The Thorne Maze (26 page)

“Of course, we can house the Countess of Lennox inside and let the men and most servants stay outside.”

“I regret to allow even this much gaiety in plague times,” she admitted as he rowed them through the mouth of the maze, “but it must be done.” She noted her two guards had climbed in separate boats, but stayed far back as she had asked.

“Cecil, I believe our murderer—that God-forsaken strangler, brick basher, and poisoner, if that’s how Bettina died—will be unable to resist the challenge of this maze.”

“Surely not with you in it as bait, Your Grace!”

“With you, I think, my lord.”

He stopped rowing, going momentarily still as a statue, his eyes wide. The prow of their little boat bumped a barrel; they nearly grazed the prickled leaf walls.

“Better me than you, Your Grace,” he said, recovering his aplomb and pushing them away from the hedges with an oar. “And I have a feeling, the ‘ghost’ will not risk everything unless there is a grand prize.”

“We must not spring our trap until our guests have had a chance to see and study the grounds and the maze. We must allow them to walk and row to their heart’s content. Perhaps, by keen observation, how much time each person spends doing so will tip us off early concerning whom to watch later.”

“Then you do intend to have certain people followed or guarded?”

“Only if it is possible without showing our hand. Our ghost must feel confident in this strange maze, and I warrant the idea of drowning his or her next victim will be an enticement, too.”

“Drowning? And by the next victim, you mean me.”

“We shall safeguard you at all costs. But variety is the spice of life—or death—that’s what our murderer believes,” she argued. “Perhaps there is no motive beyond the mere challenge of it, but I believe something deep and dreadful must be driving the ghost, and we have not yet found the key.”

“No wonder you lie awake at night. You have it all reasoned out.”

“I wish I did. But are you willing to be our bait, if we can think of a way to set it all up?”

“Let the blackguard come on!”

“Then we shall move ahead. I had intended to cross-question Jamie Hatton and Darnley again, perhaps Chris too at Hatfield, but I believe we shall just summon them here tomorrow. So you must send someone posthaste for pavilions from St. Alban’s, those I recall from their summer fair.”

“You believe it’s Darnley, do you not, Your Grace?” he asked suddenly, almost hopefully.

“He’s at the top of the list,” she admitted as they rowed around another bend. The hedges were indeed thorny, and she gathered her skirts to keep them from being snagged. She peered down into the water to note the weighted barrels from which the thick bushes grew. They were spaced about three feet apart and filled with stone ballast above the soil. The swell of rainwater had raised the surface level to lap at the tops of the barrels. But with a swish of oar, water would splash in and rock the hedges as if they were an upside-down reflection of the disturbed water. By the height of the barrels here, she judged the depth to be about four feet, near that of the pond at Hatfield where she and Meg had ventured out. But she’d tell Cecil that part later.

“These hedge paths wind ever tighter with several false turns,” Cecil said as he rowed farther in. “There is no goal per se, but only a wider opening in the very heart of it.”

“This must be an eerie place at night.”

“At night? Surely, you are not thinking—”

“Lit by a single lantern from your boat in the goal, waiting for our prey, who believes you are his prey. Our ghost will hardly come out here in sunlight or a blaze of torches. Which reminds me, my lord, you keep shifting the subject and have not yet answered my question about the ghost of the manor. Tell me all you know of him.”

“Of her.”

“Indeed? A woman ghost? I shall not take that as an omen.”

“A unique ghost, the former owner told me. It—or she— drips water on the floor and leaves her bare footsteps and the marks of her sopping petticoat hems dragged through it.”

“A female ghost bold enough to swim is one after my own heart,” Elizabeth boasted, though gooseflesh prickled her arms.

“It’s said,” Cecil admitted, grudgingly, she could tell, “that it’s the ghost of a woman who drowned in this very maze.”

Chapter the Sixteenth

THE PAIN WAS NEARLY UNBEARABLE. EACH JOLT OF THE horse’s hooves on the road ripped through Jenks, but he fought blessed oblivion. He had to stay awake to guide the horse. He had to get to Hatfield, but not too close, call to someone to fetch help, to tell Her Grace from a distance what he’d learned in London … before he died … because he was sure he would, from pain if not plague. He tried to picture Elizabeth Tudor and Meg Milligrew standing together at his grave, looking so alike, both mourning his loss.

He’d managed to walk to Whitehall Palace; his appearance had shocked the two grooms left behind to care for the injured horses. At first light, he’d taken a mount which was healing from deep cuts, a young stallion he recalled Lord Darnley had abused at Hampton Court, which must have been sent to Whitehall. Its limp had long healed, and he’d ridden it as hard as he’d dared today.

Now he turned the nervous horse off the road as he approached Hatfield. He cut through the fringe of forest until he could see the house. Though he slowed the big beast to a walk, he flushed both deer and woodcock. Hanging on its neck, he prayed he didn’t faint and fall off or a hunt party might discover only his bones someday. He could barely hold on to this horse or his own pain one moment more … .

He woke on the ground with the horse standing nearby, cropping grass. The slant of the sun showed it was early afternoon. The trees above him spun and whirled. And then he heard what he knew could save him, if he wasn’t just dreaming again.

“Don’t you rogues bring those sheep anywhere near my knot garden. If they eat these yew hedges, they’ll be dead in a trice! Keep them on the larger lawn, or I’ll run them off myself!”

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 slipped 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.”