The Poyson Garden (17 page)

But her candlelight caught only the solemn, disapproving stare in a man's portrait from an olden day--perhaps even one of her ancestors' painted faces, if Waldegrave hadn't burned them all like the queen burned martyrs.

She noted that there was one more door beyond this one, but surely this was the room Aunt Mary had said had been her mother's. Biting her lower lip, holding the bolster cover with her booty close to her breasts, Elizabeth stretched out her hand toward the big brass door latch. She would feel closer to her mother inside; she would feel safe and not afraid.

An odd floral scent wafted out as she drew open the door. It creaked. A chill draft from inside gutted her candle out. She jumped back as she blinked at light from inside --a single lantern and wan moonlight. Had she stumbled on someone still here?

But silence reigned, and the bed in the center of the room bore the familiar telltale signs of someone who had quickly thrown off bed linens, counterpane and all, and slid out. Still, she stepped no farther in. A set of sleeves lay on the counterpane, both the clothing and the pane gaily embroidered with twining vines and flowers of slightly different patterns.

That made her hesitate the more. She pressed her eye to the hinge side of the door. No one behind it, and she could only pray the occupant was not behind or under the bed.

She saw the room boasted a big bay window with its slightly vaulted roof set higher than the ceiling. Moonlight washed in to etch everything in tarnished silver, despite the steady flame from an oil lamp. Finally, Elizabeth stepped inside and closed the creaky door behind her.

Then she saw what adorned the wall over the bed, strung high up from plaited cords. She gasped and pressed back against the wall. Herbs and flowers hung behind her too; she crushed and crinkled some. Just as in the cellars at Wivenhoe, nooses dangled dry and dying plants.

She jumped away from the wall. Though she wanted to flee, at least to get Ned, she seized control and forced herself to search the two coffers, one at the foot of the bed, the other in the far corner.

Despite decent light here, she shuddered as she plunged her hand inside the depths of the first one. She kept seeing that dreadful coffer at Bushey Cot with the sticky poison fungus.

It was full of dried flowers of all sorts. She took several handfuls at random, hoping they could link them to their finds at the cot, mayhap even the deadly meadow saffron from Wivenhoe.

In the second coffer her hand touched only heavy garments near the bottom, but fine, light ones lay atop. She picked one up to examine it in the crosslight of moon and lantern. Just a veil with hand-rolled hems and delicate needlework along the edge. She squinted to discern the pattern.

A decorative coil of some sort of leaves, greatly reminiscent of the designs in the previous embroideries they had as clues--and in Bea Pope's creations. were these leaves some sort of poison herb? They looked a bit like clubs on playing cards, or ... like clover, three-lobed. She wished Meg were here to identify this. And something else in each corner--a tiny heart pierced by an arrow dripping blood.

She began to shake harder. Though she was drenched in sweat, her teeth chattered. It all meant something, something just out of her reach. If the veils were for disguises and not mere modesty or fashion, She must be someone people would know bare-faced. Ned had reported a veiled woman came and went at Bushey Cot. The poisoner She must live here where Waldegrave sheltered and supported her. If so, she had defiled Anne Boleyn's bedchamber as part of her revenge. But revenge for exactly what?

As Elizabeth thrust the single veil into her sack, the toe of her boot stubbed something under the bed. She fell to her knees and tugged out a leather and brass-nail studded box, narrow but as long as her arm. She tried to lift it, but it was heavy. Glass or pewter clinked inside when she shifted it. And then she heard the chamber door creak open.

Chapter The Twelfth

Elizabeth dropped to her knees behind the bed. The brocade counterpane draped to the floor, but she lifted it and started to slide under, dragging her sack of pilfered goods. The scent of the drying things

she'd disturbed--or just dust--assailed her. Flattened on her back, she could not get her finger up under her nose.

Her sneeze exploded. Surely she was snared. She'd have to fight her way out as a lad or reveal her identity and risk--

A whisper of a voice. "Robin, are you in here?"

She sneezed again as she slid back out and stood with her eyes watering.

"'So blood, Ned. Why did you not sing out right away? I thought I was trapped in this second Bushey Cot."

"What? She's here?" he said, gaping at the hanging herbs.

"She's been staying here and is no doubt coming back."

"If we don't fly we'll be staying too. They're coming in, all of them."

As she kicked the leather box to send it back under the bed, she heard the distinct clink of glassware again. More vials, she thought, as she followed Ned quickly out the door.

"This room has no one staying in it," Ned explained, pulling open the door directly across the hall. It, too, creaked. "We'll hide out here till they settle, then get downstairs and out before they--"

But as he ran across the small chamber and opened the single window to look out, they heard the unmistakable groan and rattle of the drawbridge going up, then banging to echoing silence. She quickly closed the door behind them and joined him at the window.

"The whoreson poxy Spanish lackey bastard traitors," Elizabeth muttered over Ned's own curse. "I thought they'd but keep watch outside, but they've closed us up."

They heard voices in the hall and knelt behind the bed, just in case someone opened the door to peek in. She whispered close to his ear. "I thought sure we'd at least be able to hide downstairs if they closed the bridge. And then we'd get out a window there. If they linger in the hall or leave a servant up, we've got a long drop to the grass inside the moat from here."

"There had better be a rowboat on the inner-moat side, like at Ightham."

"I told you to keep an eye out for them so we'd have time to get downstairs."

"By hell's gates, Lord Robin, you also told me to search chests and coffers. You're making a fine fool of me indeed."

She ignored his sarcastic wordplay. "I've letters and such here I don't want sopped in the moat--not to mention myself."

"And since, of course, this entire hugger-mugger scheme was my idea from the first--"

"Shut your smart lip and listen!"

The authoritative man's voice sounded in the corridor, hard by their door. Obviously, she thought, Sir Edward Waldegrave. And perhaps his wife's voice too--a woman's--almost musical and much more muted.

Though she kept bent low, Elizabeth got to her feet and tiptoed toward the heavy door. The man's words carried; the woman's did not.

"... mayhap deliberately set by Kentish Protestants again, knowing we're loyal to the queen."

The woman's murmurs.

"I doubt it. I don't care if she is staying with supporters at Ightham. I'd wager this castle it was local louts."

Elizabeth gripped her hands together and pressed them under her chin. They were talking about her. This woman had evidently thought she might send someone --or come herself.

"Her Majesty Queen Mary," the man went on, his voice increasingly agitated, "had best burn the lot of these Kentishmen. They forswore their Catholic oath and lurk about, hoping for the Boleyn whelp to last long enough to have the throne fall right into her pretty little lap. By the rood, if Philip and Mary only had a child!"

The woman spoke again, something mayhap about the fire tonight. Elizabeth ached to crack the door and peer out, but it would creak and they would be caught. She yearned to rip it open and declare herself, accuse them, but that would be far more foolhardy than what she'd already done tonight.

She dipped her head to try to see through the keyhole. The key blocked it, but on this side. Slowly, she slid it out to give herself a view.

Maybe the woman was not his wife at all, but the master poisoner, for she stood in the door to Anne Boleyn's bedchamber. Devil take the man, his big shoulders blocked her view. Hoping to hear the woman's voice better, Elizabeth pressed her ear to the keyhole just as

Waldegrave's voice leapt through it in answer to whatever she had just said.

"Aye, that sort of purging flame will do just as well as the queen's burnings. St. Anthony's fire, you say? I can see it now," Waldegrave went on, his voice becoming more expansive. "Bodies strewn about like those Hatfield rabbits you described, as many as swarms of your bees, but this time Boleyn loyalists ..."

Elizabeth pressed her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out. Her stomach twisted so she thought she would dry-heave. Her frenzied fears drowned his next words until she caught control of herself.

"But just you take a care," Waldegrave added, "that our farm workers here at Hever are spared. Over by old King Henry's beloved Leeds, eh, that will be a warning to the rest of them. Sleep well on that thought then."

Elizabeth silently damned him again for his complicity--and for standing in her view and not using the woman's name. When he stepped away, the door across the hall creaked closed. She saw no one now, so at Waldegrave's next words she jerked so hard she cracked her nose into the iron door latch inches from her face.

"Ho, men! If you've searched the first-floor chambers well enough, start down here at this end, but stay out of this last bedchamber of our guest."

"They're coming," Elizabeth whispered to Ned, though hovering, he had heard Waldegrave and was already halfway across the room.

"Come on," he whispered, digging in his sack. "I lifted a brace of men's hose just in case we needs must tie and gag someone--or get out these windows on a rope."

She jammed the key back in the lock and turned it to give them more time. As she hurried back to Ned, she fingered her painful nose. Already it was swelling, and she had to breathe through her mouth.

She soon saw that Ned Topside was good for more than a fast mouth. He had four knitted silk hose knotted together before she grabbed some from his pile and followed suit.

She tried to keep from admitting that the next queen of England--God willing--was trapped like a rat in a trap in her mother's home, praying for even so much as an ignominious escape. Again she had stooped to illegal entry, theft, and now

peeking through keyholes like some old gossip or scullery maid.

But she had learned this poison plot was more far-reaching than she thought. Not only were she and the Boleyns the target, but common Kentishmen loyal to her. She could not help but think, though, as they desperately knotted the slippery hose, that if she'd only brought a weapon--and Jenks--she might risk facing that poisoner here.

Someone in the hall rattled their door latch and cried out, "This one's locked. Shouldn't be. Been empty. Ask his lordship if'n we can break it down."

"Make haste, Ned."

"I would send you down first," he said, yanking on their cord to test the knots, "but don't know if this will hold." He bent to tie the makeshift rope to the leg of a heavy chair. He had trouble with the knot; she saw that his hands shook. She seized and tied the knots herself. Even if the chair lifted off the floor at their weight, it could never follow them out the window.

"As soon as I drop off, you follow," he ordered.

"Fine. G. I'd not make it across the moat without you if there's no boat there anyway."

"Can't swim, Robin?"

"Can you?"

"Like a fish."

"Go!"

Despite their banter, his face looked frenzied as he hiked himself over the wide wooden window ledge, grasped the cord, and descended. As black night swallowed him, she felt so alone.

Waldegrave's men began to batter something against the door. Dear Lord, help me, she prayed, though she didn't close her eyes. She had her hands clasped though, tight on the bolster's neck as if she would strangle it. Please Lord, my refuge and strength, my very present help in trouble, do not let me be taken by my enemies. Do not let me be poisoned by their iniquity--

The wooden door shuddered and cracked, rattling even the open windowpanes against their lead frames. At the next hit the door splintered but did not break. She sat on the ledge, pulled her knees up, and peered out and over.

As the chill breeze cooled her hot face,

she realized Ned was so close to the walls she could not clearly make him out, but the line was still taut with his weight. Whether it could hold both of them or not, she had to go now. Else when they broke down the door, she would be silhouetted against the sky. They would turn her over to Waldegrave, who would let that witch poison her, then ...

As Ned had done before her, she dropped a bolster out the window and tried to seize the slippery knotted hose. But his weight kept it too taut to the frame and outer stone wall.

Suddenly, the rope slackened, and Ned cried out, "Robin!"

She held to the rope and went over, bumping and dangling before she began to inch down. Above her, it sounded as if the door splintered to shreds. She scraped her knuckles against the stone wall; her nose throbbed. She slipped, but only from knot to knot before she could stop herself and slide to the next, her legs alternately dangling or scraping the walls.

A downstairs window, fully lit, went by, but she, praise God, saw no one in the room. A long carpeted table. Chairs. An arras with a hunting scene on the wall.

And then Ned's hands were hard on her ankles, her legs. The sensation of being seized so firmly by a man jolted her from her fear. No one had touched her there at all, not since Tom Seymour--

"No more rope, Robin. Let go. Drop."

She did, half into Ned's arms, half against him as her knees buckled. He thrust her bolster back into her hands, and ducking under windows, they darted away, even as men must have run to the open window above. Their voices came clear now.