The Poyson Garden (8 page)

"Oh, Lady Elizabeth, Mistress

Ashley said you were still abed and not eating, and my lord said he's going up to demand that you do." Even when Bea gave a mere yea or nay answer, words

seemed to spill from her as if they conveyed the most momentous message to all mankind. "Else we shall have to send to Her Majesty the report that you are ailing and we needs must have her best physician, like the time she sent her own before."

Elizabeth stopped in her tracks. Why had she not thought of that? Her sister had sent the royal physician just after she was released from the Tower following the aborted Protestant Wyatt Rebellion, for which Mary had blamed her. Elizabeth had slowly sickened--with some of the signs her aunt showed--and had publicly protested her fears to all around her that perhaps she was being poisoned. Indeed, when first Mary was queen she had banished Elizabeth after shouting she deserved to be poisoned and claiming that Anne Boleyn had poisoned Catherine of Aragon.

Under the care of Mary's physician and the newly arrived Cora Crenshaw, a cook who still served here, Elizabeth had recovered. There was no real proof of poison. But what if--what if, though Queen Mary dare not have her done away with thusly in the Tower, she had decided to have her somehow gotten rid of here? And what if, when Elizabeth publicly complained, she had bided her time, but as she herself became ill and mayhap would die soon and leave the realm to a Protestant queen ... Oh, dear Lord, what if Queen Mary Tudor, who burned martyrs at the stake, were the "she" the poisoner had feared when she drank that vial of venom rather than facing her wrath? What if, before she died, Mary Tudor planned to wreak vengeance on all of the Boleyns?

"I said," Bea was repeating, suddenly staring so close into her face that Elizabeth jumped, "are you certain you are well, my lady? You looked as bleached as my linen for this sampler."

Elizabeth glanced at what she held up.

The intricate chain stitching outlined rose vines with thrusting thorns and tight buds curled around each other in a mazelike pattern, twisting tighter toward the central space left for the epigram. For a moment she thought she would faint. She took a slow, deep breath.

"I am quite on my way to recovery," she claimed with a forced smile. "My head suddenly cleared this morning, and I could not abide being closed in by the bed-curtains and that stale chamber

any longer. I craved fresh air, so

I donned a gown while Kat yet slept and took a walk."

"It is laced in rather slipshod fashion," Bea observed, with a suspicious glance at her back. "But you really should have put on some petticoats. It's not like you to look so tawdry. And you might merely have stuck your head out the casement for fresh air."

Bea tilted her head and slanted her gaze toward the suite of windows where Kat Ashley looked out, surprise stamped all too plain on her broad face. Kat could keep a lock on her lips but never, without a veil, hide the feelings on her face.

Kat opened the casement as Elizabeth gave her a jaunty wave. "Oh, there you are, Your Grace," Kat called down. "Best come up and get garbed proper now."

"She's right, you know," Bea said to Elizabeth, her narrowed gaze traversing her mussed gown and tangled hair again. By comparison, Elizabeth realized, Bea's own impeccable gabled hood, coif, and attire only made things worse. Even when Bea had ridden clear to Maidstone to visit her sister's family, she arrived home looking both comely and kempt.

"I'll bring the Lady Elizabeth right in and sit with her to give you a respite, Mistress Ashley," Bea shouted up to Kat and waved her embroidered piece like a pennant.

"How kind of you," Elizabeth said and linked her arm in hers, holding up her heavy skirts with the other. One thing she recalled her father saying was that the best defense was a bullish offense. "You know, I've missed your company, Bea-- everyone's these last terrible days."

"You just do not look as if you feel better." Bea's repeated words buzzed in her ears. "You had best go straight back to bed."

"Nonsense. Those head pains just drain me, that's all," Elizabeth insisted as they strolled around and went in the front door, where Thomas Pope confronted them with arms akimbo and face aghast at the bottom of the staircase.

She'd never let on, but her head hurt indeed, almost as badly as her heart. So she forced another smile, squared her shoulders, and held herself erect. It was the first time she realized what she might have to do to get to the bottom of this

Boleyn plot: namely, put on an actor's face, skilled as that Ned Topside. Say next to nothing, as that poisoner had done before she killed herself. Or tell lies. And, as Jenks had put it, bluff her way, or even be a sneak. Yes, Elizabeth of England thought, she could do all of that to solve this and to survive.

She put one step before the other on the stairs, hoping no one noticed she wore mud-speckled riding boots.

Elizabeth Tudor raced her big black stallion Griffin down the road toward the little village of Hatfield. Sheep cropping the lawn scattered; she rode fast enough so that only Jenks managed to keep up with her. It was the sole place she had felt safe lately, out in the open air, on familiar ground, but with no buildings or forests hemming her in or hiding enemies. What had happened at Wivenhoe still haunted her. What to do about it, kept close confined as she was, tormented her.

She reined in with Jenks at her side. "The Popes are keeping close today," he observed, patting his horse's lathered shoulder. "Sticky as can be since we come back. You don't think they know something, Your Grace?"

"I believe we got away with our venture. And I must admit I stick close enough to them for everything I eat. If I don't see food go into either of their mouths, I avoid it too. They think," she said with a rueful laugh, "I've become companionable at mealtime."

"Anything I can do, you only need--"

"I do need to send you to some apothecary with that bloody arrow. I want to know what it's been dipped in and its properties. 'So blood, I wish I had two of myself so one could keep them occupied while the other investigates ..."

Her voice trailed off as the idea flashed through her. It was mad, but it meshed so well with her other obsessive thoughts lately. She had been toying with the plan to send Jenks to find both Meg Milligrew, who must surely need a position now, and Ned Topside, who could feign to be only her clown. But in truth Meg could serve as her double and decoy, and Ned would become many different people--be her eyes and ears to find things out when she could not escape Bea and the Pope, just like this.

"Come on, before they catch up, let's ride!" she cried and spurred Griffin on again.

They galloped down the main gravel road past the vast lawns and then along the dirt lane skirting the village that had grown up higgledy-piggledy, as one always did near a great house. But as Hatfield had faded from proper royal use, the village had too. Its half-timbered homes and shops were tattered or tumbled, and many--

She screamed. The first arrow winged its way close past her head. She could feel its breath. Another followed farther on. She yanked Griffin's reins, and he reared. She held on, tried to turn him, shouting to Jenks.

"Arrows! An attack!"

Jenks charged his mount the way she pointed. "No!" she cried. "I can't lose you. Not like Lord Harry lost Will!"

But he dismounted and ran headlong, darting, ducking low. He disappeared behind a tall stone wall. As she kept low and sidestepped Griffin away, Thomas Pope and two others thundered up with Bea coming along behind. Blanche Parry rode over, her face white with fear.

"What is it, Your Grace?" Blanche asked. "Why did you scream?"

"Help Jenks," she cried to Sir Thomas, pointing. "Someone was shooting arrows at us."

They would know too much if she told them more. But at that moment Jenks came dragging two ragged-looking boys by their collars out from behind the wall. Both held children's bows made of bent willow sticks and vines. Thomas Pope shouted a laugh and dismounted to retrieve an arrow in the grass, a stick crudely fletched with chicken feathers and no sharpened point at all.

"They didn't mean to be shooting at you," Jenks said, out of breath. "They say they didn't even see you, Your Grace." She noted that Thomas Pope had begun his usual slow burn he suffered each time her people so much as alluded to her royalty, when her sister's staff pointedly called her only my lady. Elizabeth nodded, flushed with embarrassment--and anger.

"Shall we put them in the stocks," Sir Thomas inquired, his voice mocking, "or send them to the Tower, or use the iron-maiden torment, my lady?" His jowls bounced when he laughed; she detested the man. "Yet I cannot help but

think," he went on, playing it to the hilt, "that your bridling your own runaway temperament to go riding about hither and yon would solve this ... uh, childish problem."

Elizabeth glared down at him from her saddle. "Let the lads go with no penalty," she said. "It took me by surprise, that is all."

"But it could have been something, aye, it could," Sir Thomas pursued. "As I said, you'll not go dashing off ahorse without me again." No doubt to show he ignored her pardoning the lads, he broke their bows over his knee and soundly cuffed both before shoving them back toward the village. Elizabeth wanted to protest, yet she sat silent in shock. Though arrows had not struck her, sharp, instant terror had pierced her heart. She was sick to death of living in fear and would have no more of it.

"Jenks," she said out of the side of her mouth as she turned back toward the village and he, as ever, cantered first at her side, "you must go see your father tomorrow, as you have done afore."

"But you heard the Pope," he said, thankfully not turning his head her way as the others came to ride behind them. "We can't go off somewhere else when--"

"Listen," she hissed. "Not us, you. Under pretense of seeing your father again, you will ride back to Wivenhoe and tell Meg Milligrew I need an herbalist and would have her just appear at my door selling some such. And she must not let on where she's been before, never that she knew Mary Boleyn. And then you must find those Queen's Country Players somewhere near Colchester and tell Ned Topside I have need of a clown and will pay him well. And if you must to convince him, tell him who I really am and that I admire his cleverness. And on your way go by the village back there, for I shall give you a coin for each of those boys and tell them someday I shall want fine archers in my armies and nav--"

She left off midword as Thomas Pope cantered up to her side and Bea appeared on her other to edge Jenks out. "As I said, my Lady Elizabeth," Sir Thomas intoned, out of breath and frowning at her like a schoolmaster, "best you take no other jaunts without me or Lady Beatrice this close at your side. And perhaps you'll keep this as a token to remember why."

He extended to her a crude child's arrow. She

took it, seeing instead that other one they had dug from Will Benton's putrid corpse. She gripped it in her gloved hand and swore a solemn oath to herself that she would search out and stop the plot against her family and herself. Then she thrust it in her belt the way soldiers once did to show they were at war.

Chapter The Sixth

"It can't be she. Not here--so soon," Elizabeth muttered as she pressed her forehead to the cold window glass of the great hall, where she'd been taking her exercise on this rainy day. But yes, her eyes did not deceive her. "Oh, dear Lord," she whispered as she began to run, "I pray You, do not let that girl say something to give me away."

But after all, she had prayed the Lord would show her what to do next in her dilemma. The children's attack with arrows had been one sign to spur her on, but now here in the flesh stood Meg Milligrew on the very day she'd sent Jenks for her. Was that not some sort of miracle--a sign pointing toward salvation? But with Thomas Pope standing between her and Meg, it could mean damnation.

She hurried out and down the hall to the front entryway, where she'd seen Meg ride in--in pitiable style in the driving rain--dismount from her broken-down nag, and nearly slip in a mud puddle. She heard voices and knew the Popes had greeted Meg before she could warn the girl to guard her mouth. Elizabeth had a stitch in her side by the time she reached the three of them at the door. Drenched, Meg stood holding a sodden hemp sack, while the Popes hovered like king's beasts guarding the threshold.

"Come to sell your goods to the Lady Elizabeth from where, wench?" Sir Thomas was saying. At least they had let the poor girl close enough to the door that she was out of the rain.

"From Stratford-Upon-the-Avon in Warwickshire, my lord. Not to sell her things but give her gifts--for protection."

"She is well-protected here and needs no such superstitious nonsense," Bea put in.

"Oh, not charms or amulets, milady, but God's good, simple herbs for cures and happiness."

Elizabeth joined them at the door. When

Meg saw her she dropped into a curtsy in the puddle she was making. Water still dripped off her nose and chin. "Herbs for me?" Elizabeth inquired, wedging herself between the Popes and giving the girl a quick wink when she rose. "How very kind. I love strewing herbs and sweet potpourris. Is that what you mean, girl? What is your name?"

"Oh, yes, that's what I mean all right. Margaret Milligrew, called Meg, that's me."

"Sir Thomas," Elizabeth said, turning to face him down, "I believe Christian charity commands that I accept and give this lass a good meal and night's lodgings at least." Though she fully intended to keep Meg here, that must seem to come gradually, naturally.

"Oh, thankee, Your Grace" came muffled from Meg as she curtsied again, making her shoes squeak with water.

"You may rise," Elizabeth said. She noted that even the rain had not seemed to wash the girl's dirty face and clothes. She was afraid Bea would never let her in. At least she did not reek of horse or sweat but emanated the most pleasant flowery aromas, like a wet garden.

"You may go around the side door," Elizabeth went on, "and we shall stable your horse."