The Poyson Garden (27 page)

nearly learned to ignore her pounding head pain. It had not lessened one whit since she'd found that fox, and Kat had coiled and pulled her hair up too taut under her boy's cap for this grueling ride. Poor Kat, she thought: Was she managing to cover for Meg's absence too? Thomas Pope had been told Ned and Jenks had been allowed to go to Edenbridge, but Kat was probably at wit's end over Meg gone missing.

When a guard called down at them from the crenelated parapet to halt and send just one on, Ned glibly gave his false identity and spurred his horse ahead. The gaping maw of the portcullis seemed to swallow him whole. Elizabeth ached to hear what was passing between him and the castle guards. Mayhap he'd been taken to Lord St. Leger or Desma Ormonde herself in the long time the rest of them waited.

She drummed her fingers on her saddle and fidgeted. She hated not being in command. She detested subterfuge. When she was queen, surely she would do everything aboveboard, mayhap except for foreign policy. No more domestic plots against her, no murders of someone dear, no more frustrations or fears when she could act from a position of safety and power.

She held her breath while Ned--Niall McGowan--rode jauntily back out to them.

"Lord St. Leger's in London, my lads, but when the steward said I talked just like some of the men who are staying here--Irish guests, he said--he agreed we could give a performance tonight. Says there's a lady guest here might like a wee bit of an Irish play in honor of Her Majesty and old Ireland too."

Elizabeth remembered to breathe. Her hopes had plunged, then soared. At least they would not have to outsmart St. Leger and his retainers. And she had correctly surmised that Desma would be here. She prayed that this time they could outfox her and not be the ones trapped.

They were soon inside. Like the others, she scanned the grounds and buildings, simply pretending to gawk at their archaic grandeur. The old farmer they had questioned about the place had described the main castle and the even older, attached section called the Gloriette on its own tiny island--a last stand if the place were attacked in times of yore.

Across the grassy inner bailey from the castle proper, she noted, stood the separate, four-story, rectangular edifice called the Maiden's Tower. Under this gunmetal-gray sky, its windows stared blankly down on them. Mayhap its lower floor was a makeshift stable or barn these days, for a cow was tethered near the door and sheep cropped the green where a single white peacock strutted, fanning its huge tail. As they passed closer to the Tower, she noted watering and feeding troughs and a pile of ripe manure, from which the stench drifted their way.

"A pox on them," she mouthed. It would be just like Desma Ormonde to deface and desecrate the Maiden's Tower as she had other places once dear to the Boleyns. The old farmer had said Elizabeth's father had built the place as a small pleasure palace in honor of her mother, Queen Anne.

"The tower 'twas built," the rustic had explained, obviously eager for an audience, "years after the rest of Leeds, years after. And by the great King Harry hisself. And ha' been visited by his poor Kentish Queen Anne Boleyn herself too. A local girl, ye ken, and her girl, Elizabeth, ha' nary a foreign drop of blood in her veins, not like that bloody one now. Elizabeth, aye, she'll make us a queen, pure English someday. ..."

Even now Elizabeth treasured his words. How much she had wanted to thank him for his loyalty, but she had stayed back with the lads while Ned questioned him. Also, she had wanted to warn the old soul not to eat rye bread, but that might start a panic, when there was one already rampaging in her heart to stop Desma Ormonde's mass slaughter of such folk.

Her pure English father, whom she had both feared and adored, had been cunning and wily but evidently not enough to realize his Irish ambassador St. Leger, to whom he gave this place, had played both sides to harbor hatreds. And now the traitor must have dedicated himself to keeping Desma Ormonde's curse going against the Boleyns. Let him hide out in London. When she was queen--

Elizabeth almost leapt straight out of her saddle when Ned--in an Irish accent--shouted at her.

"I said, lad," he repeated, pointing

rudely up at her, "help the others unload our goods while I go ask where we're to stow them. Get a move on those lazy bones now, or I'll take a stick to your backside."

For one moment she glared down at him, not moving. In all this danger, with lives at risk, the blackguard was enjoying this. She noted that his uncle and the others glanced nervously at Ned, then back at her.

She scrambled to obey.

Meg had never been more terrified, though Ned would be proud. This woman--She, in the flesh-- was so convinced a mere herb girl was Princess of England, she was going to kill her for it.

The woman came closer with a narrow, open leather box containing glass vials and small pewter cups. Meg bucked hard against the ropes, but it only made her limbs go more numb and her breath come harder against this gag. Wide-eyed, she quieted as the woman Her Grace had called Desma Ormonde moved behind her and set her burden down with a clink, then went back to close the door.

Meg had been studying this room in the tower for at least two hours but saw no hope of escape. She was four floors up, and the single door was heavy wood. She'd heard it bolted outside when that ruffian Colum had put her up here. Two other Irish louts had looked in off and on, one called Brian; and now the master poisoner herself, like some veiled vision from the dead.

Since Meg knew she had no hope of rescue unless her friends found her fast, her dilemma simply was this: Whether she should save her own skin by telling the truth here--though Desma could poison her anyway--or whether she should play it out to protect the princess by her death, or at least earn her a bit more time.

"I'm going to remove that gag now so that we can have a little discussion, Boleyn," the veiled woman said, bending close to where Meg was tied, hands behind her, her legs to the wooden ones of a heavy, carved chair. Desma Ormonde smelled of herbs, but dry, decaying ones, and Meg's nostrils flared.

"I want," the woman went on, speaking deliberately and coldly, "to hear you admit you are a treacherous bitch, spawn of traitors

to my family, just like your mother and your aunt."

When the woman fumbled with her gag, Meg could have bitten her fingers off for degrading Mary Boleyn. Now she knew for certain who had poisoned her beloved mistress and left her to take the blame from Lord Henry, whom Desma had tried to kill too.

"Come on now," Desma coaxed as she poked in Meg's mouth to get a piece of the damp linen. "Before we're finished here, I will hear you confess and beg for your very life."

At first Meg just planned to glare at her silently, disdainfully, down her nose the way Her Grace did. That would buy her more time to decide whether to be Meg or the princess. But when the woman yanked the linen strip from her mouth, Meg thought her whole throat had come out too. She coughed and gagged, wheezed and gasped.

"Here, poor thing," Desma crooned mockingly, "let me give you a little something to drink."

A clanging bell went off in Meg's head. Poison for certain!

Her captor produced a small cup from her box and moved it toward Meg's lips while her eyes streamed tears. Meg shook her head hard and tried to turn away, but the woman grabbed her hair, yanked her head back, forcibly wedged her teeth apart, and poured the liquid between her lips to make her choke again. Meg tried to spit it out, though it tasted enough like water. The woman threw the rest of it in her face and tossed the tankard into a corner.

"I said I just want to talk--at least right now," she said, dragging another chair close and perching upright on the edge of it.

Meg's gaze darted wildly around the small room, desperate for some way to fight back, to run. Not only was she nearly immobile, but the chamber was sparsely furnished, with nothing that could help her, even if she could shove her chair around. The single table was dwarfed by four stone columns that stood sentinel in the corners. High brass hooks where tapestries once must have hung encircled the tall stone walls. Now they bore only a single, faded arras of a lady with a deer, mayhap the maiden for whom the place was named. If only she could escape like that maid into that embroidered meadow and forest.

Reluctantly, Meg's eyes refocused on the poisoner. She held herself like a real lady, Meg had to give her that. But her voice was bitter as bile, and it was so strange never to see a face. Meg imagined it must be ugly as sin, and cruel to boot.

"A very special drink for you later, Boleyn, I promise," she was saying with a hollow laugh.

Meg licked her cracked, dry lips and took a deep breath. She tried to steady herself by picturing the princess as, even in her bonds, she sat up straighter and squared her shoulders. She narrowed her eyes and glared down her nose as she said her first words to this witch.

"'So blood, how dare a lickspittle like you assault my royal person!"

"If we get caught here, we'll tell them we are gathering cobwebs for the play," Elizabeth whispered to Jenks, who followed her so closely he kept breathing down her neck. "Ugh!" she cried as she wiped webs from her face. She recalled Kat's warning that Desma would be sitting at Leeds like a spider, waiting to ensnare her.

She heard rats skitter away again and wondered how Wat Thompson and one of the lads were faring in their underground kingdom of vermin, searching whatever cellars and dungeons underlay the old Gloriette. Ned was to be ferreting out who slept in which upstairs bedrooms and perhaps taking a peek in them, while Randall and the other lad set up the scenery. She, supposedly with the nervous Jenks to guard her, searched this dungeon of the main castle.

They stopped at the bottom of the uneven steps and squinted into the vast, black cavern toward the labyrinth of halls and cells beyond. The ceiling of this central chamber was vaulted above two iron doors with grills that the outer guards could look through. As Jenks went to peer through the one in the first door, she stood frozen. Her own captivity in the Tower of London, the clank of keys in locks leapt at her, but all was silence here.

"I'm going to call her name aloud," Jenks said, but his mere whisper echoed. Elizabeth saw that her brave man was trembling so hard his candle wavered. Coming down the stairs he had already singed her sleeve with it.

"No need to do more here," she said suddenly, stepping down beside him to grip his arm.

He started, gasped, and jerked around, evidently thinking she'd spotted Meg--or her corpse. But she lowered her candle and pointed to the scabs of rust, years of it, encrusting the sets of locks to both doors.

"No one's been through here for decades, Jenks, praise God."

"But I was praying we'd find her here, just tied or something," he said as they turned and made a quick retreat up the narrow, crooked stairs.

When Elizabeth saw the door to the upstairs chamber Ned had told her of, she almost wished she were back in the black dungeon. He had not managed to search all the upstairs rooms but had learned a bit about the Irish lady who was his lordship's guest. Always veiled, she came and went at will, one servant had told him, and was somewhere about the grounds now. But they didn't know where to go to invite her to the play, since she wasn't in her chamber, first one on the third floor overlooking the lake. Besides, she asked for what she wanted and otherwise liked to be left alone.

Yet, under the pretext of inviting her--and to keep Jenks from charging upstairs to bang about in every chamber looking for Meg--Ned had slipped up the back stairs and peeked into the bedchambers, including that very room.

"Was Meg there?" Jenks had demanded the moment Ned returned to where they were setting up small bits of scenery before the play.

"Not Meg nor the Lady of the White Peacock, but it was quite a room," Ned had announced.

Elizabeth gasped. "Alike to her one at Hever?"

He nodded. "And to Bushey Cot. Strands of stinking herbs and toadstools."

"Did you make a thorough search?" Elizabeth demanded.

"If Desma Ormonde's not there, neither is Meg," Ned insisted.

"We must be sure. As soon as the play begins and before my first entrance, I am going up there to search that chamber for anything that may help us, even a letter from my sister. If I don't make my entrance, come after me."

"Since the servants say she's not about and

they'll all be in the audience, I warrant we can risk that," Ned had said. "But you will not go off alone outside the castle until I make my exit and join you."

Elizabeth just nodded. He had become so pompous she could have stuck him with her dagger to deflate him. "After Act the Second," Ned declared, "Wat and Rand can manage to carry it alone long enough for you, me, and Jenks to search those other buildings for both of them."

"Join me in the kitchen, where I'll keep an eye on the inner bailey in case she heads this way," Elizabeth had said. "Besides, who cares if a lad just steps out to get away for a precious moment from an arrogant, scolding master of the players? No one will recognize me anyway if I--"

"Unless," Ned had interrupted, ignoring her jab, "it turns out Meg is here but not on our side."

"I told you," Jenks had insisted, "that can't be, and Her Gr--this lad did too. After my sword-fight scene I'll be there to guard you, lad."

She had felt pressed between the two of them. "All right," she had said, "that's the way we will play it. But time's of the essence. Both of you join me in the kitchen as soon as you make your exits."

Now she stood, shaking, with her hand on the latch to the chamber Ned had said was definitely Desma's. She knocked lightly and, when there was no answer, darted in. It was nearly dark outside, so the chamber lay in shapes and shadows.