The Poyson Garden (7 page)

"Who sent you here?" Elizabeth demanded of the poisoner. "Help us, and we'll take care of you. Do you know anything about men attacking his lordship here with poison arrows?"

But the girl said nothing else and wilted right before them, soon so weak she couldn't stand. They could get no beer down her. She spit it out, and they stood in the puddle of it, mixed with the girl's own urine that wet her thin skirts. In a quarter hour she clutched her chest and gasped for air. Her pulse faded.

"Though this is no ruse, stay with her, Jenks," Elizabeth ordered. He had gone back to fanning Meg's face with his cap as she, at least, recovered. "We'd best look in on the Lady Mary, in case she has any of her favorite drink or cakes by her bed at night."

Followed by Harry and Meg, she hurried up the steps, then the stairs above. They tiptoed into Mary's chamber, amazed the cellar walls were thick enough that no one on the second floor had heard them shouting. Glenda was dozing, but she woke with a start.

"Thought you been long gone, milady," she said to Elizabeth and struggled to her feet to dip a deep curtsy, as if she'd been practicing-- or somehow knew her real identity. "Is aught amiss? Oh, there you are, girl," she added to Meg. "Come to take your turn here at last, I hope."

Elizabeth snatched the familiar tankard from the chest at the bedside and sniffed at it, then handed it to Henry, who gave it to Meg. As the four of them stood by her bed, Mary Boleyn opened her eyes.

"Oh," she said, her voice soft but her words very distinct. "I thought for one moment my lord was come late to bed. I always told him to wake me. Meg, dear girl, I'm glad to see you well

and to have you back at my side." Her heavy gaze slowly swung to Elizabeth. "And my dearest Catherine has come home at last," she announced.

Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath and glared sideways at Meg. She understood now why others resented and mistrusted the girl. Harry had even said she was not a local lass and had been in the household only a year. Yet Mary's deep affections for her seemed to rebuke them all. Even in her sleepy state she recognized a mere servant but not Elizabeth. She would tell Harry to cross-question this Meg more closely. If, as he said, the girl had tried some dosing tonics with Mary before she herself took-- or played sick--she could have had the chance to harm her.

"And my dear boy, whatever is that bandage for?" Mary Boleyn interrupted Elizabeth's agonizing. Now Harry looked surprised.

"But, my lady mother, do you not recall ..." he began, but his voice tapered off. They all stared down at Mary Boleyn.

She did not close her eyes, but they seemed to glaze over. She exhaled a deep breath and smiled and died.

Chapter The Fifth

The meager band of mourners felt the floor shudder when the four men shoved and dragged the big paving stone back into place. It rumbled, then thudded to silence on the central aisle of the small church. In the vault beneath it, Mary Boleyn, Lady Stafford, now slept with her husband for all eternity.

By the light of the four funeral torches, Meg stepped forward to strew dried rose petals on the carved double epitaph, which had borne Mary's name for many years. She sniffed hard and wiped her nose on her sleeve, while Lord Henry

Carey blew his on an embroidered handkerchief. Their eyes met before Meg stepped hastily back to her place in the circle of servants. He cleared his throat, then spoke so softly that they shuffled closer to hear his words.

"Needless to say," Lord Carey began, "I am grateful for your faithfulness and loyalty these years to my mother. Some of you have been with her almost from the beginning, when she came to live willingly in

exile and then when"--he cleared his throat again--"my family fell from royal favor and fortune. You have heard her written words read to each of you and have received the coins or plate she bequeathed to you so that you might begin new lives."

Meg shifted sideways to see him better around Glenda's broad shoulder. She knew several of the servants--maybe his lordship too-- resented her being included in the bequests. After only a year with the Lady Mary, she had eight gold crowns sewn in the hem of her inner petticoat. She wore every garment she owned, and not to keep out the chill night air. She had orders to leave Wivenhoe and head for the Princess Elizabeth. Though she was sore afeared of horses, she had bought one and was going to ride it clear to Hatfield House.

"I am hoping you will be allowed at least a fortnight in the manor house," Lord Carey went on, "before word of Lady Stafford's passing must be reported to the queen and someone comes here to claim it." His voice got bitter as rue when he said, "Like all Boleyn holdings, Wivenhoe is forfeit to the crown. ... King Henry secretly decreed only that the Lady Mary might have this for the rest of her life, so ..."

He didn't finish that thought. Some of the servants bowed their heads, some sniffled. Meg bit her lower lip hard and concentrated on that mere physical pain to try to stem the other.

"And lastly," his lordship said, his voice croaky as a frog's now, "should you be asked, I must beseech you to keep my presence here concealed as best you can. But should someone force you to it, say merely I came to comfort my lady mother on her deathbed and have gone back to the continent, parts unknown."

He began to turn away, then whirled back so his short black cape belled out. "And should anyone inquire about Lady Cornish's brief visit, say as little as you can, for we need not cause trouble for one of the Lady Mary's friends. Meg Milligrew, I would have a privy word with you," he said, fixing her with a baleful eye just when she was about to make her quick departure. She could only hope he had seen that she had dug up roots from the herb garden and would scold her only for that. "The rest of you are excused," he added, to make her stomach twist even tighter when everyone stopped and stared at her.

He took her elbow in one hard hand and steered her out the side door into the windy graveyard as if he'd march her back into the manor through the postern gate. But he stopped just outside before the first row of graves. She tried not to look at them. The whole place made her teeth clench and her knees knock.

"Milord, if'n it's about the herb starts I took--"

"That garden looks like a tiny graveyard at the Second Coming," he muttered. Before she could ask him what he meant, he went on. "I want to know what you dosed the Lady Mary with, thinking to help her woes. Do not look at me like that, as I am not accusing you of being in league with that girl we buried in unhallowed ground out there beyond the paupers' place." He gestured to indicate the far side of the graveyard wall.

Meg took a deep breath. "There's something I gave her I didn't tell her about," she admitted, shifting from one foot to the other.

His eyes were in shadow, but she could just tell he narrowed them. "Say on," he ordered sternly.

"A concoction of lavender to lighten her grief. See, herbs can help heal the mind and heart just like the body, though she was beyond mere simples then. But she liked it and my raspberry tonic, milord. For my bellyache I took that too." She tried to tug back from his grip, but it was futile, so she stood stock still.

"Could that tonic have made her worse?" he demanded, leaning closer as if to study her face in the darkness. "Is it what made you sick to puking?"

"Oh, no, milord. I had the greensickness afore I took it. I think it made me better. But sadly not till that evening she was gone. I never would harm the Lady Mary. She took me in and saved my life when I didn't know who I was."

"You mean, when you didn't know who she was." "No, milord. Myself. They found me on the road, her stable man and Coll, the gardener. Kicked by a horse in the head and knew nothing but my name, not where I lived or what happened. Even with her lord sick then, she took me in and nursed me, and later it come to me I knew all 'bout garden herbs and strewing herbs. But as for dosing with infirmary herbs, I remembered only what came back to me about some simples and nothing

about poisons, I swear it on the Lady Mary's grave."

She saw he scowled at her. The moon had sprung itself loose from above the big tree and lit his face in all its furrows. She was scared he wouldn't believe her, wouldn't let her go. Maybe he'd even turn her over to the local bailiff or to the king's man coming to claim the manor.

"'Tis true, milord," she insisted. "And I can't bear it I was ailing when she took worse, 'cause she nursed me so fine when I was going to die. She said it was just like she birthed me herself, gave me life, and I loved her and ever will."

He looked surprised to see he still held her arm. He loosed it and stepped back. "I don't mean to cross-question you so hard, girl, but it's important. Tell me this, then. In the short time you lived here, did you meet anyone about the area who was skilled in herbs? Someone must have sent that dolt of a girl--the someone she mentioned when she killed herself."

"I know, milord. The girl called her only "she" and had such a fearful look on her face." Meg had plans to talk to that "she," but she didn't let on.

"Well?" he said sharply to make her jump. "Well what, milord?"

She didn't mean to fret him more, but his voice rose. "Do you know of anyone who could have sent her to the manor? We make our own honey here, so I never would have expected someone fouling it or that meadow saffron that apes the real. Do you know of someone who could have done either? Someone very clever? Is there anything else you can tell me?"

"Only that your lady mother loved you, milord, and always brooded over your safety."

"What in God's name does that have to do with the poisoner?" he exploded. Then he looked about him and lowered his voice, as if afraid he'd wake the dead.

"Nothing, but that's the only message she gave me for you, in case you never made it here on time, she said. That she loved you and always brooded over your safety."

"Yes, all right." As he looked briefly heavenward, she saw that tears glittered in his eyes before he ducked his head into moon shadow again. "We're all distraught," he said, more to himself than her. "But I want to speak to you again in the

morn before I leave. I need to go through her things tonight, burn some, keep some. And, Meg, I do thank you for being so loyal to her--and now I do see why, that and perhaps why the others resented how she favored you. Tomorrow then."

He turned and walked toward the manor, not through the postern gate but along the road outside the wall, where the mourners now straggled back toward a cold funeral feast. Meg leaned against the tree and watched them disappear with a big piece of her life. Then she went back into the church, where a single thick candle burned at the head of the flat tombstone strewn with dry rose petals.

She gripped her hands before her and bowed her head to stare at the Lady Mary's name cut in the stone. The flickering flame made the words she could not read seem to waver and leap.

"I don't want to let his lordship down but can't wait to talk to him tomorrow, milady. I got to find your royal niece and take care of her if'n it's the last thing I do."

As she turned away in this deserted place, she thought she heard the echo of footsteps, light, quick ones, and not her own. Her heart thudding, she looked about, staring into corners. But all was silent, shifting shadows, even behind the old vaults with the cold stone effigies staring straight up toward heaven. Tears blurring her way, Meg hurried out the door and ran to where she had her old nag of a horse hidden in the trees.

"You'll have a devil of a time getting back safe inside now it's gone light," Jenks observed as he laced Elizabeth's gown in the thicket beyond the back lawn of Hatfield. It was just shy of midmorning; their return had been a grueling, grief-stricken ordeal. "The watchdog Popes are like to see you sneaking in," he added to rile her temper further.

"I do not sneak, Jenks, no matter what you think you may have seen or been privy to these past two days. Do you understand?" she demanded in a voice that could etch steel.

"Aye, Your Grace. Just bluff your way in, you mean."

"I shall tell them I walked out to get some fresh air. Aren't you done with that?" she said, twisting around to glare at him. "Must your fingers be as slow as your brain?"

She instantly regretted her words. "It is

only," she amended, catching his hangdog expression, "I am likely to scream from exhaustion, grief, and distress, Jenks. And to whom else can I show my pain if not those I trust? I could not have succeeded without you these last two days, and I shall not forget your help."

His cheeks flamed like a yuletide candle. "Your Grace, you've only but to ask me ever and--"

"Then go on through the woods to return the horses." She ticked off his tasks on her long fingers. "Be certain you rehearse your excuse before someone sees you. And guard that arrow in the saddle pack with your life until you can get it to me--to comme, not Kat. Go on now, and I'll be fine."

She knew that last claim was a bold-faced lie, for she was truly desperate. At the last moment she had made Harry promise to flee for sanctuary to her friend William Cecil's country home in Stamford and not return to Europe as he had planned--and as their nameless enemies might expect. He was simply to tell the Wivenhoe household he was going abroad again.

She walked from the forest cover toward the back of the house. A carp pond littered with yellow leaves and a few rose beds gone to autumn legginess were all that lay between her and the familiar house. Hatfield boasted no fine herb garden either. But from here she hoped to get Kat's attention with a few pebbles against the windowpanes. She would have her toss down a petticoat or two so she didn't look like something the cat dragged in. In case someone spotted her, she merely carried her cloak with its lining out so no one could see how mud-speckled it looked.

Please, dear Lord, she prayed as she had much of the endless, sad ride back, protect me and show me what to do next.

Though no answer to that prayer, Beatrice Pope popped round the corner of the house with her ever-present needlework in her hands. Her pert face registered shock: Her full lower lip dropped, her tilted blue eyes widened, and she tossed her head.