A wave of cold anger suddenly broke over Kate that a man could do such a thing, could destroy Mary’s happiness and life in a fit of temper. And then just run away from it.
“God’s teeth!” she cursed, bringing her fist down hard on the table. The ledgers tumbled from their piles.
Anthony laid his hand over hers, bringing a calm over her anger. “Kate, you cannot go after Lord Henry Everley yourself. He has already shown himself to be of a bad temper.”
Kate thought of Lord Henry, the way he grabbed his sister’s wrist, the fire in his eyes. Anthony was right; she would gain nothing from confronting Lord Henry herself. He would never confess to her, if indeed he was the one to kill Mary, and she might end up dead herself. She nodded and drew in a deep breath. “What of Richard St. Long? What did you discover about one of that name?”
“Very little. It appears that he may not be a natural relation of the Everleys, as the earl’s only sister died many years ago, and Master St. Long did not come to Everley Court until many months after she was gone. I could find no record of her married name.”
“Then who could his mother be?” Kate said, puzzled.
They searched through more of the ledgers, but could find no answers to the origins of Richard St. Long, or any more useful connections to the Everleys. There was a record of a wealthy wool merchant who had purchased the estate next to Everley Court, which could have been the family of the heiress Lord Henry was supposedly sent to woo.
When they at last looked up from their work, the light at the window was turning a soft amber. Kate rubbed at her aching eyes, and gave Anthony a rueful smile.
“I fear I have kept you from your real work too long,” she said. “I should return to the palace.”
“Surely this is real work,” Anthony said with a laugh. He pushed away the ledger in front of him and rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Finding a villain who means the queen harm—surely nothing could be more important.”
As Kate studied him in the pale gold light, she was struck anew by how handsome he truly was. He didn’t have the flashing, bright beauty that made Rob Cartman such a focus on the stage; Anthony’s face was thinner, more sharply sculpted, starker. His dark, almost black hair was cropped short, making his green eyes seem even lighter. Intelligence shone in those eyes, a close attention that Kate knew missed little of the world around him.
Kate was sure he would make a fine lawyer, with a practice that would attract noble families who needed his quiet perception. He would have a successful and prosperous career.
She remembered Master Hardy’s words, seemingly uttered so distractedly, but she knew he had meant a message for her. Anthony was at a critical stage in his budding career, where he was just beginning. He needed good connections, plentiful funds—eventually a good housekeeper and hostess. Things Kate could not have or be.
Anthony was her friend, a friend she valued highly for so many reasons. And, as his friend, she knew she had to wish what was best for him—even in a wife. No matter how much it would hurt to lose him in her life.
But he was not gone yet. He was still here, with her.
“Aye,” she said. “The queen is all that is important. I must go and tell her what we’ve learned today.”
“You should stay for supper first,” Anthony said. “Mistress Hardy would be disappointed if you don’t. She is most proud of the fine table she keeps, and there are no ladies in the household for her to converse with.”
Kate took a deep breath, and her stomach did rumble with the sweet scent of roasted meats in cinnamon sauce that floated up from the kitchens. The Hardys were always kind and polite to her, but she was too tired now to face them across their own table and know what they were really thinking. That her friendship was not as beneficial to Anthony as his was to her.
“That is very kind of her, but I have duties at court this evening,” Kate said. “I must return there before dark.”
“Then I will walk with you.”
“Nay, you have your own work. . . .”
Anthony gave her a stern look. “I can’t let you walk by yourself. After all that has happened, it is too dangerous.”
Kate nodded, and let him help her with her cloak. His hands were warm and strong on her shoulders as he settled the heavy wool around her, and for an instant she was tempted to lean into him.
Only friends, she reminded herself as he led her out into the cold evening. But she had to admit she was glad to have his company for a little longer.
The lanes were crowded with people trying to make their way home before the dark winter’s night closed in around them. They hurried and jostled on the narrow walkways, the frosty ground crackling under their boots and pattens, and Anthony kept her close to his side so she wouldn’t be knocked into the gutter.
They talked of his work as they made their way toward the palace, of the new music Kate had been writing for the queen’s revels, and of her father’s health. Only when they reached the looming royal gatehouse with its sentries in the queen’s livery did Anthony face her with a most solemn look on his face. He rested his hands gently on her shoulders.
“Kate,” he said quietly. “You must take care. If you think to go and ask questions again in places where enemies could lurk, I hope that you will come to me first and let me help you.”
She had just been thinking that very thing, that she should return to the draper’s shop near Master Lucas’s establishment and ask them if they had seen anything strange of late. But she could not say that to Anthony. She had already asked too much of him.
“I will confine most of my questions to court, and I am quite safe there,” she said lightly. “I am always surrounded by people. And Master Hardy is right—you must mind your own work.”
“I can see to my own work and help a friend,” he insisted. “I hope you always know that, Kate.”
Kate swallowed hard and nodded. Friends. Just as she and Rob were friends? “I know. I do hope we shall always be friends, Anthony.”
For an instant, his hands tightened on her shoulders. He pressed a kiss to her forehead. Even though it was light and soft as the brush of a feather, it made her shiver.
“Send me word whenever you need me,” he said. Then he turned and vanished into the crowded street.
Kate watched him until she could no longer see his dark head above the river of people. Only then did she straighten her back, square her shoulders, and steel herself to go back into the whirling maelstrom of the court once more.
CHAPTER 22
“La volta!” The cry echoed in the crowded great hall as all the gentlemen dancers lifted their ladies high in the air and twirled them around. Bright silken skirts swirled and flared.
Robert Dudley lifted the queen higher and held her longer than any of the other dancers. Elizabeth held on to his shoulders and threw her head back in laughter. Her loose red-gold hair spilled down her back, over the darker red silk of her gown.
William Cecil scowled at the couple, almost as much as the Count de Feria did. It seemed Sir Robert was not admired by everyone at court.
Kate’s fingers ached on her lute strings as she played the Italian song faster and faster. She almost laughed aloud out of the sheer joy of the music. The rush of the notes, tumbling over one another, whirling and shimmering.
The dance wound and wound, more and more wild, until it all ended on a great crescendo.
“Most excellent, Mistress Haywood!” one of the other lutenists said.
“I do like the new Italian songs,” Kate agreed, trying to catch her breath. For those long, sweet moments she had been able to forget death and cruelty in the bright alchemy of music. Nothing ever overcame her like music could, and the volta was so quick and fiery it carried her away like a warm wave.
She watched as Sir Robert lowered Queen Elizabeth slowly to her feet, the two of them laughing with their heads
bent together. He led her toward the dais at the far end of the hall, where her chair and canopy of estate waited. Elizabeth leaned on his arm as the other couples swarmed around them.
For just an instant, Kate wondered what it might be like to be one of those dancers herself. To feel a man’s strong hands on her waist, twirling her high in the air, looking up at her with a flirtatious smile.
But whose hands would she want?
She took a deep drink from a goblet of wine offered by a page boy, then launched into a quieter madrigal. Servants carried in the next course of the banquet, winter vegetable salads dressed in vinegar and cinnamon-laced chicken. Everyone found their seats again at the long tables laid with fine white damask cloths and lined with tall silver saltcellars. Merriment still hung in the air, a cloud of laughter.
Suddenly the exuberant scene was shattered by a piercing scream that rose even above the laughter.
Kate’s heart leaped with a hot rush of fear. She hopped up from her stool and ran through the shifting confusion of the hall, toward those screams that went on and on, moving only on instinct, feeling. Robert Dudley was behind her, drawing his dagger, his cronies closing in directly behind him.
Kate glanced quickly over her shoulder to see the queen standing on her dais, her guards surrounding her even as she impatiently tried to push them aside.
Outside the great hall was a long corridor lined with tapestries that made the sound of screams echo, carrying them into the hall. At the end a door stood open, diffuse rays of silvery moonlight sparkling on the wooden floors in a strange beauty that contrasted with the terror of the screams.
Kate tumbled out into the night to find Lady Catherine Grey standing at the foot of the outdoors stairs, her pale blue gown and golden hair shimmering in the darkness. Her hands were thrown out in front of her as if to hold something away, her mouth open on a scream that had faded to a hoarse hiccup.
Kate took in the whole scene in one horrified glance. She felt a scream crawling up her own throat, clawing to get out, but she managed to shove it back down and look at the tableau as if it were a mere tapestry.
A woman was sprawled out at the foot of the stairs. Her fine, dark red satin skirts were spread around her, and her head was arched back as if to stare at the clouded night sky. Her hair, even more red than the dress, was piled on her head and held in place with a gold wire headdress. The fine metallic embroidery of her bodice gleamed. It was the same color as the gown the queen wore in the volta.
The woman looked almost as if she had just wandered away from the royal party and fallen asleep there. Except for the garish red-purple gash slashing her throat, and the glazed, silvery, looking-glass gleam of her wide-open eyes.
For one instant, Kate thought it was Queen Elizabeth. Then she heard a shout from behind her.
“God’s blood! What is the meaning of this?”
Relief rushed through Kate until she realized that if this was not the queen, it was still someone, someone murdered and left on the queen’s doorstep. She glanced back to see Elizabeth standing behind her. The queen tottered on the threshold on her heeled velvet shoes, held back by Robert Dudley. He and the queen’s guards had drawn their swords, and Elizabeth’s dark eyes were burning as she glared out into the garden. Bright pink spots flared in her pale cheeks.
Kate spun around again and ran down the steps to where Catherine Grey still shrieked in little hiccup noises. Kate wasn’t at all sure what to do with shocked, shrieking people, but she did remember a nursemaid she once had as a child who was very strict—until her father found a sweeter girl to look after her.
Sweet would not work now.
“Be quiet now, Lady Catherine,” Kate said, stern and loud. She gave Lady Catherine’s arm a hard shake, which seem to surprise the woman into silence. Once Lady Catherine covered her face with her hands, sobbing, Kate went to study the terrible sight laid out on the dry, frosty grass.
She pressed her fingers to her mouth to hold back a sudden sick rush. It was Bess who lay there so still, Bess—the sister of the murdered Nell. Bess who wore the fine, rich gown and gold headdress on her curled red hair.
And pinned to her bodice was a piece of expensive parchment. Written across it, in bold, black, scrolling letters, was a simple message:
Bastard queen, Elizabeth Tudor. You are next.
CHAPTER 23
“Tell me where he is!” Kate grabbed a handful of Harry’s rumpled shirt and shook the apprentice actor hard. He was so surprised by her sudden move that she yanked him to his feet before he could stumble and pull away from her.
“I don’t know what you mean,” the young man muttered as he backed away from her. He ran his hands through his tangled hair, eyeing her warily all the time. “You should be declared mad, woman, breaking in here like that and hurling accusations!”
“I haven’t hurled anything yet,” Kate said fiercely. She had spent the morning dashing up and down the crowded, stinking lanes of Bankside, looking for Rob Cartman. He wasn’t at the Cardinal’s Hat or any of the taverns nearby. None of the actors she had found there had seen him in days, though most of them were ale-shot and probably couldn’t even remember their own names.
The queen’s wardrobe ladies had no knowledge of the gown Bess wore being stolen, but when they looked for it amid the cases and cases of gowns, underskirts, and sleeves, it was gone. No one at the Cardinal’s Hat had even realized Bess was missing, and Kate could find no clues in her chamber. She had looked around while Mistress Celine stood in the doorway and screeched about missing her rent. The bed was made, and Bess’s few clothes hung on their pegs. The grate was cold. There had been no struggle there, so surely Bess was snatched someplace else, possibly for her red hair, or possibly because she knew Nell.
Or maybe she went with someone she knew. Someone who offered to take her somewhere away from the Cardinal’s Hat.
Kate had to find Rob. She had risen at dawn after a terrified, sleepless night amid a chaotic court, put on her boy’s clothes, and slipped out of a tightly guarded palace to go in search of him. She’d finally found Harry, the young actor who had appeared in the play that night at the Tower, in bed with a drowsy-eyed bawd at the Sign of the Hart.
“If I do not find him soon, Dudley or Cecil will,” Kate said. “With all their spies throughout London, it won’t take long for them to find out he was connected to both Nell and Bess, and they will come after him to question him about their murders. Wouldn’t you rather I found him first?”
Harry’s eyes went wide. He fell back another step. “Bess is dead, too?”
Kate nodded tightly. “And her body left at the queen’s palace, dressed in a fine embroidered gown.”
Harry breathed out a foul word. His face went as white as his shirt had once been, and the bawd who had been listening behind the door the whole time let out a shriek. Southwark would soon know the doings at the queen’s court.
“If Rob did this . . . ,” Kate began.
“He never would!” Harry shook his head fiercely. “He likes a brawl sometimes, but you know he wouldn’t hurt a woman, especially not Nell or Bess.”
Kate nodded. Harry reflected her own earlier feelings about Rob, her surety that he couldn’t kill a defenseless woman. But what if a woman made him very, very angry? Or what if Rob was hurt as well, by whoever was killing red-haired women?
Kate could almost see Harry’s thoughts scrolling across his smooth brow. Surely an actor ought to be able to conceal his inner feelings. Finally he nodded. “I think I know where we can find him.”
• • •
“Rob is there?” Kate cried, appalled as she stared up at the black, stark walls of the Clink Prison. “For how long?”
Harry shrugged. He tried to act careless, as if such things happened all the time. And to actors, who always seemed embroiled in drunken, high-emotion quarrels, perhaps they did. Yet Kate could see the shadow o
f concern in his eyes. The Clink was notoriously filthy and gaol-fever ridden, a cesspit stop on the way to the gibbet that stood just outside its walls.
“Yesterday, so I heard,” Harry said. “He went looking for the villain that did for Nell, furious he was. Nearly killed a man in a brawl at the Rose and Crown tavern that he heard had been seen hitting Nell before. So he got tossed in here.”
Kate clenched her fists, so angry and frustrated with Rob she could hardly see clearly. Losing her temper would never help him now. “Well, he will not be here for long.” She gathered the heavy folds of her cloak around her and marched up to the ironbound doors. Harry scrambled behind her, but by the time he reached her side, she had already tugged hard on the bellpull.
After several long, heart-pounding moments, the rusty locks and bars on the doors at last squealed and the portal swung open to reveal a cadaverously thin, waxy-skinned guard. He peered out at them with ratlike eyes from behind a curtain of long, greasy hair.
“Aye?” he said.
Kate swallowed hard, and tried to imagine she was the queen. She needed some imperious manners now. “We are sent by one of the queen’s own courtiers to see a man who had been unjustly imprisoned here. A Master Robert Cartman. At once, if you please.”
The guard eyed her fine cloak and implacable expression, and the tall, handsome man who lurked silently just beyond her shoulder. “The queen’s court, is it? How can I be sure of that? I can’t let visitors in without telling the governor, now, can I?”
Kate dug a coin from her purse and held it out to him. “You may be sure of our complete honesty. And of Her Majesty’s most acute displeasure if we are turned away.”
The coin swiftly vanished between his skeletal fingers. “Follow me, then.”
Harry took Kate’s arm as they stepped through the door and it slammed behind them, like the gates of hell. A thick, damp darkness closed in around them, and Kate shivered. The guard had already almost vanished in the gloom, and she hurried to keep up.
Murder at Westminster Abbey Page 18
