Murder in the Queen's Garden

by Amanda Carmack

  “Who is there?” she called, trying to emulate the queen’s confidence, her certainty that no one would dare harm her. Whether it was true or not. “Show yourself at once!”

  A stooped, black-clad figure stepped out of the shadows and raised its face to her meager light. To her shock, she saw it was Dr. Dee who lurked there.

  “Dr. Dee,” she whispered. “I did not see you there.”

  “Forgive me for frightening you, Mistress Haywood,” he said hoarsely. “I did not think anyone would be here so very late. But you found him in the garden, did you not?”

  Kate glanced back at the bones. She thought of the old tales of Dr. Dee, of his studies of arts beyond human understanding. Of the mysterious Lord Marchand, who had once accused Dr. Macey of treason. “My friend did, aye. I was in the maze with her.” Kate paused for a moment as she played back the doctor’s last words. “Found him?”

  Dr. Dee gave her a smile, a sad flicker behind his thick beard. “’Tis my teacher Dr. Macey. Surely even a very young lady such as yourself has heard the old tale?”

  He was right. Everyone knew gossip was rife at court; it was everyone’s very lifeblood. And a disappearance among rumors of a queen’s adultery and dark arts, here in this very palace—of course it was known. “I have heard it. I am sorry for it, Dr. Dee. But how do you know it is him, found at last?”

  Dr. Dee gestured toward a small bowl on another table she hadn’t yet noticed. A heavy gold ring set with a gleaming black stone, run through with shimmering veins, rested there. “That was found with the body. It was his. The stone—it is very rare, and he guarded it well.”

  Kate stared at the ring, thinking of its resemblance to the opalescent mirror that had shot sparks into the air of Lady Knollys’s room. She didn’t want to be afraid; she could not be afraid, not now. “When did you last see him?”

  Dr. Dee gently took her arm and led her to the chair he had left against the wall. A strange, sweet smell clung about his black robes, like a growing green summer garden. “Please, sit, Mistress Haywood. It is bad enough we stand here in this damp place.”

  As Kate carefully lowered herself to the edge of the wooden seat, she noticed that Dr. Dee blocked her view of the body. Was he being courteous? Or was there something he did not want her to see?

  “I last saw him before he came here, to Nonsuch, when we were in his chambers at Cambridge. We were going over an ancient manuscript he had just acquired,” he said. In the meager light, his face looked gaunt, all harsh lines, and his eyes narrowed by long hours bent over ancient books. What had he learned in all those years? “King Henry was coming here on his summer progress, to see how his fantasy palace was taking shape. To show it to his pretty new queen. He wanted his own astrologer to come with him, to foretell the futures of them and this place.”

  “And you did not come with him?” Kate said. It sounded as if King Henry and his courtiers were much like Queen Elizabeth and hers, wanting to harness magic for their own uses. But magic would not be controlled, not always.

  “Nay, I had my studies, and I was very young then, barely more than a child. I wish I had come with him, to try to help him. He was my teacher, and also my friend. I met him when I first went to school, fascinated by so many things that had no answers. I wanted to know about the stars, about the powers numbers have. The ancients knew things we are only now rediscovering, Mistress Haywood. Dr. Macey was also deep in such studies; he had been to the Continent and purchased many old manuscripts. We spent long evenings reading them together, trying to decipher their secrets. It was he who opened my eyes to the endless possibilities that linger all around us in this world. He knew that alchemy and mathematics were not for the perfection of mere metals, but for souls. For eternity.”

  Secrets that powerful people would pay much to possess? Kate thought of the book she had taken from Master Constable, which she’d hidden at the bottom of her clothes chest and hadn’t gotten a chance to study yet. The bizarre symbols and nonsensical letters, like music. Music notes looked like scribbles to those who could not decipher them. Only people who had learned them could unlock the world of sound and emotion and truth contained in those little ink markings.

  But the secret code of men like Dr. Dee, and Dr. Macey and Master Constable, revealed not just madrigals and motets, but life and death, and beyond death, too. Spirits and angels. Did she really want to know more of such things? After seeing what she had at Lady Knollys’s, she wasn’t sure at all.

  Yet those secrets touched the queen and Kate’s own family, as it seemed they had once touched King Henry and Queen Catherine Howard. And they touched Kate, too, and everything and everyone she loved.

  Boleyn witches.

  “What happened back then, here at Nonsuch?” she asked. “At least what you know of it.”

  Dr. Dee rubbed a trembling hand over his bearded face. “Dr. Macey was supposed to cast Queen Catherine’s horoscope. Even I, young as I was then, was sure such an endeavor could not end well. Queen Catherine was so young, so flighty, always dancing, flitting from one friend to another. Her stars could not have been aligned yet. I begged him to put it off, to tell the king it could not be done until the planets were in agreement. But none could ever gainsay the old king. He was besotted with his wife, his rose without a thorn, and he would not be dissuaded. And Dr. Macey lived to serve the Tudors. As we all do.”

  Kate shivered as she remembered what had happened to the pretty, foolish Queen Catherine. The stars had indeed never aligned for her. She remembered, too, the tales of what Dr. Dee might have been doing while Mary was queen and Elizabeth her prisoner. Where did his loyalties lie? Where had Dr. Macey’s?

  “Is that why he died?” she asked quietly. “He displeased King Henry by telling what he truly saw in Catherine Howard’s horoscope?”

  A wry smile twisted Dr. Dee’s lips behind his beard. “Dr. Macey never even cast her horoscope. If he had displeased King Henry, he would not have vanished and been tossed into a hidden grave. He would have been executed in full view of the public, as so very many were. Nay, he disappeared on a stormy night, before he even talked to the young queen. After he had a quarrel with another courtier, so I heard.”

  With Lord Marchand, whoever he was? Kate’s thoughts raced with all the possibilities of what could have happened on that long-ago night, who could have been there. “Who saw him that night?”

  That smiled faded, but he gave no sign he thought her questions strange. “One of his servants, Mistress Haywood, who came to talk with me after. It seems Dr. Macey was much preoccupied with something he was writing, something he would not show me or even speak of. He seemed agitated that night, pacing and muttering in his chamber, which was a small one near the attics. He left most abruptly, saying he had to meet someone. His servant feared for his safety, there was such lightning, the rain coming down so hard.”

  “And he did not follow?”

  Dr. Dee laughed. “My dear Mistress Haywood. Court had opportunities the university did not. I am sure the servant had met a pretty maidservant that day. And he died soon after himself, so I could ask him no more.”

  A frown abruptly replaced that brief smile. “I have so often reproached myself for not following him here. I never saw him again after that, and I have searched for him in my studies so often.”

  “You could not have known. You were very young. Even with all your studies, surely you could not have seen his future. It sounds as if Dr. Macey was involved in a matter of some secrecy, and danger.” Kate had a sudden, strange thought of Rob Cartman, the way he’d behaved by the lake. Even people one cared for could not always be known.

  Dr. Dee shook his head. “I looked for him after, for many years. Both in the physical world and among the spirits, but he was nowhere to be found. Until you and your friend stumbled over him so abruptly. He was here all along.”

  Kate nodded, thinking of the cottage. Had he been se
arching for Dr. Macey there? “Perhaps he was waiting for you,” she said carefully. “After all, you have returned to Nonsuch with your own student, to serve another Tudor monarch.”

  “Maybe there is something in what you say, Mistress Haywood. Are you perhaps a student of numbers, of the mystical arts, yourself?”

  Kate shook her head. “I am only a musician, Dr. Dee.”

  “Music, too, has its own hidden code. You must know, Mistress Haywood, that when an alchemist or astronomer is not himself spiritually pure, he can never find success in any experiment. Inner harmony is the only way to find the ultimate harmony of the universe.” Dr. Dee fell silent for a moment, and Kate noticed he turned a ring around his scarred finger. It was set with a clear opalescent stone, not black like Dr. Macey’s. “I heard much of what happened with Master Constable, when Lady Knollys asked him to summon the spirits. Such matters should not be looked into by those who have not carefully studied them for long years.”

  Kate was sure that must be true, considering what happened. “Surely everyone at court has heard of that by now.”

  “I did warn him not to try such a thing. His studies are only just beginning, though I do sense great gifts in him. He must develop them carefully; they are too rough yet to try such things. Especially before such people.”

  “For Boleyns, you mean?” she blurted out on a spark of anger.

  Dr. Dee’s eyes widened as if he was surprised. “Aye, for Boleyns. They are too close to the queen, and they have deep powers of their own, though they may not know it.”

  “Anne Boleyn was no witch,” Kate whispered.

  “Nay, not as we think of them,” Dr. Dee said slowly. He gave Kate a long, considering look, his eyes too dark and shining, and she had to resist the childish urge to squirm under that regard. “And, of course, Dr. Macey died long after Queen Anne was in her own grave. Can I tell you a secret, Mistress Haywood?”

  The night seemed full of nothing but secrets. What was one more, surely? Kate nodded cautiously.

  “I came with the queen to Nonsuch because she requested it, of course,” he said. “But also to fulfill a promise I made Dr. Macey long ago, to make sure his son was taken care of.”

  Kate was shocked. This was a piece of gossip she had not heard. “He had a son? Here at Nonsuch?”

  “In the village nearby. That was one reason why he wanted to come here then; he had a child with a seamstress there. I feared that was one of the reasons they say he was so agitated that night.”

  “You have no idea what happened to Dr. Macey?” Kate said urgently. “He had no enemies? No threats he faced then? What of Lord Marchand? Surely he did not like Dr. Macey.”

  If Dr. Dee was surprised she knew of Lord Marchand, he did not show it. He only smiled sadly. “Oh, my dear Mistress Haywood. We all have enemies. And Lord Marchand was a man not to be crossed. He had dangerous friends, like poor Queen Catherine’s lover, Thomas Culpeper. But Dr. Macey surely had none who would kill him thus. He knew how to be careful. Marchand was just a drunken courtier like all the others. If I knew what Dr. Macey was working on then, what he studied—if I could find his last writings . . .”

  Kate thought of her hidden book, the one she could not read because of the strange symbols. Was Dr. Macey’s lost book like that one? “You search for it still?”

  “Of course I do. I have learned much since then myself. I could decipher it now as I could not when I was a mere student.” He suddenly smiled. “Yet I know I am not the only one who seeks the truth, Mistress Haywood. You, too, have your own gifts, I can see.”

  Kate stared up into his fathomless dark eyes for a long moment. She felt terribly weary down deep in her bones, and her head whirled with everything she had seen. All she had heard. She carefully pushed herself to her feet. There was little more she could do that night, not until she had processed all she had learned.

  “I will leave you to your vigil, Dr. Dee,” she said. “Thank you for confiding in me.”

  He gave her a small bow, and Kate felt his eyes on her as she walked to the doorway. The only sound was the hem of her robe brushing the cold cobbles of the floor, yet she felt as if many eyes watched her.

  “Mistress Haywood,” Dr. Dee suddenly called. “I have always been loyal to the queen. I must hope you know that.”

  Kate glanced back at him. He looked like a ghost himself, his black clothes blending into the darkness, the terrible bones on the table behind him. He had lost so many people, just as she had, just as the queen had. What would a person do when faced with such a thing? She no longer knew.

  She finally nodded. At the top of the stairs, she looked back one more time and found that he held Dr. Macey’s black stone ring in his hand. He turned it around and around, as if he could see all the sinister secrets of the past in its depths.

  She shivered and ran back toward the deceptive safety of the palace, which was just stirring to early-morning life. She had to show the queen King Henry’s emerald and find out what the royal family had to do with Dr. Macey.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “‘Perchance I may prefer thee well, for wedlock I love best! It is the most honorable estate, it passes all the rest. I . . .’ Oh, what is the next line?”

  Kate made herself keep smiling as she watched Catherine Grey move across the makeshift stage in the great hall, surrounded by the other ladies assigned to be her goddess attendants. It was very clear that, honor or not, Lady Catherine was not happy to be assigned the lead role of Juno in the new masque, forced to stay indoors and rehearse while the rest of the court, including Lord Hertford, rode out to the hunt. Lady Catherine moved through her dances stiffly, the words of her song off-key and too quiet, even though Kate knew she had a lovely voice. Bess Martin, who played Diana, could scarce follow her meandering, and Lady Anne Godwin, who was meant to be the goddess’s acolyte, had not shown up at all.

  Kate sighed. She could rather sympathize with Lady Catherine, for once. It was a sunny, warm day outside, the perfect antidote to the suppressed fear that had descended like a gray cloud over everyone since the grisly discovery in the garden. She could barely keep the notes of the new songs in her own mind, and she had written them herself. It was so hard to think of goddesses and marriage, sylvan glades and romance, when so much real drama swirled around.

  When she knew all too well what lay in that underground kitchen room somewhere beneath their feet.

  On the other hand, this masque was meant to distract and amuse the queen, which was why they were all there in the first place. It would be a much easier task if they all worked together.

  Kate signaled to the other musicians to pause in their song. “Lady Catherine,” she said patiently. “In this moment, you are meant to feel a change of heart. That perhaps romance is possible, in fact a very good thing. You are meant to be light, happy. Pretty. Which we all know you are most capable of, more so than any other lady at court.”

  Kate almost choked on the flattery, but she knew it was necessary if they were to have the masque ready to perform so quickly. Lady Catherine would just have to forget her lovesickness for a few moments.

  Lady Catherine shrugged and nodded, but it was still obvious her thoughts were very far away. She raised her arms, clad in the half-finished diaphanous sleeves of her costume, and sang a few more bars, much more expressive this time.

  She was interrupted by the sounds of heavy hammer blows, as the servants sent from the Master of the Revels’ office worked on the scenery of the large wooden moon and the towering papier-mâché trees behind her.

  Lady Catherine whirled around, stamping her foot. “Be still, you varlets! Can you not see I must finish this song?”

  Kate had to resist the urge to throw down her lute and have a little tantrum of her own. She was working with only an hour of sleep behind her, hard-won after her strange meeting with Dr. Dee and nightmares of skeletons dancing in gardens. But be
fore she could lose her temper, Rob Cartman leaped lightly onto the stage. He had been leaning against the scenery above their heads, watching the rehearsal in silence, though Kate had been too aware of his presence ever since she arrived.

  Unlike Kate, whose eyes were shadowed and hair disheveled, Rob looked as if he had stepped out of a play where he performed the part of a king or emperor. All golden hair and skin, his lean acrobat’s body in a gold-embroidered purple doublet and black hose. The ladies all giggled at him, and Kate wanted more than ever to throw her lute at—someone.

  At least he made Lady Catherine smile and forget her changeable Tudor temper for a moment. If he could only make her learn the song, too.

  A blast of trumpets sounded from outside the open windows, and Kate leaned over to peer out the closest one to her stool. She was glad of the distraction from the spectacle of all the queen’s maids of honor falling over themselves over Rob Cartman’s handsome face.

  Below her, Queen Elizabeth rode out for the day’s hunt, despite her own sleepless night. She shimmered in her white-and-gold doublet and skirt, the white plumes of her hat waving jauntily in the breeze. She laughed as if she hadn’t a care in the world, though Kate remembered well the shadow that had crossed the queen’s face when she saw the emerald that had been with Dr. Macey’s bones. She had only nodded and put it quickly away.

  The queen’s pages rode ahead with her falcon’s-badge banners flying high, and Robert Dudley was beside her, as always. Lord Arundel rode at her other side, trying in vain to catch her attention, and Violet’s brother, Master Roland, was behind him, the loyal attendant.

  With the queen’s pack of hounds baying at the horses’ hooves, they took off at a gallop down the lane, Elizabeth and Dudley laughing together as if the bones in the palace were not there at all. As if the queen had not sat up all night, staring into the fire as if she saw ghosts dancing in the flames.