The Thorne Maze (22 page)

“Grudges,” Will began again, “especially those that are long-festering, can come out in strange ways, I warrant. Mildred, I realize that since Robert’s birth you’ve been fretting about how he compares to Tom—”

“Fretting? More like foaming at the mouth, like some sort of mad dog, isn’t that what you really think?” she challenged, clinking her spoon against her pewter plate. Yet she was relieved the conversation had not taken another turn, for this was familiar jousting ground.

“And I was wondering if what might be bothering you, too, could stem from the fact that I wed his mother in the rashness of youth, when it was ill-advised, yet I persevered.”

“Indeed you did,” she said, rising and walking to the window to gaze out over the sunny grounds of Hatfield. “Your tutors at Cambridge were appalled, I hear, that their brilliant student was ruining his reputation, and I know your father nearly disowned you.”

“True—that’s true. Because I went through such a bad streak, you think I’d countenance Tom’s caperings, but I’ve been so hard on him, not wanting him to make the same mistakes.”

“Caperings? Seducing virgins from respectable families and stealing from his tutor’s money box when you sent him to study on the continent is mere caperings?”

“Do not sway from the subject at hand this time. I’m admitting I made mistakes back then. But can it yet vex you that I wed Mary Cheke against all odds?”

She knew she would lose control, but she couldn’t help it. “Does it bother me that I know full well she was the great love and passion of your life?” she screeched.

He looked astounded and appalled. Had the man, one of the most able in the queen’s kingdom, never considered that his love for his beloved first wife produced a strong son and his mere duty with his second respected wife a dead son and then a sickly one?

“You are much mistaken, Mildred, but I—I see your reasoning,” he stammered at last.

“It’s not reasoning, my lord, as educated as I may be. It is my heart talking, not my head. How you yet must long for her, the woman who—though she was an innkeeper’s daughter—made you risk your entire future for her.”

“But Mildred,” he said, getting up from the table so fast his chair knocked over onto the floor. He left it there and came toward her, arms outstretched, palms up. “Mildred,” he began again, “all I knew was a wild beating in my blood then, and the foolish defiance of my youth. I may have lusted once for Mary but it is you I chose with much forethought, you whom I respect, honor, and deeply admire.”

“Respect and honor, even admire?” She smacked her hands on her skirts so hard they bounced. “Templar supposedly had all that from you, too, and Bettina had—”

She bit off her words and raced to the door before she could say more. But when she opened it to run out, the queen’s fool and principal player Ned Topside stood there, hat in hand.

“Pardon my lord and Lady Cecil,” the actor said, sweeping off a plumed cap. “Her Majesty has decided that Lady Cecil may go to Theobalds if she wishes, and she’ll provide an escort. But she needs you, my lord, to stay here on state business.”

Mildred noted that Ned lifted his eyebrows as if in some signal to her husband. “Though it pains me and my lord to be apart,” she said before Will could get a word in, “tell Her Grace that I shall gratefully obey and be gone within the hour. No doubt, my lord, Her Majesty has need of you right now.”

“As a matter of fact …” Topside said and gestured toward the hall.

“It heartens me you will have some time there to appreciate the place and to see that the manorhouse is in order for the queen’s visit,” Will said as he grabbed his satchel and his hat. He was no doubt relieved to ship her away so there would be no more outbursts. That suited her, for she wanted out of here.

“I’ll be over to Theobalds to see you as soon as possible,” Will added, “and I’ll bring the building plans.”

Mildred could see his usual cool control was ready to boil over. “By all means, bring the building plans,” she said, and closed the door a bit too hard behind him.

But he opened it again. “I forgot to tell you that we needed a good but sober black skirt with which to clothe poor Mistress Sutton to face the coroner and then for burial, so I took a black one you had evidently cast off. I didn’t think, since the poor wretch was dead, that you would mind.”

Fortunately for him, he closed the door quickly, because she heaved a pewter plate at it as hard as she could. But when she realized which black skirt he meant, she shouted for her servant and began to pack in earnest.

Jenks’s hopes fell. The Inns of Court looked as deserted as the rest of the city. Worse, just a few doors beyond the sprawl of Gray Inn’s buildings and courtyards he spotted a tell-tale bundle of straw hung from a window to signify an infected house. Quickly, he ducked down an alley that ran beside the main building of Gray’s. A black rat darted across his path, then veered back toward him. He kicked at it, then turned through the first door he found open into the paved central courtyard.

“Halloo! Anybody here?” he called out only to have his voice echo off the walls. “Halloo!”

The silence and solemnity of the place impressed Jenks. The Inns of Court, including Gray’s, Lincoln’s, and Middle and Inner Temple, were collectively called the Third University of England for the learning of law. Twice he’d been with the queen’s party when she’d been entertained at Gray’s, one the day she’d plucked Chris Hatton out of his student life here. The place was usually aswarm with students. He couldn’t believe they’d all fled since it seemed so safe and sheltered here.

As the sun set, he found a lantern, but not a bite of food. He wandered through the wilderness of brick or timber-and-plaster walls, his feet echoing on slate, stone, or oaken floors. He looked in the dining hall, the chapel, and the library, wondering if Templar Sutton’s books were part of this massive sea of them, maybe half a hundred, all told. He felt crushed he’d not find anyone to question and no food either but at least he had a light.

As he headed out of the library, a dark figure blocked his path. Tall, thin, the man raised a cudgel.

“Hold there!” Jenks cried, crouching to spring or flee.

“State your name and business,” the crisp voice cracked out.

“Ned Jenkins of Norfolk, a friend of former student Chris Hatton. He told me I could put up here while passing through.”

Jenks amazed himself. It was always the clever actor Ned who invented people and played parts, but it was too late now to take the straight and honest way.

“Passing through plague London?” the man challenged. Then he added, “Certes, I remember ‘Handsome Hatton,’ as they dubbed him.” He stowed his cudgel back in his belt. “Name’s Hugh Scott, night porter here, pretty much the only one left to keep an eye on things with bands of thieves and ransackers about and all. So, how’s he doing at court—and that friend of his went along, too?”

“Jamie Barstow, you mean?”

“Aye, Jamie Barstow. He was more my style, one foot firm on the servants’ rung of the ladder, but the other leg up. Hey then, I was about to go mad as a Bedlamite, alone in this big rabbit’s warren of a place, so what the deuce, I’ll put you up one night.”

Maybe there was some benefit to lies, Jenks thought. This man might not have believed him if he’d said he came for the queen, and in a way, he hadn’t. Elizabeth Tudor would have his head for sure if she knew he’d disobeyed her to come into off-limits London—unless he could get what she needed out of this man.

“We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for, do we?” Meg asked the queen as they searched Bettina’s goods in her tiny, slant-ceilinged room under Hatfield’s eaves late that night.

“Another wretched surprise, I suppose,” Elizabeth muttered as she ransacked the single, small coffer while Meg stripped the bed down to its web of supporting cords so she could probe the mattress and sheets.

“I hate to say this,” the queen admitted, “but I’d give a country castle to turn up a suicide note, saying she murdered her husband and couldn’t live with the shame so she killed herself. But not with those hacked off skirts and those clippers, she didn’t, and the murderer wanted us to know that. He—or she—lives by his own set of perverse rules, as in some hide-and-seek-in-the-maze game we’re supposed to be playing.

“Look,” she went on, delving deeper into the coffer. “She brought Templar’s garments and goods here with her. I should have known she had a certain affection for him—unless she just kept them to sell later.” She flipped through a law book in Latin in case something were secreted within; she couldn’t believe her good fortune when a piece of paper fluttered out.

“I don’t think she’s the bookish sort,” Meg muttered. “That’s probably Templar’s notes.”

“No,” the queen said as she skimmed it, “it’s a note to Chris Hatton, and, I warrant, in Bettina’s hand. It must be very recent or at least she’s hidden it here recently. Otherwise Templar could have found it.”

“‘I never meant to shame you or tarnish your new path here at court,’” Elizabeth read. “So, she wrote it either here or at Hampton. ‘But I cannot keep from wishing you would smile on me, instead of her—Her Majesty, I mean.’”

“So she did have a motive to attack you,” Meg cried.

“Enough of one to strangle her sovereign? I wonder why she didn’t send this note, or if this is just a copy or draft. That is probably the case as there is no more, and that can’t be the end of it.”

“Mayhap the end of it was that she decided to eliminate you in some sort of demented jealousy over Lord Hatton’s devotion to you. Or she meant to make you grateful to her by appearing to help you after she’s the one who really hurt you. Once she kills poor Templar, she hopes you’ll keep her at court in gratitude and sympathy for your own salvation, where she can pursue Lord Hatton. But when she tells him or gives him such a note, they argue and he—”

“Meg, you leap too far afield. If it is Chris Hatton who killed her, it must have been an accident, for I cannot believe it of him. And then there is the problem of Jamie, for he’s ever protective of his friend.”

“Look, Your Grace, Bettina had this tiny filigreed box of cloves, and it is Lord Hatton who uses those.”

“With about half of the court,” the queen clipped out and turned back to the coffer. The maze murderer simply could not be Chris, and not only because he seemed so loyal and honest: truth was, he didn’t have the wit to pull it all off—did he?

Meg’s gasp made Elizabeth look up again. “What now?”

“Your Grace, there’s gillyflower petals in her pomander. See? Smell it?”

The moment Meg thrust the netted pomander on its waist ribbon toward the queen, the scent brought so much back, including that day in the haunted gallery at Hampton Court when she fancied Catherine Howard’s ghost passed by.

“But the Suttons had barely arrived at court that day someone might have eavesdropped at Mary Sidney’s keyhole to hear I was meeting Robin in the maze,” Elizabeth said, reasoning aloud. “Surely, Bettina had not found her way to me through that vast palace so quickly, even before I walked them through the maze. It cannot be. But I am going to face down Chris Hatton first thing in the morning with this note—and without his watchdog Jamie.”

“Lady Rosie would be devastated if Jamie had aught to do with this,” Meg reminded her. “How can you bring her into the Privy Plot Council if we’ll be discussing whether Jamie or his friend is to blame?”

“You’re right about that,” Elizabeth said, closing the coffer lid. As she had surmised, neither of Bettina’s two remaining skirts were good enough to bury her in, and neither of them had been black or even dark-hued. So far, though it was the flimsiest piece of evidence, it was Mildred Cecil’s discarded gown that matched the one for which she’d been searching. After seeing Chris Hatton, she was riding to Theobalds without Cecil’s knowledge, to speak with his wife alone.

Jenks could not believe his continued good fortune, even if he was spending the night in plague London. Hugh Scott had shared some bread and cheese with him, moldy though they were. Hugh loved to talk and had been downing mug after mug of his own store of sack, which only made him talk the more. Jenks was wishing he’d slow his drinking so he could assure Her Grace that his source of information had been sober.

“So you really liked Jamie better than Chris,” Jenks tried to get him on track again.

“What the deuce, wouldn’t you?” Hugh challenged, reaching over to slap Jenks’s knee where they sat in the large window bay of the library. “Barstow came from the workaday world like you and me, while most lads here was in on their sire’s pedigree and purses. ‘Sides, it always riled me how Handsome Hatton had to beat the maids off with a stick—e’en though no wenches were ’round here much but the cook, scullery maids, and the lecturer’s wives.”

“You mean like Mistress Sutton? Chris mentioned her,” he lied.

“I’ll bet he did,” Hugh said with a snicker. “She was hot for him, and no doubt, other way ‘round too, a pretty pair they’d make, eh?” he added, sitting up straighter with a hiccough. “But if she thought her late-night activities was secret, she was cracked. Students like to compare notes, if you get my drift. Aye,” he went on importantly, “I might have been only a watchman porter, but my eyes and ears took in a lot, I’ll tell you that. Hey, bet Hatton wouldn’t want none of that ’bout him and ’the mistress’ noised ’round the queen’s court, but you can tell him I won’t let on,” he added, guffawing and slapping his own knees this time.

“So you heard Mistress Sutton bedded with some of the students here?” Jenks asked, then repeated the question more loudly. “What about Jamie Barstow?”

“Barstow? No—all business, that one, just trying to keep his footing around his betters, like I said. ‘Sides, I swear your friend Hatton kept him too busy—you know, under his thumb or Barstow could have got the heave-ho. But since you asked about others, what the deuce, come on and let me show you something—my little secret,” Hugh said and got unsteadily to his feet. “Bring that lantern, Ned, my man.”

Jenks had to admit that Hugh Scott, beslubbered or not, knew his way through the tangled halls at Gray’s, probably just as he knew all about the teachers and students here. Now Jenks had a firsthand report to give Her Grace, so she’d have to forgive him for coming into the city. Despite how much she favored Chris Hatton, she’d best consider him hostile to the Suttons. And poor, hardworking, base-born Jamie Barstow sounded like a good man to have in anyone’s corner, because he knew well how to serve another.