Murder at Hatfield House (26 page)

“Ah, my dear. If they only knew your true depths.” He sipped at the wine. Outside the stout door, there was a sudden clamor, a shout, and a great banging noise.

“I must be getting a new neighbor,” Matthew said. “The alleged blasphemer was sent off to London yesterday.”

To London—to be burned? And her father’s supposed crime was to be in possession of heretical writings, another burning offense. Yet he had not yet been sent away. She still had time, a little time, to piece it all together. And the queen’s lady’s appearance at Hatfield could be a good sign—or a very bad one. It could mean the queen was more ill than ever and had sent her favorite lady to give word to Elizabeth, the queen’s heir. Or it could mean the queen had just sent more spies into her sister’s house.

The man outside screamed incoherent words before the cell door was slammed on him. The gaoler’s heavy footsteps faded away, and everything was quiet again.

“How does your work progress, Father?” Kate asked, determined to be cheerful for him in the time they had left today.

*

When she left the village, the afternoon was growing late and she knew she had to hurry to get back to Hatfield before dark. She glanced toward Master Hardy’s law offices. A candle burned in one of the upstairs windows, a tiny, solitary glow in the gathering gloom, and for a moment she wanted to go back and knock on the door. To talk to Anthony, go over her ideas of the murders, share her fears.

But she remembered how confused she was when they had parted at the gates of Hatfield, and she didn’t need to cloud her thoughts now. She turned away and quickened her steps toward home.

The wind grew brisker and colder as she made her way down the lane. She wrapped her cloak tighter around her and pulled up the fur-edged hood, glad of the dagger she had tucked into the purse tied at her waist. The darkness past the trees seemed even heavier than usual, filled with the potential for watching eyes. Waiting eyes.

Kate walked even faster, and thought of the murders that had already happened rather than what might be lurking in the twilight. It still seemed so elusive, the connection between all the victims. Ned, Braceton and Braceton’s servant, Master Cartman—how were they linked beyond Hatfield? It all kept coming back to Jane Grey.

Yet half the nobility of England had once been allied with the Greys. They had been at the very center of the elite of the new religion. And the other half had held them as enemies. She would have to trace all those connections. Try to remember all she could about her young life at court, which was not much. She had been such a child then, only vaguely aware of alliances and plots and families.

Kate turned a bend in the road, and glimpsed a rider ahead of her. Thus far she had been the only traveler abroad, as the day was chilly and everyone kept in hiding while the queen’s men searched the neighborhood. She was startled to see someone else, and for an instant thought about hiding in the trees until they passed by.

But then she noted the horse, a sturdy brown cob that seemed familiar. She had last seen it drawing a brightly painted cart. And the rider had bright blond hair under a plain knitted cap.

“Rob,” she called, and hurried to catch up with him. “What are you doing here?”

He turned in the saddle and watched her as she came toward him. Beneath his cap, his handsome face was drawn into stark, sharp lines, and dark circles were etched under his eyes. But he gave her a quick smile, and didn’t seem surprised to encounter her there.

“I came to see what I could find out about my uncle,” he said. He swung down from his horse and wrapped the reins around his gloved hand. They continued slowly on together down the road.

The wind had become even more biting, and Kate was glad of the fine cloak’s warm hood, shielding her face and keeping the breeze from tearing at her hair. She was also glad not to be alone now, though she worried about the way Rob looked. The angry light in his eyes.

“What of your friends?” she asked.

“They have returned to London for the time being,” he said. “We have no further performances until the holiday festivities, and my uncle had a house there where they can stay for a time. I owe it to my uncle to find out what happened here.”

Kate nodded. She understood family obligations, even when family members weren’t of perfect form, as Rob’s uncle had not always been toward him. “How do they fare at Leighton now?”

“Well enough, I suppose. Lady Eaton wanted us to stay for a few more days and present more plays, but her husband refused her. So she took to her bed.” Rob ruefully shook his head. “They are a strange household indeed. Lady Eaton seems most eager to confide in someone, anyone, but her husband keeps her locked away. They are certainly hiding a great deal.”

Like a woman in a tower? Letters, papers, refugees from the queen? Kate looked up at him. “Did you find—”

Suddenly her words were cut off by a high, thin, whining noise through the air, like a flock of insects. She half turned to see what it was, and was driven back by a sudden blow to her shoulder. It felt as if someone had pushed her hard, and she stumbled, confused.

Then pain shot as a bolt of fire all through her body and she cried out. It was like nothing she had ever felt before, burning and freezing all at once, numbing. She fell to her knees and her hand flew up to her shoulder.

Her fingers found the wet, warm stickiness of blood. And the thin shaft of an arrow.

A thick cloud of tight pain closed around her mind.

“Kate!” she heard Rob shout. “God’s blood, Kate, nay!”

She felt his arms close around her and lift her up before she could fall into the dirt, but then the darkness closed in and she didn’t feel anything else.

*

It was the wrong woman
.

The archer stared between the trees in astonishment. How could such a mistake have been made? The Lady Elizabeth wore that cloak so often, a fine red beacon on a gray day. But as the hood fell back, it was dark hair that tumbled free and not red.

Dark.
How had the last piece of the puzzle slipped away so quickly? And why did it have to be
her
?

The figure watched in mounting anger and chagrin as the actor caught the girl in his arms. Her head fell back over his shoulder, her arms limp as if she was unconscious—or dead. He snatched a blanket from over his saddle and spread it on the ground before he laid her carefully down. He was much too busy with her to go chasing after the shooter.

The man certainly seemed to be good for something beyond spouting pretty verses. He drew out a dagger and rolled the girl to her side. The arrow had gone straight through her left shoulder. The aim, then, was true, even though the real prey had used a decoy.

Yet another mark against the Boleyn whore’s spawn. The girl would never have been hurt if Elizabeth hadn’t sent her out in her own place.

The actor cut off the pointed arrow tip and swiftly lowered the girl onto her back. He grasped the feathered end and drew it out, slowly and smoothly, in one long tug. It came free, and the girl’s back arched in a swift convulsion. He ripped off the hem of the pretty cloak and tied it around her in a makeshift bandage. It was quickly stained an even darker red.

So much blood. There had already been so much blood. And now there would have to be more.

The figure backed away from the view of the wounded girl and slipped into the woods.

CHAPTER 22

“K
ate. Kate, can you hear me?”

Kate heard the soft voice, but it seemed to come from a very long way away, like whispering in a dream or as words spoken through a tapestry. She tried to struggle up toward it, but her body felt as heavy as a stone. She couldn’t even pry her eyes open. She started to let herself tumble back into the comfortable darkness, but a cool hand grabbed onto hers and squeezed it tightly. A ring bit into her skin, jerking her to wakefulness.

She pried open her eyes, and for a moment she could see nothing but the canopy of a bed above her, dark red and full of shadows. Then a pale heart-shaped face swam into view, peering down at her with wide brown eyes. Red-gold hair, untidily pinned up, glowed like a torch.

“She is waking up,” the face said with a smile, and Kate realized it was Princess Elizabeth. “Kate, can you hear me? Are you in much pain?”

“She shouldn’t be,” another voice said, one Kate recognized as Peg’s. “We dosed her with Cora’s syrup in wine after she thrashed about so much when we tried to clean the wound. Perhaps we should send for the doctor and have her bled, my lady.”

“Nay!” Kate cried. She remembered the last time she was bled, the horror of the leeches. She couldn’t bear that again. “No bleeding.”

She tried to sit up, and pain shot down her side, making her whole body contract.

“Don’t move around so, Kate,” Elizabeth said. “You must be still or the wound will open again.” She gently urged Kate to lie back down again and tucked the blankets around her. “Just be quiet now.”

As the pain slowly ebbed away, Kate remembered all that had happened. Meeting Rob on the road. The arrow that flew out of the woods. The blood. The blackness. And now here she was, in her own chamber with no memory of how she got there.

She glanced down to see that she wore one of her old smocks with the left sleeve torn away to make room for a bulky bandage and a sling that bound her arm to her side. She could smell the feverfew and chamomile of a poultice, and the smoke from the fireplace. How long had she been there? Hours—or days?

“Rob,” she whispered. Her mouth was dry and it was hard to force the words out. “Was he hurt?” She remembered the shock on his face as he leaned over her, and she knew for sure, for the first time, he could not have done these terrible things.

“Young Master Cartman?” Elizabeth said. “Not at all. He carried you all the way back to Hatfield when you were injured, and now he’s waiting most impatiently in the kitchens. Do you remember what happened?”

An arm clad in gray wool appeared in front of Kate, holding a pottery goblet. She slowly turned her head to see Lady Pope. Her face was as pinched and disapproving as ever beneath her old-fashioned gable hood.

And Kate suddenly wondered what the Popes thought of the Greys and Protestant estates. They were vassals of Queen Mary, of course, given the task of guarding Elizabeth, but they had not been overtly hostile like Braceton or Souza. Kate realized their motives needed to be examined as closely as everyone else’s. If Lord Braceton had been about to give a bad report of their guardianship to the queen . . .

“You should drink this, Mistress Haywood,” Lady Pope said. “It will help the pain.”

Kate did want to escape the pain that throbbed in her shoulder, but she didn’t want to fall back into that sticky darkness again. She had to think, think.

She shook her head, and Lady Pope pressed the goblet closer. “Drink it, girl. You need to heal.”

Kate turned away on the pillow. “Not now. My head is so cloudy. . . .”

“She will drink more later, Lady Pope,” Elizabeth said firmly. She took the goblet away and put it down on the bedside table. “I will make sure she rests now.”

Lady Pope gave a disapproving sniff, but she turned and bustled out of the room. As the door closed behind her, Elizabeth smiled.

“You should have taken a little more of her potion, Kate,” she said. “Your face is so white. But so far there is no sign of infection.”

“Was there no clue to who shot me?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “A search party was sent out as soon as Master Cartman stumbled into the hall, but it was too late. Anyone who was out there was long vanished. Only this was saved.” She reached into the purse tied at her waist and drew out a small object.

As she held it up to the light, Kate saw it was a broken piece of an arrow. The purplish feathers of the fine fletching were iridescent in the firelight, just like the feather fragment she had once found caught on a shrub alongside the lane.

“These feathers are most distinctive. I don’t think I’ve ever seen work quite like this before,” Elizabeth said. “I will compare it to the arrow that killed Lord Braceton and his servant, but I’m sure it will be a match. Master Rob says he saw nothing on the road either.”

“It was all so fast,” Kate said. As her mind grew clearer, she remembered every detail of the scene. “We were just standing there talking, and then—so much pain.”

“It’s most fortunate Master Rob was there to bring you to us.”

Kate nodded. It was indeed fortunate Rob had been there to help her. Or maybe he was there for some other, more nefarious purpose? She hated the suspicion that had infected her of late, which made her look at everyone as if they had hidden motives. Secrets.

“What do you remember from Leighton Abbey?”

Kate could feel the remnants of Cora’s potion working through her blood, pulling her downward, but she knew she had to fight it away until she could tell Elizabeth what she knew. She quickly blurted to the princess about the veiled woman, about Lord Ambrose and his carelessly lost letter, about the plan to seize Protestant families’ estates and hide the truth about the death of Lady Jane.

“It isn’t much, I fear,” Kate said ruefully, falling back to her pillows. “If I could have found the veiled woman—”

“Or perhaps she found you,” Elizabeth murmured, tapping her fingertips on the bedpost. “Perhaps whoever she is followed you from Leighton and shot at you. It would be so much easier, would it not, if our murderer was this strange apparition and not someone we know? Not someone connected to us.”

“But what if we do know her?” Kate cried, frustrated by all the unanswered questions flying through her mind. Every turn she made only seemed to create more puzzles. “She could be anyone at all.”

Elizabeth nodded. “So she could. But it always seems to come back to the Greys, doesn’t it? Damnable troublesome relations. I seem to be so rich in them.”

The princess pushed herself up from the bed to pace across the small space of Kate’s chamber.

“Families, we are told, are meant to be a comfort in this life. A loyal support. But mine is naught but a pack of wild tigers wherever I turn,” Elizabeth said, and Kate had the sense she was no longer really there in the room, but in a chamber of her own mind, talking more to herself than to Kate.