The Queene's Cure (4 page)

“Ah—indeed. We care deeply for all ill persons in our charge and care.”

“As I care for and keep a good eye on all, even physicians, in my kingdom,” the queen concluded and strode down the escutcheon-hung hall toward the street door. She wanted the final word, the fine exit, and these doctors clung like their own bloodletting leeches.

“Then, Your Gracious Majesty,” Caius went on as he reached the door with her, “there is one request that would help us to fulfill your every desire for our work.”

“Which is?” she snapped.

“I—we humbly request that we might have bodies,” Caius said, “corpses here for dissection to learn the things you would have us to do.”

“Corpses?” she cried, her hand flying to her bodice when she tried never to show dismay in public. “Corpses to dissect? I'll not have bodies so abused. Whose?”

The man dared to shrug. “I know not, Your Gracious Majesty, as the human body is all the same. The poor found dead in the streets. Prisoners or executed felons. Country rabble. Whoever.”

“I shall think on it,” she declared, raising her voice to its ringing tone, “for quite a long while. You may shrug, Fellows of the College, at the earthly remains of your fellow human beings so abused, but I do not. And now,” she concluded again, irked she had to find yet another closing line, “I shall take my leave, and next time I want to see you in the palace or here or anywhere, I warrant you will not be so busy.”

Her guard on the front door barely pulled it open before she got to it. On the stoop, watching the crowd, Robin saw her and swirled open her cloak he'd evidently been holding. He offered his arm to escort her out, but she kept going on her own. Furiously blushing and wanting no one to see so in the light, she made for her coach. It waited for her but one house away, behind the line of unmounted horses, as they had obviously expected her to ride back. Coachmen and grooms alike scrambled from their lolling stances and grabbed for reins and bridles. Boonen, the burly coachman, swept open the door for her and banged down the folding, metal steps.

Robin haphazardly settled her cloak about her shoulders, and Mary and Anne tried to help control her voluminous skirts for her climb up and in. But she was too quick even for them. Though her cloak spilled back into
Robin's hands, she felt him give her a hoist up, one hand on her waist and one under her left elbow.

And then she nearly stepped on the horrid thing lying on the floor of the dim coach. Gaping at it, despite her long-tended command of herself, the queen screamed.

THE SECOND

E
LIZABETH'S HEART BANGED IN HER CHEST LIKE A
drum. Her knees went weak as she gaped at the thing—the body—in the dim depths of her coach. Wedged between the seats, it lay faceup but with knees slightly bent to fit upon the narrow wooden floor.

Evidently fearing someone lurked inside the coach, Robin unceremoniously pulled her back out, thrust her at her ladies, and lunged within, both sword and dagger drawn.

“What the deuce?” he cried, followed by a string of stronger oaths.

Though trying to seize control of her trembling limbs, the queen whispered, “Is it a corpse?”

“I—no, a big doll—like an effigy, I think.”

Her ladies tried to tug her away, but she shook them off and peered inside between Robin's legs. He stood straddling the woman with red hair, a small circlet crown, and queenly clothes. Shading her eyes with both hands to peer into the dimness, Elizabeth was jostled by the doctors pressing in before Jenks and the guards shoved them back.

“God as my witness,” Robin told her, “I think the damn thing is wax—no, it's plaster, the face and hands, at least. And with a face, wigged and painted—”

“To resemble me,” Elizabeth finished for him.

Her mind raced. When a monarch died, it was tradition to parade a full-sized likeness on top of the closed coffin through the streets for the people to mourn. She'd never seen such but she knew earlier monarchs, including her sister, had had such effigies made.

But now, did some simpleton deem this a compliment or joke? Was this the idea of the royal physicians who not minutes ago were asking for corpses to dissect? Their whereabouts had all been accounted for when this appeared, but their lackeys could have managed it by sneaking through nearby small alleys between the bigger buildings. This clever corpse could even be a death threat. Whatever the motive, the whole charade sickened and frightened her.

“Shall I drag it out, Your Grace?” Robin asked, finally tearing his eyes away to look at her.

“No,” she said, lifting one hand to him. “Drag me up.”

Robin reached for her, and she climbed the carriage steps again. To avoid stepping on the effigy and to make room for her, Robin was forced to kneel on one leathercovered seat.

'S blood and bones, Elizabeth thought, the thing even had a pair of fine satin slippers peeking from the petticoat hems. The crown was obviously fake stones wired to the wig. But—a plague on it—she recognized the gown as one of hers!

“It's still too dark in here to see the features well,” Robin declared as Elizabeth bent over it, “but we hardly need to open the street-side door for the crowd to gawk.”

“Roll up the flap a whit, and I'll get out of this doorway. Jenks, tell the guards to hold people back and close that door!”

“Aye, Your Grace,” Jenks muttered and shouted commands to the other guards and grooms.

As Robin drew up the heavy leather flap and Elizabeth sank on the seat opposite him, what daylight still sifted into the narrow street more fully illumined the effigy. It was slightly smaller than life-sized, she real-ized—or was she indeed that small if it was made to her form? Fringed by the familiar hue of red-gold hair, the face was also a close copy, with features just a bit off.

As she leaned closer she thought the skin looked so
soft and real—alive. But as the light slanted in she saw that the white and pink skin, the complexion of the forehead, cheeks, and chin, even the graceful hands …

The queen did not scream aloud again, but in her own soul. She covered her gaping mouth with both hands as she saw the scars and grasped the dreadful threat that they implied.

D
ON'T LIKE YOU RUNNING 'ROUND TOWN MAKING DELIV
'ries even if Nick's puking his insides out today,” Ben Wilton told Meg the moment she rushed back to the apothecary shop.

Nick Cotter usually ran Meg's errands. Ben liked him well enough, and Nick was one of her few male acquaintances he never seemed jealous of. Ben did not rise from his favorite chair, but continued to tip it against the wall in a dull, disturbing
thud, thud.

“Late deliveries mean people keep ailing—and no payment,” she said.

Removing her cloak, she draped it over a stool. She knew not to leap directly into an argument but to choose her comments carefully. Living with the queen had taught her that, though Ben Wilton was a far cry from that brilliant debater.

“For all I know,” he went on, arms crossed over his big chest, “you're deliv'ring by dilly-dallying with certain men, Madam Sarah Wilton, goodwife a mine.”

She avoided that challenge, though he was the bedswerver in this marriage. “Bett was watching things here,” she protested quietly, still out of breath as she skirted the back of the long work counter. That way she didn't have to walk by him to get to the tasks she'd left unfinished when she heard the queen was going calling on the College of Physicians. The last thing she needed was Ben's hard hands on the fresh bruises she'd treated this morning with the crushed root of Solomon's Seal. She had enough to do to keep him from mauling her in his idea of amorous attentions, even when he was in a good mood.

“Bett's not here that I saw,” he mocked, his words accompanied by that ominous drumbeat of his chair against the wall. “You see her here? She musta vanished like a puff a smoke.”

“Maybe she ran out just to check on Nick. She's a real help to me, Ben, and that nose of hers telling her which herb's which is as good as an extra pair of eyes.”

“It still galls me both a you run out.”

Meg sighed as a memory leaped at her, one of those she treasured but that also tormented her. She and Ned Topside had been given a chance to get out of the palace together. Again she saw and heard the dashing, clever— albeit stuck-on-himself—Ned. This scene was of the two of them together on an errand, sent by the queen to London Bridge when they had royal coin to buy any hats they fancied. Ned had insisted they playact that they
were husband and wife as they strolled the shops and streets looking for information about a murder—

“I'd a done deliv'ries if you'd asked 'stead of just leavin' the 'pothecary without a heigh ho,” Ben groused, shattering her reverie. The fact that he hadn't been around to ask when she left evidently meant nothing to him. Getting up from his chair, he swaggered toward her behind the counter. He forgot to duck and bounced the bunches of poppy heads, braided garlic, and lupin hanging in their little nooses. Cursing, he shoved a fist at them, so they jerked and swung the more.

Standing but a half head taller than Meg, Ben Wilton had straight, chestnut-hued hair hacked ragged because he cut it himself with a dagger instead of a razor. Meg was pretty certain he didn't trust her close to him with any sort of blade in her hand. His thatched brows bridged a crooked nose and wide-set, pale eyes that sometimes seemed to look straight through one. Yet it was not Ben's features that folks remembered, but his bulky build—massive, rounded shoulders, bull neck, thick thighs, and powerful arms from years of rowing barges. Now, though he'd never admit it and she dare not say it, he'd been living on her labors and was going to fat.

Meg shifted slowly, slightly away, forgoing her halffinished job of weighing lavender heads, one of her favorite, fragrant tasks. Instead, she shuffled down the counter to roll pills that smoothed wrinkles. The ingredients
were crushed madonna lily root in wax, so her customers could get the herb down easily. Mildred Cecil, wife of the queen's Secretary of State, had sent her maid for them, but never came herself.