The Thorne Maze (11 page)

“I do not need your advice on this, Jamie. Master Sutton was my guest and is owed all the legal rights of justice—which he so ably defended and brilliantly taught,” the queen managed before her own voice broke.

“I’ll not leave him,” Bettina said, weakly now, but she made no more protest when Jamie took her arm and coaxed her away. Elizabeth could hear him talking calmly, quietly to the poor woman until his voice faded.

“Ned,” the queen said, “the yeomen guard are to surround the sides and rear of the maze until I command otherwise. And put back the rope across the front facing the palace. Call off the search outside, saying we have found Master Sutton, dead in what appears to be an accidental fall here in the maze.”

“Accidental?” Ned challenged, in a whisper evidently so Kat wouldn’t hear. “Jamie may have said so, but he didn’t know— about the other night. I supposed this could be an accident, but the coincidence of the same setting—”

“Do as I say, and let me do the thinking right now. Then fetch Cecil to meet me here. Hurry up, man. No, leave your torch—give it to Meg.” Scolded to silence, Ned turned and hurried away.

“Jenks,” the queen rushed on, “tell your master, Robert Dudley, his queen commands him to ride for the parish bailiff and have him summon the coroner. And on your way, escort Kat to Anne Carey for companionship until I return. Take your torch, for this one will serve Meg and me. Before the authorities arrive, we will throw what light we can upon this sad demise of this teacher and preserver of queen’s justice.”

Mildred listened carefully to what a man—she was certain it was the queen’s player who had read the Bible parable at the masque last night—was telling her husband in the hall outside the closed door: Templar Sutton had been found dead in the maze, and Cecil was to come to join Her Majesty there posthaste. The local officials were being summoned.

She stepped away from the door as Will darted back in to seize his cloak and cap. “Templar Sutton’s died suddenly, and the queen has need of me,” he said only. Grief contorted his expression; tears glimmered in his eyes. “Don’t wait up for me,” he added and was gone with a bang of the door before she could say a thing.

“Will ye be preparing for bed then, milady?” her girl Johanna asked, poking her head around the bedchamber door. It was obvious that the girl listened far too often at keyholes. Mildred assumed it was Will who had the maid watching her because she couldn’t fathom who else would give a fig what she did around here.

“Just turn down the covers for me and take your ease,” Mildred told her. “I’m going to read here for a while.”

But the moment Johanna closed the inner door, Mildred was out the one into the hallway. She hurried down it, certain of where to turn, where to find a door on the south side of the sprawling palace which overlooked the gardens and maze on the lawns above the Thames.

She saw much commotion ahead, torches, people. Finally, she made out the solitary dark form of her husband heading at a fast pace toward the maze. Stretching her strides, she nearly managed to keep the same distance from him across the dewy lawn. She saw three figures emerge from the black hulk of the maze: the silhouette of the person in the middle was unmistakably that of the new widow, Bettina.

Mildred stopped walking, feeling drowned by the darkness both outside and inside herself as Will, despite his summons from Her Majesty, stopped, evidently to comfort Bettina. He leaned close to speak to her, held her hand, their outlines merging in distant torchlight. Then she saw him hurry on, disappearing into the maze as the couple supporting Bettina brought her this way.

Mildred could not bear to look at the woman, so she cut a broader path to avoid them. The maze seemed to have its three backsides lined by men with torches; only the rope across the mouth of it guarded the front, which was lit by what was now blazing palace light. If anyone tried to stop her entry, she would simply say she had something to tell her husband who was within. Ducking under the restraining rope, she followed the irregular paths until muted voices became clearer amidst the noise from outside. Out of breath, she stopped on the other side of a hedge wall and strained to listen to the inner voices.

The queen: “Cecil, thank God, you’re here, as we may not have much time before Robert Dudley rousts out the bailiff, and he sends for the coroner.”

Will: “Templar dead? I—cannot fathom it, even seeing him—like this. Dare we believe it is some sort of freak accident—or must we accept the worst?”

The queen: “His head must have hit the foot of the sundial, see? But the question is, on his own or with help?”

“At least he wasn’t strangled.”

“That is one thing we must find out.”

“You have sealed the entrance again.”

“Yes, but what good did that do us last time? Lady Rosie was there, but I needed to send her with Jamie Hatton and poor Bettina. I am beginning to believe our murderer comes through the maze like some sort of specter. And here, poor Templar told me that evil spirits avoid mazes because they can’t turn the corners … .”

The queen’s usually clear voice snagged before going on. “I am sorry, my lord, that I ask you to do this when your dear mentor and friend lies here, lost to life, but I want you to quickly examine his body for other marks or possibly wounds—especially strangulation ligatures—while Meg and I search for hidden exits in the maze hedges. With rampant torchlight on the sides and rear, we will be able to discern if there is any sort of opening where a possible attacker escaped without coming out the entrance.”

“Yes, I see. For decency’s sake—and Templar was a thoroughly decent man—I will search him for signs of foul play and tell you what I find.”

“Obviously, Bettina and you will have disturbed the way he was found, but we shall simply explain to the officials I’ve summoned that Templar’s body was moved when we turned him over and his widow grieved. And, Cecil, keep an eye out for a bit of dark cloth on his person, which Kat said she saw him find in the maze today. Our murderer might have torn his or her garment the night I was attacked,” she added with a huge sigh, “and Templar took it upon himself to help me even more than I had asked. Come on, Meg. All that torchlight outside makes it easy to see through the leaves and limbs, and at least doubles the moonlight in here.”

Mildred backtracked quickly, amazed yet somehow not surprised that Elizabeth Tudor herself would spearhead such an investigation. It made her admire the queen all the more, yet fear her, too. Next, that brilliant woman would be probing one’s very tortured thoughts. Mildred ducked under the rope at the mouth of the maze and lifted her skirts to hurry away across the dewy grass.

Her finger snagged in the tear on her black gown. For appearance’ sake—safety’s sake now, too—she’d best don another skirt and cut this one up for scraps.

One thing was certain, the queen reasoned, trying to control her full skirts as she moved through the maze. If the murderer had entered or exited through a thin spot in these back hedges, it could hardly be a woman, at least not unless she was disguised as a lad. She and Meg had discovered two thin-leafed places, though she also surmised that an intruder must bear scratches, too. Now that could be a clue, but she could hardly order everyone to disrobe so she could examine their skin for scratches. Or could such be visible on someone’s hands, face, or neck?

“Will we point these bare spots out to the officials as well as look at them better ourselves tomorrow?” Meg asked.

“I intend to let them examine Master Sutton’s demise on their own and see what they determine about whether his death was accidental—and discover how good these crown-appointed men are at their tasks. Perhaps they will turn up something we have not, but whatever they decide, I am undeterred about secretly tracing my attacker—and, I warrant—tying it somehow to Templar Sutton’s death.”

“If someone slipped out this way, he’d have ended up in the grape arbors or could have hidden in the stand of trees along the river bank,” Meg observed.

“Ah, the grape arbors or those trees—someone who was familiar with the area, or who thought it could hide his dark deeds,” she whispered, recalling Lord Darnley’s illicit assignation there. She had not shared her real plans for Darnley with anyone but Cecil and didn’t intend to. But, if the ruttish coxcomb—who was thin as a rail—had tried to murder his monarch, she’d have a decision to make. She intended to send Mary Stuart a weakling to wed, not someone who strangled queens. The Queen of England would not do that, even to her nemesis, the Queen of Scots.

“Let’s go back and see what Lord Cecil has discovered,” Elizabeth said, and led the way back toward the goal. “My lord,” she called to him across one width of hedge, “is he decent now?”

“Enter,” Cecil clipped out, as if he were summoning an undersecretary, but she knew how deeply this had distressed him. “Nothing is decent about this,” he muttered when the two women came around the turn to find him slumped on the bench by the body. He had managed to balance the single torch they’d left him on the top of the sundial to give himself good light.

“No, don’t rise,” Elizabeth commanded, staying him with a firm hand on his shoulder. She was surprised to feel him trembling. “Did you—look him over thoroughly, my lord?”

Cecil nodded forlornly. “I found no dark scrap of cloth,” he said so quietly she almost couldn’t hear him. She gestured for Meg to leave them, and she instantly obeyed. “I am sorry to ask all this of you, my lord,” she told him. She sat down on the end of the bench, so he would not feel compelled again to rise. “I know he was dear to you.”

“I was steady until you asked—asked me that way, ‘Did you look him over thoroughly …’ I was just thinking, the very first day I met him twenty-three years ago at Gray’s Inn, after we had talked for a while,
he
looked
me
over thoroughly and questioned me at length. He told me I had great potential, but he would never stand for me doing things half cocked Though I was a strong student, I’d admitted I’d left Cambridge when I was close to taking my degree. Master Sutton also said that day,” he added and swiped his nose with a sleeve like a lad, “that I must never make slipshod, rash decisions that would errantly affect my life and my career.”

“Meaning, like leaving Cambridge too early.”

“Also meaning that I had defied my father, who had been supporting me, by passionately, rashly wedding an innkeeper’s daughter. ‘Be circumspect in all you do, and let not passion be your rule,’ Templar said that day, and I’ve never—that is, tried never to forget it.”

“Surely, you have made him proud these last years, my Cecil. You have not been rash or done things in an errant or slipshod manner, I can testify to that. You and the others like Chris and Jamie are the sons he never had, just as Bettina said when—”

“I’m only human!” he cried, lunging off the bench and turning away, evidently to wipe his eyes and nose, again with his sleeve instead of his handkerchief. “Like you, Your Grace,” he added more quietly, “the man had a way of looking right through one and knowing everything. I never meant to let him down … .”

“Of course you didn’t. But, the thing I would know before the parish officials rightfully take this out of our hands—at least I know they will claim Templar’s body—is what you found when you examined him.”

“No marks around his neck at least,” he said with a sniff.

“Thank God for that. What then? Why are you looking at me like that? You don’t believe it could just be an accident?”

He shook his head hard. “Granted, a fall into the stone pedestal could have stunned him—I pray God it did. Because on the back of his head, the nape of his neck, he was struck either a second time—or at first.”

He stooped to point at the back of Templar’s head. Cecil had turned him face down again, but arranged him with cap and cloak covering his neck, much as they’d found him.

“Struck back there by what?” the queen asked, bending over him, too. “You mean he was pushed or slammed against the bench first, then thrown onto the pedestal?”

“There is not a spot of blood on the bench. I would postulate he was struck on the back of the head by a blow from a brick which sent him into the pedestal. The imprint in his scalp—his very skull—has a definite shape with the mark of a corner.”

“The bench has squared corners,” she argued.

“But this crumbled material was stuck in his blood at the back—not the front—of his white hair.”

Even as they heard the voices of men coming closer in the maze, Cecil pulled something from his padded doublet. In the light of their single torch, he opened and extended to her his clean handkerchief Bits of bloodied, rose-hued brick lay in it. The queen gasped, rewrapped the cloth, and thrust the handkerchief quickly up her sleeve as Robert Dudley led a group of men into the very heart of the maze.

Chapter the Seventh

THE MEN’S LANTERNS AND TORCHES LIT THE MAZE SO brightly that the queen and Cecil had to squint at first. Robin had Chris Hatton at his side, which amazed her, since Robin didn’t like the younger man. Frowning, Chris bit his lip and shook his head when he saw his teacher’s body sprawled beneath the bench.

Jenks and two yeomen guards brought up the rear of the party, but before them paraded three parish officials. Elizabeth was immediately annoyed that, crowding in, they did not give a care to the area in case there had been clues, even though she knew her people had tramped about, too.

Snatching off their caps, the visitors made matters worse as they all bowed. Packed like fish in a barrel of brine, they bumped into each other, sending the largest man of the three into the hedge wall, bouncing the bushes. Robin’s knees accidently brushed the queen’s skirts when he rose from his bow.

“Your Most Gracious Majesty,” he began when she nodded to give him leave to speak, “may I present to you the parish bailiff, Jonah Withers. Bailiff Withers, the Queen’s Majesty has personally summoned you as the deceased was an important teacher of law in her kingdom.”

Bailiff Withers was of middling height and weight, with hair red as autumn pippins. As he bowed again, Elizabeth noted he’d been rousted out of bed, for his hair stood on end like a cock’s comb, and he had sleep wrinkles on one side of his face.