Meg. He had to get to Meg. This was no yearning dream, not with that anger in her voice.
With great difficulty, he rolled to his side, then to his belly. Somehow he got his knees under him and began to crawl. When he collapsed, he dragged himself. The edge of the clearing where the lawns began … where he could see Meg’s red head as she bent over her knot garden … seemed as far away as she did from his grasp and love.
“M—m,” he tried to call her name and was appalled no word came out. He tried to clear his dry throat. On all fours, he leaned his shoulder against a tree trunk and managed to lift one filthy, shaking hand to his mouth. He whistled shrilly, the way he did to summon horses he had trained.
He saw her stop hoeing—or was she just using the hoe to search for something? She turned toward the road and lifted a hand to shade her eyes.
Again, he forced his hand to his mouth and drew in a deep breath that seemed to rip each broken rib. Somehow he found the strength to whistle again.
She turned toward him. She began to walk, then run, across the gravel lane toward the trees. Once she was in the shade of forest she’d see him certain. Only, as desperately as he needed her help, as much as he wanted to cling to her, he couldn’t let her near him.
“Stop!” he wanted to shout, but it came out a mere croak.
“Jenks? Jenks, is that you? Mercy, what happened?”
“Stay—stay,” he tried to tell her but it came out a hiss.
“Oh, dear heavens, you’re hurt,” she cried, gripping her hands to her breasts and coming closer. “Robbers on the road? Oh, Jenks …”
“Yes—thieves,” he finally managed to say. But as she came nearer, he summoned the strength to cry, “No!”
She stopped ten feet from him. She was sweating, she looked dirty and confused and appalled, but she’d never looked better.
“I’ve been—in London,” he croaked out.
“In London? But the pl—”
“Listen to me. Tell Her Grace I couldn’t find Bettina.”
“Bettina’s dead, too. I found her in the knot garden laid out and stone cold the morning after you left. I was just looking through every inch of the shrubs for other clues since the local authorities who took her body just asked if there were witnesses, but didn’t look around themselves.”
Jenks fought to focus his scattered thoughts. With Bettina dead too, the queen could be next. “Listen—to me. I went to Gray’s Inn. Her Grace—she can’t trust Chris Hatton. And Cecil’s hiding something. I’ll—I’ll write it if you bring me paper.”
“As if you could hold a pen,” she said, shuffling closer, her eyes narrowed as she looked him over. “I’ve nursed folks through many a disease before and not been sick myself. You—you think you’ve caught it?”
“Don’t know. No signs—yet.”
“We’ll have to ask permission for you to be in the vicinity. You’ll have to stay out in the woods, but I’m going to take care of you.”
If he had not been so sapped by pain, he would have rejoiced. “At least go tell Her Grace what I said,” he gritted out. “Then bring me some paper soaked in vinegar, then dried.”
“But she’s gone on to Theobalds. All of us are to go there first thing on the morrow, but I’m to ride over today.”
“Then you tell her—go now.”
“And leave you here to die of those injuries? You’re black and blue, and I’ll bet you’ve got a broken bone or two. At least they didn’t take your horse. Jenks, Her Grace would want me to tend you—and I want to. I’m going to go in and write what you said and send it to her by Ned, then I’ll be right back.”
Damn, he thought through the mist of pain. Her Grace had left Ned behind with Meg. But she was coming back to him … to tend him.
“But what about Cecil?” Meg asked, still shuffling closer. “What about Cecil?”
“Just tell her to trust no one.”
“Nonsense. She’s always trusted you and she can trust me with her life. Swear to me you’ll be here when I get back, or else I’m coming over there to examine you right now. Swear it to me on—on Her Grace’s honor.”
She walked close by but passed him and took his horse’s reins, perhaps so he wouldn’t ride away while she was gone.
“I swear,” he said with a sigh that was the last of his strength.
William Cecil looked out of breath as he was admitted to the queen’s wing of three small rooms at the manorhouse. “What is it, Your Grace?” he cried. “Lady Rosie said you were nearly beside yourself when you received a note from Hatfield.”
“From Meg Milligrew via Ned Topside, whom I’ve sent directly back with orders,” she said, flourishing a letter. “Jenks returned to Hatfield beaten by thieves, but he’s been all the way into London.”
“London? No wonder you’re distraught. You’ll have to isolate him for a time and—”
“Yes, Meg wants to tend him even if he should become ill. But the thing is, he actually went to Gray’s Inn and found information somehow. She says she’ll know more to tell us when they arrive tomorrow, as I told her to bring him here but that they must use one of your garden buildings to avoid everyone. Cecil, she writes that Chris Hatton is not to be trusted.”
“Aha. Perhaps we won’t have to spring our elaborate snare then, if Jenks has something specific on Hatton. I believe either one of us could trip up Chris Hatton under questioning if we could get him away from Jamie Barstow.”
“Don’t rejoice that we have our murderer yet,” she said, sinking in a puff of huge skirts on a bench under a narrow window. “For, you see, this same missive also says you’re hiding something.”
“What?” he asked, and she passed him the note to read. She noted how he snatched it up nervously.
“But,” she went on, even as he skimmed it, “it is the post scriptum that interests me most. Strange how one agonizes and strains to find clues to probe the murderer’s twisted mind, and they just fall in one’s lap. Read that part aloud to me, my lord.”
Still frowning, he cleared his throat. “‘I was thinking, Your Grace, I must keep the stupid sheep out of my knot garden, because the yew leaves there are poison. But Bettina was found dead in that very knot of yew. Chewing the leaves or a distillation of yew in her wine would kill her quick with no outward marks. Medicinally it must be given in small, measured doses, like what I’ve been doling out in Jamie Barstow’s tonic to cure his weak kidneys. But the point is, could Bettina have been placed in yew because she was poisoned with yew?’”
“She’s got a point there,” Cecil said. “If Bettina were poisoned, it could have been with yew plucked from the maze at Hampton Court or Hatfield—or from an overdose of Jamie Barstow’s medicine.”
“Medicine which both he and Chris had access to, no doubt, but she says here she’s been doling it out to him. My point is, we must be on our continual guard and suspect the worst if Bettina was indeed poisoned, for perhaps our versatile, opportunistic killer has now taken a fancy to that method of murder. Jamie and Chris live together and both have had sudden and suspicious internal ailments which no one else has shared. In short,” she said, getting up to pace, “the murderer could be slowly poisoning both Chris and Jamie as his next victims.”
“You can’t mean Meg!”
“No, for Meg is a healer and would do nothing amiss to be sent from court or accused of any wrongdoing as she was before. But that doesn’t mean someone else can’t be poisoning Chris and Jamie’s wine or food. If so, you must admit that would eliminate them from suspicion.”
“And greatly narrow our field of suspects.”
“I have, however, ordered Meg to dose Chris and Jamie with antidotes and purgatives at once. But she is not to tell them why, only say it is to get their systems back in alignment with their humors. If Meg can’t cure them, I may have to summon doctors of the Royal College of Physicians from wherever they’ve fled in the wretched plague. The murderer will not claim another victim!”
“But could two men be slipp
ed the same poison, and one get the gripes and one a sort of dysentery?”
“Who says it has to be the same poison, or perhaps the dose has been slight so far, and they are just reacting differently.” She sat down again, putting her hands to her head as if to hold her thoughts together. “The maze ghost still has us on the run, I fear,” she admitted. “I try not to, but I live in terror of what is around the next corner.”
“So you are going to cancel the gathering here?”
“No. Setting the snare in your water maze is the best thing to do, though not without risk. We could try watching Chris and Jamie’s food from garden to kitchen to their mouths, but that would be tedious and overly obvious—and it’s just one more theory.”
“At least I don’t fear poisoning here at Theobalds. Mildred always oversees …” he said before his voice trailed off.
“And Kat still insists she taste my food first as she has for years. When I eat alone, she occasionally seasons it the way she knows I like, too. Cecil, I believe I am about to go mad,” she declared, jumping up again. She covered her eyes with the palms of her hands. “Whoever is tormenting me is winning if he—or she—always has me looking over my shoulder. And, despite the fact it appears this may clear Chris and Jamie, I’m still not sure we have one damned, solid due to place someone above the others on our list of possible culprits. It may be simply my prejudices for or against individuals that makes me suspect someone more.”
Her voice broke, and she turned to look out the window so he would not see the tears in her eyes.
“Your Grace, when I was sore afraid as a boy, my father used to say, ‘For God hath not given us a spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.’”
“A sound mind—that’s a good one lately. Yet I prefer that Bible quote to the threatening one nailed on my ascension oak.”
“You have the power to solve this, Your Grace.”
“Sometimes ’might does not make right.’ As for love, Cecil, I can only pray that the person behind all this is not someone I—or you—dearly love and would loathe to lose.”
At high noon the next day, the courtiers and servants the queen had left behind at Hatfield came in procession to Theobalds, even as Cecil’s meager staff hastily pounded the final tent poles in the ground. To lull their prey into relaxing his or her guard, the queen had sent for more than gaily striped pavilions. Two trumpeters greeted the party, and imported ale and food were laid outdoors upon a board table covered with a bright green cloth.
“My lord,” Elizabeth greeted Chris as he dismounted, “you look much improved.”
“No longer under the weather, as the rain has cleared at last,” he jested. “That soothing peppermint concoction your herb mistress said you recommended did me an immediate service, Your Grace,” he went on, going down on one knee in the grass and kissing her beringed hand. “My stomach’s better and my breath sweeter, even without cloves, which Mistress Milligrew noted could be souring my system, too. Jamie’s also better,” he added, turning to smile at his friend, who dismounted right behind him.
“In short, Your Gracious Majesty,” Jamie said with a laugh and went down on his knee too, as if he and his friend were a matched set of andirons, “I will not be darting off into the bushes.”
Though the queen had been prepared to force a good mood, she laughed from the heart, seeing the two of them at her feet like fond swains come courting. She noted too how Rosie, blushing just to be near Jamie again, looked relieved at his return to robust health.
“Your Majesty,” Jamie went on, “should the kingdom’s treasuries ever shrink, you will not need to have Secretary Cecil petition stingy Parliament, but merely decree that anyone who is ill must pay the royal treasury for your clever herb girl’s services.”
Others standing close, including Darnley and his mother Margaret, chortled as if Jamie had made the wildest joke. Yet Elizabeth was grateful to him and Chris for elevating the mood from plague and murder. Earlier this morning, the queen had received the report from the Hatfield bailiff assuring her that Bettina had been properly buried. The authorities had also ruled that “suspicious but unnamed causes” had brought about Bettina Sutton’s “sudden and unfortunate death, for no signs of assault or disease were discovered upon said body.”
In short, the queen thought, there had been and would be no help from the authorities at Hampton Court and Hatfield—but that which she and Cecil would fabricate soon to set their plan in motion.
To her surprise, Robin belatedly joined Chris and Jamie’s jest, kneeling and kissing her hand, then Lord Darnley, though she’d have liked to kicked him back on his bum. Her cousin Margaret remained while the men finally rose to their feet and, with the others, traipsed after Cecil and Mildred as they began to give a tour of the house and immediate grounds.
Elizabeth overheard Cecil tell everyone as planned, “After all of you partake of some dinner, I shall show you the fantastical water maze. Six rowboats will take any of you through it at any time. It’s a challenge, I tell you that. And it’s my solace and thinking spot, and the most privy place I have here or anywhere. As for tonight, Her Majesty’s principal player, Ned Topside, has adapted some sage or lighthearted speeches … .”
“Some of those sage speeches by her Gracious Majesty, I hope,” Margaret said at her elbow.
Though Elizabeth saw her Tudor cousin was drinking sugared malmsey, it obviously was not sweet enough to mellow her usual bitter tone, even when she might be trying to be pleasant.
“I trust the ride over did not tire you, Margaret,” the queen said as the countess dipped her a curtsy.
“Now that the rain has stopped, it is lovely to be out. Hatfield, all cheek-by-jowl with courtiers and servants, is rather cramped quarters compared to what I’m used to. Not to mention that ubiquitous guard Clifford in the hall,” she added portentously. “Yet I see this manor is an even smaller retreat. Does the size of your realm seem to be shrinking lately?” she said and chuckled.
The queen smiled stiffly at that subtle jab. She had noted that Clifford rode in directly behind the Stewarts. She hated to do it, but she would have to call off his vigil of watchdogging Margaret and Darnley to free them up to do their worst tonight.
“I thought,” Margaret went on with a sweeping gesture toward the array of tents and tables, “that you had eschewed all pleasantries during plague time and with the unfortunate deaths of the Suttons. If I were you—”
“You are not me, and will never be, Margaret. Yet perhaps you still harbor hopes that the Tudor blood in your son’s veins will make him someone’s choice to sit a throne.”
Margaret looked appalled, as if she’d never considered such a thought. “Indeed, I hope for nothing of the kind, Your Majesty, however much I see my son’s many virtues, as does any good mother—such as Lady Cecil here.”
Elizabeth spun, amazed to see how close Mildred had approached unheard behind her. But it was noisy now, as some milled about the grounds and servants climbed out of the cumbersome carts of baggage and goods which had brought up the rear of the procession.
“I believe, countess,” Mildred said, her voice cold as steel as she bobbed her betters a curtsy, “you refer to my stepson, Tom, as my son Robert is still in leading strings, and hardly glowing with virtues yet, as is your son and heir.”
And then, over the women’s shoulders, Elizabeth saw what she’d been waiting for. Still far back, separate from the other carts, Meg Milligrew drove one heaped with straw.
Jenks, the queen thought. It must hold poor Jenks. She was so anxious to know how he was and to hear of his journey into London she would have liked to sprint to greet him. Granted he had disobeyed her orders to avoid that city, but he had done it for his queen and at great risk to his own person.
But sadly, she must carefully keep her distance from him. Paying scant attention to her companions, though she occasionally took part in their stilted conversation, Elizabeth noted an exhausted-looking horse tied to the back of Meg’s
cart. Her long-honed eye for horse flesh made her certain it was the same one that Lord Darnley had abused back at Hampton Court.
“I trust Lady Cecil will show you to your quarters in the manor, just down the hall from mine,” Elizabeth told Margaret. “I hope your dear, devoted son won’t mind sleeping out under the stars.”
“It looks to be an awfully small manorhouse,” Margaret whined, taking up that tack again. “But yes, please show me to my rooms, Lady Cecil.”
“Room,” the queen corrected pointedly, vexed at Margaret and Darnley, however much she’d steeled herself not to let on. “I have three, and you have one. I will see you later this afternoon, dear cousin.”
With Ned and Clifford trailing a good ways behind her, the queen slipped around the manorhouse and down the path toward the small dairy barn where Meg had pulled off the road. The ramshackle garden sheds stood beyond.
But when the queen turned away from the barn and headed deeper into the forest, she heard Ned’s low whistle, so distinct from the sharp ones Jenks often used to call his mounts. She turned back and saw Darnley had followed her out here—and that, he, too, was surprised to see that he was being followed. He was obviously startled as Ned and Clifford came quickly up behind him. Surely he had not intended to make an assault on her person here.
“What is it, my lord?” the queen called to Darnley who, now discovered, came a bit closer, then swept her a graceful bow.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but I thought my mother had come out here—with you. I saw you speaking.”
“She went into the house. Come, walk with me, as I was just about to circle around to the lane,” she said, drawing him away from Meg and Jenks, though she figured if word leaked out that Jenks was here and had been to London, no one would go near him anyway. In so many ways, she felt she was sitting on a barrel full of fireworks.
Though she turned back to be certain her guards were still walking behind, the queen kept up the pretense of being calm, chatting to Darnley to allay any suspicions he might have about being suspect. She asked him about the weather and their journey from Hatfield and requested he play some lute music later, though not after supper, so he could be at leisure as night fell.