The Thorne Maze (16 page)

Jenks rode up to Meg’s place in line on his way toward the vanguard of the growing array of riders and wagons which would follow the queen’s guard and coach. Her Majesty always felt better if he and Lord Dudley rode near her, especially when the Countess of Lennox and her son, Lord Darnley, were riding right behind.

“Nice weather at least.” Jenks tried something safe with Meg.

Still unmounted, she was struggling to balance two bulky, sweet-smelling burlap bags on her horse’s rump, so he reached over to help her.

“It is that,” she agreed, “though any day’s a good one for fleeing the plague. You just keep a sharp eye out for varlets who might try to harm Her Grace.”

“Folks already gathered at the palace gates waiting to cheer her on. She’ll be fine now we’re leaving that cursed maze behind, and Hatfield’s got nothing like.”

“Not unless you count that knot garden I put in six years ago, the year she became queen.” Meg shook her head and frowned, but he figured it wasn’t at him this time. “I haven’t seen it since then, so unless the caretakers of the manor tended it, the pretty twists of shrub hedges will have gone to rack and ruin.”

“Your touch will mend them fast.”

She smiled up at him, right into his eyes in the slant of morning sun. “Jenks, I don’t want hard feelings between us.”

“Not on my part, Mistress Milligrew. Come on then, I’ll give you a boost up,” he said, and quickly dismounted.

She seized her reins, and he laced his hands to take her foot and hoist her into the saddle. She settled her skirts as he remounted.

“Jenks,” she began, then bit off what else she’d say as the cries “Forward! Forward! Make way for the Queen’s Majesty!” sounded over the hubbub in the waiting line.

“Tell me quick, though I’ll see you along the way,” he said.

“I do care for you and always will.”

“But not the right way?”

“I can’t explain about Ned. God knows he doesn’t deserve my care and concern …”

“He doesn’t and I do, but you still want Ned,” he said, his voice harsh when he’d meant to sound sweet. He’d been carrying around for days a pair of riding gloves he longed to give her as a courting gift and here she was getting ready to explain why she loved Ned.

“The plague,” she whispered, leaning closer to him and reaching out to touch his hands gripping his reins, “and the threat of death to us, the queen’s being attacked too, all make me think about what’s important, and—”

“What’s important now is getting this progress on the road,” he said and doffed his cap to her as he might to a fine lady. “Facing death from the plague or from loving someone you can never have—hell, I’m just sticking to serving the queen, because it’s all too much for me.”

Cutting off what else she would say, he spurred his mount around those waiting to move and caught up with Robert Dudley directly behind the royal coach.

The shortened royal entourage stretched nearly a mile instead of the usual four. One would have been deaf and blind to miss the grand procession, and people responded with wild adoration of their queen.

On earlier progresses, the queen would ride a white horse, but she’d left Fortune behind with her new foal. Elizabeth had been known to recline against cushions in an ornate litter carried by men or pulled by a team of white mules. But today, she waved from her open-sided coach, drawn by matched horses with their manes and tails dyed orange. Accepting numerous nosegays and even petitions, she waved and smiled until she thought her arm would drop off and her face would crack. At least no one had had the forewarning to be able to prepare the usual delaying speeches and pageants.

When they passed a stretch of open fields with scattered shade trees, she finally stretched and stared straight up at the carved and plumed roof of the coach. The interior was richly upholstered in scarlet cloth, dripping gold and silver lace. Despite its splendor, even pillowed and padded, the damned thing rested on two hard axles and jolted her nearly to death.

“Stop at once, Boonen!” she shouted to her coachman. “I need to stretch my legs before your driving these pitted roads turns me to mincemeat!”

Robin appeared immediately to help her down. Already behind her, word of a respite had spread, for others dismounted or jumped from wagons to stretch or tend to privy needs. Elizabeth did not want to catch Margaret Stewart’s eye and have her come traipsing over to join her, but she noted she was huddled with her son.

As the queen drank the proffered goblet of ale, men quickly erected her small, crimson-cloth pavilion. She paced back and forth, but when she finally glanced past Robin’s shoulder and saw Bettina Sutton on the road behind, she sent Jenks to fetch her. As the woman came closer, the queen noted that she looked quite sober and dry-eyed for the first time since Templar’s death.

“You are not sending me back, Your Majesty? I’m afraid to go back to London right now,” she cried as she rose from her curtsy.

“Why would you think that? Have I been anything but kind to you?” Immediately, the queen regretted her baiting tone. Mildred’s casting suspicion on Bettina had changed her attitude toward the new widow, and that was unfair, at least so far.

“You have been so gracious I cannot fathom the depth of your care,” Bettina gushed and blinked back tears as Elizabeth indicated she might join her in the small pavilion. They sat on low, folding camp chairs on a Turkey carpet spread over the grassy fringe between the road and the fields.

“You’ve been riding with Chris Hatton and Jamie Barstow today,” Elizabeth said. “Since you’ve known them for quite a while, I thought they might be of some comfort and you could talk of old times. Because Templar kept close relationships with his students, I’m sure you had some intimacy with them, too.”

For one moment, Bettina blinked at Elizabeth like an owL “Oh, yes, I knew them all.”

The queen merely raised her eyebrows, hoping Bettina would feel the need to elaborate.

“One can’t help but feel sorry for young men away from home,” Bettina went on, shifting slightly so her wooden chair creaked. Each time she sighed, her breasts heaved. “At our dinner table, Templar questioned and bullied his pupils to become better orators or to learn to discern truth through their disputations. Of course, I was hostess for those events.”

“Discern truth through their disputations,” the queen repeated. “I also recall Templar liked to retire early to bed to read, you said, though he later mentioned it was to plan questions for his pupils—as he did the evening of the masque. So the way you described it was close to the truth, yet slightly askew.”

Bettina had looked merely uneasy, but at that salvo, her bewilderment seemed to shift to bravado. “Yes, as Templar said, he retired early the evening I found you nearly dead, Your Majesty.”

The queen fixed Bettina with a steady stare and let silence hang in the air between them again.

“Templar cared deeply for his work and his students, yes,” Bettina said, her voice almost breathless.

“And did you care for them deeply, too?”

“Of course, I did. But—you mean Christopher, do you not?”

The queen threw the rest of her ale out the tent opening and tossed her goblet on the carpet. “Tell me about your relationship with him then.”

“There is naught to tell, Your Majesty. He was charming and handsome, and I delighted in his company, that is all. What red-blooded woman would not respond with warmth to that particular young blood, as they call the Gray’s Inn students. You no doubt noticed I was happy to see him here again. I am proud that he is doing well in your eyes, that is all. I warrant the fact I favored him among my husband’s students was not one whit different from the way he was—and is—treated by any woman, however highborn, with two eyes in her head, Your Grace.”

Elizabeth almost slapped her, but she was forced to admire the woman. She might look like a coquette, but she could probably sway a judge or jury like any good lawyer. The queen decided to switch tactics.

“Of course your skills as hostess would be a great help to your husband and solace to yourself,” she said, forcing herself to sound pleasant. “And I can only imagine that living with someone as brilliant and demanding as Templar was not easy for you.”

“No, Your Gracious Majesty, it was not, when all I wanted was to be as loved and cherished as were his precious law and his books.”

A flood of new tears. At least Bettina had not denied her mingled feelings toward her husband or her attraction to Chris Hatton. Despite wanting to harden her heart against this young woman, Elizabeth understood being lonely—the swirling desire to be coddled and cherished when important men seemed ever busy with other things.

“But, Your Majesty,” Bettina plunged on, evidently not knowing when she was winning, “if you think I had aught to do with harming Templar, I swear to you by all that is holy that I did not, could not! And I don’t know what you’re implying about my relationships with my husband’s students, but I feel much maligned. Ask Chris and Jamie if you don’t believe me—send someone to Gray’s Inn to ask anyone!”

“Impossible now with the plague there, as you know. But I assure you I will speak to Chris and Jamie. Then tell me why you put Mildred, Lady Cecil’s name on the list with all those men.

“Just the other day she argued with Templar and tried to turn him against me, and now she’s turned you against me too, has she not?”

“Turn Templar or me against you how?”

“The question is
why
, Your Majesty. Mayhap she thought I was always part of the camaraderie between Templar and his students, including her own husband. Templar and her lord remained close over the years, and Templar preferred him to visit us instead of the other way round, and Lord Cecil always loved coming back to Gray’s. That day Templar became godfather to the Cecils’ new child was an exception to the rule. Since Lord Cecil was busy at court and then spent time with us, perhaps Lady Cecil became jealous of or hostile toward me, especially if she is of unstable temperament of late.”

“So, you are surmising that Lady Cecil was jealous of you for merely being part of—a close witness to—Templar’s and her husband’s friendship, for helping indirectly to keep Cecil away from her, so to speak?”

“Your Majesty, from what Templar told me, she was of a jealous nature, not so much of me but of another woman—a dead woman,” Bettina declared with the look of one who had just thrown her trump card.

“What? Of whom?”

“Of Lord Cecil’s first wife, the mother of his heir Tom. I take it she haunts Lady Cecil like a ghost.”

“Like a gh—jealous of a woman long dead? Explain,” Elizabeth demanded, leaning forward.

“I don’t know more than that, I swear it, but something has driven Lady Cecil to distraction. Maybe she saw me slip out the night of the masque and thought she was strangling me—until she saw it was you and, of course, stopped. Then the day she argued with Templar, mayhap she saw he was walking alone, trying to find who attacked you, and decided she must stop him at any cost.”

Elizabeth gaped at her. All that was completely outrageous, and yet it made as much sense as some of the other paths she’d been down.

“Bettina, say nothing of this to anyone. Mildred Cecil absolutely cannot be guilty of such atrocious deeds.”

The rest of the journey, Elizabeth of England smiled and waved, but she was shaken by much more than the jolting, rocking coach.

Chapter the Tenth

WITHIN A MILE OF THEIR DESTINATION, WHEN THE forest road turned achingly familiar, Elizabeth halted her entourage. “Bring me a horse, Robin,” she commanded. “I want to ride into Hatfield as I used to. There is no one here anymore to impress in this damned coach.”

After he had brought up her horse and checked the sidesaddle straps, he helped her mount. Suddenly, her guards rode closer to surround her—the nervous Cecil must have put them up to that—but she motioned for them to move back.

“Jenks only with me, just as in those difficult days,” she announced and motioned for her stalwart guard. “Everyone else may follow,” she called over her shoulder and spurred her horse.

Just as in those difficult days
. Her own words echoed in her head in rhythm with her horse’s hoofbeats. Did she not think the times were troubled now? But she ripped off her hat and let her tresses bounce her hairpins free. It was her first visit to dear, old Hatfield since she had learned here she would be queen. Now, if only for one mile or one moment, she would ride free from fear and whatever dangers and destruction threatened.

“Remember when we rode so fast ‘The Pope’ could not keep up with us?” Elizabeth called to Jenks as he kept his horse nearly abreast hers. Her sister Queen Mary Tudor had named Thomas Pope her guardian but in truth he’d been her gaoler.

“Aye, Your Grace! And how you outfoxed him more than once to get us away from those Catholic household spies.”

The queen looked back to see Robin riding a short distance behind with Chris and Jamie in his dusty wake. The moment of exuberance and defiance ended; Elizabeth reined in to a trot as her burdens leaned hard upon her heart again. And she had a murderer to find, perhaps one who was part of the royal retinue strung out behind.

The central single tower and two stories of the russet brick building burst into view through the protective arms of old oaks. Three roe deer on the lawn bolted for the cover of surrounding forest. She was evidently heard or seen by humankind too, for the skeletal staff which had been sent ahead emerged from the arched entry and lined up to greet her.

She saw immediately why the deer had been on the lawn. It had not been cut—sheep used to graze on it—nor had the shrubs been kept in trim. The intricate knot garden Meg had labored over the last autumn she, as Princess Elizabeth, had lived here in forced exile had run riot to weedy tangles. So, she thought, by coming a bit early she had caught the simpletons who were to keep the place up.

The queen dismounted with Jenks’s help and briefly greeted the waiting staff as Robin caught up to her. On the journey, she’d given much thought to what she must do next to try to find the maze murderer before she was buried in courtiers and cares again.