Murder at Hatfield House (19 page)

“How strange,” Kate mused. Could the poor, grief-struck man be responsible for some of what had happened? Could he have been somehow involved, and was that why his son became the target of a murderer? The neighbor woman had said Ned’s father was once a soldier and served with Lord Braceton, until drink took him over.

“Perhaps he really has gone to seek his revenge,” Penelope said.

Before Kate could answer, she heard the rattle of wheels in the road. She turned to see Rob’s cart slowly creaking toward them, Rob at the reins.

In stark contrast to how they had appeared on the way to Hatfield, all bells and drums and bright colors, today the players were silent, saddened. Most of them trudged along the lane, muffled against the cold, and Kate could hear a woman sobbing loudly inside the cart.

“Master Robert,” Kate called out as they drew near. “Did your uncle return? Are you leaving for Leighton Abbey?”

Rob pulled up the horses and the cart lurched to a halt. He looked tired, his handsome face sharply drawn beneath his cap, and Kate could see the glint of blades hidden beneath his short cloak. It reminded her that he was not to be trusted.

“We are going to Leighton, aye,” he said. “But my uncle has not returned. We couldn’t wait for him any longer.”

“
You
couldn’t wait, you heartless varlet!” the woman in the cart cried.

Rob didn’t glance back. “My uncle’s leman disagrees, of course, but it wasn’t safe for us to stay. Not with all that—well, all that was happening this morning. People have a tendency to blame players if they can.”

“My father being arrested, you mean?” Kate said.

“I’m sorry for that, of a certes,” Rob answered solemnly. “How does he fare now?”

“We were allowed to bring him some comforts from home, so he is well enough for the moment. But I must get him out very soon. He has done nothing wrong.”

Rob nodded, and he looked as if he would say something more. But Penelope spoke first.

“I doubt you can say the same about your uncle, Master Cartman,” Penelope said in a hard voice, one Kate had never heard from her before. “There is surely a reason people blame players when matters go awry.”

Rob’s jaw tightened as he stared down at Penelope.

“Penelope . . .” Kate said. Her head ached with all that had happened on that long day, and she didn’t need quarrels to cloud her thinking. Besides, Penelope could certainly be correct.

“Wasn’t his uncle the one who brought that dreadful play into the house?” Penelope said. “The one that angered Lord Braceton so much he took it out on your poor father. Perhaps he even brought in that pamphlet, and hid it in your father’s things when he was afraid of being found out.”

“What pamphlet?” Rob demanded.

Kate shook her head. She knew the pamphlet was her father’s; he had just forgotten he possessed it, so wrapped up in his music was he. Yet it
was
strange it had appeared in such an obvious place just as Braceton looked for it. Right after the play about Jane Grey. Which, as Penelope had pointed out, was brought into the house by Rob’s uncle, who was now gone.

“It was a work of Lady Jane Grey,” Kate said. “A collection of her letters and such, printed soon after her death.”

“I have seen such a thing,” Rob admitted. “They were much circulated.”

“Braceton arrested my father for having it amid his things. Yet I think it was all merely some ploy to flush out the real villain he seeks. The one who killed his manservant.”

“My uncle could have had such a publication,” Rob said. “But I doubt he would have hidden it in your father’s room. Surely he would have buried it when he found out Lord Braceton was here.”

“Then why has he vanished?” Penelope demanded. “Why did you perform that play?”

Rob shook his head, and Kate saw a fierce frown flicker over his face. “I vow I do not know, mistress! My uncle was never in the habit of confiding in me. But I intend to find out.”

The woman in the cart wailed again, and Kate was suddenly very aware that they stood talking of dangerous matters in the middle of the road. She hurried closer to the cart and peered up at Rob over the brightly painted rim of the wheel. Penelope tried to stop her, but was not quick enough.

“You remember Ned, the kitchen boy who was killed in the church?” Kate said.

“Aye,” Rob answered. “’Tis hard to forget such a thing.”

“His father has also vanished, as your uncle did,” she said. “Did they know each other at all? Could it be connected somehow?”

“I don’t see how it could be. My uncle surely did not know the man. Yet why should they both disappear on the same night?”

Kate shrugged helplessly. There was so much she did not understand. So much she was determined to discover. “You say you are on your way to Leighton Abbey now?”

“Aye. No matter what has happened to my uncle, we must eat. I will see to it we still have work. And perhaps there is something to discover there as well.”

Kate nodded. The Eaton family, who lived at Leighton Abbey, was another Protestant family who had gained their estate in the Dissolution of the Monasteries. And Lady Eaton, as well as being related to William Cecil’s late first wife, had once been a lady-in-waiting to Frances, Duchess of Suffolk—mother of Jane Grey. Surely there would be much to know at their home.

“If you will send me word, I will let you know if we hear anything of your uncle,” Kate said.

“Kate, we must get home now,” Penelope said insistently. She hurried over to tug at Kate’s arm.

Kate nodded and stepped back as Rob set the cart in motion again. His mournful band trailed after him, and Kate watched them until they vanished down the road. She felt quite unaccountably sad as they disappeared from view. Their departure was so very different from their first appearance.

“Come, Kate,” Penelope said, and they continued on toward Hatfield. “They brought nothing but trouble. And now they can run off, free, while we must stay and face Lord Braceton.”

“They are hardly free,” Kate said. “Their leader has vanished.”

“And does that not seem like a sign of some guilt? Or perhaps some cowardice.”

Kate feared her friend might be right. Rob had said his uncle acted strangely before they even came to Hatfield. And Master Cartman was the one who insisted on the play that infuriated Braceton so much. He had surely been up to something. But what? Why? Could the forbidden books she had seen in Master Payne’s hut also be connected?

She was distracted by a sudden sound, like the cry of a wounded animal carried on the wind. She glanced back to see a man standing at the rise of a hill, beyond the wall that snaked along the side of the road. It took her a startled moment to recognize the man, outlined as he was by the glare of the gray sky. Then she saw it was Master Payne.

The vicar wore his usual dark, ragged old vestments, but his cap was gone and his long gray hair blew around him. He waved his hands in the air, then pointed at Kate and Penelope as they stared at him in astonishment.

“You are all damned!” he shouted. “Just as I warned. But you did not listen. If you disobey God’s word, you will be punished. All the sinners will be struck down!”

“He should be in a play himself,” Kate murmured, yet she couldn’t help but shiver as she stared up at him. It was said the mad knew things, saw things, the sane could not. What had Master Payne seen?

“We should get home,” Penelope said. “Master Payne should have been locked away long ago.”

Kate nodded, and they quickened their steps until the man’s warnings faded behind them and they went through Hatfield’s gates at last. The dark redbrick house loomed before them, seemingly quiet behind its old walls, the gray sky reflected in the empty windows. Not even the gardeners were out yet, and when they went around to the kitchen doors no maids were hanging out the wash or throwing out slops. It seemed everyone was in hiding.

“’Tis most strange,” Penelope said. “Surely we must still eat. Why is no one out?”

A clattering sound came through the half-open door, and Cora’s voice berated one of the maids.

Kate sighed in a measure of relief. “It seems we will eat, then. Something, anyway. We just have to stay out of Braceton’s way while we can.”

She turned to take the pattens from her boots, and her attention was caught by a flash of color that interrupted the expanse of gray-green lawn beyond the low herb garden wall. Slowly, she moved nearer to investigate. There had been too many unpleasant surprises that day.

And it seemed there would be yet more. It was a man lying amid the grass, his blue and green clothes bright in the dismal day. From that distance, Kate couldn’t see who it was, but she remembered that Master Cartman wore bright garments.

“Kate, what is it?” Penelope said.

“Stay here, Penelope,” she answered, and took a deep breath as she made her way out of the kitchen garden. She had to steel herself before she looked, especially after the way she had found Ned. She wasn’t sure she could bear any more blood, even as she knew she must. This person might need help.

Holding her skirt hems above the damp grass, she crept closer. The figure lay so still she could see the person was beyond help.

When she was a few feet away, she found to her shock that it was
not
Master Cartman, or even Ned’s missing father. It was Lord Braceton himself, stretched out on the grass, his open, glassy eyes staring up at the leaden sky and a trickle of blood from his gaping mouth matting his beard. He looked as if he had been there for some time, as the moisture from the grass dotted his doublet and he was growing stiff.

Two arrows had pierced his chest.

Penelope screamed, and Kate whirled around to find her friend had followed her. A scream escaped Penelope’s mouth again, and her hand flew up to cover it. She stared down at Braceton, her face a terrible shade of green, and Kate feared she would be sick. That they would
both
be sick.

She grabbed Penelope’s hand and they ran for the house.

CHAPTER 15

“H
ouse arrest! God’s blood, but now I am even more a prisoner in my own home.”

Kate watched as Elizabeth pounded her fist on her table, rattling books and papers set out across the flat surface. Since Braceton’s body had been discovered, more of Queen Mary’s men had overrun Hatfield, swarming through the rooms and the gardens. The queen had roused herself from her sickbed to write to Elizabeth and declare her outrage that such a thing had been allowed to happen to her own agent in her sister’s house. Elizabeth was confined to her chambers until the murderer was caught.

Word had even come from the village that the lawyer Master Hardy, Anthony’s employer, was intercepted on his journey from London. Master Smythson had closed his shop, and everyone stayed home, hiding behind closed shutters. A priest was being sent forthwith from court to purify the church and instruct Elizabeth on what she must do to save her soul. There would be no more prevarication.

And Kate’s father was still in gaol. Captain Souza, one of King Philip’s soldiers who now led the regiment of burly men in the queen’s livery who filled the house, said he would remain there until he was told everything there was to know about the “treason rotting this cursed place.” He also muttered many Spanish words Kate was sure they were better off not knowing.

Like Braceton, Souza railed about treason. But Souza was a spare, ascetic man of staunch Spanish Catholicism, a man of few words and much action. He would obviously be a difficult person to get around, and not someone Elizabeth could charm or befuddle. There were no journeys to Brocket Hall, no plays in the great hall.

And there were always guards at the princess’s door.

Elizabeth sat down and tapped her fingers on the table, a hard, staccato rhythm. “I have long been a prisoner in truth, but now there is no pretense about it.”

“I am sorry, Your Grace,” Kate said.

Elizabeth shook her head. “You have nothing to be sorry for, Kate. You are the only one I can rely on now. Everyone else is so panicked they cannot see straight. Even Penelope, who has been such good company since she was sent to my service, weeps in her bed. She seems much more shaken to have found Lord Braceton’s body than you are.”

Kate swallowed hard, twisting her hands in her skirt as she thought of how Braceton looked when she stumbled over him. “I— In truth, Your Grace, I have been able to see little else in my mind since we stumbled across him lying there. But surely it’s at moments like this that we must remain the calmest. Only by keeping control can we solve this crime and save ourselves.”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “Quite so, Kate. Where did you learn such a wise thought?”

“From you, Your Grace,” Kate said with a small smile. She’d watched Elizabeth walk the dangerous tightrope of courtly politics with only her wits to hold her up for many months. And now, when they were so close to a safe haven, things looked darkest. It was no time to panic.

Elizabeth laughed. “Clever girl. Tell me again how Braceton looked when you found him.”

Kate closed her eyes and reluctantly conjured up the scene again. “He looked as if he was startled, I think. As if he died where he fell and did not expect danger. He probably wasn’t moved to that spot.”

“Sir Thomas did say Lord Braceton insisted he would go for a walk alone,” Elizabeth said. “It was very early in the morning, and Sir Thomas tried to dissuade him, to make him take a guard, but Braceton said he was not going far. That he needed fresh air to clear the poison of this, er, snake pit.”

“So there were no witnesses, even though he was not so far from the house.”

“Most strange, indeed. The kitchen servants were all indoors, at their baking. But you say you saw Master Payne on your way home?”

“Aye, just at one of the hills beyond the woods. He was waving his arms and shouting at us. He looked even more ragged than usual.”

“Could he have seen something?”

“Perhaps, Your Grace. If he could be found and questioned—and made to talk sense, which is probably beyond human effort.”

Elizabeth slammed her fist down on the table again, sending a book crashing to the floor. “And I can find no one and nothing while I am locked up here!”