The Poyson Garden (9 page)

"Just hold here," Sir Thomas ordered. He lifted both palms as if to stay poor Meg's onslaught on the house and Elizabeth's hasty invitation into it. "I insist on seeing in that sack, wench. My Lady Elizabeth," he went on, twisting his head about and frowning, "have you so soon forgot that you are not to go off hither and yon--in any way?"

"Oh, my sack," Meg said with a grin. "I've two saddle packs full of herbal starts, too, milord, and I'd be happy to put in a physic or infirmary garden come spring as well as plant your kitchen or cosmetic ones."

"Come spring?" he repeated. "There was no talk of more than one night in the kitchen." He glowered, but Bea seemed curious as the girl opened the sack and fished about in it, from time to time producing a bunch of something at its broad mouth. She kept up a running commentary.

"I've tuzzy-muzzies to ward off winter agues, and rue to make sweet salves-- for bee stings, Your Grace," she said, her eyes wide on Elizabeth's gaze again. For some reason the mention of bees made Elizabeth shudder, and she'd never once been stung. When both the Popes peered into Meg's sack, the girl dared to wink at her, in imitation of Elizabeth's earlier signal to her.

"And peony seeds," she went on, "mixed with wine can cure nightmares, and basil for the heart to take away sorrow. And this, my lord, is southern wood. You burn it and drive all serpents from the house, and that would be protection for Her Grace."

As Meg rattled on it struck Elizabeth that she was giving her a message in code. Warding off disease and troubles ... stings ... nightmares, a sorrowing heart, and serpents in the house. Meg Milligrew had come on her own to help her with her troubles. And if she didn't cause her new ones first with her sly looks over the top of Thomas and Bea Pope's heads, it was a clever ruse at that.

"She resembles you enough to be a closer sister to you than your own," Kat whispered the moment she led Meg into Elizabeth's bedchamber late that night and closed the door behind the three of them. Kat had fetched Meg from her pallet on the kitchen hearth after everyone had retired. "If she hadn't looked like such a drowned rat, the Buzzard and the Pope would have seen it too."

"I realize that, Kat."

"Is that why you want her here," she asked, "and not just that she served your aunt?"

"More than ever lately, I need to surround myself with people I can trust--like you, Kat," Elizabeth said and gestured for Meg to sit beside her on the settle they had pulled up to take advantage of the low-stoked fire. No good to build it up when the Popes thought she was snug in bed. Kat pulled up a three-legged stool and plopped on it so they sat almost in a circle.

"I've come to pledge my services and loyalty, Your Grace," Meg said, looking so intent and eager it touched Elizabeth deeply. "And, to tell true, the Lady Mary said if aught happened to her--when she knew she was dying and wanted to die, I think--she said I should go to you and

try to serve you and never let on to anyone else I had been with Mary Boleyn. And more than that," she admitted, and her voice took on a hard tone. She looked directly into Elizabeth's assessing gaze. "If someone poisoned that sweet lady to death like you and Lord Carey said--and meant to make it look like it was me --I'm going to make them pay!"

Elizabeth squeezed her hands. Though she had asked Harry to cross-question the girl about what herbs she had given her aunt, such loyalty helped convince her that Meg had no connection to the poisoner they had caught in the cellars. Before she killed herself, that girl had shown real fear of whomever "she" was. The reference could not have been to awkward, endearing Meg--she was certain of it. Still, there was much about Meg she would know.

For one moment they stared at each other in solemn, silent study. Then Elizabeth loosed her hands and said, "I was relieved to hear you realize you must admit no Boleyn connections here. Your story about coming from Warwickshire today was mere fabrication, I take it?"

Meg nodded, though her gaze and voice softened as she frowned at some thought. She explained about losing much of the past from her head injury, which the Lady Mary nursed her through. "But since things come flying back in foggy bits, Your Grace, sometimes ideas just come to me, but I don't know where from or if they're true." She gestured helplessly, then plopped her hands back in her lap.

"Do not fret, because it changes nothing here," Elizabeth assured her. She lowered her voice even more. "I sent Jenks for you just today, but he must have passed you on the road. He'll learn you're gone and go on for Ned Topside--the dark-haired actor from the players. You see, Meg, I need some people about me not only to trust but to help me solve a--poison plot."

"And I can help you," she declared with a decisive nod. "I done some asking of my own on that, just like Lord Carey done to me."

"Who were you questioning?" Elizabeth asked, leaning closer to the girl's avid face. She was fully aware Kat had not taken her eyes off Meg and that she resented her. She wondered fleetingly if that would always be poor Meg's lot in any household she served.

"I questioned a few folks what live round

Wivenhoe, folks might have taken in or bought goods from that girl you fought with in the cellar."

"Fought with?" Kat sputtered, pressing her clasped hands to her breasts. "Your Grace, you didn't say you fought with that foul poisoner, only apprehended--"

"Shh, Kat. Go on, Meg."

"And I found out who she was--I mean, part of it. Named Nettie and came from Kent, she told old Widow Willoughby she stayed with. I even paid the widow one of my gold crowns the Lady Mary left me to buy Nettie's worldly goods from her, since she was dead. I had to put up the whole coin when the old hag didn't believe my story I was her kin and to keep her mouth shut about what I been asking."

"What did this Nettie leave behind? Where is it?" Elizabeth demanded. Her heart pounded in anticipation. "And from where did she hail in Kent?"

"Don't know, and mostly it was a few clothes but for this that I thought was important, and maybe you can read it to say where in Kent," Meg explained in one long breath. She stood and reached down into her stiff bodice. She had obviously taken off a layer of clothes from her ride, but she still looked padded.

"Can't read," Meg went on, tipping her chin up to pull something folded out, "or would have told you already what it said, if it was some threat to you or Lady Mary or Lord Carey or some such." Slowly, she drew out a piece of folded, embroidered linen. The back of it with its knotted threads and cross-stitches looked like chaos. Meg sat again, unfolded it, and turned it up in her lap.

The embroidered green leaves and bright red berries reminded Elizabeth of yuletide colors. Kat, who was looking at it upside down, whispered, "My own mother kept those in our garden. Lords-and-ladies, that's what she used to call it."

Meg nodded but kept silent as she passed it to Elizabeth. While Kat craned her neck to see, Elizabeth sat staring at the long-leafed plants, twined in a wreathed pattern that encompassed the elegantly scripted words: For I see that you are poysoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity.

"Does it tell where we can find Nettie's place in Kent or who is that "she" Nettie worked for, Your Grace?"

Meg asked when Elizabeth just glared at it. "It is words from the Bible," she whispered. "From the book of Acts, and act we must. Like a curse, it says, For I see that you are poysoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity."

"Poison!" the girl cried.

Kat leapt to her feet. "I remember now," she muttered. "Mother said we children mustn't touch it."

"Quiet," Elizabeth ordered, grabbing both their wrists. She didn't say so, but the style, though it could belong to many fine needlework hands, reminded her of Beatrice Pope's work. The saying itself--where had she heard it before? Not in a sermon at court perhaps, but somewhere there. Her stomach twisted; her crunching head pain returned with a jolt.

While Meg and Kat hovered over her, standing close to the hearth, Elizabeth examined the entire piece carefully, wishing the many skilled chain stitches could whisper their maker's name. She flipped it over to peruse the other side.

"Another word here," she told them, "only in crude if tiny block letters, see? No," she said, bending closer and tipping it to the light, "there are two words, almost hidden by these knots and tie-offs. Bushey, it says. Bushey

Cot."

"There's a Bushey not so far from here," Kat put in, her voice agitated. "You know, that little market town."

Elizabeth nodded. "And that is not in Kent. Meg, is this embroidered plant indeed lords-and-ladies, as Mistress Ashley said?" She turned it to the right side again, and they stretched it between them.

"Looks to be," she said, squinting at it. "Heard it called a wake-robin too. They say the berries taste sweet and the leaves sour, but I don't know who says that because--"

"Because it's a poison plant," Elizabeth finished for her. Wide-eyed, Meg nodded. "What part of it is poison?" Elizabeth demanded, fighting for control as she fingered the outline of the leaves and the bloodred berries.

"Why, pick it early and all of it's deadly, Your Grace," Meg said, and Kat nodded. "Every last bit."

The innyard of the Head and Crown in Colchester was packed to the gills with a rowdy crowd for the performance, though it wasn't to start for a good hour yet. Silently cursing the fact he must play the role of the lecherous, bumbling Ned Topside he'd made so popular--and had come to feel trapped by--Edward Thompson had curled up for a quick bit of early-afternoon dreaming on the cushion in the deep window seat.

He yanked closed the curtain between the seat and one of the two bedchambers the players had used last night. Here Uncle Wat and Grand Rand had slept, and it served as their prop room. Their tiring-room next door, which he'd shared with the two lads, was smaller and noisier, right over the taproom. At least there would be no more jamming into one bed or pinching pennies for a while. They'd been living high these last two days, flush with fortune from Lord Henry at Wivenhoe.

Now, despite the noise welling up from the innyard, it seemed peaceful here. An autumn fly that would soon be dead bumped and buzzed against the mullioned windowpanes, protesting its unjust imprisonment. His fellow players were taking their ease at a meal, lost in the busy distant drone of human voices.

Yet stirred from his sleep Ned heard his Uncle Wat's voice, muted, muffled. At first he just pulled his cloak over his face, wishing he could plug his ears with it. But he recognized the lines from The Reluctant Lover. And then he heard that damned Grand Rand doing the girl's part, of all things, when, ever since Ned's father had died, he'd had the choicest men's roles:

"Sword point or stinger do I oft fear

But not when you, my love, are near.

Then desire I more than your fervent eye

So eager on this bed I lie."

"Best not lie down or we won't have time before the others come up," his Uncle Wat said, his voice breathy. "Here, just stand, lean ..." Ned heard a rustling, a groan.

"Did I hear those sweet words, come up?" Rand asked, his voice strangely thick.

"Just shut up for once afore--"

The moment Ned ripped open the curtain, he knew that he should not have. Better just to hide here,

knowing at last why Randall Greene got everything he wanted lately. But Ned was furious and sick of them both--of his whole life suddenly.

He picked up a battle banner and heaved it at them, then a stool. They leapt apart, wide-eyed, scrabbling for cover.

Rand hopped about trying to pull up his hose, then just grabbed a wooden shield and held it before him. His uncle had the gall to yell at him, "Damn you, boy! You've ruined everything!"

"Leave off, you deceitful, whoreson bastard!" Ned shouted. "I've two things to say to you." He was not sure why he strapped on a stage sword as he spoke, though he was furious enough to kill them both. "One is, if I stay--and I don't have the stomach to perform today--I will play the notable men's parts I have long deserved. They obviously can't go to this one anymore"--he nodded dramatically at Rand. "Hellfire, I know

I'd never keep a straight face hereafter. And," he added, pointing with a dagger, "I will kill both of you if you so much as touch the lads."

"The lads," his uncle stammered, crimson-faced. "That has nothing to do with--"

"I may be back, I may not--ever!" Ned concluded, thrusting the dagger into his belt. He stomped out, leaving the door gaping. In the next chamber he knotted his long cloak around his meager goods. He dug in the velvet codpiece in the tiring-trunk, where he knew his uncle hid their treasury. He seized what he considered to be about one-fourth the coins, then dropped a few back, even though it was his saving Lord Henry that had gotten them this bounty.

He went downstairs and out through the crowded common room into the innyard. "Where you going, Ned?" The boy Rob called to him from where he sat perched on the well watching a cockfight that was evidently the prologue to their play. "We got to go on."

"Aye, lad, we've all got to go on,"

Ned told him and ruffled his hair before he turned away.

No more Ned Topside, he vowed as he shoved his way out into the innyard through the crowd. No more playing seconds to anyone. Though he had sworn to his father on his deathbed that he would help his uncle keep the troupe together, this double betrayal had canceled that debt. He'd find some other band of players, show them what he knew, even buy his way in if he must, but he'd never trust them or

anyone. If a member of your own family could betray you, what was left to believe in? Though he felt like a vagabond, he slung his bundle over his shoulder and started off for who-knew-where.

"Ho there, you!" someone behind him shouted. "You, Master Topside!"

He would have just kept going, but the formal address and the fact he'd been recognized made him turn. A tall, gangly man hurried to him, dragging the reins of a good-looking horse through the fringe of the crowd. "Oh, thank God, 'tis you, Master Topside," he blurted, out of breath. "I know you got a fine calling, but I been sent by a person of renown with an offer for your service."