, his hand would be swift to grasp its honed steel hilt.

  Everyone thought him a creature of burning ambition, grasping to raise his formerly disgraced family by the jeweled hems of the queen’s skirts. A man of impulsive action, of battle and rash daring, who sought only to wed the queen and become king—despite his ill wife locked away in the countryside.

  And surely he was all of that. The court was filled with people of just such hungry ambition, such eagerness to play for the very highest stakes, despite the dangers of royal favor. They were always with the queen: the Howards, the Greys, the Carews, her Boleyn cousins, the Douglases. Rumors that one or the other was rising or falling were always floating in the perfumed air of court. Robert Dudley had learned in the hardest of schools to be more adept than most.

  Yet Kate had seen a different side to him last winter, when he’d helped her chase the evil villain who would have turned Elizabeth’s triumphant coronation into a bloodbath. Behind Sir Ro
bert’s laughter, his piratical dark looks, he was solemnly watchful. Courteous, aware, and even admiring of the intelligence of others, willing to die for Elizabeth—both the queen and the woman. Kate couldn’t help but admire him, despite his blatant courtship of a woman he could not have, not while his own wife lived.

  Which was a feeling not many shared. The Duke of Norfolk, the highest nobleman in the land, despised Dudley and his brand of brash “new men.” Cecil distrusted him. The new Spanish ambassador, the Bishop de Quadra, spread rumors of Dudley and the queen throughout the courts of Europe. Dudley would have to protect himself and his family along with the queen.

  Sir Robert noticed her at the window and gave her a small nod. Kate nodded in reply, suddenly remembering why she was standing there at all. She was meant to fetch the queen’s book, not loll about in windows thinking up fanciful notions of danger and romance. The queen was surrounded at all times, by Sir Robert and his men, her ladies, by Secretary Cecil and his retainers, by all her suitors and their ambassadors. She couldn’t be reached by her enemies, even at Nonsuch.

  Not if Kate had anything to say about it.

  She glanced once more at Elizabeth, sitting in her rosy arbor. Master Green had finished his song and knelt on one knee as the queen and her ladies applauded. Elizabeth teasingly tossed him a sweetmeat, and he caught it in his mouth. She laughed even more and clapped her hands in delight. The sound of her laughter was a joy, her merriment like a balm for the whole country after the perils of the coronation.

  All her ladies giggled too, falling against one another in a wave of frivolous mirth. All but one of them. Lady Catherine Grey, who sat at the edge of the group with her best friend, Lady Jane Seymour, glanced back over her shoulder at the gardens beyond, a frown on her pretty, heart-shaped face. She tucked one of her golden curls back into her cap and sighed, plucking at her silver-and-white skirt.

  Lady Catherine surely should have been rejoicing. After Mary Queen of Scots became Queen of France and brazenly declared herself the rightful Queen of England as well, Elizabeth had drawn Catherine Grey closer as her other Protestant heir. She restored Catherine to the post of Lady of the Bedchamber she had enjoyed under Queen Mary and kept her nearby at every banquet and hunt.