The Twylight Tower (17 page)

“Then Felicia Dove said something about my drinking?” Harry asked, startling her back to reality.

“No, cousin. You have a guilty conscience about your drinking, and, I hope, for naught else.”

“You don’t imply that I would want to harm Luke or, Your Gracious Majesty, ever harm you, no matter what rumors say?” he whispered, leaning toward her avidly, his bloodshot eyes wide.

“Harry, my various cousins or other kin scattered here and there may want my throne—Katherine Grey, indeed, not to mention Mary, Queen of Scots. Then too, my cousin Margaret Douglas and her Scottish husband, the Earl of Lennox, fancy that either she or their son, Lord Darnley, deserves my throne more than I. They hate me and are always intriguing, even if they do know enough to stay in their northern castle
these days. But you—I know you have been true to me.”

“And will be,” he declared, rising only to fall upon his knees nearly on her skirt hems. “I have never said—as have Katherine Grey, Mary Stuart, or Margaret Douglas—that I had any claim on your throne. My sire was Will Carey, not your royal father, so, unlike them I have no links by blood to—”

“Get off the floor,” she said wearily, putting out a hand as if to pull him to his feet. “You leap too far afield. I believe you would never harm or wish me ill. But this—this mischance today must be examined since it is the second fall and the first was fatal. And because this time I was tied to the disaster too—literally. And I thought some were simply set on ruining my reputation because of my friendship with Robert.”

Harry rose stolidly. “You will assemble the Privy Plot counselors?” he asked, all too obviously avoiding her mention of Robert Dudley. “But I heard Cecil’s hied himself back to London.”

“Is that where he is?” she said, getting to her feet also. “Then best he stay because I am vexed by his rantings about the way I have conducted myself this summer, scoldings as if he were my brutish father!”

Her last words echoed in the room, though she had not meant to shout and certainly not that. If the walls could hear, they indeed got an earful that time. She reached out to pat her cousin’s shoulder.

“Return to Luke’s bedside, Harry, and send word if his condition changes. I will visit him myself this
evening after I privily assemble those who are both my helpers and, in some cases, the first people I must question.”

“I was the first you questioned,” he corrected her. “But I swear that each time I ducked behind the scaffolding to make an exit or await my entrance for my paltry lines, I saw naught amiss. Others darted in and out too.”

“Yes, I included. If someone somehow tripped Luke up or cut that rope to harm me, we can narrow it down to far too many, but I must start somewhere. Actually, I do wish Cecil were here, as bitter as he’s been, or that I could call in Robin’s help. Without Cecil, I shall needs rely on Lord Robert Dudley’s advice even more,” she declared, talking more to herself than him, “but mayhap not in these privy investigations.”

Harry murmured something, bowed, and left the room, though she stood lost in agonizings again.
Chi Ama Crede,
Robert had written for Felicia to sing.
She who loves trusts.
Surely she could trust Robin, trust him with her very life.

“IT HAS BEEN FAR MORE THAN A YEAR,” ELIZABETH SAID
to call the meeting to order, “since we have met thusly to solve a crime. At least,” she added, staring down Kat, Ned, Jenks, Meg, and Gil in turn, “since we all met officially rather than gathering in some fleabitten horse stall.”

Jenks and Ned, the queen noted, shifted uneasily. Kat dared not look her in the eye, but Meg shot back a
sullen stare. Perhaps the girl was still fuming from their not being summoned to probe Geoffrey’s death. Then too, she still looked peaked. As for the queen’s little monkey of an artist, Gil Sharpe, the boy instantly produced the sketch she’d ordered when she looked his way.

Elizabeth studied it as Ned asked, “Are we still to be on first-name terms when we work together like this?”

Elizabeth frowned at the intricate sketch of Dr. Dee’s rope rigging and winch. “You may call me Bess and the others’ first names will do. Will and Harry are elsewhere, of course, and I would like to supplement our crew here with a few others to replace them, but—”

“Lord Robert?” Jenks asked. Ordinarily Elizabeth might have rounded on someone who assumed such, but Jenks was ever loyal to whomever he served, and she admired that.

“Yes, especially since William Cecil—Will—has flown the coop,” she muttered. “But for now, we stay with those of us who are adept at this, with Gil our only new addition, for he has helped us before. I have asked him to draw the wire and ropes for the masque, and Dr. Dee has made certain not only that this was the proper arrangement, but that the rigging, even after Luke Morgan fell, had not been tampered with. Someone or something must have tripped or shoved the man off the walkway, for nothing else went awry but a rather cleanly broken—or cut—master rope.”

Everyone began buzzing, talking at once. Names flew by, whispered, hissed.

“Quiet!” the queen ordered. “I know full well who could have been back there to place something on the walkway to distract Luke, to trip up or even push him. I have reckoned out that at the very time he fell, Kat and Harry stood behind me onstage and Lord Robert had just exited. But Katherine Grey had made an earlier exit, so was unaccounted for. I shall question her soon, I assure you. But meanwhile, that leaves the three of you and Felicia to give your explanations.”

“Are we here,” Ned said, leaning back and crossing his arms almost insolently over his chest, “to help you solve this crime or be questioned for it?”

“To help, of course, but sometimes that entails answering questions—as witnesses, not suspects. Now, let me take Will’s approach to things, though he is not with us.…”

Her voice trailed off. She was furious with Cecil for his protest and unauthorized departure, but she missed him too—at least she missed his rational approach in this upheaval of emotion, his loyalty to her in the past, though that had gone atumble to the winds somehow.

“You do intend to probe for motives?” Ned asked, making her realize she had been silent for a while, “As Will says,
sui bono
?”

“Precisely,” she said, recovering her control and turning to look at Jenks first, since Ned seemed suddenly so assertive. “Jenks, you had words with Luke about his being the one given the responsibility of working those ropes instead of yourself.”

“Yes, but I’d hardly climb up there and throw him
down for that,” Jenks protested, and shook his head so hard that his thick hair, straight-cut across his wide forehead, bounced.

Throw him down?
Elizabeth thought. She had not pictured that scenario, though few but Jenks could have bested Luke that way. Would Luke’s strength imply the culprit must be a man? That turn of phrase,
throw him down,
did not mean, she reasoned, that Jenks was giving something away. That his strength and temperament would mean a physical struggle was the only way her seldom astute Jenks could imagine it.

“At the time he fell I was standing on the other side of the scenery,” Jenks continued, “though I’m not sure who saw me there. Besides, my argument with Luke doing your ropes was that I’m the one been keeping you safe for years. So if I’d knocked him down and you got hurt … I would die before I’d see you hurt, Your—Bess.”

“Thank you, Jenks. I owe you a great deal and have always trusted you,” she said, her voice nearly breaking. It was true. Why was she questioning this man? He and Kat had been closer than kin for years.

“Ned, just to clear the decks here,” she pursued, turning in the chair to face him, “you had naught against Luke Morgan, did you?”

“Nary a thing,” he declared, looking steadily at her. “It’s Jenks and Lord Robert jumped down his throat when Luke merely touched you the other day.”

Robin? Well, yes, and he had made a slightly earlier exit behind her, but it had been in the other direction,
away from where Luke waited to hoist and swing her. But surely Robin would not get in Luke’s way on that scaffold, especially not if he thought she could be injured. And yet the other evening he’d told her of a dream he’d had where he rescued her when she fell from an apple tree in a garden and all the apples thudded down around them, crimson and shiny and juicy as her lips. But if he’d knocked Luke off his perch to give himself an opportunity to grandiosely save his queen, he’d done a wretched job of it.

Realizing she was blushing, she rose from the table and strode to the withdrawing room window. “Meg,” she said, “there is no bad blood between you and Luke Morgan?”

The queen turned back. Perhaps the girl should be put to bed. She did look a bit greenish about the gills.

“Hardly. I didn’t even know the man,” Meg said, sounding uncharacteristically snappish.

“Luke’s good-looking,” Ned put in, “and a bit forward, a rank and position climber, I warrant too. He didn’t say something or—”

“Something like what?” Meg cried, smacking her hands on the table. “If you mean flirting with the female servant staff, you ought to know, Ned Topside! If Luke Morgan was a climber at court, it’s not going to be on the skirts of the strewing herb mistress, that’s sure. No, I hardly spoke to the man, and anyone who says different better get Dr. Dee to lend him that glass cylinder of his so he can see better. Forgive me, Your Grace, but I’m going to be sick,” she muttered, and lurched for the door.

Frowning, Elizabeth let her go, but as Kat started after her, she added, “Kat, see that she’s all right, but then we need to discuss Geoffrey’s demise too.”

Meg ran back in, right around Kat, her hand over her mouth so they could hardly catch her garbled words. “Lord Harry sends word to come quick, Your Grace. Luke can’t talk, but his eyes are open.”

THE QUEEN CONSULTED WITH HER PHYSICIANS, COMFORTED
Harry before he went off to send a message to his wife, then emptied the small room to be alone with Luke. For the time being, the patient could not do much but blink and breathe, Dr. Spencer had told her. It would, Elizabeth thought, have to be enough for what she intended.

“Poor man,” she said, standing by the side of his makeshift bed so he could see her as she leaned slightly over him. The doctors had put his head in a carved-out block of wood to keep his neck stable, and he could only look straight up. “I am sorely grieved for your condition and pray you will recover. I will do all I can to see you are well cared for. Luke, do you recall anything of your fall from the high walkway? I know you cannot answer, but can you blink once for yes and two for—ah, that’s it. Good man,” she said, and her eyes filled with tears at his single, deliberate blink. “You see, Luke, I intend to find who harmed you and make them pay.”

His appearance frightened her. His once ruddy skin had gone waxen white, and his usually expressive eyes
seemed flat and dull. He was too exhausted—or worse—to manage facial expressions, and the doctors had said his capacity for speech was temporarily gone too, and they knew not if it would return. Still, it seemed to her he frowned. Perhaps he blamed her for everything.

“Luke, I hope you can help me with this. Do you think you can?”

One blink. His mind was intact, and he was willing. Yet those eyelids drooped.

“First of all, I know you are exhausted just now, and I will not overtire you but to ask what I can do for you. Lord Hunsdon will return to your side soon, but would you like the doctors to return?”

Two blinks.

“Are you quite warm enough?”

A surprised look—a slight widening of the eyes, then one blink. She knew that the doctors had siphoned some wine down his throat with a poppy potion to make him sleep. She would let him rest an hour or so, carefully guarded, then come back.

She put her hand on his big shoulder, so limp now, all of him, but she had no notion if he could feel her touch or not. The queens and kings of England held traditional curing ceremonies for a disease called scrofula—the curing of the king’s evil, some still called it. She wished desperately that, like the Lord Jesus’ touch, hers could heal this man.

“Sleep, Luke, sleep,” she whispered, and left his side. She was pleased to see Robin waiting down the corridor to escort her upstairs.

“I know this grieves you, my queen,” he said as she laid her hand properly on his arm, “so let me comfort you. Meet me in the Round Tower tonight as you had hinted you would.”

“As I had said I might,” she corrected him. “But tonight, with this great sadness, I can hardly …”

“Not for our own pleasure, but to talk everything out,” he coaxed, his voice so strong and yet so gentle.

“To talk out something about Luke’s fall?” she asked.

“I know naught of that, as I stood far across the stage near Felicia’s playing post. Now that Cecil’s turned tail and run off, I want to advise you about replacing him.”

“I will think on it,” she said, but she was only thinking how much she needed Robin’s strong arms around her. She almost told him so, but Felicia sat on a bench outside the royal apartments, cradling Geoffrey’s lute to her as if it were made of solid gold.

“Felicia,” she said, and the lass jumped up and hurried to them. “Lord Hunsdon is sitting with the injured man downstairs, so go down and play them both something soothing—nothing sad and nothing lively.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” Felicia said with a quick curtsy to her and then one to Robin, before she evidently realized she need not show him that courtesy in the queen’s presence and stopped in mid-bob.

“And though you were playing from too far across the backstage setting to see what went on,” the queen told her lutenist, “I still would speak with you later about everyone else’s entrances and exits.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“And, Felicia, I heard those sour notes of protest that I used the trumpets for my masque music instead of your lute. Considering all the changes in your life in the short time you have been at court, best learn to be both obedient and grateful without sour notes.”

“Yes, Your Majesty,” the girl repeated as if she were some sort of pet parrot. Elizabeth glared at her as she hurried off.