The Queene's Cure (20 page)

But her mind was not on her labors. If she didn't diagnose the strange symptoms of this effigy plot, she feared she might not even survive to do the nation's business. Indeed, malicious intent toward her lurked behind that mocking effigy and the body in her fountain. She was thinking of escaping to Hampton Court earlier than planned, just after an annual public healing ceremony at the Abbey in two days.

“My Lord Cecil, please stay,” she said, gesturing his secretaries away. “I had ordered Lord Dudley and the Sidneys to report what they discovered about that body in the fountain during their mermaid masque, and they'd best have answers for me.”

After stilted greetings and overmuch bowing and scraping from the three of them, Mary Sidney said, “We have spoken with nearly everyone at court, Your Grace, servants too, even the Cheapside jeweler who fashioned the mermaid pin. But it seems no one who knew of the timing for the masque looks guilty of abetting or committing murder.”

Both men nodded but kept their peace, and that from Robin was most unusual. Elizabeth sensed that they'd had a family council and made Mary their speaker. They were, no doubt, harboring hope that her close friendship with the queen would smooth things over.

“But we did locate ladder marks,” Mary went on.

“From the feet of a ladder, deep-set marks,” Robin put in.

“I am getting to that, my lord,” Mary remonstrated. “Deep-set marks, we surmise, because someone carried that unknown woman's body up and over the wall, behind the orchard—precisely between those two pear trees you favor, Your Grace.”

“And footprints?” Elizabeth asked as her pulse quickened.

“Yes, a single pair, a man's boot soles, quite deep too.”

“I hope they have been preserved, as Gil's been out with his parents today, and I would have him sketch them. We must judge the man's size, whether the boots were worn or not, and—”

Robin cleared his throat and exchanged a wary glance with his brother-in-law.

“Say on,” the queen ordered. “Tell me flat, Robin, for I didn't used to call you My Eyes for naught.”

“We fetched a gardener's ladder to go up and look over the wall ourselves,” he said. “Ah, Jenks was there poking about too, but we told him we had it under control.”

“And?” she prompted, her voice rising as she stood. “Must I turn torturer to get you to spit it out?”

“We found an abandoned ladder on the public passageway side of the wall,” he blurted.

“But then,” Mary added, “in coming back down our ladder on the privy garden side, in the soft loam there,
the ladder wobbled—with both Henry and Robin on it, trying to duplicate the weight of two bodies—and they had to leap off to keep from falling.”

“And somewhat obscured the best prints,” Robin concluded when Elizabeth stared him down.

The queen employed one of her father's favorite seagoing oaths and began to pace. “But you did go around on the other side to look for prints and tracks there?” she demanded.

“ 'Tis stones and cobbles on the other side, not garden loam,” Mary explained. “But we—they—asked folks in the area if they'd seen anyone carrying two ladders or even one. They said they were searching for someone trying to pinch late apples, so they didn't stir up a hor-net's nest of suspicion or start rumors.”

“Pinch late apples from denuded pear trees?” Elizabeth asked, uncertain whether to laugh or cry.

“But, Your Grace, we came up with a clue—in a way,” Mary said, coming closer and holding out her hands beseechingly to her royal friend. “You know that walkway on the far side of the wall goes to the public water stairs. A bargeman hanging about says he indeed saw someone on a ladder there Saturday evening. He thought it was just a man trying to get a glimpse within, for the man had no one—or thing—with him. Especially visitors, some even foreign, he said, sometimes try to see you within your walls those times no one is invited—”

“Invited to catch a dazzling glimpse of the sun,”
Robin put in with a hopeful smile. “We all understand wanting a glimpse of our smiling, radiant queen, do we not?”

“You spoke to the bargeman?” the queen asked, ignoring the flattery that used to make her fall headlong for him.

“Robin did,” Mary said, with a warning look at her brother, “and it was that man your former Strewing Herb Mistress of the Privy Chamber wed before she came into your service. If you want him brought in for questioning, he's most willing.”

“Ben Wilton,” the queen muttered. “No, that won't be necessary if Robin spoke with him. But the description of the man Wilton saw up the ladder?”

“A man,” Robin said, obviously aching to take over, “all in black with a hat with some sort of flaps over his ears. Actually, it sounds like physicians' garb.”

“Why didn't you say so at first?” Elizabeth cried. “See, Cecil, the two men you have sent for are exactly who hold the key to this deadly puzzle.”

“What men?” Robin demanded. “You still suspect Dr. Caius or Dr. Pascal? Pascal's fat as a pig and could never get up that ladder, not with a body over his shoulder. And Caius is no new-fledged stripling to be hefting weights either.”

“Then Wilton said the man was not fat or elderly?” she demanded.

“He couldn't tell,” Robin admitted. “Besides that
flapped cap, the climber wore a black robe or cloak, though I must admit that would fit a doctor's garb too.”

“Of course,” Lord Henry put in, the first time he had spoken in all this, “that's assuming that a murderer—any murderer—would not wear a loose black cloak and some sort of obscuring hat to hide his identity in case he was seen.”

They all looked at him. Elizabeth felt deflated and foolish. She was so desperate of late, she was wildly pinning her hopes on any clue, however secondhand. And that reminded her of the lovely mermaid pin Mary had given her on that dreadful night. She would not want to wear it again. Frowning, she dismissed Mary and her lord with brief thanks. Robin stood before her now, looking half hopeful, half fearful.

“I do have one more question for you, Robin.”

He eyed both the queen and Cecil suspiciously. Despite the fact he had not been bidden to approach her, he walked around the table and went down on one knee before her chair. “Ask me aught you would know or have me do,” he said.

“I believe you still employ the squire who so cleverly created a dummy for your passes with the lance and sword at the quintain rail.”

“I not only have him, but just today scolded my man Jenks—”

“
My
man Jenks.”

“As you wish, my queen. Scolded Jenks for shoving
his nose in to ask my squire to see that old dummy. I take it since Jenks and now you, and who knows who else,” he added, risking a glare at Cecil, “seem suspicious, you believe I am somehow linked to the making of that other effigy you found?”

“My, how you jump far afield, my lord,” she remonstrated gently. “Not at all, though indeed your effigy was also of a queen.”

“Of Catherine de' Medici, an enemy to you and your realm,
my
queen. As Mary, Queen of Scots' former mother-in-law, Queen Catherine is both an Italian and French, Catholic, conniving—”

“A queen, no less, and one whose effigy, I recall, you had richly gowned and crowned with a fine wig—which you got where?”

He had the brains to go white as a ghost at last. She could tell he wanted to stand to not be at such a disadvantage, kneeling at her feet.

“Indirectly, from an old Chelsea wig-maker years ago,” he said, his voice rising. “For my mother when she began to fret about losing her hair, if you must know, Your Grace. But you cannot be serious that I would have aught to do with … with what you found in your coach. And hardly with that body in the fountain.” He stood at last; she rose too.

“If I believed that, I would have your squire and that dummy both thoroughly examined and you arrested, Lord Robert Dudley.”

“I will fetch it and him up here straightaway, Your Grace. I have naught to fear.”

“Do so then, but wait until I summon you again, for I have other visitors to see,” she said, dismissing him with a wave of her hand as she turned her back on him. But the moment he stomped out, she turned to the silent Cecil. “Quickly, my lord,” she whispered, “pick one of your best men and have him covertly watch Robin's every step. I yearn to trust him, but I fear that I cannot.”

M
EG WAITED UNTIL SHE CLOSED THE SHOP THAT AFTERNOON
and could escape upstairs. Only then did she take from her canvas apron pocket Dr. Clerewell's note, which Nick had slipped her several hours ago. Ben was gone. Street noise still rose up from the Strand, but it seemed private and silent here above the shop.

Meg wondered if she'd see the little girl today, Susanna Miller's youngest child, from the house directly across the way. These top stories leaned out so far that, if the shutters were open, it was easy to see in each other's places. Yes, there she was, running hither and thither about the Millers' main chamber. The golden-haired, giggling three-year-old vision made Meg's arms ache for her own babe sometimes.

Before the sun sank over the tightly packed, gabled rooftops, she broke the wax seal and smoothed the note open on her knees.

“That's a good one,” Meg muttered. “Said he didn't believe in traditions in medicine, now wants to rely on the oldest healing ceremony I know.”

But perhaps, she thought, it was his sad, once-comely female patient who begged him to get her into the healing ceremony. Meg wondered how old this comely girl was.

Meg's mind drifted to that ceremony. As one who fancied herself a healer in earlier days, before all the restrictions put on herbalists or apothecaries, Meg had been dazzled by the beauty of the ceremony and the power of her queen. Standing in the slant of sun through stainedglass windows, the queen touched and blessed each ill person. She presented each with a specially minted coin, a golden angel on a ribbon to wear around their poor, swollen necks.

Gold angel, Meg thought, distracted from her reverie by the sound of giggling. She looked up to see the little Miller girl, waving through her window. Meg smiled and waved exuberantly back.
That girl
was a golden angel better than any queen's coin.

Meg had seen that ceremony four times since Elizabeth had held the throne, twice while in her service, twice after she had been dismissed. Mostly the royal household physicians and those of the Royal College brought their patients to be healed of the disfiguring tumors and scabrous marks of the dread disease. But it was true that other doctors could bring their patients and hope the monarch turned aside to them too.

It was tradition that French and English monarchs touched victims of glandular neck tumors. The affliction was known as the King's Evil, for superstitious folk of
yore believed the monarch's touch could cause as well as cure the disease, and the unfortunate name stuck. The Tudors kept up the ancient practice, for the message to the people was a sound political one: God granted to his chosen sovereign, at least upon occasion, the Lord's own power to heal.

Meg had already planned to sneak away from the shop to watch Her Grace this year. It was a marvelous opportunity to see her when she was not sweeping grandly past in a barge or on horseback or hidden in that damned coach of hers.

Meg skimmed the rest of the note, rereading the end where Dr. Clerewell offered to treat Gil's muteness for however long that took and for no remuneration, so that the boy
could regale them with tales of the palace
. Tears prickled her eyelids. Yes, Meg thought, no matter that she risked Ben's throwing a fit if he ever learned she had spent hours on the day after next with Marcus Clerewell. She'd take the good doctor there and show him where to stand. If she could snag Nick first thing on the morrow before she and Ben took care of their unpleasant business in Chelsea, trying to collect a fee, she'd send him back with her reply.

Before she took out pen and ink, Meg reluctantly closed the shutter, lit a candle, and built up the lowburning hearth fire. But at the last moment, she couldn't bear to burn the note that asked for her help and so graciously acknowledged her healing skills and former importance
to the queen. Instead, she folded and stuffed it in the toe of her oldest darned stocking in the chest at the foot of the bed.