The Thorne Maze (18 page)

“But I didn’t, and we caught a killer. My lord Cecil,” she added, strolling deeper into the forest, “I was wondering if you’d considered buying Bettina’s books, those from Templar’s private library back at Gray’s Inn, that is. I suggested to her that you might be interested.”

“Indeed I am, both to honor him and help her. I shall speak to her about it.”

“Fine. But because Bettina is under a cloud of suspicion too, I asked Chris Hatton and Jamie Barstow to describe their relationships with her. They have admitted that she was not adverse to being overly intimate with some of her husband’s students, even ones younger than she. And your Mildred said the same had been bandied about your dinner table when you hosted Templar’s students from time to time.”

He frowned, looking off into the distance. “And you’re wondering why I didn’t tell you?”

“I realize you are not one to credit rumors or besmear a reputation without proof.”

“Your Grace, when you appointed me your principal secretary here at Hatfield, you challenged me always to give you truthful counsel, and I have done that. So I must admit that I believe there is a basis for such rumors about Bettina.”

She stopped walking and swung slowly to face him. That had been carefully couched lawyer talk indeed. “Then, yes, my lord, why did you not tell me?”

“I cannot fathom she would have aught to do with murder. True, Templar was not the best husband for a woman of her youth, temperament, and needs. But she would never strike him down with a brick from behind in some cold-blooded, calculated murder, not Bettina!”

“You speak passionately in her defense.”

“She is a passionate woman, to her shame, I warrant, at times, but, I repeat,” he said, seeming to stumble for words now, “not a murderess, Your Grace, and never one who would try to strangle her queen.”

“I must tell you too that Mildred seems to resent Bettina so that I believe your wife is almost jealous of her. Perhaps, Bettina tells me, it is because you used to visit the Suttons often when Mildred herself had not seen enough of you because of the demands of queen and kingdom. Cecil,” she said and gripped his forearm, “forgive me, my friend, for asking this, but in these tenuous times, I must. Tell me straight you have never betrayed your marriage vows.”

His brown eyes widened under his high, furrowed brow. The corners of his mouth tightened, and for one moment she believed he would refuse to answer or confess the impossible.

“No, Your Grace, I have never betrayed my marriage vows.”

“Thank God, for I needed not those sort of complications in this—or to think ill of you, my bedrock advisor and ever my friend. I charge you to be certain Mildred knows that truth, for she evidently had harsh words with Templar the day he died. The reason I have not shared Bettina’s list of possible culprits with you is that I am discounting one name on it—and if I do that—all the other names on the list are suspect, too.”

“One name. What name?”

“Mildred’s, my lord. It is obvious to me that, though the two women have seldom met, they dislike each other, and that can’t be helped. I’m afraid it is rather like me and Mary of Scots,” she said with a forced little laugh.

Cecil was not laughing, for tears matted his lashes before he blinked them away. Elizabeth had meant to corner him on Mildred’s possible resentment of his first wife and of his heir by her, but the queen could not bear to see her Cecil cry.

When William Cecil hurried back to be with his wife, the queen tarried again at the knot garden. Though it was nearly dusk, Meg’s bodice was soaked through with sweat.

“Since when have you decided not to heed my orders?” Elizabeth asked her. “It is high time to leave off that task.”

“Aye, Your Grace, I’m quitting for now. I’m going to take a plunge in the pond beyond the trees to cool off, too, or the Countess of Lennox will smell me coming, strewing herbs or not.”

The thought of immersing one’s self in the spring-fed pond sounded both alluring and daring to Elizabeth. Meg Milligrew was the only woman she knew who could swim. Surely the bathing tub the queen’s father had installed at Whitehall Palace would be a far cry from drifting free in a rush of living water.

“I believe I’ll go with you, though hardly to swim,” she told Meg as her herb mistress held up her skirts and made great giant’s strides to escape the knot garden. Meg bent to hide the clippers in the thick foliage before they walked on. “Perhaps to dabble my toes and let the fish nibble them.”

Suddenly, Elizabeth felt lighthearted at the mere thought of bathing outdoors. No doubt because Meg resembled her—and was used upon rare occasions to stand in for the queen when she was endangered—she sometimes also mentally put herself in Meg’s place, wondering what it would be like to go shopping on the London streets, or to go unguarded about one’s business, to run an apothecary shop, or even to swim.

“But I was going to strip down to my shift and then where will your guards be?” Meg asked.

“I shall be your guard, and you’ll be mine,” Elizabeth declared with a laugh but then sobered. “No, since I was attacked, I’ll not risk that even here where I feel quite safe. We’ll stop by the stables and have Jenks come along and stay well back.”

The queen studied Meg’s face as she mentioned Jenks’s name. Though looking much overheated already, the young woman blushed.

“If we’re going by the stables, I suppose we could pick up Lord Robin to watch out for someone who might sneak a peek at us, too,” Meg teased and could not stifle a giggle.

Once the queen might have boxed a servant’s ears for such impertinence, but she only laughed again. Hallowed Hatfield seemed a haven, and she’d fear naught here.

Chapter the Eleventh

“SO, MEG, ARE YOU AND JENKS GETTING ON WELL?” the queen inquired in a soft voice. “I’ve seen some friction between you, and I can’t afford that with my servants—or my Privy Plot Council members. Yet I was beginning to believe he would follow you anywhere instead of me.”

“His first love and loyalty, and mine, will always be to you, Your Grace. But lately he’s been more than protective. He’s been attentive and painfully intent. I suppose I’ve been a bit hard on him of late.”

“Ah,” Elizabeth said only, as they saw the pond through the trees, but she was thinking
poor Jenks
. She had sent him to fetch Kat, and she and Meg had the older woman in tow, whereas Jenks trailed a good ways behind as ordered. The queen turned back to gesture to him to stay where he was unless they called him. Robin had not been at the stables to double their guard, but that was just as well, she thought, perversely amused that the trials of queen and herb girl could be at all similar when it came to men who were passionate yet problematic.

“I shall dabble my feet while you swim,” Elizabeth said.

“I too,” Kat spoke at last, though she’d seemed to be enjoying the walk. “I always used to test the water in your bath when you were young, lovey, to be sure it would not burn you.”

Kat and the queen followed circumspectly while Meg scrambled toward the end of the small, oval pond where bramble bushes hid the grassy bank. “Shall I help you with your shoes and stockings then, Your Grace?” Kat asked.

“Do you think I am some ninnyhammer who’s forgotten how to undress herself? Ah, Kat, do you recall how we used to make do with old-fashioned, darned garments and few enough of those last time we were here at Hatfield?”

“Of course, I recall. I always vowed that should you become queen,” Kat said, plopping down beside her on the bank, “you would have the most beautiful gowns—and someday you shall.”

Meg was so used to that sort of past-and-present scrambling that she didn’t even look up as she stripped to her shift and waded in while Kat and the queen pulled off shoes and stockings. “Oh, it feels delightful,” Meg said and flopped belly down in the pond to paddle like a dog. Elizabeth was transfixed with envy.

“Quite unnatural and unladylike,” Kat muttered, swishing her bare feet in the water, “but you do make it look like fun, Meg.”

“I’ve a good nerve to get in, too,” the queen declared, smacking her hands on her full skirts, “but these petticoats would pull me under.”

“You’d have to take them off, that’s for certain,” Meg said, not even sounding out of breath. “Watch this, Your Grace.”

To their amazement, Meg sucked in a big mouth of air, pinched her nose, and disappeared under the rippling surface. Kat and Elizabeth held their breaths too until Meg burst upward again in a fountain of bubbles. To Kat’s obvious dismay, Elizabeth stood and began to strip off layers of petticoats from under her gown.

“You don’t mean it,” Kat cried. “I’ll not allow it.”

“I’ll stay near the bank, and I don’t take orders from you as I did once, dear Kat. I must try it. No one will know, and I may never get such a chance again. Just look how easily Meg goes under and pops back up.”

“Everyone will say you fell in when they see you,” Kat protested. “Your father will blame me.”

“He’s given me permission,” Elizabeth declared.

Meg stood awed in the pond as the queen, clad in bodice, sleeves, and now drooping outer skirts, sat again on the bank and carefully edged into the water. “Like a big washtub,” she said, “but ooh, it’s slippery underfoot.”

“Just moss and mud,” Meg said, coming closer to help. “Here, dip down a bit like this.” She bent her knees and blew bubbles when the water covered her mouth, then put her nose in too and snorted like a horse.

Despite her fears, Elizabeth laughed and followed suit. Doing something so curious and bold bucked her up. After all, the queen set standards. No one could tell her she could not do a simple thing one of her servants could, even if it were an outrageous practice. Imagine, swimming like a dog or fish!

Her air-filled skirts buoyed her up at first, but soon went sodden, like heavy plaster around her legs. The weight of them pulled her down the moment she lifted her feet from the slanted bottom of the pond. She tipped sideways and lost her bearings. As she sputtered and coughed, Meg helped haul her up and steady her.

“Had enough, Your Grace?” Meg asked. “Best get out now.”

“Not until I’ve mastered it.”

“But I’ve been at this for years.”

“You both climb out of there right now!” Kat ordered.

But Elizabeth gasped in a great breath, held it, and plunged under, nearly sitting on the pond bottom. The shock of being completely encased in the press of cool, heavy water stunned her. Currents of her own making tugged at her hair and swayed her heavy skirts. But she held her breath, then blew out tickling bubbles that raced up her forehead. She felt defiant and free until she recalled how she could not get her breath when the garters were around her neck, stopping her air, strangling her in the maze.

She choked and snorted out, then in. Water slammed up her nose and made her head sting. She tried to find her feet again, to rise above the surface, but she slipped in the grasp of her skirts.

Get air. Stop the strangler. Her hands clawed wildly in the dark maze of heavy water.

Her head popped up, slicked with her sopping hair. Hacking, she gasped in breath after breath as Meg helped her to right herself.

“We’d best not tell anyone you did this on purpose!” Meg said.

“I’m not taking the blame from your father or his sneaking, snippy, young Queen Catherine Howard!” Kat insisted.

“Hush both of you—and go to the house together—to fetch me dry clothes,” Elizabeth gasped, sitting exhausted and angry on the bank. “Meg, you send Lady Rosie out with the dry things so Kat doesn’t need to come back. And send Jenks to wait here with me. I daresay he’s seen me in worse straits.”

Both women hurried to obey. Jenks came running, his eyes wide when he saw her.

“No, I did not fall in,” she told him, “and if you laugh at me, I shall ship you off forthwith to Scotland. I just had to try it.”

“Sounds like me with Meg, Your Grace,” he said, not daring to so much as smile. “I’d try anything to please her, but it all goes wrong.”

“You offer her that power over you, and she’s afraid of it, that’s all. Command is not an easy thing to wield over others, but the most sobering, awesome responsibility, especially when one cares for the well-being of the other,” she counseled, wringing water from her skirts and hair.

“I can’t come up to her standards—that’s more like it,” he muttered.

“’S blood and bones, Jenks, you are a good, brave, and deserving man. I just wish I had someone as loyal as you who would ride into hell—or at least plague London—for me. I need some answers from Gray’s Inn about Jamie Barstow and Sir Christopher’s reputations, not to mention Bettina Sutton’s. But that dread disease sits in Londontown like a big, bloated poisonous spider, so that’s the end of that, just like this is the end of my swimming.”

She’d been nearly shouting, but it did feel good to get that all out, and she could always trust Jenks. “Here, help me up, my man,” she said, more quietly, as she offered him her hand. “London is out of the question, so we’ll simply have to make do with what we can here to flush out the maze murderer.”

Her first night back at Hatfield, despite how exhausted she felt, the queen couldn’t sleep. It almost seemed the place was haunted, for memories marched back and forth in her brain about the good times and the bad. From here she’d been ordered to the Tower and feared she’d never return. She’d been questioned here for her parts in Protestant plots; she’d been ignored and afraid and yet hopeful too that someday the throne could be hers, that a woman could rule alone. At dear, old Hatfield, she’d learned to survive against all odds and that was just what she meant to do again.

She must have nodded off because when she woke a woman in white was standing by her window. Her heartbeat jumped to a pounding pace. Surely, not a spectre, but …

It was Kat in her nightraiL She’d been sleeping in the truckle bed with Rosie against the wall of the queen’s chamber, but now she walked toward the door to the hall. Rather than bothering Rosie, who was breathing heavily in sleep, Elizabeth got up, wrapped herself in her damask robe and shoved her feet in her flannel mules. She’d bring Kat back to bed herself and bother no one else.