Murder in the Queen's Garden

by Amanda Carmack

  He laughed, but it was a rough, wry sound. “I let you see more of myself than most people, Kate, except for my uncle. I think of him much here, of what he must have been like when he was young and his troupe played here. Nonsuch seems to bring out such memories, does it not?”

  Indeed it did, far too much. “Did he play for the old king?”

  “Aye, when he was a young apprentice. King Henry loved a good play, especially one that glorified kings and romance. My uncle played the fair maiden then. He talked of the beauty of the palace, unfinished though it was then, and the beauty of poor Queen Catherine Howard. It sounded like a dream to me, but now that I see it myself, I know why it haunted him so.”

  Kate swallowed hard, thinking of the lost Dr. Macey, the ghosts that lingered at every turn of this fanciful place. “Yet that can all be more than a dream to you now, Rob. The queen has noticed you. As has her theater-loving cousin Lord Hunsdon—as you wished.”

  His expression sharpened as he looked down at her. The twig went still between his fingers. “You know Lord Hunsdon, then, Kate?”

  Kate nodded warily. “Does not everyone know of the queen’s cousin? She favors her relatives much now, and everyone says he enjoys a fine play. That he keeps players at his home. If he likes you—”

  Suddenly, her words were drowned by a scream. It was a high, thin, terrified sound, a dagger slicing through the warm idyll of the summer’s day. It sent the birds soaring from the maze.

  “Violet,” Kate gasped. Without thinking, she lifted the heavy hem of her gown and ran toward the corner where her friend had vanished. The soft mud snatched at her fine shoes, and her mind couldn’t fathom what was happening around her. Yet she tumbled ever forward, headlong.

  In the maze’s square, sun-dappled center, Violet stood with her hands thrust out in front of her, as if she would push something away. Another scream escaped her lips as Master Green reached out to catch her arm and pull her back. His handsome face was frozen into a pale mask of disbelief.

  In front of them, the ground was churned up in a froth of sandy brown mud mixed with grass and twigs like a tangled river, as if the days of rain had swept the ground itself away.

  And tangled up with it was the stark, harsh white of bones. A flash of stained, shredded red cloth. A horrible grin from a skull that stared up at the deceivingly beautiful sky.

  Lakes of blood. Kate pressed her hand hard to her mouth before a hysterical laugh could fly out. Master Constable had been right, even in his frenzy. Death had been lingering here at Nonsuch all along.

  CHAPTER TEN

  “Mistress Haywood! Mistress Haywood, wake up, I beg you.”

  Kate gasped as she fought her way up from the darkness of her nightmare, toward the sudden, shocking touch on her shoulder. It felt like creatures were clawing at her, trying to drag her back down into the humid world of night terrors. Memories of grinning skulls, white bones sticking up out of the mud, had haunted her sleep ever since she managed to close her eyes after the horrifying events earlier that day.

  She sat straight up in bed, still gripped in raw fear, her mouth open to cry out.

  “Nay, don’t wake the others,” someone said, that touch on her shoulder tightening.

  Kate clutched the damp sheet closer and looked over to see that it was Kat Ashley, the queen’s Mistress of the Robes, who knelt beside her bed. Mistress Ashley held a candle in her other hand, and in its flickering light she looked older, gaunter, far more fearful. In the daylight, the Mistress of the Robes ruled the queen’s household with a crisp, iron efficiency; she was all remoteness and dark silks, not to be crossed.

  Here, in the darkest part of the night, with her graying hair falling in a long braid over the shoulder of her bed robe and no fine pearls around her wrinkled throat, Mistress Ashley looked almost fragile—and afraid.

  The thought of such fear made Kate clutch even tighter to the sheet. If even Mistress Ashley was unsettled here at Nonsuch tonight, made fearful by that skeleton in the garden, what hope was there for everyone else to stay calm?

  Kate glanced quickly around the room. Violet and Anne still slept in their shadowed bed closer to the fire, holding on to each other against the force of their own nightmares. Violet had been unable to stop whimpering and shaking after her terrible discovery in the maze, until the queen’s own physician dosed her with a strong cordial that made her fall into a fevered sleep as Anne murmured words of comfort to her.

  “What is amiss?” Kate whispered. “Is the queen ill?”

  Mistress Ashley shook her head. “Not—ill. Yet she cannot sleep. She keeps pacing her chamber, muttering about old curses. I thought I had best fetch you and see if you could play for her. Your songs do seem to soothe her.”

  Kate drew in a deep breath, gathering the real world around her against all the bad dreams, and she nodded. It was not the first time she had been summoned to play for the queen in the middle of the night. Elizabeth was often beset by dark thoughts that wouldn’t let her sleep. Tonight the distraction seemed especially welcome, for Kate had no desire to lie in the silent chamber any longer, alone with the memory of that death’s-head smile in the sunshine.

  She quickly climbed out of bed and pulled on her own robe over her chemise. Her restless sleep had pulled her thick, straight dark hair from its braid, and she looped it up under a cap. Mistress Ashley took her lute from its stand in the corner and pressed it into her hands.

  Kate ran her fingers over the initials carefully carved into the wood as she followed Mistress Ashley along the silent maze of corridors. EH, with a smaller KH beneath. Eleanor Haywood—the mother she had never known, who had once played, and loved, this same lute. Boleyn witch.

  If only Eleanor had been a witch, Kate thought half desperately. Maybe then she could find a way to be with her daughter now.

  They soon reached the doorway to the queen’s bedchamber, and there the night was not quite so silent. Guards clustered close about the doors in the royal livery of green and white as well as Robert Dudley’s scarlet.

  It was Sir Robert who had reached the center of the maze first, drawn by Violet’s screams, his sword in his hand and his men close behind him. He was ever ready for battle. He had surrounded Elizabeth with an unbreachable wall of his own guards, and no doubt was still on patrol outside the palace. None could ever gainsay him, not Lord Arundel or William Cecil, or even the queen herself.

  “God’s teeth, but am I to be a prisoner here, in this place my own father built for naught but pleasure?” Elizabeth shouted, her words thundering out from behind the closed door. “What can a rattling set of old bones do to me?”

  Mistress Ashley pushed aside the hovering guards and hurried into the chamber, and Kate followed close behind her. Elizabeth’s tower bedchamber was a blazing beacon of light against the impenetrable darkness of the night, a fire blazing in the large grate, candles lit in sconces and candelabra. Yet the windows were thrown open to let in the cool breeze.

  On the great carved bed, set high on its dais, the velvet covers were thrown back, the feather pillows mounded up in an untidy heap. The curtains were looped back and tied with their gold-tasseled cords. One of the queen’s little dogs, a greyhound sent by the Venetian ambassador, peeked out from the snowy linen sheets.

  William Cecil, the queen’s chief secretary, stood near the fireplace, still dressed in his black velvet doublet and robes, leaning heavily on his walking stick, as he tended to do when weary. Two ladies, Mary Sidney and Lady Catherine Grey, hovered behind him in their pale satin bed robes, holding on to each other as they stared out with wide, uncertain eyes. They were not good friends; once the Dudleys and the Greys had been closest allies, but no longer, not in this new world of uncertain alliances. But the hovering spirit of old death bound even two such different ladies together tonight.

  The queen paced the polished length of the floor, as she was wont to do when the nights
pressed in on her. She moved so fast, in such an agitated fashion, that the loose fall of her red-gold hair and the glossy scarlet of her brocade robe made her look like a moving flame. Her long, elegant pale hands twisted together.

  “Until we are sure the danger is past, Your Majesty . . . ,” Cecil said warily.

  “Past?” Elizabeth cried. “’Twas clean-picked bones in that garden. How much more past can it be? I shall go riding tomorrow as planned. I cannot bear to be shut inside one more moment.”

  “But whose were those bones, Your Majesty?” Cecil said, in his usual calm, measured way. “Until we know, it would be wise to stay close. Or mayhap to leave Nonsuch altogether. We could return to Windsor early.”

  Elizabeth shook her head fiercely. “Nay, not Windsor. I can’t bear that dank old place yet. It’s still summer . . .” She squeezed her eyes closed, her long, pointed cat’s face contorted as if in a flash of raw pain. “Do I not deserve a few more days of merriment?”

  Cecil had served Elizabeth for many years, long enough to know when to give in to her. He bowed his head. “If you will go well guarded, Your Majesty, and not ride away alone as last time. England needs you; you must have a care for yourself above all else.”

  Not go ride off alone—but for Robert Dudley. Even Kate could hear those unspoken words. The queen would often vanish on hunts with Dudley, the two of them returning flushed with laughter and followed by trails of gossip.

  “I have given myself entirely to England, all my life,” Elizabeth said wearily. “Surely she knows that.”

  The queen turned and saw Kate standing near the doorway. “Ah, Kate, very good. You have come to entertain me at last. Cecil, my dear, you should find your own bed. You, too, Mary, Lady Catherine. It will be dawn soon enough.”

  Cecil bowed and departed, his bearded face set in hard, weary lines. The two ladies followed him, and Elizabeth sat down in the cushioned chair beside the fire. Mistress Ashley went to pour a goblet of spiced wine, and Elizabeth gestured Kate to a low stool nearby.

  “What shall I play tonight, Your Majesty?” Kate asked as she settled her lute on her lap and carefully tuned the strings. They were predictably responsive, something she understood, something she could control, and it calmed her as it always did.

  Elizabeth stared into the fire, her white face looking older, more tired, thoughts hidden deep behind her dark Boleyn eyes. “Something old, I think. Something of my father’s time. It seems appropriate on this night of ghosts, does it not?”

  Kate had wanted to forget ghosts, but she nodded. She bent her head lower over the instrument, letting herself fall into it as she often did. It reminded her of another night of ghosts, of the Tower under a winter moon, and long-dead mothers hovering nearby. She started playing “Whereto should I express my inward heaviness,” a sweet, sad old tune written by King Henry himself.

  Elizabeth was quiet for long moments, her fingertips tapping on the carved arm of the chair. She stared deep into the fire, her forehead creased as if she saw things very far away indeed.

  “You saw the bones today, did you not, Kate?” Elizabeth suddenly asked. She didn’t turn to look at Kate, but kept her gaze steady on the fire.

  Long hours of practice helped Kate not to falter in her song, even as an image of that grinning white skull in the brown mud flashed through her mind. “Only for an instant, Your Majesty, before Master Green pushed Violet and me away. He acted most quickly and calmly.”

  Elizabeth nodded. Robert Dudley had kept her away from the center of the maze, even as she loudly protested. He was surely the only one who could have prevented her. “What did they look like?”

  Kate shivered. “Like—like bones, Your Majesty. All coming out of the mud, as if a river had flushed them free. The skull . . .” She swallowed hard, unable to go on.

  Elizabeth nodded slowly, still watching the snap and dance of the fire. “They must have been there a very long time, to be only bones thus. The sight could have been more gruesome for you, I fear, Kate.”

  Kate thought of the boiled heads that always loomed above London Bridge, executed traitors doomed to stare down at the city until they fell into the river below. She also remembered the terrible, acrid smell of burning flesh that seemed to hang over everything when Mary was queen. Gruesome—aye, but no more so than everyday life could be. “Who could it have been?”

  Elizabeth shrugged. “If the bones are as old as all that, I could not say. They must be of my father’s time, or even earlier. He seldom used this house, you know. It was not even finished when he died. He meant it to impress my very pretty stepmother, who was barely older than me when he brought her to visit it.” She gave a humorless little laugh. “Poor Cat Howard. It would have taken more than a fine house to hold her flighty interest. For all her prettiness, all her merry smiles, she drew death behind her wherever she went.”

  Kate took in a deep breath. She knew little of Queen Catherine Howard beyond her sad end, yet Nonsuch seemed to hold her as well as so many others. “What of Dr. Dee’s old teacher, Dr. Macey?”

  Elizabeth looked toward Kate, her eyes widening as if she suddenly had come back from the past. “The one who left here so long ago? Who told the horoscopes of my father and his court?”

  “Aye. ’Twas said he was accused of treason and then vanished. Surely it is very possible. I saw a bit of muddy cloth with the skeleton, perhaps once red. If there is enough left to see the fashion of it . . .”

  Elizabeth nodded, a thoughtful frown on her lips. “They took the bones to an unused room of the kitchen, I do think. Cecil would never let me go there to look, I am sure, but if you could . . .”

  Kate swallowed again and nodded. In truth, she would rather not see that terrible deathly grin again. But Elizabeth was right. Kate could go where the queen could not, could take her time to observe without being observed herself. And it was true—there could be a more gruesome sight.

  She felt the old curiosity, that old, terrible need to know that had taken her into trouble before, rise again.

  “Should I go now?” Kate asked.

  Elizabeth nodded. “Before anyone wakes. Then you can tell me if you find anything.”

  Kate carefully put aside her lute and drew her robe close around her before she hurried to the door.

  “Kate,” Elizabeth called as Kate reached for the door latch. Kate glanced back to find Elizabeth watching her closely, her face white and strained. She looked almost—afraid?

  “Your Majesty?” Kate whispered.

  The queen seemed uncharacteristically hesitant for a moment, her long fingers tense over the armrest. “My cousin Lady Knollys told me about what happened in her chamber with that strange Master Constable. She was most—overset.”

  “Boleyn witches?” Kate said, barely daring to voice the words.

  Elizabeth bit her lip. “Do you remember that night in the Tower?” she said quietly, and Kate was startled the queen would speak of it. They never had; it was as if those moments were forgotten. The queen was always moving into the future, enjoying her glorious present. The past, made of pain and blood and fear, was gone.

  Only here, in this place, the past didn’t seem so far away.

  “Of course I remember that night. And I will find out what is happening here, Your Majesty,” Kate said. She was not at all sure she could keep that promise, but she would do her very best. For the queen. For their mothers.

  Elizabeth nodded and looked back to the fire. Kate wondered what she saw there.

  “Be careful, Kate. I can’t lose you, too,” the queen whispered.

  * * *

  Kate tiptoed down the cold stone stairs toward the small room tucked beneath the kitchens, deep underground. Unlike the warm, soft, bread-scented air above, this place felt chilly and dank. She pulled her robe closer around her and held her candle up higher.

  As her slipper touched the bottom step, s
he thought she heard a sudden noise, quiet and muffled, far away. She froze, her chest aching as she held her breath in her lungs. She listened closely, trying to decipher if it was above her head or ahead of her in the darkness, in that room of death.

  She heard nothing else, only the nighttime silence, which was thick enough to pierce with a sword, and slowly her breath moved again. She knew she had to move forward, always forward.

  She slipped through an arched stone doorway into the small chamber. Surely it was usually used to keep butter or cheese, but tonight it was used for a much less pleasant purpose. Her candle cast its feeble light into the stone-lined space, and she tightened her other hand on the edge of her robe, bracing herself to look.

  A sturdy wooden table was laid out against the far wall, and the bones that had been unearthed from the garden maze were arranged there in a semblance of a human form. Not every part was there; one foot and nearly one whole arm seemed to be missing.

  Kate swallowed against a sudden sour rush of nausea and made herself tiptoe to the side of the table and look closer. A tuft of hair, mostly gray, clung to the skull, which still seemed to smile up at her. She could tell that whoever it was, they had not been very tall, but surely were prosperous, if the remains of the garment also laid out on the table were anything to go by.

  It was a robe of finely woven wool, patches of red beneath crusted dirt, bits of tarnished metallic embroidery clinging to the edges.

  “Who were you?” she whispered, studying the tiny bones of the remaining hand. One finger seemed to have been broken and healed crookedly. “What were you doing in the queen’s garden?”

  Kate saw the gleam of something beneath the bones, as if it had fallen to the floor, and she steeled herself to look closer. It was a ring, but not just any ring. A large emerald set in wrought gold, with a cipher etched along one side. HRVIII. Henry VIII. The king’s cipher! What was such a thing doing with the bones?

  A sudden rustling sound echoed behind her, and Kate cried out. She instinctively swept the emerald into her pocket. Fear, and a dark, burning urge to fight rushed through her veins, and she whirled around, her candle held high like a weapon. Her glance frantically swept over the darkness along the stone walls.