THE POYSON GARDEN
        An Elizabethan Mystery

            by KAREN HARPER

Published by: Delacorte Press, New  York, New York.

  Copyright 1999 by Karen Harper
 
       BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

  Fans of bestselling authors Anne Perry and Ellis Peters are sure to love Karen Harper's new historical mystery series, rich with period detail and featuring Elizabeth Tudor, the future queen of England, as its heroine.
  Living in exile in the English countryside, the twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth awaits her fate during the waning years of her ill and childless half sister's reign. Despite an occasional truce, there has always been bad blood between Queen Mary and the princess since Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, replaced Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in the heart of King Henry VIII. Elizabeth has already survived imprisonment in the Tower of London after a rebellion is raised in her name, and now the half sisters live in an uneasy d@etente that is threatened by the arrival of a murderer who moves too easily through the secret society of Queen Mary's court.
  Little does Elizabeth know that in the autumn of 1558, she will be called upon to explore not only England's rural heartland, but also her own heart. At great risk to her person and her nation's future, she plunges herself into an investigation of a multiple murder, where she might very well become a master poisoner's next victim.

  Karen Harper is the author of several suspense, romance, and historical novels. A former English teacher, she divides her time between Columbus, Ohio, and Naples, Florida.

         EARLY PRAISE FOR
          The Poyson Garden:

  "A walk side by side with one of history's most dynamic characters."
    --Anne Perry, author of Breach of Promise

  "Like the very best historical mysteries, it is driven by the events and attitudes of its time period. The Poyson Garden serves up a sumptuous Elizabethan feast, from first course to last, with satisfying side dishes of intrigue,
 
treachery, and treason. ... A deafening round of applause is due chef Harper."
    --Miriam Grace Monfredo, author of the Seneca Falls Historical
    Mysteries

      SPECIAL SYMBOLS USED
           IN THIS VOLUME

@ (4) Accent sign. Placed immediately before the print letter marked with an accent.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

         For those who helped to make the Elizabethan Festivals
        at Whetstone High School
          so real and so rewarding: Don Harper
            Linda Thompson
             Anne Barry
        and our Brit Lit students
 
         THE POYSON GARDEN

             The Prologue

  "The Queen wishes to see you alone in her privy chamber, my lady."
  So kindly, simply spoken, the twenty-year-old Princess Elizabeth thought, but not so kind or simple in fact. They always called her lady, not princess or even Your Grace, these swarming courtiers of the new queen, her half sister Mary Tudor.
  Yet Elizabeth kept a set smile on her face as she sat across a small inlaid table for an afternoon repast with Her Majesty. The sweetmeats and tarts looked delicious, but under her stiff stomacher, Elizabeth's belly cramped with foreboding. She had always danced on sword points at court, but only in her sister's newborn reign did she fear she could stumble and impale herself.
  "A beautiful day," the pale thirty-seven-year-old monarch said with a sigh and a sideways glance out the window. Set slightly ajar, the casement caught crisp October air blowing up from the Thames across the gardens and greens to Whitehall Palace. "And here I've done naught but read and sign bills, grants, and warrants today--when I was not hearing holy Mass, of course."
  "Your Grace works far too hard," Elizabeth assured her, gripping her hands together in the pale blue silk folds of her gown. "Would you not have time for a walk in the knot garden or a ride in St. James's Park?"
  "Dios sabe, duty calls," Mary intoned in her masculine voice that always surprised people when they first met her. She reached for her goblet of claret and cradled it in her beringed hands a moment before putting it back down with a thump. "I'll not have them say behind my back that a woman cannot rule."
  "Remember our father king said once, Your Majesty, that like lunatics, we women are so governed by the phases of the moon we could never command his realm?"
  "We?" Mary challenged with an audible gulp. "You, sister, will never bear these royal burdens, for I shall have a son and heir--as our father also said!"
 
  "God grant it, Your Grace, and I am ever grateful for your continued kindnesses to me."
  Despite the queen's slow nod, Elizabeth's heart began to thud like horses' hooves. She fought down panic at her latest faux pas. Even an imagined affront could set the queen off. At least she was used to Mary's nearsighted squint always making one think she was frowning. Now those pewter eyes skewered her to her chair as the queen waited for her younger sister's next move.
  But Elizabeth's one true--if necessarily covert--adviser at court, the young secretary Master William Cecil, had always said, When in doubt, do or say nothing. So with a pleasant countenance she sat stock still. In the aching silence Mary leaned forward to select a berry tart. With her other small, blunt hand, so different from Elizabeth's tapered, elegant ones, the queen clutched the heavy gold crucifix that swayed from an ornate neck chain. To stall further, Elizabeth took a tart that appeared to match Mary's. It oozed rich, red juice.
  "So," Mary murmured with a heavy sigh, "these weeks since I was crowned you publicly declare you support me but will not even hear the Mass with me in private."
  Elizabeth stayed the tart halfway to her lips. There they loomed again, those upturned sword points to tread upon as if she were some spike-walker from distant Araby.
  "Your Majesty, you yourself said one must hearken to one's own conscience, so I only follow your lead to--"
  "But my conscience is obedient to the true faith." She dropped her uneaten tart back on the table and seized her goblet again. "Eat, eat, sister," she ordered with a dismissive gesture. "Do not look as if I would devour you. We shall be more than family; we shall be allies forever in the holy church and in our daily--"
  The tart tasted bitter in Elizabeth's mouth. And she bit on a cherry pit. She tried to chew and swallow but gagged and spit out the mouthful into her lavender-scented handkerchief. The smell of that made her explode in a messy sneeze.
  "Bitter," she muttered, sniffling. "And within, a hard stone I cannot--"
  She jumped as Mary's arm swept across the
 
table to clatter goblets and dishes together. Tarts rolled and broke; the ewer tipped, spewing crimson wine, splattering Elizabeth's gown.
  "Diversion and disobedience masked with pretty smiles, that has always been your game," the queen thundered, "for it is in your blood!"
  "I--forgive me, Your Majesty, but the tart just tasted--"
  "Poison? Is that what you would dare to say?" she shrilled, rising. Elizabeth leapt to her feet too. "Despite my good graces to you," the queen went on, "is that what you will accuse me of next?" She paced to the window so the afternoon light slanted in to gild her stocky form but obscure her features.
  "No, of course, not, and--"
  "In her own privy chamber the Catholic queen tries to poison her Protestant half sister, Elizabeth of England, beloved of the people. Is that what you and your tricky supporters will say next?"
  "I have no supporters of my own, but all yours in loyalty."
  "I'll hear no more lies. It would be justice indeed if someone did poison you, but not I--never I." As she paced, her skirts swished and her crucifix scraped her jewel-encrusted bodice. "I want only the best for you and your eternal soul, sister."
  "But I spoke not of poison," Elizabeth whispered, yet her mind raced. She had swallowed nothing, but she still felt she choked down the sour taste of the tart. Surely it was more than that some pastry cook had simply left out the sweetening. With the back of her hand, she wiped her lips. "I never intended--"
  "You do know that woman poisoned my sainted mother," the queen said. She came closer. With both hands Elizabeth held hard to the tall back of a carved oak chair. "At Kimbolton Castle, where she died. It's true: poison."
  Elizabeth knew that woman always referred to her own mother, Anne Boleyn, who had supplanted Mary's in the king's affections years ago. "No," Elizabeth protested quietly, "that cannot be true, since your mother was ill then, so she simply--"
  "I tell you it is God's truth, and you'll not gainsay me on it. Queen Catherine wrote
 
of it to me, and years later I had it straight from her loyal Lady de Salinas, who was with her to the end. That woman bewitched our father to send his Catherine into exile, and your mother--the whore Boleyn--had her poisoned there. The queen wrote me she was sore afraid. Her few ladies were reduced to cooking their meat over the fire in her bedchamber to guard against poison, but still that witch--"
  "That is a lie!" Elizabeth screamed, then, wide-eyed, clapped her hands over her mouth. Despite knowing she should hold her tongue or just withdraw, her fists shot to her waist. She shook her red head so hard her headdress rattled its pearls. "No, Your Grace, it cannot be," she said in more measured tones. "I cannot warrant that--"
  "Get out--out! I cannot bear to have you here. I thought we could be sisters, allies, friends. But there is too much bad blood between us, and not of my making." She had come so close, Elizabeth could now see her own reflection in the haunted eyes.
  Elizabeth's survival instincts rose to the fore. She bridled her temper, dipped a curtsy, and bent her head. "Whatever passed between our long-departed mothers, my queen, I love and honor Your Gracious Majesty. I am your loyal subject, and this talk of poison is painful to me, for God knows, I am innocent of any--"
  "No one, especially you, is innocent," Mary said, hissing the last word. "Like your dam, you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity. Go back to your country house and keep clear of plottings against your God-given queen!"
  When Elizabeth left the chamber, she was so distraught she ignored the veiled woman who stepped swiftly back into the shadows.
 
            Chapter The First

                  Five years later--

  The two riders urged their mounts faster through the deepening gold and scarlet forest on the road to rural Wivenhoe. In the brisk autumn wind their black capes flapped about them like raven's wings.
  "So long gone, but I see you've not forgotten the way, milord," Will Benton, Henry Carey's man, called to him over the steady tattoo of their horses' hooves. In the chill afternoon air both men's breaths made small clouds that darted quickly behind them.
  "These five years Bloody Mary's held the throne seemed eternity, Will, and we're not well out of it yet. But I'd never forget the way home to my lady mother. I just pray we are not too late, since she's sore ailing. It takes letters damnably long to find me and Catherine hidden away like scared rabbits in Switzerland."
  "Not scared, not you, milord. Just careful and waiting for a better turn of the times. If'n your cousin the Princess Elizabeth mounts the throne, then we'll see English sunlight again, all of us, eh?"
  Henry did not answer. It was no doubt unhealthy to shout her name even out here where no one could hear. He tried to summon up her form and face, but his younger cousin seemed a red-gold-haired, haloed vision to him. He recalled her toddling about in leading strings--three years old she was when her mother, Anne, his aunt, was beheaded--but he had seldom seen the woman grown. As children they had spent fleeting moments together when their common cousin Catherine Howard was queen. Later, Boleyn kin as they were, he was forced to stand afar off while Elizabeth passed in the London coronation procession of her half brother, the boy king, Edward.
  Henry shook his head and shifted farther forward in his saddle. Now Bloody Mary had declared herself pregnant. Finally, thank God, the royal physicians had declared her full only of a festering belly tumor.
  "And vile venom," Henry muttered. "What's 'at, milord?"
  "Let's just ride, my man. Food and a fire await us just beyond this last stretch of forest."

  The four men hunkered down behind massive oaks and sycamores that lined the road to Wivenhoe. Thickets as well as tree trunks would hide them until their prey rode into the snare. The bend in the way here should slow even fast-ridden horses.
  The leader pointed to move one of them farther back and put his finger to his lips. That kept the two across the road from stomping their feet to keep warm in the ankle-deep pile of dry leaves at their feet. Saints be praised, he thought, for at least the woods still held most of its bounty to shield them from the man she had promised would come ahorse this afternoon.
  When he heard distant hoofbeats--not more than one or two men were in the party--he gave the first signal. His men fitted their arrows into their strung bows and, aligning their sights, lifted and steadied them. The arrows were perfectly fletched, the tips sharp and well-anointed with the thick paste she had made from hellebore and something else she said could kill wolves and foxes. Be careful if you have a cut, she had warned, not to so much as touch the paste to your skin.
  To kill wolves and foxes: Her other words echoed in his mind as only two riders came into view, slowing their mounts for the turn, just as he had hoped. Wolves and foxes.
  "Now!" he yelled.
  Four bows spewed arrows. One rider shouted, then screeched. As the other noisily drew his sword, his horse panicked, reared, and whinnied, throwing him. Both were dressed alike and on first glance, looked alive. But it didn't matter: They had to kill them both.
  When he strung his next arrow and ran out slightly into the road, one horse had fled. One man lay writhing on the ground, three arrows in him. Hellebore worked quick all right, and that was certain. Still, he stood astride this one and, slinging his bow briefly over his shoulder, seized the arrow protruding from his stomach. The man squinted up at him, perhaps hopeful of help. With both hands he thrust the arrow deeper with all his weight. Pinned to the road, the wretch grunted, groaned, then lay stone still.
  "Is that one Lord Carey then?" his man at his elbow asked.
  "Hell and be damned if I know," he said with a shrug, stepping back to look around.
 
  His other two men came out of the woods. He saw the second horse standing not far down the road. "The other one," he cried. "Where is he?"
  "Don't see 'im," someone behind him said. "Thought we 'x 'im too."
  "Beat the bushes. A knife or sword blade will do, but these poison arrows be better."

  Shaking with shock and agony, Henry Carey huddled behind a fallen tree in a bramble thicket just off the road. He was certain he had broken his sword arm when his horse threw him. And there was blood on his hand when he touched his chest. Had one of the brigands' arrows nicked him, or had he gotten cut by his own blade when he fell and rolled?
  "A pox on you. Canna you jackanapes find him?"
  That voice didn't have the local burr, or had he been away too long? It was the first thing they had said that he could discern. He heard them come closer, thrashing through the brush and dry leaves. But with his arm useless and this cut, with his pistols in his saddlebag, he would die. His mother was dying too, but he'd never see her now this side of heaven.
  "Someone's coming on the road."
  That voice came so close he knew they'd find him. He squinted his eyes shut tight in pain, in childish hope they would not see him. He tried to picture his wife, still in Switzerland with his sister, Catherine. And in his last moment he cursed himself that, once again, he dared not--could not--just stand up and fight for what was good and right.
  "We canna be leaving this half done." But Henry heard his chance at deliverance now: more than one man's voice in some rollicking song. Or had he died and was being welcomed at the sacred gates to leave behind this regret, this fear and pain?
  "Let's fly then, and we'll be settling later with them all."
  The next cry clanged in Henry's ears like doomsday bells.
  "Down wi' the bloody Boleyns--e'en the royal one!"

  Edward Thompson, alias Ned Topside, stopped singing when he thought he heard some sort of shout just up ahead on the road. He couldn't
 
discern the words, but it was definitely not someone joining in his romping chorus of "Between your thighs your beauty lies."
  "You hear that, Uncle Wat?" he asked, turning his head to survey the new leader of their troupe. Wat Thompson had taken over when Ned's father had died of the sweat this summer. Wat rode their only horse at a plodding pace that kept up with the cart the mule pulled. When they emerged from this dense woods, Wat would ride ahead to a tavern or manor house to inquire if they wished a revel, masque, or play from The Queen's Country Players.
  Meanwhile, Randall Greene, a pompous popinjay Ned secretly called Grand Rand, rode the cart because he felt peckish today, the sot. The two boys, Rob and Lucas, who did the women's parts, walked as Ned did, their high voices echoing his deep tones.
  "Don't think that man's shout was a hurrah we're coming, sounding clear out from Colchester, not out here," his uncle said, seeming to rouse himself a bit. "Best fetch our pikes and stage swords in case we meet up with some rural louts ahead, eh, lads?"
  But Ned had already reached for one of the ax-headed pikes that protruded from the bundles of costumes and makeshift bits of scenery. He was not a tall man, but wiry and strong. Despite his shock of curly black hair and boyish-if-rugged face, he'd long yearned for the meaty roles--the Italian dukes, English kings, even villains--the ones Wat usually took himself or gave to Grand Rand. Ned wearied of his uncle making him play the fond lover or young captain just because the ladies liked the turn of his leg and the mere hint of his smile.
  But worse, he hated playing the fool, the clown, the country rustic whenever a comedy came along, however good his ear for it. And right now he was sure that voice up ahead had not been some rural lout at all. Though he could not discern the words, it had been a defiant if lilting shout.
  Gesturing for them to slow, Ned strode ahead on the bend of road and came first upon a nervous horse, well-fed and curried, lathered yet from a run. He smacked its flank to send it along the road to his companions.
  "Stay back," he warned when young Rob came first around the bend. Wide-eyed, the boy nodded and
 
seized the horse's dangling reins. "And tell them to halt the cart till I call the all-clear."
  Warily, Ned advanced, then stopped and stared. A body studded with arrows lay ahead in the middle of the road, not moving. Eyes darting both ways, Ned shuffled carefully forward. A corpse dressed well enough, with his jerkin all bloodied and his warm wool cloak splayed out under him black as night. His first instinct was to hurry everyone past, for some folks didn't trust the likes of traveling troupes and might blame them. But that would be unworthy of him and of what he promised his sire just afore he died.
  And then he heard a rustle in the bushes. Instinctively, he shouted and charged with his pike, just as he did in act the third of Victory at Agincourt.
  But in a sudden bramble brush he banged his shins and took a tumble over a tree trunk--and a second body. Gasping, Ned knelt over him. The man's pale face clenched in pain. He was bloodied, but at least for now he was among the living.

  "I am bored to death with all this waiting," the tall, red-haired woman muttered to herself as she dismounted. "To death."
  The sudden cloudburst wet Elizabeth Tudor clear through to her skin, but she turned her face up, reveling in the strength and sweep of it. No dangerous lightning or thunder with this, but it still suited her mood. And it pleased her that she managed to be out here nearly alone when the Popes had gone back with her Barbary falcon, the servants, and the remnants of the food.
  She dismounted and leaned against the strength of the great oak for what cover it could give. Gazing into the distance toward her small rural realm, she sighed. The old palace of Hatfield House where she lived in exile--watched closely by the queen's man Sir Thomas Pope and his wife Beatrice--would have to do since she could not be at court. She could yet be rotting in the Tower of London if her royal brother-in-law, Spanish King Philip, hadn't taken a fancy to her and asked Queen Mary to be kind while he was away.
  "But that is as kind as it gets, Griffin," she told her favorite horse and stroked the black
 
stallion's muzzle to quiet him. "Some of my people at least have been returned to me, and you, of course, my dear boy."
  The horse whinnied as if he understood and cherished every word. "'So blood," she whispered and patted him again. "Sweet talk to horses, that's what has become of the most marriageable virgin in the kingdom."
  "You say this place has you talking to horses now, Your Grace?" her faithful lady Blanche Parry teased as she pulled up under the tree and dismounted. Unlike her princess, Blanche huddled in her hooded wool cloak to avoid the wet.
  "At least," Elizabeth said with a smile, "I know they are to be trusted."
  They shared a little laugh that faded, drowned not by the downpour but by quick horse's hoofs. As with hearing someone running in a house, Elizabeth had learned to fear fast feet of any kind, for they had seldom boded well for her.
  But it was her groom, Stephen Jenks, whom she jestingly called her Master of the Horse in Exile. He usually stuck to her skirts like a burr, her unofficial bodyguard and one she relied on, but she thought she'd lost him in the storm somewhere.
  "Your Grace, beggin' your pardon, but you want to go back in now? You'll catch the ague out here," the young man blurted as he dismounted.
  Jenks's wit was for horses. Elizabeth was quite sure that when he talked to them they truly listened. As for people, he was good at taking orders but not usually at giving them. Still, strangely, he looked as if he'd like to command she go inside right now.
  "I'd only get wetter going back to the house," she told him and patted his slick shoulder. "And I'm in no hurry to return to the watchful eyes of Her Majesty's second-most favorite Pope."
  But she startled when Jenks pulled one side of his leather jerkin open to flash a folded letter at her, then patted it to his body again as if to preserve it from the rain and prying eyes.
  She studied his eager face. His blue eyes were alight with a message she, for once, could not read. His chestnut eyebrows lifted to touch his straight, sodden hair, cut low across his forehead. Though Blanche was one of her two trusted
 
ladies, he had cleverly blocked even her from seeing what he had.
  A secret letter for her. Pray God this did not mean a new attempt to snare her in another plot like the one that had cost her her reputation and Tom Seymour his head, or the aborted Wyatt Rebellion, which had put her in the Tower.
  "You know, Blanche, I think Jenks has a point. The rain looks to be letting up. Let's ride back."
  With his linked hands under her foot, Jenks gave her a quick boost up, then helped Blanche remount. Because of slippery grass and the warren of rabbit holes in this meadow, they went slowly toward the russet-brick Tudor palace, now gone shiny in the rain.
  Eighteen miles north of London,
Hatfield House had become her refuge, though the queen had seen to it that it was invaded by far too many spies. Yet Elizabeth loved its quadrangle overlooking the central courtyard. She admired the modest great hall, not that she ever dined or entertained there, but her parents had in their brief happy years together before the Boleyn downfall. On sunny days the solar was her favorite haunt, even for her studies, for it overlooked the fish pond and flower gardens. But today that letter loomed.
  When they dismounted in the courtyard, Jenks thrust the letter quickly into her hand. She folded it once and shoved it up her sleeve just before Thomas Pope and his lady, Beatrice, called Bea, came out to greet her. Elizabeth saw that they had both dried off though not yet changed their riding garb.
  "You mustn't go off by yourself like that when we are all out riding, my lady," Sir Thomas scolded by way of greeting. "It is our duty and honor to protect you."
  "The storm and skittish horses separated us, my lord, not I," Elizabeth told him, brushing quickly past. "I'll change these sodden garments and see you a bit later for supper."
  She could feel it now against her skin, the letter. She would read it once and burn it if it were anything to incriminate her. Didn't they realize --those most loyal to her who wanted to raise a rebellion--that only in this solitary waiting game in exile could she hope to survive?
  "Oh, no, I knew it," Kat Ashley, her childhood governess and the closest thing
 
Elizabeth had to a mother, cried when she met her at the door to her chambers. Kat's plump face framed by graying hair was its own raincloud. She threw her hands up, then smacked them on her skirts. "Oh, lovey. Look at you, soaked to the skin. Drenched hair despite the cloak and quite bedraggled."
  "Yes, Kat, I know."
  "I'll not have you catching your death of cold or anything else."
  "Do not fret, my Kat. Just build up the fire, and I'll undress before it. And lock the door," she whispered as she swept in and went directly to the hearth. "Blanche is no doubt changing, but she'll be in here fussing over what I'm to wear soon enough."
  "Just so she doesn't bring the Buzzard with her," Kat muttered. She closed and locked the door and hurried over to throw a new log on the others in the broad, open hearth, but she kept her eyes sharp on Elizabeth.
  "The Buzzard" was Kat's name for Beatrice Pope, who she said was always hovering, watching, just waiting for bones to pick. Despite the fact Elizabeth knew Bea was sent with her husband to keep an eye on her, she appreciated Bea's quick wit and even temper--and her beautiful handwork. She'd had far worse jailers, and she'd even overheard Bea sticking up for her privileges in private when the Pope had ranted on about keeping her more closely confined. Still, Kat at times seemed so put out by Bea that she looked as if she'd like to stab her with her own sewing needle.
  While Kat hurried to the clothes press for a dry linen smock, Elizabeth put a foot up on the iron fender and pulled the now-damp letter from her sleeve. Though both Kat and Jenks would know she had a missive, unless she chose to tell them, they'd know nothing else of it.
  But now she saw something caught in its tiny loop of red ribbon the sealing wax held. She recognized it instantly and sucked in a silent breath.
  A three-tiered pearl eardrop, the mate to the other the Duchess of Norfolk had given her years ago during the Twelve Days of Christmas--Catherine Howard was queen then, briefly.
  This was your mother's once, one she wore the day
 
she was arrested, the duchess had whispered, so do not wear it openly. I meant to get the other of the pair for you, but I hear someone in your mother's family has it for a keepsake. Hide it, and do not speak of it, she had insisted as she thrust the dainty thing into Elizabeth's palm and fled back into the crowd of masked, laughing courtiers.
  Now, as new flames at her feet caught and leapt, Elizabeth's eyes widened and her lower lip dropped in shock. She skimmed the letter in the delicate but shaky scrawl.
  It could not be. This eardrop with a letter from a woman long dead. The forbidden past resurrected from its tomb. And a summons she was desperate to keep but one that could mean the utter end of her.

          Chapter The Second

  Elizabeth clasped the pearl eardrop in her fist as she read the letter:

To My Dearest Niece Elizabeth,
  I know we have had no dealings these long years since the fall of the Boleyns, and that has grieved me sore. But it was, indeed, the best for you and the only way for me to survive. How many times I have longed to write you from my voluntary exile or, since I lost my beloved husband last year, to steal to you. But I know, especially now with Mary queen, that would be impossible, and I vowed once to your father I would remain silent to my grave if he would but let me live my own life away "from the heat of the sun," as he said.
  But, my beloved Elizabeth, I must break that promise now. I believe you were informed that I died here at Wivenhoe several years after your mother's death. That was a falsehood I willingly upheld to protect you and my children from my first marriage, Henry and Catherine Carey. Even now they must live abroad in exile from Bloody Mary's England. I assure you they are your loyal future subjects and friends who pray daily for your rightful succession, as I do.

  "What is that letter?" Kat's voice interrupted Elizabeth's concentration. Kat tried to peer over her shoulder, but she shrugged her off and turned slightly away. "Lovey, what? You look as if you've seen a ghost."
 
  "I have," she whispered, not looking up. "Now, let me read."
  "Not if that is from another dangerous rogue or whoreson traitor like Wyatt."
  "Leave me be, I said."

  People have claimed cruel and wretched things of your mother, my poor sister, but she loved you. She fought and died for your rightful place, so never forget that. And I, as a mother, dying now, must fight for the safety and future of my children.
  Therefore, I long to see you to explain further certain things in person. God be pleased, at my manor house at Wivenhoe, west of Colchester, Henry is healing from an attack on his person. We are not so distant from you at Hatfield, dearest niece, but so far these long years apart. Henry insists there is something he must tell you. Beware for your own safety, for he believes, even after all these times and trials, that the Boleyns of your generation, your royal self included--perhaps especially--are in grave danger.
  If you will, come not by the Marks Tey forest road, but cross the River Colne near the village. Say you are Lady Penelope Cornish of Ightham Mote in Kent come to visit. She and I have corresponded for years, but my people do not know her face.
  Loyally, with respect and love,
    Mary Boleyn, Lady Stafford

  The coffer lid banged down; Elizabeth jumped. "What is it, then," Kat demanded from across the room, "if not some silly or solemn plot?"
  "In a way, my own plot a-hatching," she declared, pressing the letter to her breasts. She lay it slowly upon the carved oak mantelpiece as if on an altar. Frowning, she freed her long hair from her flat velvet cap and snood. She let Kat drape her tresses over the front of her shoulders to begin unlacing her bodice in back. She felt frozen with fear--when in doubt, do nothing, Cecil had said--but she thought only of sweeping to action. She would have to make ready as fast as possible.
  "Not a tryst then, is it?" Kat asked, her voice even sharper. "Not after that disaster with Tom Seymour, I warrant."
 
  "I told you not to speak of that again." Elizabeth gripped the mantel, then slowly loosed it to turn toward Kat. "This hardly bodes a tryst for love--romantic love. But I must get away, and I know I can trust you to help me with this ruse."
  "Get away? Ruse?" Kat sputtered.
Hands on ample hips, she gasped for air like a beached fish. "What talk is that?" she whispered. "I would go back to that purgatory of the Tower with you, die for you, but I'll not let you go off God knows where. And how would you escape from this velvet prison the queen's got you in?"
  Elizabeth spun her back to Kat for her to finish the unlacing. Reluctantly, the skilled hands crept back to their task. "In answer to your query, I'm afraid, my Kat, I feel one of my wretched head pains coming on." She hurriedly untied her own petticoats, wriggled out of them, then jerked her damp shift over her head.
  Naked but flushed, she waved away the linen towel Kat had to dry her. She wrapped herself in her favorite old green velvet robe and thrust her feet in woolen mules. She retrieved the letter, kissed it, and pressed it to her forehead as if she could emblazon the words in her brain.
  How dare the Tudors keep her from her mother's people? It was the worst sort of treason, fragmenting a royal family. Trembling, she unfolded and read the letter again, then thrust it into the flames, where it flared to silver ash and floated up the chimney.
  "You're not acting one whit like a sick head pain coming on," Kat groused, grunting as she bent over to gather the garments. "But at least, once I tell everyone, you will have to stay here. The last time you lay abed two nights and the day between with no one allowed in footfall but me. And with the drapes all pulled tight and the bed-curtains closed and no noise or visitors, not even wanting food ..."
  "Exactly," Elizabeth declared and watched Kat slowly catch her intent. "And after my getting caught in the storm, even the Pope and Bea will take our bait whole."
  "Our bait?" Kat echoed, dropping the garments by the door for the laundress to fetch. "You'll tell me where you're off to or I'll not lift one finger," she insisted, coming back toward the
 
hearth, wagging that finger at Elizabeth as if she were her girlhood tutor again.
  With the hand not holding the eardrop, Elizabeth seized Kat's finger in her fist and bent close to her round, florid face. "Go find Jenks, because he'll have to get us the horses. Tell him four sturdy ones so we can spell the beasts, and not from the stables here, for they'd be missed. For him and me--not you. And take some coins to give him."
  Kat pulled her finger back, then grasped Elizabeth by her slender shoulders. "Your Kat Ashley will do naught of the sort, on my mother's soul, Your Grace, till--"
  "No, on my mother's soul, I will do this, and you will help me. And now," she added, shrugging off Kat's hands and lifting her chin to stare down her nose at the shorter woman.
  Kat collapsed to a long, low curtsy. It always shocked them when the gulf of privilege and power gaped between them.
  "Kat, rise," she said, helping her up. "Heed me and never speak of this to a living soul but me. This letter came from my aunt, Mary Boleyn, from what sounds like her deathbed."
  "But she's already dead. Has been these long years so--"
  "Shh! That is what they told me, my lord father and my sister, years ago. But they both hated the Boleyns then--and no doubt me, for my bad Boleyn blood, as Mary once put it. I must see my aunt, and they'd never let me, not even if I begged."
  Her usually bell-clear voice snagged. "Now, listen to me, Kat. Jenks and I will leave tonight and have but one swift day there before coming back. And tell him I need some boy's garb-- and if there are fleas or mites in it, I'll have his head."
  At her choice of words they both stared wide-eyed at each other. Kat's lip pushed out in a trembling pout; the sting of unshed tears made Elizabeth blink.
  "You're sure 'tis safe," Kat whispered, "and cannot be a trap?"
  "I have had enough of both to smell them out. Besides, see, she sent the other of the pair of my mother's earrings, the ones they said she wore when the king had her arrested, before everything ... went so wrong."
  "Aye, went so wrong," Kat echoed as she stared down into Elizabeth's trembling palm.

  "Rein in here and hold the horses," Elizabeth called to Jenks. She looked only slightly less a lad than he. They stopped abreast of an apple orchard, with the distant village of Wivenhoe barely in sight through predawn mist. "I'm going to don my gown."
  "Here?" he gasped, frowning and craning his neck to scan the area. "Thought you packed that gown for when we got there, Your Gra--I mean, milady. How you going to do it without at least a tiring-girl out here?"
  Jenks looked entirely rattled, as if battle drums or bagpipes had beat in his ears all night instead of horse's hooves. Before he could dismount to help her down, Elizabeth swung her leg over her mount's broad haunch and slid to the ground. She dug the rumpled gown out of her saddle pack, grateful that the mud puddles, which had splattered them the first twenty miles, had not dirtied it too.
  "I can't carry off being a lad once we get there," she told him, "even if the folk at Wivenhoe don't know me. I'll put the gown on here, and you can lace it."
  Ignoring the fact that he looked as if she'd ordered him to dance barefoot on hot coals, she stepped behind a cluster of trees and yanked off her jerkin, shirt, and breeks. The gown was not a good one, though she'd have loved to go in fine fettle to see her aunt and cousin after all these years. And she'd brought no petticoats, so it was going to hang as if she were some rustic milkmaid.
  "'So blood!" she cursed in the voluminous folds as her cap came off and a hairpin snagged something. She yanked harder and could breathe again. She shook the gown's warmth about her legs. The weight of the cloth would have to smooth the wrinkles, that and the patches of fog out here. She pulled the pins from her snarled hair and flung it back loose over her shoulders. Since she'd forgotten a proper hat, the hood on her cloak would have to do.
  "Here, lace me," she told the now dismounted Jenks as she held up her skirts and strode to him. She shoved the boy's garb in her saddle pack, then spun away and lifted her hair so he could get at the back laces. "Pretend you're cinching saddle straps or some such," she prodded when he didn't move.
  She could tell her bold lad's hands were shaking
 
at the task, when little scared him. Still, her mind raced ahead, then back to Hatfield, where she had sneaked out at night like some love-struck swain gone courting. But so much more than a lovers' assignation was at stake. She offered up a swift prayer that her Kat could hold off the Popes and that all would go well here.
  "Done, but don't know if it's right, your-- milady, I mean."
  "Lady Penelope Cornish of Ightham
Mote in Kent, and don't forget it. Come on now, boost me up and don't be chatting overmuch with Lady Stafford's sta2oys or scullery maids."
  "I know," he said as they urged their tired horses to a trot again. "But Mistress Ashley made me swear I'd go in first to see if'n it's a trap."
  Her first sight of the modest manor house awed Elizabeth more than the vast grandeur of a castle or opulent palace ever had. She stared, wondering if it had been enough for Mary Boleyn to live here with a commoner she loved, one she had chosen herself though it angered her king and family. As if in answer to her unspoken question, pale dawn gilded the gables in pure gold. Autumn frost pearled the gray thatched roof. Silver smoke curled from brick chimneys, and the mullioned windows blinked like brilliant gems. Yes, this place and life had been their riches, and she ached with deep envy for something she would never know.
  Her stomach began to knot itself like a noose. She settled deeper into her dirty brown traveling cloak and hood and stayed back as Jenks rode into the center courtyard, pulling the two extra horses behind him. She heard him call out, "What, ho!" then other voices. Squinting up at the diamond-shaped windowpanes for a welcoming face, she shifted in her saddle. She knew she would be sore from riding astride, but it was worth the pain, the risk--at least she prayed so.
  Jenks appeared on foot and windmilled his arm. "The Lady Stafford left orders for the Lady Cornish to go direct in to see her," he called as she rode forward. A man and woman, stout and simply dressed, stared up at her in the cobbled central courtyard, curiosity easy to read on their open faces, so different from those at
 
court or even Hatfield.
  Jenks helped her down. "Welcome, my
Lady Cornish," the man said, as the woman managed a half curtsy so awkward
Elizabeth instantly knew how it had been for her aunt these years of willing exile. Queen Anne Boleyn's sister Mary had never brought ceremony here and had been much the better for it.
  The two servants introduced themselves as Piers and Glenda, the household steward and his wife. As she entered, Elizabeth saw that the great hall lay dim and silent but for the low crackle of fire on the hearth. Jenks walked a step behind her, rotating his flat cap in one hand, his other still resting warily on the hilt of his sword.
  Along the upstairs gallery that overlooked this large room, a chamber door banged open. From above a flicker of firelight threw a long shadow of a figure on the high-beamed ceiling. A woman clothed in a white shift or night rail with long silver hair ran forward to clutch the banister and lean toward them, wavering like a specter who would take flight.
  "Is it you?" the woman cried. "Bless God, is it you?"
  Glenda started up the stairs. "My lady, you're not to be up. I'll skin that girl Meg for leaving you alone and ailing. This here's the Lady Cornish, come like you hoped she would--"
  But Elizabeth was quicker than Glenda up the stairs, around the turn of the landing. Her skirts dragged, but she lifted them and almost sprinted. Unladylike, unroyal to run, but she had never dared to dream of this reunion.
  Mary Boleyn's face was gaunt and haunted, white skin stretched over fine bones, eyes once deep blue, now washed almost colorless by tears and pain. Mary pressed one hand to her belly and breathed through her mouth. How could it be that this once blond beauty could look so faded and frail--and old? Elizabeth had always pictured her young, laughing like those muted memories of her own mother, but Mary Boleyn must be in her middle fifties now.
  Yet Elizabeth saw in a closer glance that her inner spirit flamed. Mary held up a trembling hand to halt her woman's approach and said, "My friend, Lady Cornish, will help me back to my bed. Please fetch her a hearty breakfast--now." She looked as if she would be
 
ill, but she only dry-heaved once, pressing her palm to her mouth. She leaned for strength with one hand on the banister. Glenda turned and plodded back down the stairs, mumbling.
  "Dear aunt," Elizabeth whispered, "let me help you." She put one arm around the woman and her other under her elbow. How skeletal she was under the linen night rail.
  "I will be fine now," she insisted through lips thinned with pain. "Everything will be fine now." They shuffled into the bedchamber, and Elizabeth closed the door behind them. Though she leaned her aunt against the bed, the moment she let go to reach for the mounting stool, Mary Boleyn slid back to her knees on the woolen rug.
  "Not the strength to curtsy anymore, can't manage it," she murmured as Elizabeth knelt beside her, then lifted her again. "Besides, there has been no one else for years, no one who truly deserved my curtsy after he killed my --our--family."
  "Don't talk now," Elizabeth insisted. "No one here must curtsy to anyone. Save your strength so we may talk."
  Suddenly, huge tears began to pour down the woman's wan face. Elizabeth, trained by duty not to cry but when alone, held her aunt to her, blinking back tears.
  "Oh, my dearest," Mary Boleyn said in a rush, as if Elizabeth would disappear if she were silent, "you have your mother's slimness, her dark, snapping eyes, and long, elegant hands too. His red-gold coloring, of course, but not his ruddy face. A porcelain complexion, just like hers," she went on, leaning back to study Elizabeth. "You are Boleyn as much as Tudor, and you must never forget it, no matter what threatens."
  As she spoke, the door swept open. A russet-haired man with broad shoulders filled it, stepped in, then closed it quickly. "Mother, Glenda says you got up and almost fell, so I'm glad Meg's finally back out of her own sickbed to help--" he began before his eyes focused on Elizabeth.
  He squinted at her before his frown relaxed in surprise, as if he hadn't known Mary had sent for her or had not fathomed she would come. Because he wore a white shirt, it was only when he stepped slowly closer that she realized his right arm
 
and upper chest were bound in bandages and he wore a sling.
  "Princess Elizabeth," Mary said, her weak voice gaining power in obvious pride, "may I present your cousin and devoted subject, Henry Carey." She leaned against the bed, clinging to the heavy carved post so that Elizabeth did not have to hold her up. "His sister, my Catherine, is still in Switzerland with Henry's wife and their children. But Henry came home to see me before ... before--"
  "Before I could miss her more than I already did," he finished gallantly. He was broad-faced, with wide-set eyes and a prominent nose much like her own, Elizabeth thought, a handsome man with a trimmed auburn beard, though he looked older than his thirty-some years. She could not place him as the lad she had met fleetingly years before. He was of middling stature, but his manly bearing made him seem tall. Indeed, she did resemble him, even more than she had her half brother. She liked him instantly.
  "Cousin Henry," she said, extending her hand, "it gives me great joy and comfort to meet you, even --and especially--in these tenuous circumstances and times."
  "Your servant and liege man always, Your Grace," he whispered. He went down on one knee before her. Inclining his head, he lifted the hem of her soiled cloak and kissed it, then the backs of her fingers before, still kneeling, he raised his face. She clasped his shoulders lightly to raise him, and they exchanged proper kisses on each cheek. She saw the outer corners of his eyes crinkled and his hopeful expression turned up a bit on one side of his broad mouth. Tremulously, she smiled into his eyes, brown ones shadowed by lurking sadness or grief.
  Together, they helped Mary Boleyn back into her big bed, for she seemed to have instantly fallen asleep right where she leaned. Henry indicated they should walk out. They huddled in the hall by the bedchamber door, he now suddenly silent, she looking to him for further explanation.
  "My eyes," he said, when she stared a bit overlong, "are glad of your sweet face. When I see you here so strong and sure, I know we can face and solve this murder plot together."
  "Murder plot?" she gasped. "Whose murder? You mean the attack your mother mentioned was attempted
 
murder? Tell me."
  "I will," he vowed, lifting a finger to his lips. "Let's go outside where none may overhear."
  But it was her own inner voice now screaming the question in her ear that terrified her most: This is my murdered mother's family, and now are they--we --in grave danger of murder once again?

           Chapter The Third

  "Tell me everything," Elizabeth demanded as they walked downstairs.
  "But you've obviously just arrived and should rest and eat," Henry insisted.
  "I can do naught until you tell me."
  She wanted to show him how much she respected him and didn't mean to take over. Still, she could not help but blurt, "But we must fetch someone to sit with your mother. Who is this Meg you and Glenda spoke of?"
  "Meg Milligrew, her favorite girl, just the kitchen herbalist, really," he explained as he escorted her through the hall toward the back of the house. "The chit is down with greensickness and can't even seem to dose herself back to health right now. The thing is, forgive me, Your Grace, but she somewhat resembles you, and that's who I thought you were at first glance."
  "Resembles me?" Elizabeth asked, stopping so suddenly he almost bumped into her. Her tone and glance were more withering than curious.
  "I mean in hair color, height, and form," he added quickly. "She hardly has your fine features, bearing, or presence. No grace like yours, cousin. She's a bumbling sort, but Mother quite favors her. I'll just stop in here." He indicated a door that had to be, by the smells and sounds emanating from it, the kitchen. "I'll have Glenda send someone up to Mother. When she exerts herself, she sleeps for hours. I've been sitting with her when I wasn't weak with blood loss myself."
  Elizabeth followed him a little ways down the dim hall. She was surprised to realize she still wore her cloak, though her hood had long fallen down her back. "And tell Glenda," she added, "to give my breakfast to my man out with the horses. Ask her, I mean, will you?"
  He inclined his head in a hint of bow as
 
Glenda came out with a tray. While
Henry explained, the woman's narrow eyes shifted back and forth between the two of them. She nodded with a sniff, muttered a curse against poor Meg, and bellowed for Piers to come take the "fine lady's tray" to the stables.
  No, Elizabeth thought again, they didn't stand on ceremony here. Ordinarily it might have amused her, but she felt only foreboding as a male servant appeared to swirl Henry's cloak over his shoulders and give him his cap before they went outside.
  A bench against a brick wall in a patch of sun overlooked the kitchen herb garden. It was laid out in neat rows surrounding a cleverly knotted central pattern that the early frost had not yet blighted in this wind-sheltered place. Beyond lay the kitchen door and a window with its view partially obscured by hanging, drying clumps of herbs.
  "Please, sit, Your Grace, and I shall tell you all."
  "Will you not call me Elizabeth when we are alone together?" They sat, of necessity, close on the narrow bench. "Or you know," she went on, her voice almost wi/l, "here I almost feel I should be just plain Bess and be quite at home, except for what you have to tell me."
  He nodded and flushed--unless it was the crisp breeze that curled around the corner that suddenly burnished his cheeks. "Of course. And you must call me Harry as my friends do. Elizabeth, I did not mean for Mother to summon you here, but I am heartened she did." She saw he was more distraught than he had let on at first. He kept shifting his position, and his deep voice faltered. "I was afraid to put this--this dangerous disorder--to you in writing. The attack on my man and me in the forest not far from here was no accident--when I thought I had come home covertly to see my mother before she--she ..."
  "But are you certain she is dying?" she asked, leaning slightly toward him. "Can we not bring in some skilled apothecary or physician?"
  He hung his head, staring at his hands gripped on his knees. "She's had all the local ones. The thing is, she's given up the will to live since my stepfather died last winter. She's been wasting away with worsening signs like watering eyes, nausea, stomach pains, and general weakness.
 
Though I am glad you came, I fear that now that she's seen me and you at long last ..."
  "That she will have naught else to live for?" He looked up sharply. "You read my mind. But to this other dreadful business. My man and friend Will Benton was killed riding next to me not a quarter hour before we would have arrived here."
  "Killed? Then, that is the murder. I am sorry, cousin, for him and you," she said, covering his hands with one of hers. "Thank the Lord you will mend, but I am sorely grieved for his loss."
  "He was ever your loyal subject. He attached himself to my faded star, but it was you he longed to see in power." He slumped slightly. She held his hand tighter. "In a way it's my fault he's dead," he went on, his voice shaky. "He was hardly the target of such a quick and painful death, but I, his sponsor--his better --a Boleyn. Three arrows felled him, one driven clear into his gut. Pardon my rough tongue, Your Grace--Elizabeth."
  "Never apologize for the truth," she insisted, standing and beginning to pace before turning back to him when he jumped to his feet. "You must tell me all of it, Harry. Are you certain you were the target? Can you describe your attackers?"
  "It is such a black whirl in my brain now. I never saw but only heard them, at least three, I think. I fear they were watching and waiting for me. Somehow I had been spied on-- they knew I would come to see my mother and when. And pox on it, but I might have fought back but their first volley missed when my horse reared, and I was thrown and fell on my own damned sword." He hung his head again like a whipped boy. "And was saved," he added quietly, "by a ragtag group of players to whom I owe my life."
  "You are certain it was not they who assailed you? Some country troupes are bands of thieves. They could attack, then hope for reward by miming a bold rescue. Or could it not have been local rogues just lying in wait for any hapless traveler? Times are terribly hard for the common folk, too, under Mary's taxes for her
Spanish husband's foreign wars."
  He shook his head so hard his cap went askew. "No, I am certain the assassins were driven off by the player called Ned Topside. I believe him. He says he did not see them either, only heard their terrible shout from afar.
 
He's yet my guest, staying at the
Rose and Thorn in the village, and I've asked them to do some pretty speeches to cheer Mother tonight. But Elizabeth," he went on, stepping closer, "I know it is a plot because I, too, heard the blackguards--at least one of them--shout that threatening battle cry when they had to leave their murderous work undone."
  His eyes, now wide as coins, looked beyond her as if he saw it all again.
  "Their battle cry?" she prompted.
  He flinched as if he'd been struck, then spit it out between trembling lips. "Down with all the bloody Boleyns," he whispered, "even the royal one."

  Elizabeth ate and washed but refused to lie down, though she had a real headache working on her, as if an unseen tormentor screwed a tourniquet tighter about her forehead. She supposed it served her right for lying to her people at Hatfield. At least this head pain wasn't that crippling. Her stomach and balance seemed sound enough for now.
  She sat with her sleeping aunt awhile, then walked the walled gardens of the manor house with Harry again, trying to catch up on years apart and yet make some plans to counter this current danger.
  "Where did you bury him, your man Will?" she asked when she saw the churchyard with its mounded humps of turf and a few tilted gravestones just through an iron-gated door at the back of the grounds. A charnel house where old bones were eventually stored stood against the far wall of the graveyard. Over all loomed a stalwart stone church, one Harry had said lacked a minister since King Henry rooted out Catholicism from the kingdom.
  At first he only gestured in a general direction, but when she continued to peer through the bars, he took a big, rusted key from a chink in the wall and unlocked the gate. It creaked open. They walked through, just to the edge of the yard where several fresh graves lay bare of grass.
  "Will lies in this one," he said, pointing to a rectangle at their feet with a crude wooden cross stuck in the somewhat sunken ground. He sighed. "Sadly far from his home in Sussex. I have written to his mother, though she can't read.
 
I had him buried quickly. I couldn't bear the way he looked. The arrows made black spots around the wounds, sores the likes of which I've never seen."
  "Spots? Small ones, like with the pox?" "No, black blisters dreadful to see, yet nothing like buboes of the plague," he added hastily, as if to comfort her.
  But a shudder racked her. She had risked everything to come here and found only dying, death, and danger. And yet she could and would not draw back like some craven coward.
  "Do you still have the arrows that struck him?" she asked. "Mayhap there is something to identify the attackers or the maker, a particular fletching pattern or marking on the shaft or even the point. My father always used to make his fletchers set his feathers just so when he shot at the buttes or hunted."
  "But for the one arrowhead I had to leave in him, I wrapped the bloody, sticky things and put them in a box with my own shorter arrows from boyhood visits here. My stepfather taught me to shoot," he said with a glance at the little church where, no doubt, the grave of Mary Boleyn's beloved lord lay out of the elements that battered these of lesser rank. "The box is in the gardener's shed we just passed," Harry added and escorted her back into the manor grounds. The gate scraped closed behind him; he relocked it and restowed the key.
  But there were no wrapped arrows in the interior of the wooden box he peered in, then showed her. Not his boyhood ones or those that had been used to murder Will Benton. Cursing under his breath, Harry ransacked the shelves of the shed, knocking things off, then throwing them.
  "Did anyone know you put them here?" she asked, raising her voice over the din he made.
  "I told no one--didn't want to keep the dreadful things in my chamber, but I see I should have." He looked ready to tear the place apart. She realized and understood his devastated poise; no one had ever taught him to stand stiff and still no matter what befell. Besides, she'd seen the result of choleric humors all her life, especially in men. His face clenched in a frown, he hunched against the crooked doorway.
  "We've two gardeners I'll question," he said, his voice tight. "And that herbalist Meg uses this place, as is evident enough with all this hanging
 
rubbish."
  A sweep of his good hand bounced bunches of thyme, marjoram, and rosemary hanging over their heads by tiny nooses from the crossbeam. On their way out he shoved a spade into a wooden rake until a row of tools toppled as he slammed the door of the ramshackle place.
  Elizabeth let the incident go at first. She wouldn't blame a gardener or herb girl for burning or burying some horrid, bloodstained murder weapons kept in the garden shed he or she used. For one moment she almost wondered if Harry himself hadn't destroyed them in a fit of rage. Or perhaps he had been annoyed he hadn't kept them and didn't want to admit his hasty, ill-reasoned mistake to her. She had seen that inbred arrogance from men before too.
  Though she had a good nerve to question the servants herself, she spent the waning afternoon with her aunt, treasuring Mary's memories of her mother from their girlhood days. Mary described their home of Hever Castle in Kent, their days being educated at the French court, their heady return to England when first Mary caught the king's eye and then Anne. Elizabeth asked about her Uncle George, who had died on the block with her mother, and asked Mary to describe her Boleyn grandparents. But she did not pry into how Mary became the king's mistress before he turned to the lively, clever Anne--and Anne held out for marriage and the crown.
  "I was ever the fond, gentle one," Mary whispered, as a tear tracked down her wan cheek, "and she so clever and strong. You, of a certain, are like her."
  The hours slipped away and Elizabeth became more exhausted, more weak with the pounding in her head. But she told no one and even let them talk her into attending the entertainment tonight. "My dearest," her aunt had said before she slipped off into one of her instant slumbers, "don't fret anyone will guess it is you at the play. We're having only the manor staff in, and if they don't think you're really Lady Cornish--I overheard Glenda has her doubts--they will think you are merely my Meg ..."
  That snagged Elizabeth's attention again. She wanted to see this girl who looked like her, who so held her aunt's affections when others seemed to dislike her. She decided to speak with her before she
 
left, no matter what.
  She ate an early supper with her aunt and Harry in Mary's bedchamber, dreading the coming entertainment, then her departure, and the long ride back to Hatfield. Though Mary drank a good deal of what she called mead, which Harry later said was hard cider sweetened with honey, she ate only a few small saffron cakes.
  "No wonder you are thin, aunt," Elizabeth said, leaning toward her chair where she reclined against plumped cushions. "Cannot you take a bit of this meat pie to build your strength?"
  "No appetite anymore, my dearest," she replied with a tiny shake of her head that was almost imperceptible from her constant trembling. "Not for food, not for much but my happy memories."
  Harry put his goblet down a bit too hard and wine slopped out. He reached to clasp one of their hands in each of his. "Three of Boleyn blood gathered together," he intoned as if in prayer. "That is a memory to cherish." He cleared his throat and frowned. "And that would make the queen choke on her own bile, eh? Pray, don't tell your sister I said so, Your Grace," he added, his serious face almost gone playful for a moment. He loosed her hand and lifted his goblet. "To the next queen of England!"
  He saluted her and drank, but Elizabeth read despair in his voice and eyes. Mary tried to lift her tankard of mead, but again, Elizabeth had to help her get it to her trembling lips.

  "Fresh-come from the streets of fashionable London," Ned Topside announced with a flourish of his short cape and a graceful sweep of his feathered hat after he had introduced himself, "our band of players oft does histories and tragedies. But tonight we shall play mostly trifles and tomfooleries to lift hearts and light smiles, especially for the Lady Stafford."
  By rushlight and sconce, the five men who dubbed themselves The Queen's Country Players had swept into the center of the great hall to present themselves before their scenes and speeches. Mary Boleyn, Lady Stafford, had loved such pleasantries in her day and often, as the fairest lady at court, Harry told her, played the parts of Diana or even Venus. Tonight she
 
segued between smiles and stupor, her head tipped back on her chair cushions.
Elizabeth sat on her right and Harry on her left while manor folk, including Jenks, crowded two benches along the side.
  Elizabeth scanned the women's faces for someone who could be Meg Milligrew, but there was nonesuch. Besides, Harry had said she was still puking and he hadn't talked to her yet. The gardeners had denied any knowledge of seeing or taking the arrows, and he said he believed them.
  "We hope to amuse and amaze," the older man named Wat Thompson intoned with his deep bow as he introduced himself.
  "And to sweep you away from this place to other sites in this world, though none so grand as our fair England," Randall Greene announced, with entirely too much gesturing and posturing for such a simple sentence, Elizabeth thought.
  Lastly, the costumed and wigged lads who would play the women's parts curtsied and lay small, ribboned boughs of sharp-scented pine at the Lady Mary's feet. "So keep your spirits evergreen, e'en as these fond fantasies we strew at your feet for your favor."
  Elizabeth was surprised to see that Ned, who had supposedly saved Harry's life, was not the senior member of the troupe. That position was apparently taken by the one called Wat, and the almost effeminate Randall held a loftier place too. Still, as the hour flew by, she thought the young, rugged-faced Ned the most glib and clever. He knew, as they used to say, which side his bread was buttered on, for he played directly to her cousin and aunt with only an occasional glance her way and never a look at the benches. 'So blood, she'd been used to being overlooked like that for years during her brief stays at court. But someday, God willing, all the players in the realm--including this sharp fellow with the well-turned leg--would bow and say their pretty speeches for her.
  "And now," Ned was declaiming as the others took their temporary leave to reenter with some new piece of costume or prop, "we shall present a few speeches and scenes from the new and fashionable Italian comedy The Potion of Pleasure.
Drink up and dream you are in sunny Florence and have found such a magic liquor there as to make anyone who drinks it fall in love with you. ..."
 
  He was, this so-called Ned
Topside, rather a good-looking rogue with his black curly hair and green eyes. Elizabeth noted that a hundred expressions plied his face. His eyes could sparkle with a range of passions from mischief to malevolence. He could speak volumes with the mere lift of a sleek eyebrow or tilt of lip. She noted well he could ape a lordling's pompous demeanor or a cowherd's lumbering walk. And most fascinating, he had the ear and tongue for all types of speech, court or country, familiar or foreign.
  Though her heart was heavy with her aunt's imminent demise and the murder of Harry's man, she found herself smiling more than once. How grateful she and Harry both felt when Mary Boleyn smiled too.

  Elizabeth helped her cousin tuck her aunt back into bed and said her final farewell. Though she and Jenks must leave before midnight, she was swaying with exhaustion. At last she gave in to Harry's pressing her to take a brief rest in an extra bedchamber.
  But she didn't think she slept. ... She must not be asleep because there it was, clearing through the fog, the stone Tower of London with the gray Thames rippling by it when the queen's guards rowed her in through the iron jaws of Traitor's Gate.
  She walked the Tower's dank, dark corridors, looking for her mother. Anne Boleyn had been imprisoned and beheaded here. She was buried under the cold floor stones in the small chapel of St. Peter in Chains, so the place horrified and haunted Elizabeth. Yet she went on, step by step, looking, calling for her.
  "Mother! Queen Anne Boleyn! Mother!" she shouted bravely.
  She saw her form, all in flowing white, standing on a parapet within the Tower confines. Her mother held to the banister and leaned over it and called down to her, "Elizabeth, my dear Elizabeth." Her voice echoed off the walls, off her tomb. "He poisoned my love. ... Your royal father poisoned my love long before he took my hand, my heart, my head. ..."
  Over Elizabeth's head Queen Anne held a heart with an arrow stuck right through it.
 
Blackest blood made a huge spot where it pierced the heart. "Dig me up, and you'll see," she called as her form and voice drifted away in the fog. "Poison ..."
  Elizabeth jerked straight up in bed, her heart pounding, her body drenched with sweat. At first she didn't know where she was, but then it all came tumbling back. Wivenhoe ... her aunt ailing ... Will's death ... those stolen arrows.
  She got up, seized her cloak, and swung it around the boy's garb she had already donned. Wishing Kat were here to help, she shoved her feet in her riding boots. Still shaking, seeing the dark corridors of the Tower before her, she went down the dim hall to Harry's chamber door and knocked quietly on it.
  She heard his feet hit the floor, heard him coming. He opened the door, fully dressed, prepared to see her off. "Already time?" he asked. His hair was mussed from his pillow, with a cowlick standing straight up. When he stared closer into her face, he whispered, "It isn't Mother?"
  "Not yours."
  "What?"
  "Never mind. We must find out if those arrows that killed Will were poisoned. I've got to see those black spots on him. We can retrieve the arrowhead you said you left in him. Send for my man Jenks, and we'll dig him up ourselves posthaste, then put him back."
  He gaped at her as if she were speaking some barbaric tongue.
  "If they used poison, mayhap we can trace it," she explained. "I don't want to do it, but we must have answers. Now."
  He nodded jerkily and disappeared. Within a quarter hour she, Harry, and a shaken Jenks had taken a lantern and two spades from the garden shed, unlocked the graveyard gate, and begun to delve.

           Chapter The Fourth

  She loved the night because she didn't have to wear the veil. It suited her, the blackness, the very void of it, like the deepest reaches of her soul.
  She stood in the shadows of the church, watching the trio digging across the small graveyard. At first she thought it must mean Mary Boleyn had died, for her lass said it was almost time. Her burial would be
 
in secret, since she had been officially dead nearly twenty years, but they would surely inter her beneath the church floor with her lord. So they must be digging up the man her little band had killed when the simpletons should have executed Henry Carey.
  She shifted slightly closer and peered around a big tree. They were so intent, they would not see her. She realized they had come through the gate she had planned to slip through to meet her girl, using the copy of the key she'd had made. They were too close to it for her to risk entering the grounds of the manor now. A curse be on them, for she would be delayed. If this was to be the night Mary Boleyn died, she wanted to be under her window, staring up, knowing one more Boleyn had been dispatched to the fiery bowels of hell.
  The tree limb creaked overhead, and the breeze danced dry leaves through the frosted grass. Autumn had come early this year, as unnatural as the summer disasters that had plagued the kingdom because these wretched Boleyns still were drawing breath, waiting for one of their ilk to take the throne.
  She strained to hear what the two cloaked men and the lad digging for them said. The lad's face, too, was hidden, for he had some sort of handkerchief tied over his nose and mouth. Then the wind shifted, and she caught their words.
  "The poor wretch been in the ground near on four days, milady," the digger said. "Best pinch your nose, 'cause I know how a dead horse is after that time, 'less it's in the deep of winter."
  A servant, but not one Essex-bred, the eavesdropper thought. Off and on she'd been in these parts enough to hear the way the local rustics slurred their words. But who was that lady the lad addressed, and one garbed like a man? Mary Boleyn was too weak, so perhaps this was the Lady Cornish her lass had mentioned. But if they were digging the man up to rebury him somewhere, why at night? Or were they exposing his corpse for another reason?
  "Just dig, Jenks," the lady said, "then I'll slit the winding sheet."
  The watching woman spun to press her back against the tree trunk; she covered her mouth with both hands. They suspected something about the corpse. But let them be puzzling over it, she thought, let them find her hellebore and aconite
 
on those tips and shafts, if congealed blood and earth and worms had not annihilated the deadly concoction. Before they could try to trace her, she would have Mary Boleyn dead and then be on to her real passion, her royal victim, that she would--
  "Oh, 'So blood!" the cloaked lady cried and turned away, retching loudly on the grass near the grave in scraping, gasping sounds. The watching woman peered back around the tree. The lady still held the lantern but jerked it so quickly it threw sharp, tilting shadows of the trio on the brick manor wall. She wiped her face on her cloak and her hands on the grass. But she came right back to the grave, even bent over it, one hand now covering her mouth and nose. Whoever she was, the watcher had to admire her mettle. In form she resembled Meg the herbalist, but her voice was a far hue and cry from hers. She wished she'd shine the lantern at her face inside that hood. And why was she garbed like a man?
  "Wait!" the lady said in a voice both men obviously heeded. "I said I'd cut the winding sheet myself, and so I shall." The watching woman saw her put her lantern down and kneel, leaning into the grave.
  For a moment all seemed silent. Then the sheet ripped in a long, screaming tear. The wind sighed. The lady spoke again.
  "You did not tell me he was so fair of coloring and face, Harry."
  "And of heart," he added with his arms crossed and head bent as if he were in prayer. So that man must be Lord Henry Carey himself. Such piety from a Boleyn almost made the watching woman vomit too. "He never sought profit or preferment," he went on. "Jenks, help me turn him to get at that arrow that went clear through his middle. We will have to cut it out his back. Can you hold that lantern up now?" he asked the lady.
  As wan light leapt into her eyes, the watching woman instinctively pulled her veil down over her face. She crept back to become one with the shadows of the church. Leaning her shoulder against the cold stone wall, she wondered who the lady was and waited.

  The stab of sorrow--and the stench--made Elizabeth's nose run and her stomach continue to churn. It wasn't so much the slick, writhing
 
worms that were already at the corpse but the white, fine, velvety coating that covered its skin--and how that contrasted to the dreadful black puddles of flesh. There were dried blisters where each arrow went in and even where the one poked out his back. Because Henry had only one good hand, Jenks worked quickly with his dagger to cut that broken shaft and tip loose. They were all wearing gloves, so those made Jenks a bit awkward, but Elizabeth had insisted on them. She had dreamed of poison, and poison this black festering mass could be.
  "Harry, do you think," she said, her voice nasal because she held her nose, "it went so far through him because he fell on it, as you did your sword?"
  "I saw him flat on his back, and he didn't look as if he rolled over onto it."
  "Then perhaps the person who shot this arrow was especially strong," she said, her voice faltering, "or else ..." She began to shake so much the lantern light trembled.
  "Or what, milady?" Jenks asked, as he freed the arrow point and broken shaft and held them up to her.
  "Or, else," she said, reaching for it, "when they came across the road to look for Lord Harry, someone drove it deeper into W. But we need not know that to realize we are dealing with cruel or desperate men."
  "Take that arrow and go on in," Harry urged her. "Jenks and I will finish up here, and we'll talk before you leave."
  "I need to hold the light for you."
  "Go look in on my mother," her cousin insisted, tossing his cloak off and helping Jenks awkwardly shovel soil back in, one-handed. "We've enough light here for this."
  But to examine the arrow she held up the lantern, which threw light on it and full on her face. "Please go on, Elizabeth," Harry said, his voice annoyed.
  Elizabeth was certain she heard someone's swift gasp, but it was neither man and hardly poor W. She set the lantern down and blocked it with her legs and cloak to scan the darkness better, but the light had temporarily blinded her. Was there sudden movement there, over by the church? Perhaps someone had heard them digging and come to see. But the wind was rustling leaves, and the spades were scuffing soil
 
into the grave. Yes, she would go look in on her aunt one last time before they rode out. But then she thought of it.
  "Wait," she ordered and they both halted their spades. "You said he was loyal to me, cousin, that he would have served me. I want to give him this, though he will never know how truly he has pleased his future qu--I mean, his princess." She reached inside her shirt and took off the crucifix that swung by a delicate chain. Her sister had given it to her one yuletide, long before their father died.
  "Someone else will find it when they dig him up and put his bones in the charnel house," Harry said, and she thought he would protest further. "But I tell you, Will would be proud of it--and mayhap he knows, eh?"
  Elizabeth nodded, but whatever prayer she meant to say caught in her throat. Despite the fact Harry had told her to take the lantern, she left it for them and hurried through the gate. Her eyes soon became accustomed to the dark, then light from the distant house illumined her way. She clutched the arrow in her gloved hand; she would wrap and place it in her saddle pack. Later she would examine it carefully, perhaps find someone who knew about poisons to look at it.
  Nearing the back door, she saw a girl going in ahead of her. She had not slipped through the back gate, so she must have come around from the front. Elizabeth did not recognize her from her silhouette. It was just after midnight, so why would someone be up but Glenda, who was sitting with her aunt? Elizabeth crept closer. She could tell that the lass looked young and slender. In her hand she had a bunch of flowers or maybe herbs. That reminded her she had meant to tell Harry she must meet Meg Milligrew. Perhaps this was she, but she seemed much shorter than he had described. If she could but glimpse her hair or coloring ...
  Elizabeth watched as the girl first poked her head in the door, then disappeared inside.
  Elizabeth went to the single back kitchen window and peered in. The place was deserted but for this strange girl lighting a rush taper from the single fat tallow candle on the table, opening what looked to be a cellar door, then disappearing down the stairs. All this time Elizabeth had seen only her back.
 
  She looked around to see if Harry and Jenks were coming yet. Nothing. Silence and darkness, and she dare not shout for them. She went to the kitchen door and in. She removed her gloves with the long wrist guards she had borrowed from her aunt and placed them on both sides of the broken arrow shaft to protect it. She stooped to lay it in the corner of the room behind the hearth spit wheels and chains, where no one would see it and she could retrieve it later.
  Straining again to listen for the men, she heard nothing but muffled noises down the cellar stairs. When in doubt, do nothing. But she had to be sure that the intruder was not lighting a fire or doing something else dire down there.
  From the table Elizabeth lifted the candle impaled in its flat brass holder and started down the uneven stone stairs, trailing her free hand along the dank wall. She could tell the girl must have gone deeper into the vaulted darkness, unless she'd snuffed her taper and was hiding down here behind those barrels.
  When Elizabeth heard her farther in, she left her candle on a step and edged carefully forward, her hand still along the wall. However much the cellar was used, spiders still ruled here. She grimaced and blinked rapidly as she walked through a web that clung to her eyelashes and damp face.
  She came to an arched door and saw the girl just beyond. Positioning her nosegay carefully, she was hanging it up on a string that held many other herbal bouquets. Then she pulled something--a vial--from her bosom and uncorked it to pour a tiny stream of liquid into a wooden firkin. This girl was most certainly not Meg unless everyone was blind: Coal-black hair peeked from her cap, and her nose was pert instead of prominent.
  "What are you doing there?" Elizabeth demanded. Her voice startled even her. The girl jerked around, wide-eyed. She dropped the vial. It shattered between them on the floor stones. Then she lifted the firkin from its wooden cradle and heaved it at Elizabeth.
  She ducked. The girl snuffed her taper. Elizabeth felt her flee past.
  "Hold there!" Elizabeth commanded, spinning to chase her.
  The girl did not stop, but the candle on the steps etched her silhouette quite clear.
 
Elizabeth lunged and caught her. She swung the girl around by one arm.
  "Halt, I tell you!"
  Elizabeth felt as astounded as furious. She was used to being obeyed by servants, but not now, not by this wretch. Whoever she was, she fought like a fishwife, trying to kick, punch, and scratch. Rage drowned Elizabeth's control. That this chit would sneak in at night ... that she would not stop when bidden ... that she would try to assault her person ...
  She pummeled the girl, boxing her ears soundly, getting in cuffs and kicks. She snagged her long fingers in that black hair, however greasy it was. If she had lice, she'd skin her alive. The girl landed two kicks and one punch to her shoulder, but never got the best of her. The more they struggled, the wilder Elizabeth became, as if this rage had been building in her for years.
  Harry and Jenks thudded down the steps, the lantern still in Jenks's hands. Harry pulled the girl away and slammed her back against a pile of barrels, which bumped and rolled; he pressed her to the wall. Still, the girl did not cry out or say a word.
  "What in creation?" he demanded, as out of breath as if he'd been in the fray. "Who in the deuce is this?"
  "You don't know either?" Elizabeth shoved back her hair, which streamed loose from her boy's cap. "I caught her sneaking down here and pouring something in a firkin. Bring her over here," she ordered and took the lantern from the astounded Jenks to lead them into the next chamber.
  She cast light upon the glittering, wet shards of broken vial--thin-blown venetian glass, it looked to be--then found the firkin where it had rolled into a cobwebbed corner. "This is what she was tampering with, corrupting for all I know," she told them, putting it back in its wooden cradle. Half filled with liquid, it was heavy.
  "Speak up, girl!" Harry demanded.
"We've got you now. Who are you and what mischief was here?"
  "And she hung this up with the herbs," Elizabeth said and plucked down the single nosegay. She shook it close to the girl's face. She flinched as if it would burn her but still said naught.
  "Maybe she can't talk--she's dumb,"
 
Jenks put in.
  "One way or the other, she's dumb," Harry intoned and gave her another hard shake. Her head jerked and her limbs moved like a rag doll's.
  "Jenks," he said, "go up and knock quietly on Lady Boleyn's door and ask Glenda to send Meg Milligrew down here straightaway. I don't care if she still claims she's puking her insides out."
  Jenks nodded and hurried away. Elizabeth could tell the girl was terrified, and yet she did nothing to ease her situation. No explanation, no pleas, just wide-eyed, sullen, or even stupid stares. Perhaps she had been drugged, but she had fought like one demented or under some spell.
  Elizabeth's lower lip dropped when Jenks swiftly returned with Meg. Though wrapped in a rough wool coverlet, her strawberry-hued hair wild from her bed, her face pinched and pale --yes, but for the wench's broader face, Elizabeth had to admit, at least to herself, it was like gazing in a looking glass. Meg just gaped back, her mouth open too. "Good gracious" was all she managed to say.
  Elizabeth forced herself to think again. "I am Lady Boleyn's friend, Lady Cornish,
Meg. Since you are her herbalist, tell me what this is the girl tried to put among your hanging herbs. These are the herbs you hang here like in the garden shed, are they not?"
  "Yes, milady. Could I have the light on this one then, an' you please?"
  Jenks took and held the lantern for her. She frowned intently at the cluster of limp leaves on the stalks, then felt and sniffed at them. "Why, 'tisn't true saffron like I got hanging here to make the mistress's favorite honey saffron cakes," she declared. A frown furrowed her high brow. "It's got much simpler leaves and not sharp-edged, see? And they're longer and darker, but when they get mixed in and dried, Cook might not know the difference. Meadow saffron, milady, that's what this is."
  Elizabeth just frowned, but suddenly Meg looked aghast. She drew in a sharp breath, then launched herself at their prisoner. "You mean you been poisoning her?" she screeched. "By mixing with my herbs? Meadow saffron's poison, you whey-faced bitch!" Meg's hands, still holding the
 
herb, spread like claws around the girl's neck as if she'd choke the very life from her.
  Harry cursed and, with Jenks's help, pulled the two apart. Elizabeth seized Meg's arm and shook her once. "Listen to me," she said, putting her face close to hers. "If someone is poisoned with meadow saffron--maybe put into honey cakes--what would be the signs of it?"
  "Don't truly know, but could be gradual--not a big dose that way. All I know is, someone must have told me not to get them mixed, 'cause it's a poison for sure," Meg insisted, hanging stiff and still in Elizabeth's strong grip. Meg seemed suddenly cowed by her. They were eye to eye. The girl even had freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, just like hers that Kat had worked so hard to whiten with lemon and buttermilk.
  "I just work with simples for cures," Meg insisted. "Don't know much about poisons. But I'll tell you if she was tampering with that firkin there, that's the Lady Mary's privy cask of honeyed mead."
  Elizabeth knelt to feel what had broken on the floor in that shattered vial. It was golden and sticky. "It is honey," she said. "Can honey be poisoned? Can it?" she shouted, first at Meg and then at their captive.
  "I've heard of it happening natural," Meg put in. "You know, if the bees feed on something harmful 'fore they make their honey. But I s'pose someone could do it a-purpose too."
  Harry sagged against the wall, loosing their captive. She was blocked in by all of them, but that moment's freedom was all she needed. Not moving quickly to cause alarm, she took another, smaller vial from her bosom and gulped its contents.
  "She'd kill me if I din't," she mumbled her only words in a slurred voice. Then she dropped the vial and covered both eyes with her hands and pressed herself back against the stone wall as if to wait for death.
  Elizabeth yanked the girl into her grasp. "So you can talk. Speak, and right now. Who put you up to this? Jenks, get a cup and pour some beer in it. We've got to make her drink it, dilute that venom. Listen to me, girl," she said, shaking her, "I am the Princess Elizabeth, the queen's sister, so you must tell
 
me directly."
  She'd forgotten Meg didn't know, and at that revelation the girl evidently swooned against Jenks. Elizabeth made no move to help her. So what if she'd been ill? She was in charge of these herbs and should have kept them safe. But what sickened and infuriated Elizabeth most was the memory of herself just this evening lifting that tankard of mead to her aunt's lips. At least now Mary would have no drink or cakes that were not inspected.
  "Who sent you here?" Elizabeth demanded of the poisoner. "Help us, and we'll take care of you. Do you know anything about men attacking his lordship here with poison arrows?"
  But the girl said nothing else and wilted right before them, soon so weak she couldn't stand. They could get no beer down her. She spit it out, and they stood in the puddle of it, mixed with the girl's own urine that wet her thin skirts. In a quarter hour she clutched her chest and gasped for air. Her pulse faded.
  "Though this is no ruse, stay with her, Jenks," Elizabeth ordered. He had gone back to fanning Meg's face with his cap as she, at least, recovered. "We'd best look in on the Lady Mary, in case she has any of her favorite drink or cakes by her bed at night."
  Followed by Harry and Meg, she hurried up the steps, then the stairs above. They tiptoed into Mary's chamber, amazed the cellar walls were thick enough that no one on the second floor had heard them shouting. Glenda was dozing, but she woke with a start.
  "Thought you been long gone, milady," she said to Elizabeth and struggled to her feet to dip a deep curtsy, as if she'd been practicing-- or somehow knew her real identity. "Is aught amiss? Oh, there you are, girl," she added to Meg. "Come to take your turn here at last, I hope."
  Elizabeth snatched the familiar tankard from the chest at the bedside and sniffed at it, then handed it to Henry, who gave it to Meg. As the four of them stood by her bed, Mary Boleyn opened her eyes.
  "Oh," she said, her voice soft but her words very distinct. "I thought for one moment my lord was come late to bed. I always told him to wake me. Meg, dear girl, I'm glad to see you well
 
and to have you back at my side." Her heavy gaze slowly swung to Elizabeth. "And my dearest Catherine has come home at last," she announced.
  Elizabeth sucked in a sharp breath and glared sideways at Meg. She understood now why others resented and mistrusted the girl. Harry had even said she was not a local lass and had been in the household only a year. Yet Mary's deep affections for her seemed to rebuke them all. Even in her sleepy state she recognized a mere servant but not Elizabeth. She would tell Harry to cross-question this Meg more closely. If, as he said, the girl had tried some dosing tonics with Mary before she herself took-- or played sick--she could have had the chance to harm her.
  "And my dear boy, whatever is that bandage for?" Mary Boleyn interrupted Elizabeth's agonizing. Now Harry looked surprised.
  "But, my lady mother, do you not recall ..." he began, but his voice tapered off. They all stared down at Mary Boleyn.
  She did not close her eyes, but they seemed to glaze over. She exhaled a deep breath and smiled and died.

           Chapter The Fifth

  The meager band of mourners felt the floor shudder when the four men shoved and dragged the big paving stone back into place. It rumbled, then thudded to silence on the central aisle of the small church. In the vault beneath it, Mary Boleyn, Lady Stafford, now slept with her husband for all eternity.
  By the light of the four funeral torches, Meg stepped forward to strew dried rose petals on the carved double epitaph, which had borne Mary's name for many years. She sniffed hard and wiped her nose on her sleeve, while Lord Henry
Carey blew his on an embroidered handkerchief. Their eyes met before Meg stepped hastily back to her place in the circle of servants. He cleared his throat, then spoke so softly that they shuffled closer to hear his words.
  "Needless to say," Lord Carey began, "I am grateful for your faithfulness and loyalty these years to my mother. Some of you have been with her almost from the beginning, when she came to live willingly in
 
exile and then when"--he cleared his throat again--"my family fell from royal favor and fortune. You have heard her written words read to each of you and have received the coins or plate she bequeathed to you so that you might begin new lives."
  Meg shifted sideways to see him better around Glenda's broad shoulder. She knew several of the servants--maybe his lordship too-- resented her being included in the bequests. After only a year with the Lady Mary, she had eight gold crowns sewn in the hem of her inner petticoat. She wore every garment she owned, and not to keep out the chill night air. She had orders to leave Wivenhoe and head for the Princess Elizabeth. Though she was sore afeared of horses, she had bought one and was going to ride it clear to Hatfield House.
  "I am hoping you will be allowed at least a fortnight in the manor house," Lord Carey went on, "before word of Lady Stafford's passing must be reported to the queen and someone comes here to claim it." His voice got bitter as rue when he said, "Like all Boleyn holdings, Wivenhoe is forfeit to the crown. ... King Henry secretly decreed only that the Lady Mary might have this for the rest of her life, so ..."
  He didn't finish that thought. Some of the servants bowed their heads, some sniffled. Meg bit her lower lip hard and concentrated on that mere physical pain to try to stem the other.
  "And lastly," his lordship said, his voice croaky as a frog's now, "should you be asked, I must beseech you to keep my presence here concealed as best you can. But should someone force you to it, say merely I came to comfort my lady mother on her deathbed and have gone back to the continent, parts unknown."
  He began to turn away, then whirled back so his short black cape belled out. "And should anyone inquire about Lady Cornish's brief visit, say as little as you can, for we need not cause trouble for one of the Lady Mary's friends. Meg Milligrew, I would have a privy word with you," he said, fixing her with a baleful eye just when she was about to make her quick departure. She could only hope he had seen that she had dug up roots from the herb garden and would scold her only for that. "The rest of you are excused," he added, to make her stomach twist even tighter when everyone stopped and stared at her.
 
  He took her elbow in one hard hand and steered her out the side door into the windy graveyard as if he'd march her back into the manor through the postern gate. But he stopped just outside before the first row of graves. She tried not to look at them. The whole place made her teeth clench and her knees knock.
  "Milord, if'n it's about the herb starts I took--"
  "That garden looks like a tiny graveyard at the Second Coming," he muttered. Before she could ask him what he meant, he went on. "I want to know what you dosed the Lady Mary with, thinking to help her woes. Do not look at me like that, as I am not accusing you of being in league with that girl we buried in unhallowed ground out there beyond the paupers' place." He gestured to indicate the far side of the graveyard wall.
  Meg took a deep breath. "There's something I gave her I didn't tell her about," she admitted, shifting from one foot to the other.
  His eyes were in shadow, but she could just tell he narrowed them. "Say on," he ordered sternly.
  "A concoction of lavender to lighten her grief. See, herbs can help heal the mind and heart just like the body, though she was beyond mere simples then. But she liked it and my raspberry tonic, milord. For my bellyache I took that too." She tried to tug back from his grip, but it was futile, so she stood stock still.
  "Could that tonic have made her worse?" he demanded, leaning closer as if to study her face in the darkness. "Is it what made you sick to puking?"
  "Oh, no, milord. I had the greensickness afore I took it. I think it made me better. But sadly not till that evening she was gone. I never would harm the Lady Mary. She took me in and saved my life when I didn't know who I was."
  "You mean, when you didn't know who she was." "No, milord. Myself. They found me on the road, her stable man and Coll, the gardener. Kicked by a horse in the head and knew nothing but my name, not where I lived or what happened. Even with her lord sick then, she took me in and nursed me, and later it come to me I knew all 'bout garden herbs and strewing herbs. But as for dosing with infirmary herbs, I remembered only what came back to me about some simples and nothing
 
about poisons, I swear it on the Lady Mary's grave."
  She saw he scowled at her. The moon had sprung itself loose from above the big tree and lit his face in all its furrows. She was scared he wouldn't believe her, wouldn't let her go. Maybe he'd even turn her over to the local bailiff or to the king's man coming to claim the manor.
  "'Tis true, milord," she insisted. "And I can't bear it I was ailing when she took worse, 'cause she nursed me so fine when I was going to die. She said it was just like she birthed me herself, gave me life, and I loved her and ever will."
  He looked surprised to see he still held her arm. He loosed it and stepped back. "I don't mean to cross-question you so hard, girl, but it's important. Tell me this, then. In the short time you lived here, did you meet anyone about the area who was skilled in herbs? Someone must have sent that dolt of a girl--the someone she mentioned when she killed herself."
  "I know, milord. The girl called her only "she" and had such a fearful look on her face." Meg had plans to talk to that "she," but she didn't let on.
  "Well?" he said sharply to make her jump. "Well what, milord?"
  She didn't mean to fret him more, but his voice rose. "Do you know of anyone who could have sent her to the manor? We make our own honey here, so I never would have expected someone fouling it or that meadow saffron that apes the real. Do you know of someone who could have done either? Someone very clever? Is there anything else you can tell me?"
  "Only that your lady mother loved you, milord, and always brooded over your safety."
  "What in God's name does that have to do with the poisoner?" he exploded. Then he looked about him and lowered his voice, as if afraid he'd wake the dead.
  "Nothing, but that's the only message she gave me for you, in case you never made it here on time, she said. That she loved you and always brooded over your safety."
  "Yes, all right." As he looked briefly heavenward, she saw that tears glittered in his eyes before he ducked his head into moon shadow again. "We're all distraught," he said, more to himself than her. "But I want to speak to you again in the
 
morn before I leave. I need to go through her things tonight, burn some, keep some. And, Meg, I do thank you for being so loyal to her--and now I do see why, that and perhaps why the others resented how she favored you. Tomorrow then."
  He turned and walked toward the manor, not through the postern gate but along the road outside the wall, where the mourners now straggled back toward a cold funeral feast. Meg leaned against the tree and watched them disappear with a big piece of her life. Then she went back into the church, where a single thick candle burned at the head of the flat tombstone strewn with dry rose petals.
  She gripped her hands before her and bowed her head to stare at the Lady Mary's name cut in the stone. The flickering flame made the words she could not read seem to waver and leap.
  "I don't want to let his lordship down but can't wait to talk to him tomorrow, milady. I got to find your royal niece and take care of her if'n it's the last thing I do."
  As she turned away in this deserted place, she thought she heard the echo of footsteps, light, quick ones, and not her own. Her heart thudding, she looked about, staring into corners. But all was silent, shifting shadows, even behind the old vaults with the cold stone effigies staring straight up toward heaven. Tears blurring her way, Meg hurried out the door and ran to where she had her old nag of a horse hidden in the trees.

  "You'll have a devil of a time getting back safe inside now it's gone light," Jenks observed as he laced Elizabeth's gown in the thicket beyond the back lawn of Hatfield. It was just shy of midmorning; their return had been a grueling, grief-stricken ordeal. "The watchdog Popes are like to see you sneaking in," he added to rile her temper further.
  "I do not sneak, Jenks, no matter what you think you may have seen or been privy to these past two days. Do you understand?" she demanded in a voice that could etch steel.
  "Aye, Your Grace. Just bluff your way in, you mean."
  "I shall tell them I walked out to get some fresh air. Aren't you done with that?" she said, twisting around to glare at him. "Must your fingers be as slow as your brain?"
  She instantly regretted her words. "It is
 
only," she amended, catching his hangdog expression, "I am likely to scream from exhaustion, grief, and distress, Jenks. And to whom else can I show my pain if not those I trust? I could not have succeeded without you these last two days, and I shall not forget your help."
  His cheeks flamed like a yuletide candle. "Your Grace, you've only but to ask me ever and--"
  "Then go on through the woods to return the horses." She ticked off his tasks on her long fingers. "Be certain you rehearse your excuse before someone sees you. And guard that arrow in the saddle pack with your life until you can get it to me--to comme, not Kat. Go on now, and I'll be fine."
  She knew that last claim was a bold-faced lie, for she was truly desperate. At the last moment she had made Harry promise to flee for sanctuary to her friend William Cecil's country home in Stamford and not return to Europe as he had planned--and as their nameless enemies might expect. He was simply to tell the Wivenhoe household he was going abroad again.
  She walked from the forest cover toward the back of the house. A carp pond littered with yellow leaves and a few rose beds gone to autumn legginess were all that lay between her and the familiar house. Hatfield boasted no fine herb garden either. But from here she hoped to get Kat's attention with a few pebbles against the windowpanes. She would have her toss down a petticoat or two so she didn't look like something the cat dragged in. In case someone spotted her, she merely carried her cloak with its lining out so no one could see how mud-speckled it looked.
  Please, dear Lord, she prayed as she had much of the endless, sad ride back, protect me and show me what to do next.
  Though no answer to that prayer, Beatrice Pope popped round the corner of the house with her ever-present needlework in her hands. Her pert face registered shock: Her full lower lip dropped, her tilted blue eyes widened, and she tossed her head.
  "Oh, Lady Elizabeth, Mistress
Ashley said you were still abed and not eating, and my lord said he's going up to demand that you do." Even when Bea gave a mere yea or nay answer, words
 
seemed to spill from her as if they conveyed the most momentous message to all mankind. "Else we shall have to send to Her Majesty the report that you are ailing and we needs must have her best physician, like the time she sent her own before."
  Elizabeth stopped in her tracks. Why had she not thought of that? Her sister had sent the royal physician just after she was released from the Tower following the aborted Protestant Wyatt Rebellion, for which Mary had blamed her. Elizabeth had slowly sickened--with some of the signs her aunt showed--and had publicly protested her fears to all around her that perhaps she was being poisoned. Indeed, when first Mary was queen she had banished Elizabeth after shouting she deserved to be poisoned and claiming that Anne Boleyn had poisoned Catherine of Aragon.
  Under the care of Mary's physician and the newly arrived Cora Crenshaw, a cook who still served here, Elizabeth had recovered. There was no real proof of poison. But what if--what if, though Queen Mary dare not have her done away with thusly in the Tower, she had decided to have her somehow gotten rid of here? And what if, when Elizabeth publicly complained, she had bided her time, but as she herself became ill and mayhap would die soon and leave the realm to a Protestant queen ... Oh, dear Lord, what if Queen Mary Tudor, who burned martyrs at the stake, were the "she" the poisoner had feared when she drank that vial of venom rather than facing her wrath? What if, before she died, Mary Tudor planned to wreak vengeance on all of the Boleyns?
  "I said," Bea was repeating, suddenly staring so close into her face that Elizabeth jumped, "are you certain you are well, my lady? You looked as bleached as my linen for this sampler."
  Elizabeth glanced at what she held up.
The intricate chain stitching outlined rose vines with thrusting thorns and tight buds curled around each other in a mazelike pattern, twisting tighter toward the central space left for the epigram. For a moment she thought she would faint. She took a slow, deep breath.
  "I am quite on my way to recovery," she claimed with a forced smile. "My head suddenly cleared this morning, and I could not abide being closed in by the bed-curtains and that stale chamber
 
any longer. I craved fresh air, so
I donned a gown while Kat yet slept and took a walk."
  "It is laced in rather slipshod fashion," Bea observed, with a suspicious glance at her back. "But you really should have put on some petticoats. It's not like you to look so tawdry. And you might merely have stuck your head out the casement for fresh air."
  Bea tilted her head and slanted her gaze toward the suite of windows where Kat Ashley looked out, surprise stamped all too plain on her broad face. Kat could keep a lock on her lips but never, without a veil, hide the feelings on her face.
  Kat opened the casement as Elizabeth gave her a jaunty wave. "Oh, there you are, Your Grace," Kat called down. "Best come up and get garbed proper now."
  "She's right, you know," Bea said to Elizabeth, her narrowed gaze traversing her mussed gown and tangled hair again. By comparison, Elizabeth realized, Bea's own impeccable gabled hood, coif, and attire only made things worse. Even when Bea had ridden clear to Maidstone to visit her sister's family, she arrived home looking both comely and kempt.
  "I'll bring the Lady Elizabeth right in and sit with her to give you a respite, Mistress Ashley," Bea shouted up to Kat and waved her embroidered piece like a pennant.
  "How kind of you," Elizabeth said and linked her arm in hers, holding up her heavy skirts with the other. One thing she recalled her father saying was that the best defense was a bullish offense. "You know, I've missed your company, Bea-- everyone's these last terrible days."
  "You just do not look as if you feel better." Bea's repeated words buzzed in her ears. "You had best go straight back to bed."
  "Nonsense. Those head pains just drain me, that's all," Elizabeth insisted as they strolled around and went in the front door, where Thomas Pope confronted them with arms akimbo and face aghast at the bottom of the staircase.
  She'd never let on, but her head hurt indeed, almost as badly as her heart. So she forced another smile, squared her shoulders, and held herself erect. It was the first time she realized what she might have to do to get to the bottom of this
 
Boleyn plot: namely, put on an actor's face, skilled as that Ned Topside. Say next to nothing, as that poisoner had done before she killed herself. Or tell lies. And, as Jenks had put it, bluff her way, or even be a sneak. Yes, Elizabeth of England thought, she could do all of that to solve this and to survive.
  She put one step before the other on the stairs, hoping no one noticed she wore mud-speckled riding boots.

  Elizabeth Tudor raced her big black stallion Griffin down the road toward the little village of Hatfield. Sheep cropping the lawn scattered; she rode fast enough so that only Jenks managed to keep up with her. It was the sole place she had felt safe lately, out in the open air, on familiar ground, but with no buildings or forests hemming her in or hiding enemies. What had happened at Wivenhoe still haunted her. What to do about it, kept close confined as she was, tormented her.
  She reined in with Jenks at her side. "The Popes are keeping close today," he observed, patting his horse's lathered shoulder. "Sticky as can be since we come back. You don't think they know something, Your Grace?"
  "I believe we got away with our venture. And I must admit I stick close enough to them for everything I eat. If I don't see food go into either of their mouths, I avoid it too. They think," she said with a rueful laugh, "I've become companionable at mealtime."
  "Anything I can do, you only need--"
  "I do need to send you to some apothecary with that bloody arrow. I want to know what it's been dipped in and its properties. 'So blood, I wish I had two of myself so one could keep them occupied while the other investigates ..."
  Her voice trailed off as the idea flashed through her. It was mad, but it meshed so well with her other obsessive thoughts lately. She had been toying with the plan to send Jenks to find both Meg Milligrew, who must surely need a position now, and Ned Topside, who could feign to be only her clown. But in truth Meg could serve as her double and decoy, and Ned would become many different people--be her eyes and ears to find things out when she could not escape Bea and the Pope, just like this.
 
  "Come on, before they catch up, let's ride!" she cried and spurred Griffin on again.
  They galloped down the main gravel road past the vast lawns and then along the dirt lane skirting the village that had grown up higgledy-piggledy, as one always did near a great house. But as Hatfield had faded from proper royal use, the village had too. Its half-timbered homes and shops were tattered or tumbled, and many--
  She screamed. The first arrow winged its way close past her head. She could feel its breath. Another followed farther on. She yanked Griffin's reins, and he reared. She held on, tried to turn him, shouting to Jenks.
  "Arrows! An attack!"
  Jenks charged his mount the way she pointed. "No!" she cried. "I can't lose you. Not like Lord Harry lost Will!"
  But he dismounted and ran headlong, darting, ducking low. He disappeared behind a tall stone wall. As she kept low and sidestepped Griffin away, Thomas Pope and two others thundered up with Bea coming along behind. Blanche Parry rode over, her face white with fear.
  "What is it, Your Grace?" Blanche asked. "Why did you scream?"
  "Help Jenks," she cried to Sir Thomas, pointing. "Someone was shooting arrows at us."
  They would know too much if she told them more. But at that moment Jenks came dragging two ragged-looking boys by their collars out from behind the wall. Both held children's bows made of bent willow sticks and vines. Thomas Pope shouted a laugh and dismounted to retrieve an arrow in the grass, a stick crudely fletched with chicken feathers and no sharpened point at all.
  "They didn't mean to be shooting at you," Jenks said, out of breath. "They say they didn't even see you, Your Grace." She noted that Thomas Pope had begun his usual slow burn he suffered each time her people so much as alluded to her royalty, when her sister's staff pointedly called her only my lady. Elizabeth nodded, flushed with embarrassment--and anger.
  "Shall we put them in the stocks," Sir Thomas inquired, his voice mocking, "or send them to the Tower, or use the iron-maiden torment, my lady?" His jowls bounced when he laughed; she detested the man. "Yet I cannot help but
 
think," he went on, playing it to the hilt, "that your bridling your own runaway temperament to go riding about hither and yon would solve this ... uh, childish problem."
  Elizabeth glared down at him from her saddle. "Let the lads go with no penalty," she said. "It took me by surprise, that is all."
  "But it could have been something, aye, it could," Sir Thomas pursued. "As I said, you'll not go dashing off ahorse without me again." No doubt to show he ignored her pardoning the lads, he broke their bows over his knee and soundly cuffed both before shoving them back toward the village. Elizabeth wanted to protest, yet she sat silent in shock. Though arrows had not struck her, sharp, instant terror had pierced her heart. She was sick to death of living in fear and would have no more of it.
  "Jenks," she said out of the side of her mouth as she turned back toward the village and he, as ever, cantered first at her side, "you must go see your father tomorrow, as you have done afore."
  "But you heard the Pope," he said, thankfully not turning his head her way as the others came to ride behind them. "We can't go off somewhere else when--"
  "Listen," she hissed. "Not us, you. Under pretense of seeing your father again, you will ride back to Wivenhoe and tell Meg Milligrew I need an herbalist and would have her just appear at my door selling some such. And she must not let on where she's been before, never that she knew Mary Boleyn. And then you must find those Queen's Country Players somewhere near Colchester and tell Ned Topside I have need of a clown and will pay him well. And if you must to convince him, tell him who I really am and that I admire his cleverness. And on your way go by the village back there, for I shall give you a coin for each of those boys and tell them someday I shall want fine archers in my armies and nav--"
  She left off midword as Thomas Pope cantered up to her side and Bea appeared on her other to edge Jenks out. "As I said, my Lady Elizabeth," Sir Thomas intoned, out of breath and frowning at her like a schoolmaster, "best you take no other jaunts without me or Lady Beatrice this close at your side. And perhaps you'll keep this as a token to remember why."
  He extended to her a crude child's arrow. She
 
took it, seeing instead that other one they had dug from Will Benton's putrid corpse. She gripped it in her gloved hand and swore a solemn oath to herself that she would search out and stop the plot against her family and herself. Then she thrust it in her belt the way soldiers once did to show they were at war.

           Chapter The Sixth

  "It can't be she. Not here--so soon," Elizabeth muttered as she pressed her forehead to the cold window glass of the great hall, where she'd been taking her exercise on this rainy day. But yes, her eyes did not deceive her. "Oh, dear Lord," she whispered as she began to run, "I pray You, do not let that girl say something to give me away."
  But after all, she had prayed the Lord would show her what to do next in her dilemma. The children's attack with arrows had been one sign to spur her on, but now here in the flesh stood Meg Milligrew on the very day she'd sent Jenks for her. Was that not some sort of miracle--a sign pointing toward salvation? But with Thomas Pope standing between her and Meg, it could mean damnation.
  She hurried out and down the hall to the front entryway, where she'd seen Meg ride in--in pitiable style in the driving rain--dismount from her broken-down nag, and nearly slip in a mud puddle. She heard voices and knew the Popes had greeted Meg before she could warn the girl to guard her mouth. Elizabeth had a stitch in her side by the time she reached the three of them at the door. Drenched, Meg stood holding a sodden hemp sack, while the Popes hovered like king's beasts guarding the threshold.
  "Come to sell your goods to the Lady Elizabeth from where, wench?" Sir Thomas was saying. At least they had let the poor girl close enough to the door that she was out of the rain.
  "From Stratford-Upon-the-Avon in Warwickshire, my lord. Not to sell her things but give her gifts--for protection."
  "She is well-protected here and needs no such superstitious nonsense," Bea put in.
  "Oh, not charms or amulets, milady, but God's good, simple herbs for cures and happiness."
  Elizabeth joined them at the door. When
 
Meg saw her she dropped into a curtsy in the puddle she was making. Water still dripped off her nose and chin. "Herbs for me?" Elizabeth inquired, wedging herself between the Popes and giving the girl a quick wink when she rose. "How very kind. I love strewing herbs and sweet potpourris. Is that what you mean, girl? What is your name?"
  "Oh, yes, that's what I mean all right. Margaret Milligrew, called Meg, that's me."
  "Sir Thomas," Elizabeth said, turning to face him down, "I believe Christian charity commands that I accept and give this lass a good meal and night's lodgings at least." Though she fully intended to keep Meg here, that must seem to come gradually, naturally.
  "Oh, thankee, Your Grace" came muffled from Meg as she curtsied again, making her shoes squeak with water.
  "You may rise," Elizabeth said. She noted that even the rain had not seemed to wash the girl's dirty face and clothes. She was afraid Bea would never let her in. At least she did not reek of horse or sweat but emanated the most pleasant flowery aromas, like a wet garden.
  "You may go around the side door," Elizabeth went on, "and we shall stable your horse."
  "Just hold here," Sir Thomas ordered. He lifted both palms as if to stay poor Meg's onslaught on the house and Elizabeth's hasty invitation into it. "I insist on seeing in that sack, wench. My Lady Elizabeth," he went on, twisting his head about and frowning, "have you so soon forgot that you are not to go off hither and yon--in any way?"
  "Oh, my sack," Meg said with a grin. "I've two saddle packs full of herbal starts, too, milord, and I'd be happy to put in a physic or infirmary garden come spring as well as plant your kitchen or cosmetic ones."
  "Come spring?" he repeated. "There was no talk of more than one night in the kitchen." He glowered, but Bea seemed curious as the girl opened the sack and fished about in it, from time to time producing a bunch of something at its broad mouth. She kept up a running commentary.
 
  "I've tuzzy-muzzies to ward off winter agues, and rue to make sweet salves-- for bee stings, Your Grace," she said, her eyes wide on Elizabeth's gaze again. For some reason the mention of bees made Elizabeth shudder, and she'd never once been stung. When both the Popes peered into Meg's sack, the girl dared to wink at her, in imitation of Elizabeth's earlier signal to her.
  "And peony seeds," she went on, "mixed with wine can cure nightmares, and basil for the heart to take away sorrow. And this, my lord, is southern wood. You burn it and drive all serpents from the house, and that would be protection for Her Grace."
  As Meg rattled on it struck Elizabeth that she was giving her a message in code. Warding off disease and troubles ... stings ... nightmares, a sorrowing heart, and serpents in the house. Meg Milligrew had come on her own to help her with her troubles. And if she didn't cause her new ones first with her sly looks over the top of Thomas and Bea Pope's heads, it was a clever ruse at that.

  "She resembles you enough to be a closer sister to you than your own," Kat whispered the moment she led Meg into Elizabeth's bedchamber late that night and closed the door behind the three of them. Kat had fetched Meg from her pallet on the kitchen hearth after everyone had retired. "If she hadn't looked like such a drowned rat, the Buzzard and the Pope would have seen it too."
  "I realize that, Kat."
  "Is that why you want her here," she asked, "and not just that she served your aunt?"
  "More than ever lately, I need to surround myself with people I can trust--like you, Kat," Elizabeth said and gestured for Meg to sit beside her on the settle they had pulled up to take advantage of the low-stoked fire. No good to build it up when the Popes thought she was snug in bed. Kat pulled up a three-legged stool and plopped on it so they sat almost in a circle.
  "I've come to pledge my services and loyalty, Your Grace," Meg said, looking so intent and eager it touched Elizabeth deeply. "And, to tell true, the Lady Mary said if aught happened to her--when she knew she was dying and wanted to die, I think--she said I should go to you and
 
try to serve you and never let on to anyone else I had been with Mary Boleyn. And more than that," she admitted, and her voice took on a hard tone. She looked directly into Elizabeth's assessing gaze. "If someone poisoned that sweet lady to death like you and Lord Carey said--and meant to make it look like it was me --I'm going to make them pay!"
  Elizabeth squeezed her hands. Though she had asked Harry to cross-question the girl about what herbs she had given her aunt, such loyalty helped convince her that Meg had no connection to the poisoner they had caught in the cellars. Before she killed herself, that girl had shown real fear of whomever "she" was. The reference could not have been to awkward, endearing Meg--she was certain of it. Still, there was much about Meg she would know.
  For one moment they stared at each other in solemn, silent study. Then Elizabeth loosed her hands and said, "I was relieved to hear you realize you must admit no Boleyn connections here. Your story about coming from Warwickshire today was mere fabrication, I take it?"
  Meg nodded, though her gaze and voice softened as she frowned at some thought. She explained about losing much of the past from her head injury, which the Lady Mary nursed her through. "But since things come flying back in foggy bits, Your Grace, sometimes ideas just come to me, but I don't know where from or if they're true." She gestured helplessly, then plopped her hands back in her lap.
  "Do not fret, because it changes nothing here," Elizabeth assured her. She lowered her voice even more. "I sent Jenks for you just today, but he must have passed you on the road. He'll learn you're gone and go on for Ned Topside--the dark-haired actor from the players. You see, Meg, I need some people about me not only to trust but to help me solve a--poison plot."
  "And I can help you," she declared with a decisive nod. "I done some asking of my own on that, just like Lord Carey done to me."
  "Who were you questioning?" Elizabeth asked, leaning closer to the girl's avid face. She was fully aware Kat had not taken her eyes off Meg and that she resented her. She wondered fleetingly if that would always be poor Meg's lot in any household she served.
  "I questioned a few folks what live round
 
Wivenhoe, folks might have taken in or bought goods from that girl you fought with in the cellar."
  "Fought with?" Kat sputtered, pressing her clasped hands to her breasts. "Your Grace, you didn't say you fought with that foul poisoner, only apprehended--"
  "Shh, Kat. Go on, Meg."
  "And I found out who she was--I mean, part of it. Named Nettie and came from Kent, she told old Widow Willoughby she stayed with. I even paid the widow one of my gold crowns the Lady Mary left me to buy Nettie's worldly goods from her, since she was dead. I had to put up the whole coin when the old hag didn't believe my story I was her kin and to keep her mouth shut about what I been asking."
  "What did this Nettie leave behind? Where is it?" Elizabeth demanded. Her heart pounded in anticipation. "And from where did she hail in Kent?"
  "Don't know, and mostly it was a few clothes but for this that I thought was important, and maybe you can read it to say where in Kent," Meg explained in one long breath. She stood and reached down into her stiff bodice. She had obviously taken off a layer of clothes from her ride, but she still looked padded.
  "Can't read," Meg went on, tipping her chin up to pull something folded out, "or would have told you already what it said, if it was some threat to you or Lady Mary or Lord Carey or some such." Slowly, she drew out a piece of folded, embroidered linen. The back of it with its knotted threads and cross-stitches looked like chaos. Meg sat again, unfolded it, and turned it up in her lap.
  The embroidered green leaves and bright red berries reminded Elizabeth of yuletide colors. Kat, who was looking at it upside down, whispered, "My own mother kept those in our garden. Lords-and-ladies, that's what she used to call it."
  Meg nodded but kept silent as she passed it to Elizabeth. While Kat craned her neck to see, Elizabeth sat staring at the long-leafed plants, twined in a wreathed pattern that encompassed the elegantly scripted words: For I see that you are poysoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity.
 
  "Does it tell where we can find Nettie's place in Kent or who is that "she" Nettie worked for, Your Grace?"
Meg asked when Elizabeth just glared at it. "It is words from the Bible," she whispered. "From the book of Acts, and act we must. Like a curse, it says, For I see that you are poysoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity."
  "Poison!" the girl cried.
  Kat leapt to her feet. "I remember now," she muttered. "Mother said we children mustn't touch it."
  "Quiet," Elizabeth ordered, grabbing both their wrists. She didn't say so, but the style, though it could belong to many fine needlework hands, reminded her of Beatrice Pope's work. The saying itself--where had she heard it before? Not in a sermon at court perhaps, but somewhere there. Her stomach twisted; her crunching head pain returned with a jolt.
  While Meg and Kat hovered over her, standing close to the hearth, Elizabeth examined the entire piece carefully, wishing the many skilled chain stitches could whisper their maker's name. She flipped it over to peruse the other side.
  "Another word here," she told them, "only in crude if tiny block letters, see? No," she said, bending closer and tipping it to the light, "there are two words, almost hidden by these knots and tie-offs. Bushey, it says. Bushey
Cot."
  "There's a Bushey not so far from here," Kat put in, her voice agitated. "You know, that little market town."
  Elizabeth nodded. "And that is not in Kent. Meg, is this embroidered plant indeed lords-and-ladies, as Mistress Ashley said?" She turned it to the right side again, and they stretched it between them.
  "Looks to be," she said, squinting at it. "Heard it called a wake-robin too. They say the berries taste sweet and the leaves sour, but I don't know who says that because--"
  "Because it's a poison plant," Elizabeth finished for her. Wide-eyed, Meg nodded. "What part of it is poison?" Elizabeth demanded, fighting for control as she fingered the outline of the leaves and the bloodred berries.
  "Why, pick it early and all of it's deadly, Your Grace," Meg said, and Kat nodded. "Every last bit."

  The innyard of the Head and Crown in Colchester was packed to the gills with a rowdy crowd for the performance, though it wasn't to start for a good hour yet. Silently cursing the fact he must play the role of the lecherous, bumbling Ned Topside he'd made so popular--and had come to feel trapped by--Edward Thompson had curled up for a quick bit of early-afternoon dreaming on the cushion in the deep window seat.
  He yanked closed the curtain between the seat and one of the two bedchambers the players had used last night. Here Uncle Wat and Grand Rand had slept, and it served as their prop room. Their tiring-room next door, which he'd shared with the two lads, was smaller and noisier, right over the taproom. At least there would be no more jamming into one bed or pinching pennies for a while. They'd been living high these last two days, flush with fortune from Lord Henry at Wivenhoe.
  Now, despite the noise welling up from the innyard, it seemed peaceful here. An autumn fly that would soon be dead bumped and buzzed against the mullioned windowpanes, protesting its unjust imprisonment. His fellow players were taking their ease at a meal, lost in the busy distant drone of human voices.
  Yet stirred from his sleep Ned heard his Uncle Wat's voice, muted, muffled. At first he just pulled his cloak over his face, wishing he could plug his ears with it. But he recognized the lines from The Reluctant Lover. And then he heard that damned Grand Rand doing the girl's part, of all things, when, ever since Ned's father had died, he'd had the choicest men's roles:

"Sword point or stinger do I oft fear
But not when you, my love, are near.
Then desire I more than your fervent eye
So eager on this bed I lie."

  "Best not lie down or we won't have time before the others come up," his Uncle Wat said, his voice breathy. "Here, just stand, lean ..." Ned heard a rustling, a groan.
  "Did I hear those sweet words, come up?" Rand asked, his voice strangely thick.
  "Just shut up for once afore--"
  The moment Ned ripped open the curtain, he knew that he should not have. Better just to hide here,
 
knowing at last why Randall Greene got everything he wanted lately. But Ned was furious and sick of them both--of his whole life suddenly.
  He picked up a battle banner and heaved it at them, then a stool. They leapt apart, wide-eyed, scrabbling for cover.
  Rand hopped about trying to pull up his hose, then just grabbed a wooden shield and held it before him. His uncle had the gall to yell at him, "Damn you, boy! You've ruined everything!"
  "Leave off, you deceitful, whoreson bastard!" Ned shouted. "I've two things to say to you." He was not sure why he strapped on a stage sword as he spoke, though he was furious enough to kill them both. "One is, if I stay--and I don't have the stomach to perform today--I will play the notable men's parts I have long deserved. They obviously can't go to this one anymore"--he nodded dramatically at Rand. "Hellfire, I know
I'd never keep a straight face hereafter. And," he added, pointing with a dagger, "I will kill both of you if you so much as touch the lads."
  "The lads," his uncle stammered, crimson-faced. "That has nothing to do with--"
  "I may be back, I may not--ever!" Ned concluded, thrusting the dagger into his belt. He stomped out, leaving the door gaping. In the next chamber he knotted his long cloak around his meager goods. He dug in the velvet codpiece in the tiring-trunk, where he knew his uncle hid their treasury. He seized what he considered to be about one-fourth the coins, then dropped a few back, even though it was his saving Lord Henry that had gotten them this bounty.
  He went downstairs and out through the crowded common room into the innyard. "Where you going, Ned?" The boy Rob called to him from where he sat perched on the well watching a cockfight that was evidently the prologue to their play. "We got to go on."
  "Aye, lad, we've all got to go on,"
Ned told him and ruffled his hair before he turned away.
  No more Ned Topside, he vowed as he shoved his way out into the innyard through the crowd. No more playing seconds to anyone. Though he had sworn to his father on his deathbed that he would help his uncle keep the troupe together, this double betrayal had canceled that debt. He'd find some other band of players, show them what he knew, even buy his way in if he must, but he'd never trust them or
 
anyone. If a member of your own family could betray you, what was left to believe in? Though he felt like a vagabond, he slung his bundle over his shoulder and started off for who-knew-where.
  "Ho there, you!" someone behind him shouted. "You, Master Topside!"
  He would have just kept going, but the formal address and the fact he'd been recognized made him turn. A tall, gangly man hurried to him, dragging the reins of a good-looking horse through the fringe of the crowd. "Oh, thank God, 'tis you, Master Topside," he blurted, out of breath. "I know you got a fine calling, but I been sent by a person of renown with an offer for your service."
  "By whom? What service?" Ned demanded, his hand on the dull sword they'd used in many a fight scene. He wondered just how much that horse would cost.
  "I'm to say as a clown, but--"
  He turned away and threw back over his shoulder, "I'm done playing the clown. I'm near a quarter century of age and have no home, no hopes, no patron, no--"
  Though he was talking to himself--quite a soliloquy, really--the man kept up. "Just to play at playing the clown, I mean, Master Topside," he amended. "A patron--she wants your wits, your help, and she can pay."
  Ned spun to face him. "Who wants my help? Who can pay?"
  Pride shone so radiantly on the man's plain face--that was what convinced Ned he spoke the truth--as he said those remarkable words.
  "Why, the Princess Elizabeth herself. Saw you in secret at Wivenhoe, she did, and in secret asks you come to her at Hatfield and serve her, if you would, so--"
  The man stopped his speech when Ned hooted a triumphant laugh to the skies. He dropped his sack and smacked his hands, one on the other, atop his head. "Serve her? The princess?" he said, his well-honed voice cracking like a boy's. Tears he could not stem blurred his vision. "Elizabeth Tudor--Elizabeth of England? Lead on, man. Can your horse carry both of us?" he asked, but he was thinking this was the best deus ex machina salvation he had ever seen at the end of a play--or rather, the beginning of
 
another.
  But then he thought of an even better denouement, one written especially for his Uncle Wat and Grand Rand.
  "Will you wait here just one moment, man? Here, tie my pack on your saddlebags, and I'll be brief. I'd best bid a better farewell to my friends."
  He shoved his way back into the innyard, and in his deepest upstage bass, standing directly under their window, he shouted, "Wat Thompson! Grand Rand Greene!"
  The bastards rushed out and leaned over the railing as if they all played some fond farewell scene. "You've had a change of heart, my boy," his uncle called down to him. "Of course you and Rand can share--can even alternate--the choice parts and speeches."
  "He can have them all--have you too. I just wanted to inform you that the Princess Elizabeth--of England, uncle, the Tudor heir--has sent her man to fetch me to present many a sketch and speech. Heard us at Wivenhoe in secret and singled me out."
  They gaped at him, then began to shout down beseechments, apologies, excuses. When Ned only shook his head and waved, Rand started to run down the outer hall.
  "And so, farewell," Ned shouted to his uncle with a mocking bow. As Rand thundered down the stairs, Ned pushed his way through the crowd to the man waiting with the horse.
  "My uncle intends to detain me by force," he told him. "But if you can get me out of here straightaway, I will serve Her Grace body, mind--and high drama."
  When he glanced back to see that Rand had actually fallen down--in the dust their fine mount had made--Ned Topside, alias Edward Thompson, knew this was the finest exit he would ever make in his entire life.

           Chapter The Seventh

  "So that is Bushey," Elizabeth observed, gazing down the hillside at the shallow valley.
  The villagers had spread their harvest fair on a central green framed by its houses and shops. Beyond the cluster of buildings, the brassy reds, bronze, and gold of autumn trees
 
encircled furrowed and fallow fields, which looked like an irregular chessboard. Though such beauty lay sun-gilded, Elizabeth's mood was dark.
  Leaning toward Meg, who rode next to her in the small train, she said, "Since Jenks is not back yet, I'm trusting you and Kat to inquire about Bushey Cot while we are here. Then I will find a way to visit it somehow, the Popes and their people notwithstanding."
  After looking ahead at the two guards, Meg twisted in her saddle to glance back at the other two men, the Popes, and Lady Blanche, who rode at the rear with stolid Kat Ashley. "Aye," Meg said, turning back in her saddle, "but I'm having a few second thoughts about that piece of needlework. What if it was meant to send the one who found it on a wild-goose chase?"
  "Or meant to snare a silly goose," Elizabeth replied, frowning. She had thought of that possibility herself and was pleased Meg had reasoned it out. It made Elizabeth trust her more. "But we have no other leads right now," she added, "so this is worth the risk."
  "But Nettie and that "she" Nettie was so afraid of and those archers in the woods," Meg countered, "they were after folks at Wivenhoe. So why would any of them have aught to do with a place here called Bushey Cot?"
  "Because, I fear, it is close to Hatfield, and "she"--or they--are also after me. Surely you realized that."
  "You, Your Grace? No. But--"
  "I said you must learn to conceal your emotions," Elizabeth cut her off. "I plan," she explained, "to have Ned Topside teach both you and Kat to guard your expressions--facial and verbal--if he comes. But meanwhile you must take your cue from me. Now, try harder, because here comes Sir Thomas again."
  "Quite a lot of chatter up here," he observed, shaking his head so his jowls bounced.
  "I am asking Mistress Milligrew to buy up whatever herbs at this fair will get us through the winter," Elizabeth informed him archly, looking straight ahead. "I've missed the strewing and scenting herbs I've known at court."
  "I've no doubt you miss court--haven't we all?" he muttered. "Just see you do not
 
cause a stir at Bushey, my lady, and that no one gets so much as a hint who you are, at least not of your accord. It doesn't endear you to the queen when she hears you've been flaunting yourself about, hoping to incite hurrahs--and more."
  "And she no doubt hears from some source every move I make," Elizabeth countered.
  Evidently deciding not to challenge that, he rode toward the front of the band. Elizabeth looked back, caught Bea's eye, and forced a smile. After all, she would never have convinced Sir Thomas to visit Bushey if it hadn't been for Bea, who was looking for imported dyes for her sewing threads.
  But the more Elizabeth considered it, the more Bea's helpfulness and watchfulness bothered her. Besides that needlework from Wivenhoe greatly resembling Bea's style, she was upon occasion absent from Hatfield for several days at a time, including, Kat had said, the day and second night Elizabeth was at Wivenhoe. It was supposedly to visit her sister in Maidstone, which was in Kent.
  Still, Bea had never shown the slightest special interest in flowers or herbs, but to embroider them. And she seemed such an ally. More than once she had heard Bea standing up for her rights and privileges, though, indeed, that could have been arranged to get Elizabeth to trust her.
  "Never forget this, Thomas," she had heard Bea declare to her husband last month through a slightly open door when Elizabeth passed by in the upstairs corridor. "Queen Mary is ill, and Elizabeth is not. Queen Mary is hated and Elizabeth favored; Queen Mary is older and Elizabeth yet young. Queen Mary--"
  "Is queen indeed and has put us in a position of authority here with our orders!" Thomas had thundered. "And see that you bridle your lips, actions, and fond heart, madam, because who is to say if we watch the princess and report on her doings that others are not watching us."
  It had seemed so convincing. She'd felt at least pity for Bea ever since. She had scolded Kat next time she referred to her as the Buzzard.
  But it was just then, riding down into that shallow valley, with Bea no doubt looking at her from behind, that Elizabeth felt a chill slide down her spine like an icy hand. It feathered the hairs
 
on the nape of her neck; she shuddered even in her warm cloak and hood. It was as if someone with poison-tipped intent were spying on her as they rode in.
  She spun to look back at Bea again. She was watching, but she gave a jaunty wave and spurred her horse to join Elizabeth.

  In the village Thomas Pope put out the word they were just passing through to London. He gave no names, but everyone stared at their betters as they strolled the aisles of rickety booths. Besides pyramids of apples, Elizabeth saw piles of scarves and tin trinkets that traveling hawkers had spread on ground cloths. They strolled past a fortune-teller's booth and watched a morality play with puppets. Both made Elizabeth wonder if Jenks had found Ned Topside.
  Cider, apple tarts, and sausage pies were everywhere one turned. At first, relieved the food could be not be tainted, Elizabeth ate with relish. But when she realized people were indeed gawking, she had trouble getting the next pie and cider down. Her eyes watered as she recalled her Aunt Mary's saffron cakes and mead. And all this time Meg and Kat were drifting off into the crowd to inquire if someone knew of a place called Bushey Cot.
  Yet despite her unease Elizabeth felt proud to be among the realm's common folk, most of whose lives were seldom touched by shifting events on the larger stage. She wondered how she would have gotten on had she been born just plain Bess of Bushey. At least that lass would not have to fear for her very life.
  "The cot--I think I found it," Meg whispered out-of-breath as they all took a brief respite before they set out for Hatfield. She showed her some dried and powdered quinces she had bought, in case someone was watching.
  "Where?" Elizabeth whispered excitedly, as Meg knelt beside her on a baize cloth spread on the ground in the sun.
  "In the deep woods not so far behind us. Didn't see it but heard tell. Used to be a woodsman's cottage, been deserted for a while, until last year."
  "Who lives there, then?"
  "An old hag, they say. She comes and goes, and they don't know if she's there or not
 
now. No one goes there much. She keeps folks away, and some of the boys been whispering she's--a witch," she added, wide-eyed.
  "The point is, it's a woman and could be our "she,"" Elizabeth said, feeling both relief and revulsion.
  "If you try to see the cot, I'm going too," Meg insisted, "'cause they say she keeps a garden."
  "All right, then," she said, frowning, "Kat must be the one who draws them off."
  But, despite her excitement to be so close to what she sought, Elizabeth saw it would be foolhardy to try to find the cot now. She'd never get near it without the Popes and these guards sticking to her skirts like burrs. Sir Thomas was already ordering the party to remount and head back. She fumed inside, longing for the day she could order people about with a mere glance or snap of her fingers, let alone a warrant or decree.
  As they headed home midafternoon, Elizabeth sent a long glance back toward the thick forest surrounding Bushey Cot. If a garden grew there in the dank and dark, what could be in it?

  "What's this I hear?" Sir Thomas raged. They all looked up as he rushed into the solar, where Elizabeth sat before the fire at needlework with Lady Blanche Parry and his wife. "First an herbalist and now some itinerant fool added hugger-mugger to your household here, my Lady Elizabeth?"
  "That is correct, Sir Thomas," she replied, dropping her work in her lap and placing both hands on the arms of her chair. She hoped she appeared at ease, but she wanted something to grip instead of this man's fat, fleshy neck.
  "Ned Topside, however," she went on in measured tones, "is a versatile player of some repute and deserves better than the sobriquet clown or fool. He'll do all sorts of parts for us, cooped up here this winter all cozy together."
  "Do not try to get me off the track. Next you'll be putting on airs to appoint a privy council in exile," he raged, pacing before the rain-streaked windows.
  Elizabeth had to fight a smile, for he knew not how close he came to her real plans for her newly assembled little staff. She wanted
 
not gathered herbs but clues, not clever amusements but proofs about the poisoners.
  "Her Gracious Majesty will not like this when she is informed, I tell you that plain," he expounded, striding back and forth, his Spanish leather bootheels clicking on the oaken floor.
  "Surely," Elizabeth tried to soothe him, as she rose and handed Blanche her sampler stretched on its willow hoop, "my dear sister will not begrudge me a few simple and private pleasures. Indeed, I am going to inform her myself and inquire if I might not visit Kent before winter sets in--to Ightham Mote to see the Cornish family; you remember them?"
  "That little place," he said and snorted. "Granted, a family the queen favors for their loyalty, but one that was distantly related to your Howard kin, I recall, so--"
  "Her Majesty did tell me I might move about the kingdom if I do so circumspectly, and this would be a brief, private visit. It will give the household staff time to clean out the jakes before winter sets in to keep us here. You, I know, would like a change, too, Sir Thomas. I can imagine how this backwater place wears on a man of action like yourself." He had stopped sputtering at least. He glanced warily at his wife for support, but she offered none.
  "If Her Grace gives written permission," he said, "of course I would go, for you are my charge and care." He sighed and leaned on the window ledge to stare out at the vast gray sky. She supposed he fancied he felt the weight of it upon his slumped shoulders.
  "Agreed then," she said, moving quickly in for the kill before he could realize how she'd baited and hooked him. "Then I shall send my man Jenks with the request to Her Majesty at once, and we shall eagerly await her response."
  She turned to take her sewing back from Blanche but glanced again at Bea's in her lap. The tight chain stitching, the twist of framing leaves--it was so like the style of the other piece. "I hope, Lady Bea," Elizabeth said, "you will be able to join our little entourage if we go to Kent, or will you be seeing your sister at Maidstone again? At least that is in the shire too."
  "Her children have been ill--I'm not certain," she
 
replied, glancing from Elizabeth to her husband and looking rather agitated. "I shall have to see."
  "Then I shall go up straightaway and write my letter to my dear sister. Sir Thomas, I would count it a favor if you would send my man Jenks to me to ride to London with it."
  She swept from the room with Blanche in her wake. In Kent she could search for the poisoner, Nettie's background and her ties to the master herbalist. Unfortunately, to send Jenks with that missive, she'd have to do without him when she went to Bushey Cot. At least he could also get a letter to her cousin Harry at William Cecil's house, because she had some questions for both of them too. And since Meg had not been positive about the dried tincture on the arrow point, Jenks could take it to them to have it studied.
  "Oh, it looks like the storm's quite let up," Blanche observed as they made the turn on the grand staircase and looked out the window on the landing.
  "I pray so," Elizabeth said only and hurried on.

  By ten of the clock that night, skittish moonlight had replaced the rain clouds. Holding her breath, in boy's garb that was now all too familiar to her, Elizabeth tiptoed down the narrow back servants' stairs. The house lay silent but for a few inward creaks from age and outward moans from the wind, but Meg's and Kat's protests still rang in her ears.
  "But you can't go there at night unchaperoned--with just that player," Kat had insisted. "You hardly know the man. Can he ride or handle a sword like Jenks?"
  "And why," Meg had chimed in, "must I stay here in your bed? I'm not a player. They'd know it wasn't you if they looked close."
  "Hush your caterwauling," Elizabeth commanded, "or I won't have either of you privy to my needs. This is something I must do, for my family--for my own sake. If I cannot trust you and depend on you to help me, I will send you both away." She had even quoted the Holy Word to muzzle them: "He who is not with me is against me."
  "Or she," Meg had muttered with a scowl. "You just beware of that one we call "she.""
 
  They took two lanterns yet unlit. Elizabeth blessed the moonlight, but she had to lead the way because she had just been this route and it was new to Ned. She could tell he was eager to please her, yet this night ride to a place where Meg had prattled a witch might live did not sit well with him.
  "A witch? Stuff and nonsense. Village superstitions," she assured the dark-cloaked man as they crested the hill above the village. "Of course I believe in demon possession, but untutored rustics go overboard dubbing any old hag a witch."
  "This woman is old, then?" he asked. He'd annoyed her at first with his spate of questions, but he had a sharp mind and it had helped her hone her own thinking. They must search and perhaps seize things from Bushey Cot--the woman herself if they could.
  "I do not know if she is old," Elizabeth admitted as they turned their horses to skirt the village itself. "That is hearsay and what we must learn. I can only pray she does not expect a visit--that there is no one in my household who could warn her. That is partly why I wanted us to come tonight, so the woman could not be warned in time even if someone overheard me speak to Kat or Meg."
  "Meg," he said, almost to himself as they turned off the road into the fringe of forest. "She seems to live in fortune's star, stumbling on that news about the girl Nettie and that sampler that sends us here."
  "It's all logical. I think she's proved herself true. And you, too, have stumbled into this," she reminded him, hisby being there to save my cousin and then perform at Wivenhoe. Life is like that, Ned, happenstance."
  "And that is why you stand next in line to the throne?" he dared.
  "Little things are happenstance," she corrected herself. "The vast, life-changing ones are God-ordained and comguided."
  "Aye, Your Grace, as you say."
  He had annoyed her now, but this was no time to quibble, as they had to concentrate on keeping low branches out of their eyes. "Can you use that sword of yours if need be?" she whispered as they searched the moon-washed woods for the cot.
  "I warrant so," he answered. His deep,
 
commanding voice almost convinced her until he said grandiosely, "But if some old hag tries to get the best of me--witchcraft or not--I will make such a fine sword-fight scene, I'd convince her I was Alexander the Great come back from the dead."
  "Very comforting," she muttered. "Pray keep your voice down, Alexander." She had decided years ago, after her adored father had betrayed her by killing her mother and naming her bastard, that she would never trust another man. And yet in these hard times she had found a few with whom she must cast her precarious lot: Cecil, Jenks, and this man. Perhaps.

  Desperation began to devour her. In an hour silently traversing the windy forest, they had found no hut or cottage. She would skin Meg if she had believed a folktale or some rural rumor. Time was fleeting before they must return to Hatfield ere the dawn.
  Then it emerged before their eyes, as if of its own accord. They could glimpse the shake roof of a cottage with rough, light-hued stone walls. The whole edifice seemed etched with a shaft of moonlight by the darting, skeletal fingers of the trees.
  She heard Ned's swift intake of breath. "I thought we were just through here, and I didn't see that," he whispered.
  "It sits in a clearing. No wonder it can have a garden, though plants would be shaded but for high noon."
  As they walked their horses closer, her heart began to thud beneath her boy's shirt and leather jerkin. For again as if from nothingness, an opening in the wall appeared to show them faint lantern light emanating from a window--surely that was not merely reflected moon.
  "Dismount," she whispered, gesturing and pointing in case he could not hear her in the sigh of wind and rustle of dry leaves. "We'll tie up over there."
  They double-knotted the reins and took the two unlit lanterns from the saddle packs. Ned had the flint box. Each holding a lantern, they shuffled closer through knee-deep drifts of leaves. As her eyes became more accustomed to the wan window light, Elizabeth could see the silhouette of something draped or perched on the
 
tops of the stone walls, which stood high as a man. She thought at first it might be heaps of cloth, but it was thick, drooping vines. And some strange and fetid smell reached out to suffocate her. ...
  The high-pitched screech stabbed deep into her. She screamed, her voice drowned by the second screech. "Eee-raugh! Eee-raugh!"
  Ned scraped his sword out of its scabbard and dropped his unlit lantern. He tried to place himself between her and the wall, but she darted for the protection of it, pressing her backbone hard against its rugged surface. The screech sounded a third time, searing her soul with its hellish pitch.
  Elizabeth drew the dagger from her belt. She shook so hard it bounced before her face. Though Ned froze at first, sword raised, he threw himself against the wall just across the opening to the yard from her.
  They stayed that way, breathing hard. When nothing else happened and all seemed still, Elizabeth ignored Ned's shaking his head and holding up one hand to warn her to stay where she stood. She stooped to put her unlit lantern down and stayed crouched low. With her dagger held tightly in both hands, she stepped toward and darted through the gaping gate.

           Chapter The Eighth

  Ned slid around the corner, close behind her, his sword a dull glint against the inside of the wall across the gate from her. The next thing Elizabeth saw was--she thought--a ghost, rising from the ground with a huge blooming, monstrous head ...
  "'So blood," she whispered, "a white peacock. They are as good as watchdogs at some great houses."
  She heard only his low curse and then a sigh of relief.
  They both stayed still as statues, waiting for it to screech again. It only fanned its bounty of iridescent tail and strutted out the gate between them.
  "If anyone's inside," Ned hissed, "they're up or fled now."
  "Unless there's only one way out of here." He joined her on her side of the gate, but they still did not step farther into the enclosed yard. They even stopped talking, instead miming their meaning by holding their noses and shrugging at what the
 
mysterious odor could be. Sickeningly sweet, rank, cloying, it made Elizabeth's stomach clench. When they spoke next, their voices sounded stuffed and nasal.
  "We must look inside the cottage. There's no light in the window now--it must have been the moonlight--a mirage."
  They nodded agreement and set off with a shuffling slow step. Moonlight flitted in and out to guide them closer to the cot. Irregular flower beds with the frost-struck corpses of plants impaled on wooden stakes impeded their way almost as if they entered through a maze. The door to the cot was not visible from this side with the gate in the wall.
  She gestured they should separate: she around one way, he the other way. He shook his head, then --perhaps when the moon caught her expression-- obeyed.
  She found it even darker around this side of the cottage. The walls were rough and crude; the wind wheezed through some cracks. She tried to peek through a chink, but something covered it inside, just as the single window had a curtain. She wished she'd brought her lantern, but it would make her too clear a target. She edged around a rain barrel that must collect water off the roof and tiptoed on. A moment ago the stench had seemed stronger here, but now it didn't, or else she was becoming accustomed to it. She unpinched her nose so she could breathe better; she clenched her dagger only in her right hand.
  The wooden door was just around the next corner and stood ajar inward, so she could see in. She meant to wait for Ned, but she peeked in and gasped.
  Someone had just been here. A glass container in a metal rack barely bubbled above garnet embers on a clay hearth. Only that glow lit the small, single room, but it was enough to see sumptuous fabrics on the walls, a deep bed with a satin coverlet, and one fine, carved, high-backed chair and table. Some sort of food and drink was laid out there--no, it was a wooden rack of glass vials, much like the one Nettie had carried with her.
  Elizabeth carefully shoved the door the rest of the way open to assure herself no one hid behind it. It creaked, then bumped back into the wall. Mesmerized by the scene, she took a single step in.
 
  Then she remembered Ned.
  She edged back out and started around the way he should have come. And stumbled right over his dark, unmoving form huddled against the cottage wall.

  "I thought at first you were dead," she told him when he came to his senses, propped up against the wall of the house. She had used rainwater from the barrel to wash his face. Already a huge bump rose on his skull above the nape of his neck.
  "This your ... idea of a clown's ... role?" he muttered.
  "Stash the jests for now. Did you see anything?"
  "Naught but stars."
  "That peacock tipped someone off. I have to go out and check on the horses to be sure they didn't bolt. Or get stolen."
  "Not on your own. Here, I can walk."
  She helped him to his feet and steadied him. They retrieved their lanterns and mounts and led them back toward the small yard of the cot. Both horses balked and whinnied at being brought in, and they had to drag them inside by their reins.
  "Smarter than us," Ned muttered. "Hellfire, something stinks to high heaven here, in more ways than one."
  Ordinarily she would have appreciated his spirit and wit, but she could only nod. "Are you sure you are all right? Just stand guard here and cut a few samples from these plants. I'll get some from inside. We can't stay long."
  "That's the best news I've had all day." She didn't need his chatter now, but then, what did she expect? Her father's jester, Will Sommers, had been the only one who had ever dared impudence with him, but he gave good counsel on the sly too.
  They lit one lantern, and she went back inside with it while Ned gathered samples by moonlight. The interior of the crude hut looked like an opulent, draped campaign tent arrayed for a joust, she thought--or a scarlet funeral shroud. It lay flat against the four walls and close in the corners, at least, so no one could be secreted between it and the wall.
  Elizabeth boldly shone her lantern under the narrow bed, then went through the small coffer she found there. The few but fine-made garments indicated a woman shorter than she, but heavier with larger
 
breasts--but then, few were so slender, especially there. The single pair of slippers looked terribly worn and might not even belong to the "she," as Meg always called her. Her foot seemed long and narrow. But what disturbed Elizabeth was that this was the place and inner trappings of someone of means or rank, not some poor wretch like Nettie. Despite the pigsty exterior, the inside befitted a queen herself.
  She sucked in a breath at that last thought and at what lined the bottom of the coffer. She could not believe her good fortune--or had she been led to the next knot in the noose by someone setting snares? She lifted it gingerly and stared at a piece of partially embroidered handwork: entwined, twisting leaves of some sort and the beginning of the now familiar curse, For I see that you are poysoned ...
  Again the verse haunted her, whispered from her past. Then she remembered. It was what her sister had screamed at her that day she had sent her from court. Oh, dear Lord in heaven, she wanted no links to her sister in all this. She must not think it.
  Rather, this must merely mean that the Wivenhoe mastermind must be the old hag who was here. It had to be pure chance that the queen had quoted that to her. Quickly, as she stood, she snatched one of the empty vials--fine, blown venetian glass-- and dropped it in her sack along with this piece.
  Now the array of drying herbs hanging in the recesses of the room drew Elizabeth's attention. Pulling her gloves even tighter, she plucked down random samples of plants as if taking laundry from a bush. Some of the leaves smelled smoky. Had the hag been preserving them that way, or had the hearth just smoked? She could not stop to be sure, but the hand that had tied the bunches could have been the same that sent that poison nosegay of meadow saffron to kill her aunt.
  She stopped gathering herbs at the sight of a long, cluttered bench against the far wall. Slowly, she walked to it, squinting to make out what instruments lay there. But it was weapons: several daggers, their steel blades blackened by some sticky substance. Two iron carding combs with their sharp tines smeared with the same pitchlike mixture. And six arrowheads coated in the same hellish stuff that had no doubt killed Harry's Will Benton.
  "It's her!" she whispered. "The hag is the poisoner."
 
  Shuddering as she touched it, even gloved, she took one arrowhead and dropped it in her sack, then, from this vantage point, noted another coffer behind the first one under the table. She knelt to open it. Perhaps this contained the hag's letters, poison recipes, victims, the names of others in this conspiracy ...
  "Ugh!" she cried as the stench stuffed her nostrils. She lifted her lantern to stare down at a jumbled mass of grotesque-shaped roots, mushrooms, toadstools, and fungus in all stages and sticky hues of decay.
  Shuddering, she put some in her bag. If Meg could not identify them, Cecil must have contacts who could. It was then, as the embers shifted lower, she heard muted humming in the corner farthest from the hearth. Slow, drowsy, not a human sound.
  She shuffled closer and tilted her head to listen. A buzzing. Dear Lord, not bees? She hated bees.
  She recalled the man who had been her royal father's beekeeper for years--a kindly old man who had worked with honeycombs all his life--had been stung to death by them, though their venom had never affected him before that day. It was just after Mary became queen, when Elizabeth was walking in the gardens at Whitehall, that he fell and died in agony. Someone had said it was only because one sting was so close behind his ear that the poison leapt right to his brain. Elizabeth had knelt to hold his hand, until she realized other bees still buzzed about and someone had pulled her away. Mary had said she'd find a new beekeeper; and then there was something else about bees, but Elizabeth could not bear to think of that. ...
  She shook her head to clear it and stepped slowly away from the muted murmuring. Surely bees were not stored in here and kept deliberately dazed by the smoke. They must be on the other side of the wall. All that sat in this corner was a slumped bag with grain in it. The old woman must mill her own for bread.
  She began to breathe again. With a swift look back at the room, Elizabeth snuffed out the wick in her lantern, hefted her heavy sack, and hurried out the door.
  "Let's ride," Ned called to her the moment she appeared. "This place makes my knees knock as loud as the pounding in my head."
  She nodded, hardly heeding what he'd said.
 
"She's been here," she intoned, "but she hit you and slipped out. She's here, close by, hidden in the dark of the woods, watching and waiting. I--I can feel her."
  "But who is she?"
  "I still don't know. But I will."
  "Could she be armed?"
  She heaved her sack up to fasten it on her pommel. "Probably not with more than what she struck you with. We'll make a dash for it. But there's just one more thing. Do you know aught of bees?"
  "Only that there's a thatched hive of them set in the nook of the chimney," he said with a nod in that direction, before he put both hands to his head again, evidently pained by the slightest movement.
  "Then," she whispered, almost to herself, "they gather their sweet from all this sour. So their stings could be more deadly than most."
  "I only know I never heard a hive make such a buzz at night, like we've disturbed them. We'd best fly, Your Grace."
  "Yes," she said and mounted before he could help her up. She glanced around the walled yard, studded with plants she knew must be poison. "I know what she's been doing but not why," she whispered, more to herself than him. "And I will have her head, before she can get mine."

  "I call to order this meeting," Elizabeth declared as she took her place at the head of the small table in her withdrawing room at Hatfield. "And I dub you my privy and covert council."
  Shoulder to shoulder sat Ned on her left, Kat on her right, then Meg and Jenks. It was dark outside, and all but Kat had singly sneaked up the servants' stairs.
  "We are not," she went on, keeping her voice low in case someone hovered at the keyhole, "to solve problems of government but of this poison plot I have explained to you. We shall be like those who sat at King Arthur's old round table in the days of yore, where all may speak out equally when we have such meetings. If there ever needs be privy communication among us, I shall be known as just plain Bess."
  Kat's eyes widened in obvious surprise, then narrowed to disbelief. She shook her head slightly. Jenks frowned and shifted in his chair. Meg nodded, but Ned crossed his arms over his
 
chest to look watchful and doubtful. It was not, Elizabeth thought, an auspicious beginning.
  "Of course, I shall have the final say if there is disagreement," she added hastily. "Secrecy must be our byword in all we do. But in the trust we share, I must tell you I have an aide who has confederates in London, a man privy to my problems, whom I shall not name at this time. And that man is housing my cousin Henry Carey, so he shall be a support to us also, especially since he is of Boleyn blood and was intended as a victim."
  "What good, Your Grace," Ned put in, "will it do for us to have an unnamed aide to rely on if some of us know not his name? Besides, I warrant Kat Ashley knows, and that puts some of us at a disadvantage."
  "Whatever Her Grace says," Jenks put in with a fist thumped on the table, "that's the way it shall be."
  "Thank you, Jenks. And you are right, Ned," Elizabeth admitted, "that no one must have a disadvantage and we must always trust each other. But until I have this aide's specific permission, I cannot divulge his identity. Now for a report of current discoveries. Meg, tell us what you know about the dreadful hodgepodge of goods we brought back from Bushey Cot."
  "Don't know a thing about the mushrooms and fungus, 'cept they stink so they could nearly kill a body that way. Some of the poison plants I did know were the roots of black hellebore with its white flowers. It's got to be dried out of the sun, so maybe that's why "she" had them strung up inside the cot."
  "Are we going to just call her that?" Kat asked. "She? And can't we get a reckoning of women who might hold a deadly grudge against the Boleyns and search them out, Your Grace?"
  "Yes, Kat, on both questions," Elizabeth said. "I am working on attaining such a list, and when we find someone suspect we shall, as you say, search them out. And as for She--that will do for a title of that hellish murderess for now."
  "'Course, mayhap," Jenks put in,
"She is working for someone else. It's usually men behind plots, isn't it?"
  "Not necessarily," Elizabeth said. "We don't know yet who is behind Nettie's work or those who attacked my cousin, Lord Carey, or
 
even if someone is behind this She. Meg, tell us more about the Bushey Cot herbs."
  "Wouldn't know a thing about them 'cept a few like hellebore--same thing I'm thinking might have been on that arrow--but the gardener at Wivenhoe used to poison foxes what kept getting in the henhouse with that. After it was dried and pounded up, he used to add honey." Her gaze met Elizabeth's, and Ned cleared his throat before the girl went on. "And add some fat in equal parts to make a paste. He rolled balls of it and hid them in food you leave out to kill the fox-- or whatever."
  "Say on," Elizabeth said when Meg hesitated. She saw that Ned kept glaring at the girl as if she'd done something wrong. "Go ahead, Meg," she prompted again.
  "Other herbs from the cot I knew was nightshade, with its black and purple berries, and hemlock, what's called poison parsley. 'Course, Your Grace, yourself recognized the English yew and meadow saffron--the rest, don't know, 'cause I only work with garden plants and simples."
  "Sounds like you know more than you think, Meg," Jenks put in, while Ned nodded as if he'd put him up to that.
  "So," Elizabeth said, "I will have you, Jenks, carry samples of the rest of these poison plants to my aide--"
  "Jenks knows of this aide too?" Ned asked, swinging back toward Elizabeth. "Only Meg and I don't?"
  "But will soon," she said, pointing at him to make him sit back. "Now, everyone, it is my belief that our enemy--our prey--is a master poisoner, whether or not She has a superior pulling her strings," she explained, looking from one to the other. "At Bushey Cot--and God knows where else--She keeps her poison garden. Ned, I have a task for you, if you will accept."
  "Of course and gladly."
  "I would have you assume some hail-fellow-well-met identity, just in case the She of Bushey Cot is still in the area and would recognize you from our nocturnal visit there. You must ask about and endeavor to find some further description or information about her. And we must have this before we set out for Ightham Mote in a few days."
 
  "And what shall we do, Your Grace,"
Meg asked, "Kat and me?"
  "Without tipping your hand you must keep a close eye on Lady Beatrice Pope--because of this." She reached behind her on the bench to retrieve the first two pieces of poison embroidery. Placing them on the table, she added between them a linen towel Bea had done for her this year for May Day--a circlet of mixed flowers with the words, Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow.
  "I'm certainly not saying Bea is our She," Elizabeth admitted, "for I have proof she has defended me to her husband. But she could be an informant here in the house, and for whom, I'm not sure."
  "In other words, anyone up to the queen herself," Ned said.
  Elizabeth nodded jerkily. She could not bear to think that, face that. Surely her own sister would not be behind this attack on the Boleyns--and herself. Though Mary hated her, she must surely draw the line at poisoning her heir, however reluctant she had been to name her so.
  "And wouldn't," Ned interrupted her agonized thought, "the poisoner She have had such an informant in the manor at Wivenhoe, and Lady Beatrice Pope was hardly there." The question was directed at Elizabeth, but he dared to dart a glance at Meg, who kept staring down at the samplers.
  Elizabeth glared at him and deliberately stepped on his foot under the table. He started and drew back. "All things are possible," she said, "and we shall consider them. And we shall meet again soon to lay our plans for tracing Nettie and her employer in Kent. There we must search two places that have ties to my past--to the Boleyns-- where someone might have held some kind of long-tended grudge. But till that time I insist we act as a team, pulling toward the same goal. We must learn to trust each other and rely upon each other," she said, staring again at Ned, who finally looked guiltily away. "May I have your word, your hands, on that?"
  She grasped Kat's proffered one on one side and Ned's on her other and pressed them together. Jenks and Meg leaned in to put theirs atop.
  "And," Elizabeth added, "there is work to be done here that bears on this investigation in a more
 
indirect way. Ned is to teach Meg to mime my carriage and voice--at least my enunciation--lest I need her to stand in for me. And he is to teach Jenks and Meg to read on the sly. Jenks must teach Meg to ride a proper sidesaddle, as well as being my messenger and guard. Kat will stick close to me but also serve as go-between for us all. Are we agreed?"
  Each nodded in turn.
  "We'll help you find her 'fore She kills someone else, don't you fret, Your Grace," Meg whispered.
  "'Tis damned dangerous business," Kat murmured, frowning.
  "But from this moment," Elizabeth vowed, "the hunt is on."

            Chapter The Ninth

  Garbed in a cowherd's loose clothes, with a floppy hat pulled down and the ragged collar turned up, she stood behind a thick tree trunk. She glared at the red-bricked house beyond the broad meadow of brown grass, dying wildflowers, headless clover, and too many rabbits. She watched her informant, cloak rippling in the chill wind, walk toward the manor house, keeping close to the meadow's fringe in the thin shadow of skeletal trees.
  When she clasped her hands to warm them, she noticed her fingers were still sticky with honey and hellebore paste. She bent to wipe its remnants on the grass and clover leaves so she would not get it on her horse's reins. She'd wash thoroughly in the first stream she saw along the road to Kent.
  As she smeared the tacky stuff over more of the thick clover, she laughed deep in her throat. She plucked a piece of it, a shamrock sure enough, then stood staring at the second-story windows she had just been told were Elizabeth's. She crushed the clover in her raised fist.
  "Here I'm standing on your land, and you'll not be the only lass going about as a lad. I was even closer that night in the Wivenhoe graveyard but did not fathom you'd be digging up a corpse. And then you nearly snared me in the cot. But I'll be standing closer yet on your own grave soon enough to pour poisons on the sod so naught grows there, that I will for sure."
 
  The wind ripped her words away and whined through the tree limbs. As she strode toward where she'd tied her mount in the hawthorne thicket, the memory of Queen Mary's bitter voice came back to her from last year when she saw her privily at court: I was tempted to have her beheaded in the Tower, but my beloved husband would not hear of it. Yet I swear on my mother's soul she is not of royal blood. However red her hair, that one was not sired by my royal father, as my half brother Edward and I were. Her whore of a mother could have caught her from tupping her russet-haired lutenist, Mark Smeaton.
  Ailing though she was, the queen's voice had gotten louder, sharper. Her pretty Smeaton used to lie about her chamber at all hours. Dios sabe, that woman bedded him and others in her lust. It all came out at the adultery and treason trial of that witch woman. ...
  "Witch woman," the cowherd echoed Mary Tudor's words as she untied her mare's reins and pulled her to a stump so she could mount astride more easily. "Witch woman," she repeated. "Bewitching, more like."
  But "hag, witch" was what those rustic fools of Bushey had called her. She wished she had the time to put a poison curse on them. She'd wipe them off the face of the earth just as she would Kentish folk, every man jack of them who ever served or swore loyalty to a Boleyn.
  She yanked the reins to halt her horse and swing it back to face Hatfield, though she could barely see the red brick through this more distant scrim of trees.
  "I left my curse writ clear in your meadow!" she screamed like a banshee. "Come looking in Kent for me, Boleyn bitch!"

  "Not that way, girl. How oft must I tell you?"
  Ned Topside bounced back off the bench under the window in the princess's old schoolroom and rounded on Meg again. Hellfire and brimstone, but this girl was a slow study--or tongue-tied around him. At least this time he was the one giving directions instead of being chided and chastised by Uncle Wat and that damned Grand Rand. Ned knew he was about to throw a fit of choler, but, hating that in others, he reined in his voice.
  "Now, heed my words, Meg. Her Grace
 
takes more measured strides, with her head up and shoulders back, in this fashion."
  He imitated Elizabeth's walk again along the sun-struck oaken floor, past the large window where he pivoted and strode back toward the flustered, frowning girl. He hadn't, he thought, played female parts in the beginning for nothing.
  "And her elegant hands," he added, "are either clasped or carried gracefully--like this. You can tell she's proud of them. If our motley band ever goes to court hanging on her royal petticoats, you'll have to wear gloves when you're digging about in the soil with those hands. Just look at them now."
  He seized her wrists and turned her palms up, running the pads of his thumbs over her skin. She gasped throatily as if he'd done something entirely more intimate.
  "Calluses no lady would ever have," he plunged on, ignoring her reaction, "and broken nails moated by dirt, though at least your fingers are almost as long as Her Grace's."
  Blushing, she snatched her hands back, thrusting them behind her. She backed away several steps, almost coyly. "Can't you find a thing to say I done right this past hour?" she asked, in a voice hurt, not harsh as he'd expected. "Did no one ever tell you honey catches more than vinegar? You think I fancy your making me mimic a fine woman like her, the finest in the land, when I-- I--"
  He watched her hug herself and spin away so hard her meager skirts belled out. "I meant to say," she went on, lifting her head and straightening her back, "when I know where I come from--"
  "Came from," he corrected.
  "Came from. Only I don't really have a notion about that. 'Cept--ex-cept at Wivenhoe, how kindly the princess's aunt dealt with me, and her once a great lady." Slowly, as she spoke, she turned toward him. "All I know is, I'm not made to put on airs, but I'm not made to be browbeat neither." Her voice clipped along faster and she became more animated. "I'd rather be back out in the rabbit meadow gathering dried flowers for winter wreaths and strewing herbs. I found a whole spot of lady's-mantle already dried right where they grew, just waiting for me this morning.
 
  "Another sign of fair fortune's star, under which you must have been born, Meg Milligrew," he said with a sweeping mock bow. He almost regretted his subtly sarcastic tone, but she usually didn't catch on to it.
  "Meaning what?" she asked warily, drawing herself up even taller. He certainly didn't say so, but looking at her recovery from the verbal drubbing he'd just given her, he almost dared to hope this girl might find the backbone and pride to carry off looking like Elizabeth of England--if the room were dim or from a distance, of course.
  "I mean," he said, one hand on his hip, one gesturing as if he were center stage, "how you so auspiciously stumbled into Lady Mary Boleyn's house and reminded her of her own daughter living in exile or of the princess, so much that she readily favored you. And after someone poisoned her 'twas just happenstance you found all about the poisoner Nettie, which led us to that poison pit of Bushey Cot--which you, Kat says, were the one to locate during the fair in Bushey."
  "I heard some folks speaking of her--the old hag witch who lived at Bushey Cot," she protested, her voice rising.
  "As the princess keeps her tones well-modulated, why don't you practice the same?" he interjected, narrowing his eyes at her. "After all, Her Grace was born under fortune's star too, so there is something else you hold in common besides the face and form the world sees.
  "Now, Mistress Meg," he went on, "as
I was telling you afore we began, to imitate someone truly you must study them privily, listening to every word that falls from their lips. You do that with the princess, don't you?" he added, trying not to sound as suspicious as he felt about the girl.
  "She's good to me, and her lady aunt told me to come to her--a-course I do."
  "Of course," he corrected.
  "Of course," she mimicked perfectly.
  He nodded again, glad she had gone wide of the mark of what he'd implied but dared not accuse her of--yet. As he had told the princess yesterday, his inquiries at Bushey had revealed that the old hag of Bushey Cot was not necessarily old at all but walked upright and quickly. And she was not of a certain ugly, despite her loose-draped garments and some sort of lawn veil draped from her hat over her face. No
 
one had so much as seen her countenance, so she could have features fine and fair to launch a vast array of ships--a line from one of his favorite roles in The Tragedy of Queen Helen, in which he'd taken to inserting comments subtly critical of Queen Mary these last years.
  And, playing the part in Bushey of a London-born merchant looking for his lost herbalist aunt, he'd discovered that the lady of the white peacock, as he'd dubbed her, had been visited by two rural maids a hunter had spotted more than once. One of the wenches sounded as if she could have been the poisoner Nettie, as Elizabeth and Jenks had described her. The other was taller and paler, but walked with a bit of a shuffling slump.
  "Now," Ned said, clapping his hands so sharply that Meg jumped, "let's walk together again, just as Her Grace would if she were here. So this time do not shuffle or slump."

  Harry Carey watched William Cecil cast his favorite gyrfalcon, Nonesuch, to the winds from the leather gauntlet. The brown-and-white bird flapped aloft into the scudding winds, soared, then swooped, the tiny foot bells on its jesses jingling. They heard it hit the slower game bird with a thud and a scream as it bore it to earth. One of Cecil's falconers ran to recover the prey before the hawk could rip it to pieces.
  "Raw weather for October," Harry said, hunching his shoulders into his fur-lined cloak and stamping his booted feet.
  "A wretched year--ungodly weather on top of this royal mess," Cecil muttered, scanning the sky.
  In nearly a fortnight as a guest at Burghley House in Stamford on the edge of the wool-rich midlands, Harry had learned his host was a man of few but well-considered words. The thirty-eight-year-old Cecil had not been high born, but his fine schooling at St. John's Cambridge and his study of law at Gray's Inn in London had prepared him well. He had served the late Lord Protector Edward Seymour and as a secretary in young King Edward's government, until Mary Tudor came to the throne and dismissed Cecil for his
 
Protestant, humanist leanings.
Cecil had been wily enough to take the Catholic oath and keep his conscience to himself, waiting for the wind to shift. Now, as a family man--which made Harry miss his own wife and children even more--and as a sheep farmer in the countryside, Cecil bided his time awaiting Elizabeth's ascendancy.
  But the wily lawyer had already made himself of great service to Her Grace, not only publicly as the surveyor of the meager lands her father had left her, but privily as her adviser. Just last night Cecil and Harry had discussed a missive Cecil would send her with information she had requested--and with additional advice she had not.
  Now, with a sideways glance, Harry saw that Cecil was not watching for the return flight of his hawk but more likely for him to say something more. Cecil's long face looked solemn, older than his years, even more so with his shovel-shape beard. Harry had noted that his mouth barely moved, hardly bounced his beard when he talked. His eyes were a piercing brown, quick as a falcon's swoop of wing.
  "I know the times here have been terrible," Harry said, propping one boot on a rock fallen from a stone fence. "I hope you do not think I acted in a cowardly fashion to flee while others stayed. I try to keep up with events here while we all wait for the tide to turn in the princess's favor."
  "About the weather you mentioned," Cecil countered, as if a host of royal spies hovered nearby. "In July a windstorm in Nottingham knocked down houses, and the River Trent flooded to wipe out two small towns. Quartan fever raged like the very plague during the dog days, hailstones fell, and the wind--marry, it stunk from London to the shires with the charred flesh of the queen burning men and women she insists are heretics."
  "But in God's truth are really martyrs," Harry added grimly, shaking his head. "The poor people. I heard inflation is the highest ever recorded in the kingdom," he added, hoping to show Cecil he'd tried to keep abreast of English affairs. "And that some unemployed laborers are grinding acorns to make their bread."
  "Aye, that too," Cecil said with a sniff. Suddenly, he lifted his arm and Nonesuch came swooping back, fanning his great wings for balance before folding them tightly to his sleek
 
body. His talons gripped the leather glove, and Cecil skillfully turned to keep the bird's beak pointed into the stiff wind. If it got its feathers ruffled, its powerful wings could beat Cecil black and blue. The falcon's eyes looked keen but expressionless, rather like its master's.
  When Cecil had its leather hood back on, Harry said, "I've been on edge in Europe too. Mayhap distance makes waiting even worse." Cecil nodded, and Harry followed his lead back toward the copse where they'd tied their horses.
  "You know," Harry added, his voice rising on the breeze, "I've been wishing like hell I had some great gauntlet to throw down in their smug Catholic faces to champion the princess at all costs."
  "We all have hoods over us, just waiting to fly --to attack if need be, eh, my lord?"
  "Exactly."
  "But, marry, even this bird knows to sit patiently till he is cast, till the prey is ripe, and the time has come."
  "Aye, but I keep hearing that cry of those assassins who would have killed me in the woods." He glanced about nervously, though only two of Cecil's men waited at a distance. "I heard them talking while they stalked me, but I was so shocked by being attacked and thrown that their words did not stick. But that curse on the Boleyns one man cried--I have been trying to place the regional origin of the assassin. If the princess is so sure that girl Nettie, my mother's poisoner, had ties to Kent, I ask myself, could it have been a Kentish brogue? But the wretch's voice was rather lilting, singsong in a way I cannot place."
  "You've heard King Philip's people at court, have you not?" Cecil asked. "You know," he prompted, "the way their Spanish tongues dance and lisp over their words?"
  Harry halted dead in his tracks, so Cecil stopped too. "Heard it but only briefly before I left the court. It could be--not just some rural English speech, but foreign. And who hates our Elizabeth and ever the Boleyns more than the Spanish?"
  "You may write an addendum to my letter in your own hand when we send her man back to Hatfield
 
on the morrow," Cecil said. "Who more than the Spanish indeed, though that can hardly be news to Her Grace. But that is much of what I mean to write to her--and to remind her that the two places she intends to seek this master poisoner in Kent have ties not only to the Boleyns but to dangerous and hostile foreign elements."
  As he mounted, despite hearing of new dangers to his royal cousin, Harry felt better than he had in days. They would send a key clue and warnings to Her Grace. And, finally, clever Cecil had trusted him enough to speak of something else besides the weather and sheep, farming and falcons, though every time he did there lurked second meanings there. He spurred his horse harder to keep up with the older man.

  "No, I cannot take you to Kent with me tomorrow," Elizabeth told plump, flat-faced Cora Crenshaw, one of the Hatfield cooks, in the corridor outside her chamber door. Kat and Blanche had gone down to air sheets and bolsters on the bushes.
  "I tell you, cook," Elizabeth went on, "I shall regret it, too, for I shall miss your fine pigeon pies and that carp in orange sauce. But I cannot offend Lady Cornish by bringing my own kitchen staff to that small country house."
  The woman bowed her covered head, and Elizabeth thought that would be the end of it, but she had not spoken to her recently and had forgotten her stiff backbone. Clasping her flour-dusted hands, Cora spoke the next words to their feet, but her voice was still strong.
  "But e'er sin' I come to you, my Lady Elizabeth, you had nary a stomach complaint nor fear of tainted food, not from my hand. And in these times--"
  "In these times, aye, but my answer is no. You must not gainsay me more. But should I ever be called back to court--my sister's court, I mean," she amended hastily, "you have my word I shall take you with me there so that--"
  A woman's shriek shredded the air. Elizabeth pressed her back against the wall and glanced both ways in the corridor. Had that been Bea? Blanche, Kat, or even Meg? From the courtyard or outside?
  When no one came running for her, she gestured
 
for Cora to follow and ventured down the hall toward the grand staircase, glancing into every room that had an open door. Strange, but the memory that bombarded her was that one time she had heard the midnight scream of her cousin Catherine Howard's ghost at Hampton Court years after her beheading. She was begging for her husband king to listen to her pleas, not send her to the Tower, though she had been unfaithful. She was shrieking for the Great Henry to show her one shred of mercy. ...
  Goosebumps shivered Elizabeth's flesh. She hurried down the stairs to find the front door wide open but empty.
  Cora close behind her, she stepped to the side and peered out. Bea was dragging Sir Thomas by his wrist across the drive toward the meadow, pointing, shouting, as demented as a bedlamite. Several grooms and sta2oys came running, their feet spitting gravel. She wished Jenks were back from taking her letter to court and a quick dart up to Stamford to Cecil and her cousin Harry, but she'd have to face this without her favorite man. At least, ever curious, Ned appeared with Meg from another secret schoolroom lesson, even as Kat and Blanche dashed out from the side of the house.
  Elizabeth strode out. Long tendrils of red hair sprung loose to whip her face in the wind. She blinked in the bright sun. Whatever were they looking at? Pray God, not a body they had found in the tall, dry meadow grass, which they didn't let the stupid sheep crop lately since it was a rabbit warren of holes to break legs.
  Her stomach clenched. Bea had covered her eyes and Pope was pinching his nose as they peered down at something in the blowing grass.
  "What's amiss?" Elizabeth's bell-clear voice called out.
  At first no one looked at her. The wind shifted, and she caught the stench. She shook off Kat when she tried to pull her back. Elizabeth stepped closer. She had to see what it was--who lay here. ...
  She went past the Popes and gasped. Scores of rabbits lay dead or twitching at their feet. And one moaning, bleating sheep on its knees that must have got through the hedgerows somehow. At first her mind could not encompass what she saw. Then Meg spoke close behind her.
 
  "Poisoned--I seen foxes go down like this with hellebore."
  "Have you now?" Ned said much too quickly, before Elizabeth lifted her hand to halt more he might say.
  "Poisoned?" Sir Thomas bellowed, swinging about to glare at Elizabeth and her little band of people. "What evil intent is this?"
  "Look," Meg added, pointing, "pasty balls here and there in the grass they may been licking or eating. Pasty balls someone's been rolling in her--or his--hands."
  "And some shiny vile stuff smeared on the low clover leaves the frost hasn't got yet," Kat added and stooped to point at a clump of grass that ants had covered in a writhing, black mass. It reminded Elizabeth of poor Will Benton's wounds. She almost dry-heaved but put her hand over her mouth and quelled the impulse.
  When Kat looked as if she meant to examine the stuff closer, Elizabeth shrieked, "Don't touch it!" and yanked her back. "Any of you, don't touch it. Sir Thomas, get someone to dose that sheep with purgative, but bury the dead rabbits."
  "I'll give the orders here to keep you safe and sound," Thomas insisted, his voice booming. "Now, you just go on, my lady, get back in the house. I'll order some men to take care of things, ride circuit to question folks. It's a blessing in disguise we'll hie ourselves to Kent tomorrow. But for now, none of you ladies are to leave the house till we are ready to ride. My lady" --he addressed his wife now--"see to it that no one goes out. No one!"
  Elizabeth glared daggers at him. He shouted as if they did not stand close enough to see the veins pop out like ropes on his florid neck. Despite his tirade, she dragged her gaze away from the pitiable carnage to scan the meadow and the rim of trees beyond to look for--for whoever had committed this cruel outrage, as if she did not know.
  Her pulse pounded in her head. She clenched her fists so hard at her sides her fingernails bit into her palms. She fought to control herself. At this moment she could have thrown things, shoved people--kicked down the bricks of this house. In moments like this she knew she was her father's heir indeed, no matter what some traitors had dared
 
to accuse at her mother's treason trial.
  As she turned her back on the Popes, her dark, narrowed eyes in her white face met Ned's, then Kat's, and finally Meg's. They fell in behind her, striding pell-mell to keep up.
  "I'll see her soul in hell," Elizabeth hissed, "if She fathoms I'm the next dumb beast she'll torment and kill."

            Chapter The Tenth

  Her retinue's jogging, jolting, three-day progress toward Kent was an ordeal she and Jenks, hard riding, could have covered in but one, Elizabeth groused silently. Her flesh crawled as they entered the thick woods of the Weald, for she could not shake the feeling that poison arrows could fly from the trees. Frustration, fear, and fury obsessed her. And a wretched toothache bored into her jaw and patience, though Meg had dosed it twice with periwinkle and rosemary in wine.
  All the way she had felt that she was being watched. Not just by the Popes, nor by stolid fellow travelers gaping at a passing party of their betters. She didn't mind the common folk gawking as they picked walnuts or gleaned the last of the rye harvests with huge rakes or pruned the hop vines. She was watched by someone she could not see or identify. Someone who stooped low enough to poison rabbits and dared reach so high as to poison--
  "Lady Elizabeth," Bea Pope's voice interrupted her frenzied thoughts. She sidled her horse close to Elizabeth's Griffin to nose out her own husband's, who dropped back for a bit, while the ever watchful Jenks rode on Elizabeth's other side.
  "Did you not hear me?" Bea said, twisting in the saddle to peer at her. "I said, we are almost there. No wonder ordinary travelers never stop at Ightham Mote, and Her Majesty gave you permission to visit such a godforsaken part of Kent."
  Elizabeth ignored the insult. The fact that the manor was tucked deep in this maze of tunnellike lanes between the two main roads was part of its allure for her right now.
  "You know," Bea chattered on, not daring to look
 
at her now, "I believe I shall soon make a sampler 'broidered with a knot of these dreadful vines that keep snagging my hat." She reached up to rip at one. "My work shall bear the saying Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
  She laughed musically, as if she had made some brilliant jest. "I believe," she went on, when Elizabeth did not deign to reply, "your fool, Ned, said that's from a speech he did in The Tragedy of Aeneas in Torment or some such when he was with The Queen's Country Players. The knave's frightfully clever, you know," she added, gesturing behind them with a flutter of gloved fingers.
  "Someone told me so. It's why I took him on, of course." And why, Elizabeth added to herself, I told him to keep a watch on you. With the slightest nod of her head to Jenks, they kicked their mounts to leave Bea riding alone in their wake before she could think to inquire who had recommended Ned.
  But Bea, like an apothecary leech, was not to be deterred as she caught up and clung. "And did he tell you why he took the sobriquet Topside?" she asked with a chortle, as if she caught naught of their snub. "Because the groundlings took to heart his braggadocio naval captain of that name, who insists he always be topside when he goes to sea or beds a wench." She dissolved in gales of laughter again.
  It was all Elizabeth could do to keep from hanging Bea Pope with the next noose of vine they rode under. Her chatter was the least of it, for as far as Elizabeth was concerned, Bea had been topside in Cecil's warning letter.
  'So blood, she wished she could have reread it several more times before they had to set out, but Jenks had been delayed getting from London to Stamford and back. She'd had time to skim the epistle only twice, then burn it, but its message was burned in her brain.
  Sui bono, he'd written and underscored, her wily lawyer, for the letter was entirely in Latin. It mattered not: She could have read it in Italian, French, Spanish, or Greek.
Though Kat Ashley had been her first teacher, she had spent years under the tutelage of two brilliant scholars, even during her exile from court. Sui bono was a Latin law phrase
 
meaning Who will profit--who is to gain? It was the way lawyers delved for motive in a crime. Sui bono--cold and calculating, but clever. The very way she would have to act to save herself so she could get the throne and then bind such men as Cecil and Harry to her as advisers.
  Always--semper--Cecil had written and underscored also, look for who will profit monetarily, politically, or even passionately in affairs of the heart--including vengeance.
  Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord. Elizabeth recalled the biblical warning, but she had known a hundred believers who had not believed that, including her royal sister.
  However, in this instance of the so-called poison plot, Cecil had written, he had concluded that Mary Tudor's consort, King Philip of
Spain, as well as his courtiers, his Catholic church, and his country had the most to gain if Elizabeth died. At least Cecil had not dared treason to include Queen Mary as the puller of strings behind the plot. Yet in the dark of night and those places in her own soul, that was Elizabeth's worst fear--and best guess.
  Cecil had listed as possible suspects some Spaniards currently in power who would lose all influence should she ascend the throne, names from the Count de Feria, the Spanish ambassador, to others--names she had not had time to learn by rote.
  But he'd written and underscored that since the poison victims included Boleyns of the past as well as the present, they'd best look first to those who could lose much now but were also tied to Catherine of Aragon--a sort of double sui bono. And so that second detailed list was of some members of Queen Catherine's household. Though several of them were dead, they either had offspring or retainers who were fanatically loyal to the Catholic queen, daughter and wife of Spanish royalty:
  Miguel De la Sa was C. of A.'s loyal personal physician. The man was with her during her darkest days and was overheard to vow vengeance on Anne Boleyn and her rapacious family--rapacious, a direct quote, not my term, Cecil had carefully added. And, of course, as a physician, De la Sa knew something of lethal herbs. He is dead, but he could have passed on his hatred--and knowledge of the herbs, so I
 
shall look into that. His heirs have much to lose should you rule.
  De la Sa, Elizabeth thought. Yes, she remembered him, another stale old fellow from the past who had not lived long in Mary's reign. Had he not been of such lofty age when Mary took the throne, she would have probably appointed De la Sa as her own royal physician in her mother's honor. But he had often visited and had pronounced Mary's old beekeeper dead on the grass at Whitehall that day Elizabeth was there. Queen Mary had buried one old beekeeper and one physician and replaced them both with younger retainers that first month of her reign.
  Secondly, John de Scutea,
Cecil wrote, who lived to a ripe old age in London, passionately dedicated to the Spanish cause and Popish religion, was once Queen Catherine's apothecary, working closer with De la Sa. Dr. Scutea had a daughter named Sarah Scottwood--whether she had wed a Scottwood or taken an Anglicized approximation of her father's name for anonymity, I am not sure. Sarah also knew the herbs, and the queen, and upon the event of her father's death last year, disappeared from London and could not be traced.
  Elizabeth had made a mental note to herself to have Cecil pull some strings to find out what this Sarah Scottwood, n@ee Scutea, looked like. And if any of De la Sa's heirs were women.
  He had included other names on the list, but it was his final item that most angered and alarmed her. And you know, do you not, he had written, though I see no herbal connection here, that Maria de Salinas, faithful lady-in-waiting to Queen Catherine to the bitter end, who had publicly claimed that Anne Boleyn's people had slipped poison to her predecessor, was foster mother to Beatrice, Lord Thomas Pope's wife you have ever with you. ...
  Not ever with me, Elizabeth fumed, for she finds excuses enough to visit her sister in Kent. But she bears thorough watching, even if she goes off to nearby Maidstone again.
  Just as upsetting, Cecil had warned her that both Kentish houses--Hever Castle and Leeds Castle--where she intended to pursue Boleyn
 
connections were linked to dangerous foreign elements. He would send her word posthaste on these if she did not already know of this herself.
  And Harry, in his own hand, had written of his loyalty and devotion to her. She stopped rubbing her sore jaw and let her lips rest in a smile at the memory of her dear cousin. He had explained he was more certain than ever that his would-be assassins had shouted their cursed battle cry with a foreign accent. He and Cecil had discussed it, and it could well have been Spanish with its lilt and Castilian lisp.
  "Are you quite well, Lady Elizabeth?" Bea interrupted again. "This journey was all your idea, yet you have looked pained and pale all the way. And your testy temper and refusal to converse civilly tells me it is more than a toothache."
  "I am certain," Elizabeth declared, staring straight ahead, "the company in Kent will much improve my disposition. Ah--look there through the trees. How I love these old moated manor houses. They once knew how to keep the enemy out."
  Bea only sputtered as Elizabeth spurred Griffin to ride at the very vanguard of the group.

  "Now, remember, Jenks, your story is that you are my body servant, and we've been living abroad," Ned said as the two of them rode into the little town of Edenbridge late the next morning. "Since our personae don't know much of what's going on and are heading for London, we need some information about the tenor of the times from the townspeople. And don't stand agape or clap me on the back this time when I assume an educated London accent."
  Edenbridge was the only decent-size village near the Princess Elizabeth's ancestral home of Hever Castle and about ten miles from Ightham Mote, where everyone else was settling in and resting today. With its row of crooked, half-timbered shops downstairs and living chambers up, all overhung with drooping thatched roofs, the place looked like a hundred other hamlets Ned had seen on his theatrical tours. A small church with a graveyard at its skirts, a few scattered wattle-and-daub houses, and only one place with pretentions crowded a narrow, rutted lane.
 
  Several people stopped and stared at them but gave no greeting. Though their horses' hooves came not near, a woman yanked two children back into an open door and slammed it. Several people peered from second-story windows until an old woman with a wrinkle-webbed face shut hers with a smack and the others followed suit.
  The two men reined in at an ivy-fronted public house probably called the Queen's Head. No words named the place, but a weathered sign of a crowned woman squeaked in the breeze. She had hair so black she must be either Catherine Howard or--in these parts, where it could not be Catherine of Aragon--Anne Boleyn.
  Jenks began to look as nervous as Ned felt. Usually rural folk were friendly or at least curious about strangers. Jenks's eyes kept darting about to watch their flanks, but it didn't keep him from continuing their conversation.
  "But Her Grace said I can ask round what they think of the Boleyns, too, Ned. I heard London talk lots of times. But I'll follow your lead like I done hers at Wivenhoe."
  Because Ned liked Jenks's openness and honesty-- and deferential nature--he nodded instead of shaking his head in disgust. Meg, at least, would have never made the doltish assumption that anyone could summon up someone else's speech at will, especially that of their betters.
  "Just remember to listen more than you talk," Ned encouraged him. "I'm going to play this to the hilt. I'll do a version of Lord Henry Carey's voice, for he's been abroad and has now come home. But no--that doesn't mean I'll use his name," he added hastily, reading the next question the man would ask before he opened his mouth.
  They tied their horses, and Ned gave a dirty lad a groat to watch them. The boy had begun to back away, but the glint of the coin stayed his feet.
  Ned was impressed with how reasonably clean the common room of the Queen's Head smelled compared to other such places he'd been. The rushes on the floor didn't reek of dog or manured boots.
  Though the Princess Elizabeth had come to Kent to probe the plot against her, she was inordinately eager to visit her mother's girlhood home nearby. Her plans were to take
 
a small party out riding and just happen to stop at Hever. Their hostess, Lady Cornish, had told them that Queen Mary had sold the place last year to a Sir Edward Waldegrave, who had been an officer in Her Majesty's household. Not exactly the strong Spanish connection the princess was expecting because of Cecil's letter, but one that bore watching. That was why she planned a surprise visit rather than one announced--just as they did here today.
  The six patrons and tapman in the common room bore watching, too, Ned noted. All talk stopped when they entered. No one sang out greetings, inquiries, not even insults. The hair on the back of his neck prickled as he ordered two tankards of beer. He could sense when he introduced himself and said he was just passing through from the Kentish coast to London that he'd somehow said the wrong thing. He could tell from their frowns, hardened gazes, and shifting stances that they were not impressed.
  "Back to London, eh?" the tapman muttered. He was bald with a bull neck so short that his head seemed to sit directly on his rounded shoulders, as if it could topple off. Out of the corner of his eye, Ned saw three others sidle up to the row of hogshead casks, which meant three others were still somewhere behind him. He slowly pivoted to lean back against a big tun. Jenks shifted his free hand to his sword hilt. Whatever in creation's name was wrong here? He was usually skilled at reading strangers. What had he missed?
  "But we're not on court business or anything like that," Ned added hastily, addressing everyone now. "Just hoping for a little catch-up on the latest happenings hereabouts." To his chagrin, one man closed the door and leaned against it, cross-armed.
  "Meanin'," the tapman drawled, "this be an unofficial visit, just to gather more information, like you said. Been employed at Bloody Mary's court afore, I'll bet. Maybe, lads, this fine lord left the country like a rat off a sinkin' ship, but now he's scurryin' back with more news from the shires for Her Majesty, eh?"
  "News from the shires?" Ned echoed. "No, not the way you imply--"
  "Curse her filthy Catholic soul, an' you can tell her that next time you see her--in hell," the tapman cried and spit into the rushes
 
at his feet.
  That seemed the sign for a general melee. The tapman swung a pewter flagon, catching Ned on the upper arm as he tried to draw his sword. The others rushed them in a big blur of shouts and bodies.
  It was then Ned learned why a brilliant woman like the princess could abide someone as thick-headed as Stephen Jenks. Before Ned could so much as draw his sword, Jenks thrust Ned behind him so hard he bounced off the wall. Jenks scraped his sword out and, with a battle cry that would have done a Turk proud, swung it in a broad arc back and forth to keep the first barrage of rogues off them.
  When the tapman ducked low and came at him, Jenks kicked the rogue in the groin, then shoved him at the others so they went down like ninepins. He darted sideways to roll flasks to pen them in a corner. Somehow, the two plank tables got upturned to hold them there.
  Ned had his sword and dagger out and was ready to run for the door when Jenks bellowed, "We're queensmen, aye, but of our next queen! The Princess Elizabeth sent us to greet you, living near her people's home at Hever."
  Though shaken and astounded, Ned saw that was the right thing to say. Their burly attackers froze where they stood or sat, wiping bloody noses. The tapman, bent over in pain, retched on the floor. One lout spit out two teeth before he lisped through a cut lip, "God's truth, man?"
  Jenks motioned Ned out of the corner with two jerks of his sword point. "You go ahead and talk now, Lord Ned."
  "Yes. I--it's--it's God's truth indeed," he began, cursing that he sounded like a stutterer. His upper arm began to throb where the tapman had laid into him, and his shoulder stung from Jenks throwing him back into the wall.
  "Heard she's hunkered in at Ightham Mote, our princess," Cut Lip said. "Come home to us Kentish folk loves her best, ain't she--waitin' for that Cath'lic she-wolf to die?"
  "Aye," the tapman agreed, getting unsteadily to his feet and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. Another man rolled a barrel out to give them some room in the corner. The tapman gave Cut Lip a hand up as he talked.
 
  "Bloody Mary's royal arm reached out right o' a London--to loyal little places never done naught to her," he explained as he shuffled closer. "Burnt to death our schoolmaster, Alexander Walton, in front of the old church just for holding to his belief the communion host stood for Christ but wasn't his real flesh, that's what She-Wolf's London men come here and did." He spit blood again but no more teeth.
  "A burning here?" Jenks said, finally sheathing his sword. "Heard tell the queen hauled heretics--martyrs--off to London or Oxford for that."
  Ned wanted to say something, to take over, but for once words wouldn't come. Besides, it seemed these bumpkins thought Jenks was the spokesman here. He didn't know whether to laugh or cry.
  "Naw, like in other little towns, burnt him here when he wouldn't recant. And when some folk protested, her men whipped every one of us so much as spit," the tapman said and quickly shed his jerkin and shirt. He turned his back to them to display the ugly patchwork of red welts across his skin. "Every man jack here can show the same," he said, wincing as he gingerly pulled his shirt back on.
  "So then," Ned said, and his voice broke with emotion, "strong loyalty for the Princess Elizabeth and her Boleyn family still flourishes here?"
  "We'd all go to the whippin' or the burnin' stake for her," a younger, thinner, freckled lad said. He stepped out from the makeshift battlement of barrels to peer past Ned, so he could address Jenks. "Bless you for servin' her, man. Keep her safe for us."

  "Kat mentioned you cried out in your sleep again, Your Grace," Meg said to Elizabeth as she prepared to ride out to Hever Castle with a retinue the next morning, though everyone but her privy plot council thought she was merely taking a ride in that direction.
  When she appeared to have a whim that they stop at Hever for a respite, it would give her an opportunity to meet, assess, and carefully question Sir Edward Waldegrave, whom she had learned in Cecil's second letter was an ally to the queen and friend of the Spanish ambassador Feria. Hopefully, Waldegrave would give
 
her a tour of the place. No use taking the risk of slipping in there secretly at night if one could be taken inside openly. Besides, like Ightham Mote and many manor houses in Kent, Hever was moated with a working drawbridge that would be difficult to breach unless one were welcomed in.
  "No doubt my unrest was from a nightmare, my Meg, but one I don't recall." Over
Kat's shoulder Elizabeth smiled at the girl as she helped her don her fox-lined cloak over her russet riding gown.
  But her bravado was not quite the truth. She had dreamed that bees were buzzing her, bombarding her. Bees from Bushey Cot, bees from the hives beyond the knot garden here at Ightham Mote, bees from Queen Mary's Whitehall Palace. The dreams were warnings to beware of danger, of course. Her dreams always meant something, like portents of--
  "You're gone pale as a ghost, Your
Grace." Kat's concerned voice cut through her thoughts. She reached out to gently rub color into her cheeks. "Not the toothache again?"
  "No, I'm fine, my Kat, just a bit excited about today," she said, reaching up to pinch her own cheeks.
  But she knew she must stop lying to those closest to her, those she trusted. Lies must be told to the others, but not her little poison-plot council. For if she looked as if she'd seen a ghost, it was because the past still haunted her. That dreadful dream-- she'd had it more than once of late--had made her flee for comfort and courage to the Lord. Again and again today she had silently recited to herself parts of her favorite Psalm: The Lord is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me? ... Therefore shall I see my desire upon them that hate me ... They compassed me about like bees ... Thou hast thrust sore at me that I might fall: but the Lord helped me ... I shall not die but live.
  "But from somewhere," Meg pursued as Elizabeth took her riding gloves from Kat and sallied out and down the upstairs corridor, "I recall a real fine cure for nightmares. I tell you, afore you go to bed tonight we could try rosemary and peony seeds in wine, Your Grace."
  "Wine with toothache tonic and for that too? Perhaps that is your secret ingredient, my Meg: wine, wine, wine. But the pain in my jaw is much better today. I shall see you when we return."
 
  She gave Meg a gay wave. She  knew the girl wanted to accompany her, but she was  riding out only with Blanche and Bea as  ladies-in-attendance, for the rest were men. Even  here--especially here--she must do things for  safety's sake.
  She tugged her gloves on before she went  downstairs so her hands were free to lift her  skirts and grasp the banister. Ah, she could not  wait to see upstairs and down in the place Mary  Boleyn had described to her, the childhood  home her mother had known, where King Henry had come  calling, hunting for game and a new love in the  forests of Hever.
  She was hunting, too, today, but for answers to who  in Kent could be connected to the master poisoner and  why. She would not let that damned woman and whoever  was pulling her strings ruin this jaunt. To be there  might be almost like touching her mother again, and she had not  done that since she was three. But it was to the bold  Anne Boleyn she owed her right to wear England's  crown, for she had gone to the block rather than declare  her babe a bastard. And so, she thought, pausing  on the bottom stair, this is a pilgrimage I  make today.
  The princess's host and hostess, the  Cornishes, awaited her at the door to the  courtyard. "At least it is dry today and not so  brisk as of late," Penelope Cornish said,  taking Elizabeth's proffered hands. Sleek  silver hair pulled back in a dated gabled  coif framed Lady Cornish's plump face.
Her slashed velvet overgown and brocade  kirtle also reminded Elizabeth of her father's  days, but what did it matter when the Cornishes  never went to court anymore? After all, it was  keeping clear of royal politics for decades  that had made Queen Mary believe they were yet  loyal to any Tudor on the throne.
  Thin and tottering, Lord Neville Cornish  bowed and escorted Elizabeth outside to the  central courtyard, where her party waited. He    had offered to ride along, but Elizabeth knew  he was not up to it, nor could he give her any  sort of entr@ee to Lord Waldegrave, as their  separate past loyalties kept them from being  friends.
  Outside, she noted that Thomas Pope was not  yet among her retinue, though Bea was present  --and pacing. The day was brisk and bright, but  Elizabeth felt as if a cloud had  cast itself over her expectations. When her eye  caught Ned's across the cobbled courtyard, he  pointed toward the front of the house and gestured  something to her she could not decipher. At least he  did not seem sulky, as he had yesterday after the  near disaster at Edenbridge he testily  admitted Jenks had bailed him out of.
  "Is aught amiss with my plans for a ride  today?" she asked Lord Cornish.
  "I suppose both good news and bad, though  Lord Pope is likely to chew rocks and spit  them out too," the old man told her with a thin  smile. "A rather goodly size crowd, Your  Grace, especially for this place hidden away in  the Weald, has gathered at the front gate,  hoping for a glimpse of their princess. Word has  spread like wildfire, you see--"
  "A hostile or friendly crowd, my lord?" she  asked warily, cocking one eyebrow.
  "Why, this is Kent, Your Grace." His  smile widened to display crooked, darkened teeth.  "It might as well all be Boleyn land, instead  of none of it anymore."
  Exhaling a sigh of relief, she could not help  but smile back at him. While Jenks held  her horse, she climbed the mounting steps and sat,  hooking one knee over the sidesaddle, putting the  toe of her boot through the stirrup, and settling her  skirts. While her retinue scrambled to get  astride their mounts, she took the reins and riding  whip Jenks handed her and tried not to look as  excited as she felt.
  "But we're not to ride out until my lord  re--" Bea Pope began.
  Pretending she did not hear her, Elizabeth  clucked Griffin on. She had to see and hear  English folk who set no tricky political  or religious plots in motion but who truly  cared. Men like those Ned and Jenks had met at that  public house. People who were proud of her Boleyn  blood and didn't want to poison it.
  Sun glinted off the diamond-shape  mullioned windows of the inner courtyard as Jenks,  a few Cornish retainers, her two ladies,  and three of Pope's men fell in to funnel through  the narrow tower entrance. Elizabeth craned her  neck to glance up at the barrel-vaulted roof  adorned with carved Tudor roses. The spikes  of the iron portcullis were raised into the stone  ceiling. Outside, bridges spanned  three of the four sides of the square moat, fed  by springs and a waterfall Elizabeth could hear from  her rooms if she opened her windows. Horses'  hoofs clattered on cobbles behind her.
  She heard the buzz of voices before she saw the  crowd, nearly twoscore folk strung out along  the far edge of the moat. Thomas Pope was  haranguing them to go home. When they caught sight  of her, wild hurrahs drowned him out. Caps  flew and someone threw dried rose petals into the  air.
  Tears stung Elizabeth's eyes. She  smiled and lifted her hand to wave--but then she  felt it again, the fear.
  Someone in the crowd ... she was being watched  by someone who might be cheering ... but hated her.  She reined in Griffin and narrowed her gaze into the  sun, squinting to peruse their faces. Sir  Thomas strode to her across the patch of grass and  seized Griffin's bridle.
  "Her Majesty will not be pleased to hear of this,  my lady. You are not to be showing yourself to crowds--  flaunting yourself to incite unrest."
  Elizabeth tore her gaze from the women's  faces in the crowd. She looked down her nose  at the man. With her other worries he suddenly  seemed a pesky fly she could crush under her  boot, yet she had to heed him. His words found their  mark. Her temper flared, though she fought to stem  it.
  "I have hardly summoned these few folk, nor  have I incited unrest, my lord. I would merely  ride out--was
  "I am now dead set against it, because the queen  would be likewise. And when she hears of this in her  delicate state, she will no doubt rescind her  permission for you to be here in this hotbed of ... of  misguided loyalties in Kent from which your ...  some of your ... people sprang."
  She blinked back tears. How foolish she  had been to expect she could act openly here, she  who had no power but dangled by a thread hoping for  safety in the future. But she had to act now  against the poisoner, and evidently in secret.  She nodded to the crowd again but did not dare to wave.  Still they cheered as, stony-faced, she wheeled about and  rode back in through the iron jaws of old  Ightham Mote.

          Chapter the  Eleventh

  "Thank God--and Penelope Cornish--that  Sir Thomas and Bea's rooms are around the  other side of the quadrangle."
  Elizabeth's voice came muffled as Kat  helped her tug the man's shirt down over her  head and laced it for her. Since Jenks was so much  bigger, she had borrowed Ned's good one--besides, it  didn't stink of horses. Elizabeth shoved the  tails into her boy's breeks and cinched the whole  thing in with a broad belt. They tied her heavy  hair back in a tail and shoved it up under a  black felt cap. Lastly, Kat swirled her  fur-lined cape over her, for the night was chill.
  Kat stood back, tapping one finger against her  pursed lips. "If someone sees you three about  after dark with extra horses, they're likely  to think smugglers came up from the coast again with fine  Frenchie goods," she observed. "Lady  Cornish's maid Bett's been telling me this  area used to be full of them before the Tudors put  wardens in the Cinque ports on the channel."
  "We are smugglers," Elizabeth declared.    "We're going to somehow smuggle ourselves into a  moated, gated--mayhap guarded--manor house  and discover exactly why the queen gave my  ancestral Boleyn home to Sir Edward  Waldegrave for a pittance last year, as  Cecil put it in his second letter. Since  Waldegrave's so tight with Ambassador
Feria and her Spaniards, he's doing something  special for her here, or why would he live away  from court? And that something could be to give sanctuary  to a nest of poisoners who are targeting me. If  that girl Nettie came from Kent, the mastermind  behind the poor wretch probably did too. Oh,  where are the others? I told them ten of the clock!"  she said, smacking her palms on her breeks.
  Kat returned to wringing her hands, but  Elizabeth was relieved she had given up  arguing. It had not been Cecil's second  secret missive about Waldegrave that had  convinced Kat. Rather, it was her intimate view of  her royal mistress's face when she had ridden  back into the courtyard earlier today after her first  aborted attempt to get to Hever. Besides,  poison clover and dead rabbits in the front
  
meadow of Hatfield had finally  persuaded Kat that Elizabeth might not even  survive to become queen if she didn't fight  back somehow.
  A flurry of light knocks sounded on the  door, and Kat flew for it. Meg entered with Ned  hard behind.
  "Jenks holds the horses beyond the moat," he  said, out of breath. He wore a thickly padded  jerkin and a cape, but carried his cap and gloves.  "And may I present to you the fair Princess of  England--at least for the night," he added, nodding  at Meg.
  The girl was dressed in one of Elizabeth's  night rails and robes. She nodded slowly,  almost elegantly, without shifting her stance or  slumping her shoulders. Some progress here at  least, Elizabeth thought. It was much like gazing in a  looking glass.
  "Your Grace," Meg said solemnly as if  she spoke set words, "I vow I shall not fall  to pieces if Sir Thomas comes insisting he  speak to you while you're gone and it's me in your  bed."
  "I in your bed," Ned interjected.  "Kat will see that doesn't happen,"  Elizabeth assured her. "You are here only for a  surety that someone like Bea doesn't cause  trouble. If she does, pretend to be in a foul  temper, keep your head covered, and moan that your  toothache has come back with a vengeance."
  "But then they'll send for me, and I'll be you,  so--"
  "Hush," Elizabeth insisted but gave her  shoulder a quick squeeze. "We must all pray that  our risks will be worth the rewards. Meg, this is  your maiden voyage impersonating me, and I  believe Ned has launched you well."
  She turned quickly to hug Kat farewell, but  not before she saw the look of longing Meg shot  Ned. He missed it, fiddling with his dagger in its  sheath.
  'So blood, Elizabeth swore to herself, all  she needed in this maze of problems was for Meg to be  yearning for that sort of regard from Ned. But no,  she only wanted his approval, as any scholar  wants to please a tutor. Anyhow, she had no  time for such maudlin tripe from her people, not now, not  ever.
  She and Ned tiptoed down the servants'
  
stairs that led to the back hall with its  pantry, buttery, and bolting room. Though  only dogs dozed by the low kitchen fire and no  one worked this late, it seemed to Elizabeth that a  fine flour dust hung in the air. She jammed  her finger under her nose to stop a sneeze. Then  they were out the back door, through an autumn herb  garden, and across the eastside bridge where Jenks,  already mounted, held five horses.
  As they mounted, Elizabeth glanced back. A  second-story window showed the silhouette of a  woman's shape. She sucked in a breath of  crisp air. That would be at the top landing of the  central stairs, wouldn't it? Had Kat or
Meg come round to this side to see them go? If it was  Lady Cornish or Blanche, she could  probably deal with it, but if it were Bea ...
  "Let's ride," she said.

  They spelled two horses each hour on the  way, a good fifteen miles wending through roundabout  roads. Elizabeth's heart thudded faster than  their hoofbeats. The forest floor was dark, but  Jenks had done a good job getting directions,  and she hardly feared they'd meet someone abroad  this late. Few could be so brazen or desperate  as she.
  When pale moonlight revealed the painted,  faded facade of Hever Castle, tears wet  her lashes, she who never cried but deep inside.  Not even, she thought, suddenly awash with emotion,  when she lost Tom Seymour in his betrayal, not  even when she faced Traitor's Gate at the  Tower over the Wyatt plot.
  She fought for a happier thought so she would not lose  her resolve. After all, this home had seen  glad events and bold endeavors. One time, her  Aunt Mary had said, Anne insisted she was  ailing and dared to stay in her chamber the entire time  her parents entertained their increasingly frustrated  sovereign. If only she herself, Elizabeth  thought, had that much power over men, to make them dance  to her tune. But then, disaster oft came hard upon the  heels of passion and power. Sometimes they seemed  much the same to her, all twisted up.
  "I said the drawbridge is up, just as you  feared, Your Grace."
  "Yes, Jenks. But no more "Your Grace"  here, remember. You shall call me Robin in case  we are overheard."
  
  She had hardly pulled that name out of the  air, but she hadn't explained it to them either.  Robert Dudley, nicknamed Robin, had been  her friend, and in his brown eyes she had tasted a  man's adoration and first sensed a woman's power.  His family had fallen hard, too, when his father  led a rebellion against Queen Mary's right to the  throne. Robin's father had illegally crowned  Robin's young sister-in-law and Tudor cousin,  Jane Grey, as queen. Their rebellion had  lasted only nine days before Mary and her  Catholic loyalists put it down, beheading some  Dudleys and sending others to the Tower. Robin had  still been there when Elizabeth was imprisoned. He  had sent her flowers he'd picked on the  parapet, and--
  "Robin," Jenks's voice cut in again, "you  sure I can't go in with you and not just Ned?"
  She was grateful the darkness hid her flushed  face. "No, Jenks. We need you to defend the  horses, for if we lose them when we create a  stir, we're trapped. Ned and I will be fast and  light on our feet, once we can dart inside.  Ah, I see what our diversion shall be to make them  open the drawbridge and rush out so we can slip  in." She pointed toward the barn in the sprinkle  of farm buildings outside the moat.
  While Jenks sneaked out of their forest cover  to set the fire in the sole hayrick that stood  outside the barn, Elizabeth's thoughts drifted  again. She was in the strangest, detached mood, when  she knew she must concentrate on everything here. But  this place lured her so sweetly--
  "Sit tight," Ned muttered. "The flame  has caught. If someone doesn't see it  soon, I'll yell. I've got the Kentish  talk down flat."
  "You'll not make a peep until Jenks  gets back here to hold these horses. And not  until you and I get in the shadow of that other  outbuilding, away from where they will gather round the  fire."
  Jenks ran back; she and Ned fled to their  post. "Do it now," Elizabeth urged him,  breathing hard. Her heart seemed to pound in her  ears. "We'll need all the time we've got  to get inside and look around. Yell like it's  doomsday."
  "Fire! Fire!" Ned bellowed, his hands  curled around his mouth like a trumpet. She could
  
see his breath puff white in the night  air. "The barn will burn. What ho, the castle  there. Help afore it spreads!"
  "Enough," she ordered, gripping his arm. "I  asked not for an entire prologue."
  Voices. Noises. People ran from the outlying  warren of buildings. Several rushed close past  where they pressed themselves against a stone corner of the  stable block. They saw a single lantern shining in  an arched window of the castle. Someone shouted orders  out another window. Then, after an eternity while the  flames crackled higher, the drawbridge  creaked down, its old chains rattling. House  servants streamed out to join the others, finally  followed by a big-shouldered, tall man wrapped  in a huge robe, giving orders in a commanding  voice. Another man and then a woman bundled  in cloaks hurried out to watch as servants began  to pass buckets of water hand-to-hand in a line  from the moat.
  Elizabeth noted that the lantern had finally  disappeared from the corner upstairs room. A  servant who had stayed behind or an elderly  family member? She felt better when several  others came shuffling out, robed and in nightcaps.
  "Now or never," she told Ned.
  They strolled behind the clumps of onlookers--a  baby wailed nearby--then darted across the bridge  into the castle. As Lady Cornish had mentioned,  Hever was built much like Ightham Mote, with a  quadrangle of buildings around an inner  courtyard. Elizabeth wished she had asked her  aunt to explain the layout of the first-floor rooms  better, but of course, there had been no time for a  full description as she lay dying.  Elizabeth's belly cramped in foreboding.
  "This way," she threw back over her shoulder.  "And pray all Waldegrave's men and  servants have gone out to see or fight the fire."
  The timbered entrance hall lay in silent  shadow, but six suits of armor standing at attention  gave them pause. Crossed swords and pikes  adorned the whitewashed walls. A board creaked  underfoot.
  Here, she thought, her grandparents had greeted  guests; here her mother and father--but there was no time for that  now.
  Assuming that any dangerous information of a  poison plot would be secreted in a privy  chamber or bedroom above, they felt their way up
  
the staircase. When the household  returned to bed, they could search the downstairs--if  there was time.
  Aunt Mary had told Elizabeth the  original placement of the rooms on the inner side  of the upstairs quadrangle. She wondered who  had those rooms now. She was both relieved and  disconcerted to see several fat tallow candles  burning on a tall chest at the top of the stairs.  They each needed to carry one, but they threw such  shifting shadows on the walls and into doorways that  Elizabeth could almost see ghosts here.
  But not her mother's at least, she tried to buck  herself up. If she haunted any site it was the  Tower in London, where she was betrayed and beheaded  --and the chambers of her daughter's heart.
  "Which side do you want?" Ned asked. She  jumped at his voice.
  "The inner courtyard," she whispered. "That  means you must be the one to glance outside now and again  to see if they are heading back inside. Come warn  me if we must secrete ourselves until they are  back in bed. Go now."
  She took the inner rooms because her aunt had  told her those were the family chambers in her mother's  day. The first one she entered, which had been her  Uncle George's as a boy, was evidently  now nothing more than a guest room, currently  unused. The bed was not disturbed, and no items of  clothing lay about. Still, she opened the heavy lid  of the big, carved coffer at the foot of the bed. It  smelled of common wormwood and pennyroyal  to keep out fleas and moths. She thrust her hand  down through old furs and velvets to be certain no  correspondence was secreted here.
  The next room had been Aunt Mary's--  smaller than George's, but then he was the male  heir. How could her grandparents have known that the  destruction of the third child and youngest girl, Anne,  would pull George and the entire family down  too?
  Here, for the first time, Elizabeth felt shame  at what she and Ned did this night. Destroying  property and invading someone's privy chamber--their  lives. But that's what She and whoever sheltered and  supported her were daring to do to a royal princess,  and Queen Mary had no right to give this heritage  house of hers away to her own Spanish-loving  lackeys. With a vengeance, Elizabeth stepped  farther into the room and lifted her candle high.
  
  The bed linens were pulled awry, for  someone had slid off the high mattress quickly.  A half-drunk goblet of wine winked crimson  in the light of her candle. Trunk hose and a  shirt on the chair and padded jerkins and cloaks in  the coffers revealed it was a man's room, but  surely Waldegrave would not sleep here alone.  Cecil's second letter had said that he had wed his  wife, Francis, daughter of Sir Edward  Neville, only last year. Perhaps this house had  been their wedding gift as well as a bribe so  Waldegrave would help She rid the kingdom of a  hated, Protestant royal sister. Still, sometimes  Elizabeth could not believe Mary would stoop to such  treachery.
  This room had a writing desk under the windows.  Elizabeth plucked a pile of letters from a  cubbyhole and thrust them in the bolster cover she  had brought along as if she were a common thief.  She had not time nor light to read them here.
  She forced herself on. This next chamber, she  knew, with the big oriel window, was the master's  suite, where her grandparents had bedded--and that was  no doubt now Edward and Francis  Waldegrave's.
  She breathed fast and hard. Trembling, she  went through the desk first, set under the window as the  other had been. Only a few letters, but one with such  a large wax seal, it could be from the queen. She  stuffed them in her sack and looked around again. The  room boasted a fireplace of its own. What  conversations had it heard late at night over her  grandfather Thomas Bullen's plans for his children? And  had his ambition to rise far on the popularity of his  daughters made him easily accept the fact that  Anne had changed the old family name of  Bullen to Boleyn, a spelling that the  French-educated girl thought far more grand?
  She ran her hand down into the black depths of  coffers, fearing she was taking too long. She could  not let anyone come back before she had visited her  mother's girlhood room next door. But before she  could close the lid, tallow from her candle  splattered onto a brocade, fur-edged robe.  She regretted that some poor servant would  probably catch Cain for what a princess had  done.
  As she hurried to the last room she glanced  down the dark corridor, hoping Ned would change  chambers when she did, that she could catch a
  
glimpse of him to ask him how it went  outside. How long had they been here so far? A  quarter hour? Eternity?
  But her candlelight caught only the solemn,  disapproving stare in a man's portrait from an  olden day--perhaps even one of her ancestors'  painted faces, if Waldegrave hadn't  burned them all like the queen burned martyrs.
  She noted that there was one more door beyond this one, but  surely this was the room Aunt Mary had said had  been her mother's. Biting her lower lip, holding the  bolster cover with her booty close to her breasts,  Elizabeth stretched out her hand toward the big  brass door latch. She would feel closer to her  mother inside; she would feel safe and not afraid.
  An odd floral scent wafted out as she  drew open the door. It creaked. A chill  draft from inside gutted her candle out. She  jumped back as she blinked at light from inside  --a single lantern and wan moonlight. Had she  stumbled on someone still here?
  But silence reigned, and the bed in the center of the  room bore the familiar telltale signs of  someone who had quickly thrown off bed linens,  counterpane and all, and slid out. Still, she stepped  no farther in. A set of sleeves lay on the  counterpane, both the clothing and the pane gaily  embroidered with twining vines and flowers of  slightly different patterns.
  That made her hesitate the more. She pressed  her eye to the hinge side of the door. No one behind  it, and she could only pray the occupant was not behind  or under the bed.
  She saw the room boasted a big bay window  with its slightly vaulted roof set higher than the  ceiling. Moonlight washed in to etch everything in  tarnished silver, despite the steady flame from  an oil lamp. Finally, Elizabeth stepped  inside and closed the creaky door behind her.
  Then she saw what adorned the wall over the  bed, strung high up from plaited cords. She  gasped and pressed back against the wall. Herbs  and flowers hung behind her too; she crushed and  crinkled some. Just as in the cellars at  Wivenhoe, nooses dangled dry and dying  plants.
  She jumped away from the wall. Though she  wanted to flee, at least to get Ned, she seized  control and forced herself to search the two coffers, one  at the foot of the bed, the other in the far corner.
  
Despite decent light here, she  shuddered as she plunged her hand inside the depths  of the first one. She kept seeing that dreadful coffer  at Bushey Cot with the sticky poison fungus.
  It was full of dried flowers of all sorts.  She took several handfuls at random, hoping they  could link them to their finds at the cot, mayhap  even the deadly meadow saffron from Wivenhoe.
  In the second coffer her hand touched only  heavy garments near the bottom, but fine, light  ones lay atop. She picked one up to examine  it in the crosslight of moon and lantern. Just a  veil with hand-rolled hems and delicate  needlework along the edge. She squinted to discern the  pattern.
  A decorative coil of some sort of  leaves, greatly reminiscent of the designs in the  previous embroideries they had as clues--and in  Bea Pope's creations. were these leaves some  sort of poison herb? They looked a bit like  clubs on playing cards, or ... like clover,  three-lobed. She wished Meg were here to identify  this. And something else in each corner--a tiny  heart pierced by an arrow dripping blood.
  She began to shake harder. Though she was drenched  in sweat, her teeth chattered. It all meant  something, something just out of her reach. If the veils were  for disguises and not mere modesty or fashion,  She must be someone people would know bare-faced. Ned had  reported a veiled woman came and went at  Bushey Cot. The poisoner She must live here  where Waldegrave sheltered and supported her.  If so, she had defiled Anne Boleyn's  bedchamber as part of her revenge. But revenge for  exactly what?
  As Elizabeth thrust the single veil into her  sack, the toe of her boot stubbed something under the  bed. She fell to her knees and tugged out a leather  and brass-nail studded box, narrow but as long as  her arm. She tried to lift it, but it was heavy.  Glass or pewter clinked inside when she  shifted it. And then she heard the chamber door  creak open.

          Chapter The Twelfth

  Elizabeth dropped to her knees behind the bed.  The brocade counterpane draped to the floor, but  she lifted it and started to slide under, dragging her  sack of pilfered goods. The scent of the drying things
  
she'd disturbed--or just dust--assailed  her. Flattened on her back, she could not get  her finger up under her nose.
  Her sneeze exploded. Surely she was  snared. She'd have to fight her way out as a lad  or reveal her identity and risk--
  A whisper of a voice. "Robin, are you in  here?"
  She sneezed again as she slid back out and  stood with her eyes watering.
  "'So blood, Ned. Why did you not sing out right  away? I thought I was trapped in this second  Bushey Cot."
  "What? She's here?" he said, gaping at the  hanging herbs.
  "She's been staying here and is no doubt coming  back."
  "If we don't fly we'll be staying too.  They're coming in, all of them."
  As she kicked the leather box to send it back  under the bed, she heard the distinct clink of  glassware again. More vials, she thought, as she  followed Ned quickly out the door.
  "This room has no one staying in it," Ned  explained, pulling open the door directly across  the hall. It, too, creaked. "We'll hide out  here till they settle, then get downstairs and out  before they--"
  But as he ran across the small chamber and opened  the single window to look out, they heard the  unmistakable groan and rattle of the  drawbridge going up, then banging to echoing  silence. She quickly closed the door behind them and  joined him at the window.
  "The whoreson poxy Spanish lackey  bastard traitors," Elizabeth muttered over  Ned's own curse. "I thought they'd but keep  watch outside, but they've closed us up."
  They heard voices in the hall and knelt behind  the bed, just in case someone opened the door to peek  in. She whispered close to his ear. "I thought  sure we'd at least be able to hide downstairs  if they closed the bridge. And then we'd get out  a window there. If they linger in the hall or leave  a servant up, we've got a long drop to the  grass inside the moat from here."
  "There had better be a rowboat on the  inner-moat side, like at Ightham."
  "I told you to keep an eye out for them so  we'd have time to get downstairs."
  
  "By hell's gates, Lord Robin, you  also told me to search chests and coffers. You're  making a fine fool of me indeed."
  She ignored his sarcastic wordplay. "I've  letters and such here I don't want sopped in the  moat--not to mention myself."
  "And since, of course, this entire hugger-mugger  scheme was my idea from the first--"
  "Shut your smart lip and listen!"
  The authoritative man's voice sounded in the  corridor, hard by their door. Obviously, she  thought, Sir Edward Waldegrave. And perhaps his  wife's voice too--a woman's--almost  musical and much more muted.
  Though she kept bent low, Elizabeth got  to her feet and tiptoed toward the heavy door. The  man's words carried; the woman's did not.
  "... mayhap deliberately set by Kentish  Protestants again, knowing we're loyal to the  queen."
  The woman's murmurs.
  "I doubt it. I don't care if she is  staying with supporters at Ightham. I'd wager  this castle it was local louts."
  Elizabeth gripped her hands together and pressed  them under her chin. They were talking about her. This  woman had evidently thought she might send someone  --or come herself.
  "Her Majesty Queen Mary," the man went  on, his voice increasingly agitated, "had best  burn the lot of these Kentishmen. They forswore  their Catholic oath and lurk about, hoping for the  Boleyn whelp to last long enough to have the throne fall  right into her pretty little lap. By the rood, if  Philip and Mary only had a child!"
  The woman spoke again, something mayhap about the  fire tonight. Elizabeth ached to crack the door and  peer out, but it would creak and they would be caught.  She yearned to rip it open and declare herself, accuse  them, but that would be far more foolhardy than what  she'd already done tonight.
  She dipped her head to try to see through the  keyhole. The key blocked it, but on this side.  Slowly, she slid it out to give herself a view.
  Maybe the woman was not his wife at all, but  the master poisoner, for she stood in the door  to Anne Boleyn's bedchamber. Devil take  the man, his big shoulders blocked her view.  Hoping to hear the woman's voice better,  Elizabeth pressed her ear to the keyhole just as
  
Waldegrave's voice leapt through it in  answer to whatever she had just said.
  "Aye, that sort of purging flame will do just as  well as the queen's burnings. St. Anthony's  fire, you say? I can see it now,"  Waldegrave went on, his voice becoming more  expansive. "Bodies strewn about like those  Hatfield rabbits you described, as many as  swarms of your bees, but this time Boleyn  loyalists ..."
  Elizabeth pressed her hand over her mouth  to keep from crying out. Her stomach twisted so she  thought she would dry-heave. Her frenzied fears  drowned his next words until she caught control  of herself.
  "But just you take a care," Waldegrave  added, "that our farm workers here at Hever are  spared. Over by old King Henry's beloved  Leeds, eh, that will be a warning to the rest of them.  Sleep well on that thought then."
  Elizabeth silently damned him again for his  complicity--and for standing in her view and not using the  woman's name. When he stepped away, the door  across the hall creaked closed. She saw no one  now, so at Waldegrave's next words she  jerked so hard she cracked her nose into the iron  door latch inches from her face.
  "Ho, men! If you've searched the first-floor  chambers well enough, start down here at this end, but  stay out of this last bedchamber of our guest."
  "They're coming," Elizabeth whispered to Ned,  though hovering, he had heard Waldegrave and was  already halfway across the room.
  "Come on," he whispered, digging in his sack.  "I lifted a brace of men's hose just in case  we needs must tie and gag someone--or get out these  windows on a rope."
  She jammed the key back in the lock and  turned it to give them more time. As she hurried  back to Ned, she fingered her painful nose. Already  it was swelling, and she had to breathe through her mouth.
  She soon saw that Ned Topside was good for more  than a fast mouth. He had four knitted silk  hose knotted together before she grabbed some from his  pile and followed suit.
  She tried to keep from admitting that the next  queen of England--God willing--was trapped like  a rat in a trap in her mother's home, praying for  even so much as an ignominious escape. Again she  had stooped to illegal entry, theft, and now
  
peeking through keyholes like some old  gossip or scullery maid.
  But she had learned this poison plot was more  far-reaching than she thought. Not only were she and the  Boleyns the target, but common Kentishmen  loyal to her. She could not help but think, though, as  they desperately knotted the slippery hose, that  if she'd only brought a weapon--and Jenks--she  might risk facing that poisoner here.
  Someone in the hall rattled their door latch and  cried out, "This one's locked. Shouldn't be.  Been empty. Ask his lordship if'n we can  break it down."
  "Make haste, Ned."
  "I would send you down first," he said, yanking  on their cord to test the knots, "but don't know  if this will hold." He bent to tie the makeshift  rope to the leg of a heavy chair. He had trouble  with the knot; she saw that his hands shook. She  seized and tied the knots herself. Even if the  chair lifted off the floor at their weight, it  could never follow them out the window.
  "As soon as I drop off, you follow," he  ordered.
  "Fine. G. I'd not make it across the moat  without you if there's no boat there anyway."
  "Can't swim, Robin?"
  "Can you?"
  "Like a fish."
  "Go!"
  Despite their banter, his face looked  frenzied as he hiked himself over the wide wooden  window ledge, grasped the cord, and descended.  As black night swallowed him, she felt so  alone.
  Waldegrave's men began to batter something  against the door. Dear Lord, help me, she  prayed, though she didn't close her eyes.  She had her hands clasped though, tight on the  bolster's neck as if she would strangle it.  Please Lord, my refuge and strength, my very  present help in trouble, do not let me be taken  by my enemies. Do not let me be poisoned by their  iniquity--
  The wooden door shuddered and cracked, rattling  even the open windowpanes against their lead frames.  At the next hit the door splintered but did not  break. She sat on the ledge, pulled her  knees up, and peered out and over.
  As the chill breeze cooled her hot face,
  
she realized Ned was so close to the  walls she could not clearly make him out, but the  line was still taut with his weight. Whether it could  hold both of them or not, she had to go now. Else  when they broke down the door, she would be  silhouetted against the sky. They would turn her  over to Waldegrave, who would let that witch  poison her, then ...
  As Ned had done before her, she dropped a  bolster out the window and tried to seize the slippery  knotted hose. But his weight kept it too  taut to the frame and outer stone wall.
  Suddenly, the rope slackened, and Ned cried  out, "Robin!"
  She held to the rope and went over, bumping and  dangling before she began to inch down. Above her, it  sounded as if the door splintered to shreds. She  scraped her knuckles against the stone wall; her  nose throbbed. She slipped, but only from knot  to knot before she could stop herself and slide to the  next, her legs alternately dangling or  scraping the walls.
  A downstairs window, fully lit, went by,  but she, praise God, saw no one in the room.  A long carpeted table. Chairs. An arras with a  hunting scene on the wall.
  And then Ned's hands were hard on her ankles,  her legs. The sensation of being seized so firmly  by a man jolted her from her fear. No one had  touched her there at all, not since Tom  Seymour--
  "No more rope, Robin. Let go. Drop."
  She did, half into Ned's arms, half against  him as her knees buckled. He thrust her  bolster back into her hands, and ducking under windows,  they darted away, even as men must have run to the open  window above. Their voices came clear now.
  "Look, lads, a knotted cord. Someone  been here and escaped. Fetch his lordship."
  Elizabeth and Ned dashed around one corner on  the sloping grass between the walls and the moat. Then,  while she held their bolsters, Ned tore around  another corner before coming back, breathing through his mouth  more raggedly than she. Even on this side of the  quadrangle, more windows both upstairs and down  were showing lights.
  "No boat, the bastards," he muttered.  "I'll try to heave these sacks across, then if you  just get in the water and float on your back,  I'll try to pull you over--"
  
  "Listen!" Elizabeth cried,  grabbing his arm at the muted sound. "They're  putting the drawbridge back down. If we can  get to it before they do ..."
  But the muffled creaking was coming not from the bridge but  from the moat itself. From rusted oarlocks that moaned  each time Jenks pulled hard on the oars to span  the fifteen feet of water to get to them in time.

  She opened the door to her chamber after the worst  of the banging and voices in the hall subsided.
  "You there, sirrah," she said, gesturing to one of  Waldegrave's men. "To me."
  He was the last man in the hall as the others  ran down the corridor toward the stairs. Even  through the fine lawn of her veil in the dim light,  she could see he wore his blond hair shaggy and a  stubble of beard gilded his cheeks; his shoulders  looked broad and his waist narrow. Yes, he would  do quite nicely, that he would. She hoped he  didn't smell of sweat, but she had aromatic  remedies for that.
  She could see him hesitate. Despite his  size and bulk, the familiar look of fear  glazed his features as he stared at her. Finally,  he found his tongue.
  "But, good madam, his lordship says we're  all to haste outside and find the intruders what  mayhap lit the rick too."
  "Did they now? But they were in here, too, that they  were." She gestured again with one white hand that  emerged from the sleeve of her sky blue robe.  Her veil moved against her mouth when she breathed  or spoke. Sometimes she thought she should go only  half veiled, as the women of Araby, to show her  eyes. She had fine emerald eyes, her father  used to say, and a bounty of hair black as the bog  of Tralee. But the skin around her eyes--
  "I'll tell his lordship straightaway," he  said but didn't budge.
  "I must show you the evidence they were here," she  insisted, her voice soft and silky. "And you must  search under my bed to assure me your lord's  enemies are no longer in my chamber."
  "Oh, right, then. Just a quick look, then," he  agreed and shuffled in. He jumped when she  closed the door behind him. She knew she made  men nervous going and coming alone as she did, and the  veils, of course, though some found them utterly  intriguing--until they peered beneath. If only she
  
could find one man, of any rank, both  clever and strong, she'd keep him for a while instead  of trying out something new on him and being well rid  of him by the next day.
  "And who might you be?" she asked.
  "Owen, good madam. Want me to look under the  bed, then?"
  "I have not a doubt in my mind they were here, Owen  --see?" she said as she walked slowly closer and  pointed to her leather box of concoctions, shoved  halfway under the bed to catch the counterpane.
  He hunkered down to look, as if handprints and  embossed names of the intruders would stand out all over  it--though she doubted he could read.
  "And," she said, "someone has gone through my  coffers, there's no denying that."
  "I'll fetch his lordship, so he can come up  to look," he said, obviously fearful to glance at  her again. She had sat on the coffer at the foot  of her bed and let her robe split open far up  her bare, crossed legs, though he kept peering  under the bed, which was obviously too dark to see a  thing. "They'll miss me down there, and we gotta  catch--"
  "I'm afraid they'll be gone by now, with all  that shouting in the hall. Rather like the little people--the  fairies--who do their naughty deeds in the dark but  flee before they can be caught. So now we've  settled that you've volunteered to protect me the  rest of the night--"
  "Eh?" He jerked to his feet like a  puppet, then began to sidle toward the door.  When she rose, slowly and sinuously, he stood  stock-still but snatched off his cap and rotated it in  his big, square hands.
  With a predatory smile he could not see, she  said, "I know his lordship would be wanting you to help  me, just in case they do return."
  "But you said you thought they were gone, so--"  "A spot of wine then?"
  She silently cursed that she'd gotten a man  who was acting more like a nervous squirrel than a  lusty goat. She began to lose her hard-won  temper after being bested by the Boleyn forces once  again this night, even though she'd known they could be  coming. But breaking into a moated castle? When others  forced her to turn choleric like this, she always slipped  back more into the brogue of home.
  "Just be having a bit of wine with me then, and you  can go tell Lord Waldegrave you deserted me in
  
my hour of need."
  "Oh, no, didn't mean that. I wouldn't do  that."
  "Good. Very good, Owen," she said, her voice  almost a chant.
  She crossed to the small table in the corner by the  door and poured spiced and drugged wine into her own  goblet from the ewer. She used valerian root herself  to sleep sometimes, but now, her back to Owen, she  added a pinch of nightshade, always good for quick  drugging of victims for robbery or even murder.
  He took the wine and gulped it down. "Much  beholden."
  "And I too. Now, let me tell you," she  said, lifting a hand and stepping forward when he made  for the door, "the list of things I think might have  been taken from here, so you can be telling his lordship.  Here, man, just sit down on the mounting stool by the  bed for a moment, will you? You're worn out, I'm  sure, fighting that fire and then guarding the  castle."
  "Nary a bit, good madam, and don't want  to be a bother."
  But he sat heavily, hunched over, his elbows  resting on his spread knees. She took the  empty goblet from his unresisting fingers. His words and  breathing were already slower. He'd not get up again  till morn, and that was certain. The fine thing was,  the potion didn't put a man clear out but made  him able to be coerced and plied to one's will yet  recall not a thing.
  She locked her door and lighted a  gillyflower-scented candle. Though the night was  chill as one in Carrick-on-Sur, she removed  her robe and even her cap and veil. In her thin  linen night rail, she turned down the wick of the  lantern until it gutted out. She'd just be  letting the moonlight do its work, she thought.
  She did not wonder if Waldegrave had  caught whomever the Princess Elizabeth had  sent--if, as before, she had not come herself. But she  could afford to be a bit patient now. She knew  she was destined to face and deal with the royal  Boleyn in person, for there was no denying destiny.  That would be God's justice for all she and the queen  --and their sainted mothers--had lost.
  By the time she was ready to return to her big bed,  the man was slumped half on the stool, half on  the mattress. She wrapped her strong arms around  his flat belly and, grunting and groaning, hoisted
  
and dragged him up the rest of the way to lay  him the length of the bed.
  He flopped where she put him, muttered  something, and began to snore.
  Methodically, she stripped off his garments,  threw them in a corner, and washed him in rose  water with lavender. The sweet scent of that lingering  tomorrow would be enough to make him keep his mouth shut about  what might or might not have happened this night.  He was well-endowed and would react well when she  rubbed up his thighs and stimulated him with the oils,  but she was suddenly exhausted and didn't bother.  She only wanted to pretend--to drift away,  drift back.
  "You know, me lad," she said, kneeling over  him while he slept on, "me mother was the  mistress of a grand man, a wee bit taller  than you but just as golden-haired. Slept in her  bed every night, all night, couldn't leave her  alone. She held him nigh on seventeen years,  my da, and he gave us all sorts of fine  gifts. He loved us both till it got ruined,  that it did."
  She heard herself slip more into the brogue of her  childhood again, but it didn't matter. This man  would never give her away. He would be loyal.  And if she chose any vial from under the bed, he  would never, never leave her.
  Suddenly, fearful of the whole, horrid  memory of her father's loss, she cuddled  desperately beside him, one bent knee draped  over his slack thigh. She threw her top arm  over his hairy chest and wedged her forehead in the  crook between his chin and shoulder, settling closer,  shutting her eyes, pretending that he held her.
  She wanted to make it all come back, the  safe, sure times. She wanted to be her mother as  she'd seen her many a summer night when she'd  sneaked in behind the arras to watch her lying in her  handsome father's arms in those happy days before King  Henry had her father poisoned.
  Suddenly enraged, she sat up and  half-shoved, half-kicked the man out of her bed.  He hit the floor with a crack that could have been his  arm bone, groaned, then shifted to snore again.  She yanked the bedclothes up to hide her face and  sobbed wretchedly until she could barely breathe.
  
          Chapter The Thirteenth

  "Nary a word in this one about Waldegrave being  in on the poison plot," Kat observed as she,  Ned, and Elizabeth skimmed the last of the letters  taken from Hever.
  Elizabeth had called the second clandestine  midnight meeting of what she had dubbed her  privy and covert counsel. So far, Meg and  Jenks sat silent, as they could not read more than the  alphabet Ned had been slowly, secretly  teaching them.
  "But these letters do prove that Waldegrave is  Spanish Ambassador Feria's spy in
Kent," Elizabeth noted. "The wretch has  been fingering key anti-Catholics whom Feria  and Mary have ordered burned at the stake. And  Waldegrave's been harboring a poisoner.  He knows, at the very least, that She is planning  to murder hundreds of my loyalists near  Leeds, so whether he knows She wants me,  too, is a moot point. 'So blood," she  added, smacking the epistle with the royal seal down  on the table, "I shall send him to the Tower for his  treachery someday."
  Her foul temper at what she'd overheard at  Hever had not been one whit improved by the fact  they'd made a clean escape. Thank God,  Jenks had seen Ned and her dangling on their  rope before that lighted window and filched the boat  to rescue them.
  But she had not gotten off scot-free. Though  her nose was not broken, it was badly swollen, and  her left eye had gone black and blue. She  had told the Popes that she had run into a door  and that Meg was rubbing it with plantain paste. All  of that, at least, was true.
  But she hated looking like this and feeling as if she  had the most wretched cold. She had to breathe through  her mouth like the village simpleton. And she had  nearly bitten poor Meg's head off this morning  when she'd tried to tease her by asking if she should  start learning to talk as if her head was all stuffed  up too.
  "So we know a great deal more than we did,"  Ned was saying.
  "True," Elizabeth concurred. "We may  have no written proof linking Waldegrave--nor  my royal sister--to the plot to poison me, but  ..." Her voice snagged, but she'd finally said it
  
aloud. It was what she feared, that the  queen herself--
  "Don't think it, lovey," Kat protested,  reaching out to pat her hand as if she were but ten years  old. "All the ups and downs the two of you  royal half sisters have been through over the years,  despite your differences--well, she is fond of  you. Deep down, she is, I know it."
  "And deep down afraid of me and what will come  after--if--she is gone," Elizabeth said, wiping  under her nose with her scented handkerchief, which she  could not even smell. She jumped to her feet,  paced back and forth, then sat back down.  Everyone's heads turned in unison, like at a  tennis match, to watch her. "She no doubt,"  she said more quietly, "has night terrors that I  will undo her holy work, expel her friends, turn  on her Spanish husband ..."
  "And won't you?" Ned challenged, one dark  eyebrow gone atilt.
  "No theoretical questions," Elizabeth evaded  him, stopping her steps to rap her knuckles on  the table. "We must deal with the here and now. And that is  this heinous plot, which has spread like wildfire from  my aunt and cousin Harry to me and now threatens  loyal English folk. I overheard
Waldegrave try to bargain with her--with She--  to spare his workers at Hever in the mass murder  she has planned, but I warrant she'd just as  soon kill every last one of them who would back me  for the throne."
  Kat clucked and shook her head. Ned sat  grimly staring at his folded hands. And Jenks,  damn him, was studying Meg and not paying the  slightest heed to his royal mistress. But what  she had just said about a wildfire plot reminded  her of something else.
  "Can any of you think of a way She could use  fire to kill a great lot of Kentishmen near  Leeds?" Elizabeth asked them.
"Waldegrave said She would use some sort of  holy fire, and he mentioned a saint's name I  cannot recall."
  "I heard him say that--St. Anthony, I  think," Ned chimed in, looking up. "But why would  a master poisoner suddenly switch to using fire,  and in rainy Kent? And what edifice could be large  enough that she could try to trap and burn that many folk?"
  "I don't know," Elizabeth admitted,  "unless she means she'll burn Leeds Castle
  
itself. I've never seen it, but I hear it  sits in a lake, so even a huge conflagration  would be contained there. But hundreds burned?"
  "Mayhap," Kat put in, "you misunderstood  what you overheard, and they were talking of giving more  names of men around Leeds for the queen's burnings of  martyrs. Hurrying to wipe out hundreds more during  her last days if the belly tumor is really  eating her up like they say, so--"
  "Speak not of that," Elizabeth insisted,  wrapping her arms around her own flat belly.  Though it was the only way she could ascend the  throne, she was uncomfortable with talk of her  sister's death, even among these people she had gathered  for herself and trusted.
  "I agree, Ned," she went on, "the  poisoner must not mean she would actually set a  fire. I believe, however, she could place  poison in a well near Leeds. Meg, can you  recall any sort of deadly herbs that have a name  with fire in it? Or anything to do with St.  Anthony?"
  "Nothing with fire, not herbs, 'least--at least,  best I can recall," she said, sitting up  straighter, as she always did these days when  Elizabeth or Ned spoke to her. "Still, with  saints' names, there's St.-Benedict-thistle,  St.-John's-wort, and St.-Joseph's-wort  --that last one's same as sweet basil." She  ticked them off on her fingers, which looked much  cleaner these days. "And something with St. Mary I  can't remember. But nary a one's poison."
  "One more question, then we're off to our beds,"  Elizabeth said, before she saw that Jenks meant  to contribute something. At least now she had his  attention.
  "Yes, Jenks."
  "I thought we'd be heading for Leeds Castle,  after what you said, Your Grace."
  "We are, but not quite yet. We shall find out more and  lay plans. It is slightly farther from here than  Hever, so the risk increases. Mayhap they would  expect us at night this time, so I am having  second thoughts about that. Besides, a lake is more of a  challenge than a mere moat." She glared at  Ned as he dramatically rolled his eyes, but  Jenks did not change expression. "Also," she  went on, "we shall have to have a more clever entr@ee than  setting a fire. ..."
  Her voice faded and she frowned before plunging
  
on. "Besides, the master poisoner  evidently tried to tell Lord Waldegrave I  sent the intruders to Hever. They may try  to verify my presence here. Worse, I saw    someone staring at us from the staircase window in this  house when we headed for Hever--a woman, I  am sure. Meg or Kat, did you watch us  ride out?"
  They both shook their heads solemnly, almost  warily, as if waiting for some explosion from her.
  "Then it could have been Blanche or Lady  Cornish or even a servant," she mused, staring  down at the broken wax of the royal seal of  Queen Mary of England.
  "Or the Buzzard herself--Bea Pope,"  Kat intoned what Elizabeth dreaded to admit.
  Elizabeth looked up, meeting the eyes of  each in turn. "Exactly. She's always watching  me, but now especially we must continue to watch  her. Should I hazard a guess, I would say she  is tied to the poisoner somehow, and she does make  occasional visits to her sister in Maidstone in  Kent--or so she says."
  "And if she's in the thick of it, his lordship could  be too," Jenks said.
  "Yes, but--"
  A sharp rapping rattled her chamber door.  Elizabeth shot straight out of her chair as  Thomas Pope's voice resounded, "A word with the  Lady Elizabeth. A messenger came for her,  and this late too."
  "Get down," she whispered to her people, gesturing.  "Hide."
  "Coming," Kat called while the others  scrambled to roll under the bed or dart behind  curtains.
  were his words a ruse? Elizabeth wondered.  Had they made too much noise? Or had the  Popes looked for one of her people and found them  missing, and two nights in a row? Her heart  thudded, for messages in the night were rare and  fearful. Or could the rumors be true? Could the  queen's cancer have claimed her?
  Kat had the good sense to pull her robe over  her gown and muss her hair. Elizabeth did the  same and poked her head around Kat's wide  shoulder as she opened the door. Kat had  smoothly slid the bolt out so he would not hear that  the door had been locked. Elizabeth set her  feet solidly and lifted her chin. No way
  
Thomas Pope was getting into this room  even with the door open.
  "I thought I heard voices inside," he  began, trying to dart a look past the two of them.  He was in his night-robe, so perhaps he'd even  been to bed. But Elizabeth knew instantly her  sister lived. He was his usual brusque,  meddling self, and he'd not dare that--not if Queen  Mary had died. Unless, Elizabeth thought and her  stomach cartwheeled, he believed Mary's half  sister would never live to claim the throne.
  "I can't sleep," she told him before Kat  could reply. "Can't even breathe well with this  swollen nose, my lord, and Kat keeps me good  company talking of happier days. The message  then?"
  "Hmph. From your lawyer who oversees your  estates clear from Stamford--William  Cecil."
  Her heart leapt, but she kept her voice  even. "Is he well?"
  "I warrant so, my lady. His man brought  word that he will be here in the flesh to report on the  state of your estates--rent rolls or some such--  by midday tomorrow, and he hopes you might receive him.  Always good to see a fellow exile, is it not?"  he dared to add with a mocking grin that did not reach his  eyes.
  Elizabeth held her tongue but set down in  her memory another mark against Sir Thomas  Pope. Yet she was so relieved--thrilled--she  would see Cecil that she even smiled at Pope  before Kat firmly closed the door in his face and  silently reshot the bolt.
  "We're having a toast to the first good news  I've heard in weeks," Elizabeth whispered  to her little band as they emerged from hiding. She whirled  once as if she were pirouetting in a pavane, her  hands clasped together. "Kat, my favorite  canary wine for all, but everyone must whisper till  we're sure the queen's second-most  favorite Pope is not lurking about in the  halls. To Cecil coming to give us sound  advice," she said quietly, lifting her goblet.  She touched its rim to the one that the others, smiling,  passed from hand to hand.
  It hurt her nose every time she smiled, but it was  worth it.

  Elizabeth Tudor dressed formally in her
  
second-best gown of blue brocade with  embroidered underskirt and narrow neck ruff  to greet Cecil and his two companions in the  courtyard at midday next. She so seldom had  visitors and wanted to let the loyal Cecil  know she honored him. Besides, she had to do something  to make up for a fat nose and black eye, which  Meg's paste and Blanche Parry's oyster  powder could barely conceal.
  She knew the moment Cecil bowed low over her  hand before he greeted the Popes that he would be the  man for her as principal secretary when--if--  she went to court as queen. His expression did not  alter even when he saw her bruised countenance.  She had learned many a wily political move  on her own, but it was Cecil's counsel she  trusted over that of anyone else, even through the  blackest times of the Seymour scandal and the Wyatt  mess. And now.
  She knew he was concerned for her safety and that  was really why he had come. She fully understood the  rent rolls and the way he handled her business for  her. So, not a half hour later, after he had  refreshed himself and changed garments, she had  Blanche, Lady Cornish, and Kat buffer the  two of them. Standing before the big oriel window in the  solar, she and Cecil turned their backs on the  Popes as she pointed out the gardens while they  quickly, briefly talked.
  Without moving his head, his voice kept low, and  his lips hardly moving, he asked, "Your face,  Your Grace. That brazen bully Pope has not  taken to striking our next queen?"
  "This is the least of my problems. I ran  into an obstacle--or two--at Hever."
  "Hever? More news of poisoners there?"
  "I must talk to you. My women will keep off the  watchdogs after we dine. There is much to tell."
  "Lord Carey was right to suggest I come. We shall  make much of my meager report of your estates."
  At dinner she went to school again, watching  William Cecil. She reveled in the way he  replied to each of Thomas Pope's inquiries  but told him nothing, though she knew--Pope  probably did too--that the lawyer had many friends  and kept close ties with London doings.  Cecil claimed that clear up in rustic Stamford  he had heard naught but prices for wool and his  young son Robert learning to talk, and he  certainly hoped the queen's health was good. They
  
drank to it.
  And then, just when Elizabeth was about to make her  move to get him alone, Cecil said, "I do  hope Lady Cornish would not mind if you gave  me a brief tour of her gardens, Your Grace.  Late as it is in the season, I see the brick  walls have sheltered a few of the last roses. Rather  as they always did at Hampton Court, all those  red and white roses, do you recall, my lord?"  he asked Pope. But they were out of the room and down  the hall with their servants sweeping cloaks around  them and their entourage falling in behind before Sir  Thomas could reply or Bea could so much as send  for her cloak.
  "Admirably done," Elizabeth told him  with a smile. "I know you usually eschew such long  speeches--about gardens and roses, at least."
  "Right now we must both eschew any sort of  talk but of this plot that threatens you."
  "First, how does the queen, in truth, my lord?  I cannot believe what I am told here."
  "She fades and is delirious at times. Her  belly tumor and pain grow. She has named you  successor but refuses to send you the onyx  coronation ring from off her finger until--until she  can at least accept that she will die."
  "We must all accept that we will die,  Cecil."
  "Aye, but I'll not have talk of it for you. Not  at age twenty-five, on the cusp of your  destiny. No damned poison plot shall sully  or stop you, when so many of us rely on you to save  this chaos Bloody Mary's made of England."  His voice was more dark and bitter than she had ever  heard it, but he shook his head as if to cast off his  melancholy. "Now, tell me straight what you  know."
  They walked the grounds, pretending to admire  an occasional late, leggy bloom. She saw  Cecil become more and more disturbed--though he  managed yet to look pleasantly bored--as she  hurriedly told him what she had learned about the  poison plot, and how. Farther back from the  house, they walked Lady Cornish's knot  garden, and Elizabeth pointed out its intricate  patterns of box edges entwining designs of  colored gravel and plants the frost had blasted  while she talked of much else. They stopped but  one moment to peer at the brass sundial, then  moved on.
  
  "I cannot believe my ears," he said,  his voice as quiet and contained as hers. "Not  only the risk, but that you would--and could--take it upon  your person to ride out like some freebooter  to Bushey and then Hever."
  "I had to know. To stop it before it is too  late. And somehow I must get to Leeds too."
  "Too damned dangerous. When I wrote you  of Waldegrave's Spanish ties, I did not  fathom he was her spy there. I smell  conspiracy."
  "It was because it all began to add up that I had  to act. I know you used to tell me "When in  doubt, do nothing," my lord, but--"
  "Hang what I used to tell you. You are on  the threshold of ruling this realm, Your Grace, and  they are desperate to stop you at the last."
  "But who? Sui bono, as you say? Who is  this woman, and why does she bear such deadly  hatred for the Boleyns and those loyal to them? And  I can hardly run to my sister for help. Last  time I so much as hinted at poison in her  presence, she exploded and accused me--and my mother  ..."
  "I can imagine."
  "And then, my lord, I know it's treason," she  went on, her voice ever more passionate, "but what  if Her Majesty herself stands behind this woman?"
  She saw him shudder. He quickly pulled his  cloak up tighter around his neck and beard, but he  did not respond to that.
  "Dear princess, the other reason I came was  to warn you that Leeds, too, has dangerous foreign  ties, as Catholic and convoluted as they come."
  "The Spanish again, of course."
  "The Irish. Sir Anthony St. Leger,  Leeds's owner, is English, but he served your  father as lord deputy of Ireland. King Henry  gave him Leeds as a boon payment--a reward  for his services."
  "My father? And the Irish? Now there are two  wild cards on the table when I have not yet discerned  the rules of the game."
  "But Anthony St. Leger was underhanded," he  went on with his explanation.
  "St. Anthony--that is part of his name?" she  questioned, remembering the clue of St. Anthony's  fire.
  "What?"
  "Nothing--not now. Say on."
  
  "St. Leger somehow played both  sides. Aye, he convinced the rebellious  Irish to accept the occupant of the English throne  as the Irish monarch. But he set himself up well  in the process, double-dealing with the Tudors,  becoming a true ally to the Irish, it was said--"
  "Ah, finally we can join your conversation,"  Thomas Pope called out, as he and his lady  determinedly plunged through Elizabeth's women,  bouncing wide skirts and furred cloaks out of  their way. "What is said, my Lord Cecil?"
  "I was just musing aloud, Sir Thomas, about  beehives like the fine-looking wicker ones Lady  Cornish has in the corner," he said, pointing.  "They are run just like the court, with a queen and  busy, buzzing servants. But those servants need  remember not only to honor the queen but the one who  could be queen someday."
  Thomas Pope stopped dead in his tracks and  sputtered. Cecil stared him down. Elizabeth  drew herself up short. Not only did she want  to throttle Pope for interrupting them, but she had  been so intent on Cecil's words she had not  noted they had come this close to the hives. However  cleverly Cecil had set the Pope back on his  heel, she was piqued that he had so much as brought  up bees and queens.
  For the rest of an interminable quarter hour,  Thomas Pope and his Lady Beatrice walked  between her and Cecil. But Elizabeth knew when  she bid her guest a good evening, he would not depart  until he had told her the rest of what he'd  come to say.

          Chapter The Fourteenth

  "Lemon juice, milk, and antimony,"
Cecil whispered to Elizabeth the next morning.  He swirled the pale, green-hued ink in a  small bottle he'd produced, literally, from  up his sleeve.
  The two of them sat side by side at a wide  table in the solar, supposedly to review her rent  rolls from Hatfield and Woodstock, two  estates her father had left her, both of which had  served as her rural prisons in her sister's  reign. Sir Thomas and Bea sat in the  room; she and Cecil made certain they could see  them. Bea was embroidering, while Kat, Lady  Blanche, and Lord and Lady Cornish cast
  
hazard dice at a small corner table  and Sir Thomas watched them--all of them.
  Elizabeth took the quill Cecil offered  her and used his ink. 'So blood! She watched  while the air dried each word she wrote to make  it quickly fade to nothing.
  Invisible ink. She bit back a smile.  If she ever needed advice on spies, she'd go  to William Cecil too.
  But how does one read it later? she  wrote.
  Heated against hot metal plate or  shovel, he wrote back. But just write  fast.
  "Now, Your Grace," he said so all could  hear, "let me take you step by step through the  process of my men collecting the rent from your  tenants, first at Woodstock and then  Hatfield."
  Frowning, Kat looked up at them, then quickly  back to their game. She had taught Elizabeth  to do her first sums, and no one knew better that the  princess already kept a sharp eye and tight hand  on her financial affairs. This chitchat was a  bald ruse, but at least Sir Thomas didn't  know it and Kat was getting clever enough not to show it.
  "I'd like a look at the Hatfield  figures when you get to them," Pope put in,  making a big show of peering over Lord Cornish's  shoulder at his throws of the dice on the painted  board. "Just to be sure no one's cheating the  Lady Elizabeth while she's in my charge."
  "Fine. I'll let you know," Cecil said, but  he was watching as Elizabeth swiftly sketched  a clover and a heart with an arrow and two drops of  blood. Then she wrote, On She's veil.  Could tie to poison arrow through Harry's man near  Wiv. and poison clover at Hat.
  Clover could be shamrocks--Irish good  luck, he wrote back.
  "Are you following my percentages so far, Your  Grace?" Cecil asked. "You do see if you  are not careful, your Woodstock profits could  take a tumble?"
  "I see that. Let me copy some of these  figures out for myself instead of having you keep the  only set of records."
  But, she wrote, there was no one on your  sui bono list to me who was Irish. And no  Ir. tied to Queen C. of A.
  
  He responded, Did I not have  her old chamberlain, Sir Edward Ormonde,  on that first C. of A. list? But he's long dead  and left no direct heirs.
  Had to skim and burn letter, she wrote.  No doubt some Ir. hated Boleyns or  fear a Prot. queen.
  "You've got the figures right," Cecil said,  "but now we must plan to protect your future  interests. Why don't you copy these rent rates  down?"
  Remember the Ir. Butler family?  Elizabeth wrote. Twice, Bols.  offended them. My father took a Butler's title  away from him, then after Anne Bol. was promised  to a Butler, she caught the king's eye and  betrothal broken.
  In both cases, James Butler, he  wrote, 9th Earl of Ormonde. He  inherited title of C of A.'s Ormonde, but  was only distantly related. Can't be the  Butlers. J. dead and his daughter--bastard  daughter--went back to Ire.
  Another dead end, Elizabeth thought, masking  the stab of disappointment that came all the sharper  following a moment of exhilaration. Then she  recalled what else she must ask Cecil.
  Did you find out what Sarah Scottwood  --Scutea--looked like? she scribbled.  Span. ties--the herbs--her father's desire  for vengeance for C. of A.--all fit.
  "Are you on the Hatfield reckoning yet,  Cecil?" Thomas Pope asked.
  As intense as they had become, neither of them had  seen him coming. Elizabeth slowly slid her  ruffled wrist over her last words to blot whatever  might remain. She was not certain if Cecil had  time to read them or not. She reached for the sheet with the  columns of numbers Cecil had first sat down  with.
  "Nearly so, Sir Thomas," Cecil  muttered, smoothly switching pens and ink while  he shuffled papers.
  "The Lady Elizabeth has gone white as a  bleached sheet," Pope observed. "I warrant  your steep lawyer's fee has unsettled her,  Cecil." Pope grinned to show his yellow teeth.
  "Nonsense," Elizabeth countered, gripping  the edge of the table with both hands in her frustration at  Pope's eternal butting in. With him hovering this
  
close, any further talk with Cecil  was hopeless, so she'd have to make another plan.
  "I do have a slight headache," she said, "from  staring at all these numbers in the bright sun. My  Lord Cecil, why don't you go over the  Hatfield figures with Lord Thomas and I shall  get them from him later? I will take a brief  respite upstairs, then join you before you must ride  out later."
  Cecil rose to his feet with her. Her  ladies and Lord Cornish stood. Bea's  embroidery tumbled to the floor, and she stooped  to retrieve it. As if they yet spoke invisible  words between them, Elizabeth's eyes met  Cecil's. He nodded--or was that the hint of a  forbidden bow?--as if to promise a final conversation  before they parted. But with everyone swarming them again,  Elizabeth feared it was up to her to be certain it  was a privy conversation.

  "This takes sheer gall," Kat muttered as  she helped Elizabeth and Meg switch garments  with each other.
  "It takes sheer gall to hope for the throne--and  to survive to get it," Elizabeth replied, but  Kat wasn't to be dissuaded.
  "It's one thing to have Meg attired like you--behind the  curtains under the covers at night," Kat  continued, "but you becoming her?" Kat shot Meg  a swift, sideways glance. Though she had the more  intricate task of donning elaborate garments,  they were puddled at her feet while, in just her  shift, she, too, helped Elizabeth.
  "Don't fret," the princess insisted. "I  have played many a part, and this will have to work if I'm  to see Cecil alone. Just be certain he gets the  note and that the Popes don't see it. And  don't you be whispering to him, Kat, or you'll  give us all away. I'll just go down the back  stairs and out as if I'm gathering the last of the  herbs. There," she concluded, flouncing wrinkled  skirts, "that will have to do."
  Over Meg's best smock they had laced and  pinned her other garments: a russet kirtle, a  sleeveless, front-laced blue bodice that still  gaped a bit, a pair of sleeves, and a brown  doublet that buttoned up the front. The  petticoats seemed thin and light, as if she  went half naked, but she'd get used to them.  All that was covered by a grass-stained work apron.
  
  As she bent to regarter drooping  stockings and shove her feet into the girl's  blunt-toed, scuffed shoes, Elizabeth noted  that her legs and feet must be longer than Meg's.  She silently vowed that one of the first things she would do  if she ever went to London as queen was to buy her  household decent garments--not to mention herself after  having to wear last season's mended pieces all  these years in exile.
  "All right," she said with a nod, "fetch Ned from  the hall."
  Meg scrambled to cover her shift with a big  shawl, but he did not so much as look her way when  Kat let him in. He seemed speechless at the  princess's transformation, but he soon found his  tongue.
  "Kat," he began, walking around Elizabeth  in a tight circle, "it will take more than that  broad-brimmed hat to pull this off. Her red  hair's got more gold in it than Meg's.  We'd best cover it with a kerchief."
  "I don't do that," Meg protested.
  Ned still ignored her as he took the kerchief  Kat extended to him from one of Elizabeth's  coffers, balled it up in his hands, then rubbed it  on the floor in the corner of the room. He  displayed it with a flourish, wrinkled and dirtied.
  Elizabeth saw Meg's face become a  thundercloud; the girl's fists shot to her hips.  "You just listen here, Master Topside--"
  "Do not start anew, any of you," Elizabeth  interrupted. "Kat has to go down to tell  Cecil my headache is not better and slip him  the note. And I--that is, Meg--must be clear out  to the edge of the forest when he tries to find me.  Ned, is Jenks ready?"
  "Aye," he assured her, as he dared  to knock Kat's and Meg's hands away from  Elizabeth's hair to handle the kerchief himself.  Now both of the women were hot at him, but he went  on blithely. "I used to make the lads in the  company look like lasses, so this is easy as  pie." He flapped the kerchief open, halved it  neatly to a triangle, and tied it around  Elizabeth's long hair, which the fuming Kat  lifted off her neck and shoulders for him.
  Elizabeth glanced in the looking glass Kat  held and nodded at what she saw. A strange,  even shocking, sight, but necessary. Clapping Meg's  broad-brimmed, floppy hat on her head over
  
the kerchief, she grabbed the herb basket  and made for the door.
  Downstairs, she dare not go through the kitchen but  ducked out the side entrance and went out back through the  gardens she had walked with Cecil yesterday.  Bending here and there to pull up a dried flower in  case anyone was watching, she made her way through  the postern gate, still inside the moat. At least  most of the household would be assembling in the  courtyard to see Cecil ride out and should not pay  a bit of heed to Meg Milligrew.
  Jenks, good man that he was, had positioned the  rowboat for her and was waiting directly across the  moat with his horse. She tossed her basket in  the boat and, awkward at having do this for herself,  rowed across to him, cursing under her breath when the oars  went askew and she got a splinter in her  ungloved hands.
  She almost ordered Jenks to help her, but she  had told him not to emerge from the fringe of trees  unless someone tried to stop her. As she tugged the  bow of the boat up on the edge of the grass, her  appreciation of Meg's independence grew.  Indeed, what would it be like to be one of her people, a  commoner, just plain Bess Tudor, the herbalist?  As Ned had hastily suggested, she stared at the  ground as she walked, slightly swinging her  basket, and shuffled through dried leaves.
  "Pretty good," Jenks observed, "but Meg  can row that boat like a seaman."
  Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him but said  only, "Do you think I have time to walk to the fork of the  road? I can hardly be seen riding with you or  taking your horse."
  "I took Meg on a ride afore," he  admitted, standing stiff as if he expected her  to scold him for that. "If we go through the forest--"
  "Mistress Meg!" a voice behind her  called.
  'So blood, caught already? Keeping her hat  brim pulled low, she turned to see Sam, Lord  Cornish's chief groom, beckoning to her from  across the moat. Since Jenks stood in the  shadows, perhaps Sam didn't see him.
  "Saw you go out," Sam shouted, "and I'm  free for a bit, since the guests are riding off  without an escort. Just give that boat a bit of a  shove back, eh?"
  Elizabeth held her ground, though her instinct  was to move farther into the forest. When she did not
  
answer straightaway, he went on.
"I told you next time you went out in the forest for  mushrooms, I'd go along. The princess's  man there's not going with you, is he?"
  Elizabeth cursed under her breath again. He  could see Jenks. And Meg had been out in the  woods? Gathering mushrooms? And with all her  duties had the time to lead this man on, a man she  could not have known before last week? She must be on her  way before Cecil rode out. Worse, she had not  intended to have to talk like the girl.
  "Aye, Sam, walnut gathering, we are,"  she called across the moat and waved the way she had  seen Meg do, all limp wrist and quick motion.  "The princess sent us both, and quick, she said."
  She knew she sounded wrong, but she wasn't  sure just how. Before she ever tried this again, she'd  pay more heed to Meg, get Ned to tutor her  too. She turned in a flurry of skirts and  darted into the forest with Jenks pulling his horse behind  her.

  Cecil rolled the note Kat Ashley had  given him into a tiny ball between his thumb and first  finger. He had managed to skim it, then  surreptitiously dropped it in the moat as he  rode out, grateful he could trust his own people--if  he could. And he had wanted to see Her Grace  privily to ask if she could trust hers. At  least now, as foolhardy as this scheme seemed, he  would have the chance.
  A few minutes later, when he spotted the  dead chestnut tree at the fork in the road just beyond  the first big bend, he told his three men, "I  need a few moments alone here." He drew his  horse up hard and dismounted.
  "Your nervous stomach again, my lord?" his man  Givens called to him. They were all obviously  surprised and trying not to seem so.
  "Just hold the horses--and off the road should  anyone else come through. I shall be back  directly."
  He walked west, as the princess's note had  said. If she was not at the clearing by the brook, he  was prepared to wait till doomsday. But he was not  prepared for the common lass who emerged from the deeper  forest, until he saw the tilt of the pointed chin  and the flash of those dark Boleyn eyes. So, he  thought, relieved, perhaps this scheme was not so  foolhardy after all, if she could pull off this
  
ruse.
  "My princess," he said, trying to control his  lawyer's face not to show either astonishment or  amusement at her appearance or the rude basket  on her arm. With a sweep of his hat, head bowed,  he went down on one knee in the sodden moss.  He had seen her man, holding a horse, but he  kept his watchful distance. At least she had not come  out here alone. She might be daring and desperate,  he thought, but never broken.
  She came closer and touched his shoulder lightly  with her free hand to indicate he should rise. "In  these times--in this attire--my Cecil," she  said, as he stood, "between us, let there be no  ceremony. I have so yearned to speak freely with  you."
  "I am ever at your command, Your Grace. But  should we be interrupted again somehow, let me first  warn you of something that both your cousin Harry and I  have been concerned about, and I did not find an  opportunity to write before or tell."
  "We were interrupted when I was asking you  to describe Sarah Scottwood's countenance."
  "It all, mayhap, ties in. I glimpsed  your Meg Milligrew only from afar when Ned  Topside pointed her out to me, but--"
  "But what does Meg have to do with it? And you sought  out Ned? He said naught of that."
  "He spoke with me rather. Your Grace, as best  I can discover from contacts in London who have  described Sarah Scottwood's countenance and  form, as you instructed," he began carefully, then  just let it all tumble out, "Meg Milligrew  could actually .be Sarah Scottwood, n@ee  Scutea, an herbalist tied to the old, loyal  Spanish party that vowed vengeance on your mother and you,  no doubt all the Boleyns."
  Her head jerked up. He could see she  struggled for control. "But--but, then, I resemble  Sarah, too, my lord. Ned told you why I  really took Meg on--because she can counterfeit my  presence should I need a decoy--or the other way  around, like today?"
  He nodded. "A clever chess move, Your  Grace, but perhaps on your girl's part too. Ned  says she has a mysterious past and just arrived at  your aunt's and keeps conveniently discovering  helpful things so you come to rely on her. Lord  Carey told me he was to question the girl again at  Wivenhoe before she disappeared. But my point is,
  
you must be careful, very careful, because someone  you cannot trust could have been planted close to you."
  He fingered the meager dried herbs she had laid  in Meg's basket, before emphasizing,  "Planted by someone who does not wish you well."
  She dropped--or threw, he was not sure--her  basket on the ground. "But it is Bea Pope  I believe has been planted, and by my sister.  Meg has helped me again and again, even as she  did my aunt."
  "Your Grace, I am going to admit something  to illustrate my point. I pray you will not be out  of sorts over this. Cora Crenshaw, the cook  at Hatfield--"
  "You accuse Cora too?"
  "Only of being my eyes and ears there to be  certain you were safe and to keep a good watch in the  kitchens that no one does--did--to your food and  drink what happened to your aunt's. I still pay  Cora Crenshaw to keep a watch over you, for such  like reasons."
  "Ah," she said only, assessing him anew with  those sharp eyes. "For such like reasons--sui  bono, master lawyer." Her expression made  him want to fidget or back away, but he did  neither. Still, he swallowed hard enough to bob his  Adam's apple as she went on, "Then, my  lord, I shall keep an eye on Meg and others I  tend to trust because they serve me well--yet without  them, I am so wretchedly alone."
  Her voice broke on that; he knew she  included him in her mistrust now. Still, he dared  to plunge on. "And I believe the others who have  been assembled to help you years ago"--here he  glanced at her man in the distance--"should be  scrutinized closer too. Even once-loyal  folk can be pushed or priced."
  "Jenks?" she demanded. "And Kat Ashley,  of course? Dear Kat?" she taunted  sarcastically, hitting his shoulder with a balled fist  so hard he had to step back. "What about Ned  Topside, the wily actor? And the list must  include you, of course, who has stood by as my  adviser I trust enough to meet out here."
  She began to pace and gesture wildly, just as  they said old King Henry did when he was vexed--  before he got too fat and his leg too full of  gangrene to move. Cecil swallowed hard again.
  "I regret, Your Grace," he said,  feeling he was in the docket at his own treason
  
trial, "that I stand here like a harbinger from  hell to croak bad news, but in your tenuous  position, especially now so close to the throne as  Queen Mary weakens, you can trust no one. The  time is too ripe, the odds too high."
  "Lecture me then, master lawyer, and  quickly," she ordered, flinging out an arm as she  paced past him again. "Build your case against  Jenks--who can dissemble nothing and would die for me--  and Kat, who is like a mother to me. And against you, of  course. Say on."
  "Jenks came as a mere lad to you, I  believe, from the household of the Lord Thomas  Seymour, who was nearly your destruction."
  Her skirts swung as she halted before him.  Her porcelain complexion blanched, then  flushed. Cecil had long suspected she had  actually loved the seductive, traitorous  Seymour.
  "My Lord Seymour is long dead," she said,  her voice harsh with barely leashed passion. "What  in heaven's name could Jenks have to do with all that now?  You refer, I warrant, to the fact some men  fanatically loyal to Tom Seymour thought I  deserted him and let him go to the block? Well,  he deserted me first, and I had to save myself.  There was no help for it. So Jenks is innocent,  master lawyer, of whatever dire, convoluted  motives you ascribe to him. You have no case  against the lad. And Kat? What crazed thing will you  say about my loyal Kat? Well?"
  "When your enemies had Kat Ashley in the  Tower during the Seymour situation, they merely  threatened to torture her--merely showed her the  instruments--and she confessed everything about her being a  go-between for Tom Seymour and you."
  Her nostrils flared. He was walking on  eggshells now, he knew it. But she had to be  made more cautious, protected. He had long  advised her just to sit tight, hold on, and her  destiny would come to her. In this treacherous poison  plot that reached, perhaps, clear to the palace, he  knew she had chosen to act, but it was deadly  dangerous. He wanted to scare her inffbeing more  defensive, not going on the offensive.
  She stood, hands on her hips, staring at him  down her long nose. Her voice came at him  dart-tipped, but entirely under control now. "And  you fault her for that? I do not. The Tower is the  most fearsome place on earth, my lord. I can
  
testify to that."
  "But I am only saying, Katherine Ashley  gave you up quickly to Queen Mary's men and hurt  you as a result. What else did she promise  them, under duress, to be so quickly freed and  released back to you then?"
  "Hardly to report to the queen what I do in  secret--and never to let someone poison me years  later. She's had a hundred, nay, a thousand  chances to betray or dispatch me and has done nothing  but protect and coddle me. If Kat's  guilty, my lord, it is of worrying overmuch and  scolding--treating me as if I still toddled about in  leading strings. And Ned Topside? He only  saved Harry's life."
  "Oh, I give you that he came along on that  road and appeared to save Harry's life, but  what if he did that to ingratiate himself with Harry  and the Boleyns--then you? Or mayhap he  expected to find--or deliver--a corpse to your  aunt and then have access to her. He either did not know  it was you at Wivenhoe or learned too late  to get to you--or to make a second attempt on  Harry's life. Then, when he would have found a  way to get to you again, you actually summoned him.  He in turn tries to throw doubt on the others,  like Meg--"
  "You are demented. Ned has been alone with me  twice and done naught but help me when he could have  handed me over to the enemy or done me in."
  "But your earlier letter gave me the impression you  feared that this She was enjoying tormenting you--playing with  you cat and mouse--until the time she prefers  to strike. So she might have told her informant or  liaison to string you along--to bring you to her. I will  find out more information about the Irish ties, but until  I do you must not continue to trust your people so  wholeheartedly and under no circumstances go  to Leeds."
  "Master Cecil, I shall do now--and ever--what  I must do."
  He merely made a stiff half bow, though  he wanted to shout and pound tree trunks at her  obstinacy. "I am glad to hear you can vouch for  all your privy plot council, Your Grace,  for that is clever and careful, as you must be. Marry,  you must!"
  "And you, clever Cecil? Should I not trust you  either?" she goaded, pointing her finger nearly in his  face. "I believe I asked you to give me
  
evidence against yourself too."
  "Very well, Your Grace. I am vaunting  ambitious--I plead guilty to that--ambitious  for myself, my house, but most of all for the rightful  queen I want to serve. This is why I came  to Ightham, why I bide my time with my family  and farm in the countryside--to wait to serve you."
  His pulse pounded. He could barely catch his  breath; he knew his usually well-modulated  voice rose and quavered. Before he knew he would  say more, he blurted, "And I will not have some  vengeful poisoner attack you at the last minute  and snatch my dreams away."
  Tears stung his eyes, blurring his vision.  He was aghast he had lost control. But, with her,  perhaps it was that moment that saved him and strengthened their  unspoken bond.
  "Then we are agreed," she declared, "for She will  not snatch my dreams either!"
  Though afoot in the dank woods in stained,  common clothes, she had never looked more a queen  to him.

          Chapter The Fifteenth

  "I must get to Leeds Castle," Elizabeth  told Kat when she returned from her covert  meeting with Cecil. "It's a risk, but one that  must be taken, and soon."
  Kat's forehead clenched and her lips pursed  hard, but she said naught as she helped  Elizabeth divest herself of Meg's garments.
  "Cecil says that Leeds's owner, Sir  Anthony St. Leger," Elizabeth went on,  "has tight Catholic and Irish ties. Like  Hever, Leeds was a place my mother loved, for  my father once brought her there in great triumph.  The poisoner revels in defiling places dear  to the Boleyns. And since I overheard at  Hever that She is intent on destruction there,  St. Leger might be housing her at his castle.  She must have gone to Leeds!"
  "Gone to sit there like a spider, just waiting for you  to get snared in her web," Kat muttered, as she  gathered up the garments.
  "But nothing risked, nothing gained, even if that  risk must be in secret--even if I must appear  to be doing nothing. The poisoner must be stopped for
  
good."
  Despite her brave words, she felt her  resolve waver. But she could not hide or hunker  down here or even back at Hatfield like some  scared rabbit--a rabbit She could probably  poison if she put her mind to it. This plan was  perilous, considering only Ned and Jenks would be with  her, but that could have advantages too. She must  depend on the few faithful people she had gathered about  her. Suddenly, she hated Cecil: He had  made her feel more beleaguered and alone than ever  by throwing suspicion on her staff, even Kat.  Elizabeth studied the older woman through her  eyelashes and slitted lids, then decided  to trust her.
  "New, more-bold tactics will throw them off  guard at Leeds, my Kat," she rushed on as  if she were trying to convince herself. "I will not enter the  enemy camp at night this time. I'm going to have  Ned write a short play, and he, Jenks, and  I shall invade Leeds in broad daylight, yet  disguised, a small company of players to perform for  them. Well, do not gape at me like that. All  players' companies have girlish-looking lads for the  women's parts."
  "Your success garbed as Meg has gone to your  head!" Kat declared as she bent over to fan out  Elizabeth's petticoats for her to step into.  "And now you'll be a woman grown, playing a  lad, playing a lass? Who would believe it?"
  "Exactly." She put her hand on Kat's  back and stepped into her garments. "They will never  suspect. But I'll still let Ned talk our  way in so I can keep in the background."
  "You?" Kat grunted, lacing her  petticoats. "You, in the background?"
  "I did so when I visited my aunt."
  "Only till you took to digging up the dead and  scrapping with a wench who killed herself. Lovey,  you've had to do too much thinking and agonizing over  this, and it's addling your wits. Queen Mary's  keeping you in rural exile these years has  hardly kept you in the background. I've  heard," she whispered with a wink, "that true  English courtiers are just waiting for the final  downturn of her health to flock to your side."
  "You've heard such from whom?"
  She looked guilty, the cat with the cream on  her whiskers. "Why, Cecil, of course," she  blustered. "You think you are the only one can corner
  
him for privy talk?"
  Elizabeth put her hands to her forehead  to massage away hovering head pain. Her  closest people were all protective but sometimes  seemed to conspire. They had chinks in their armor,  but if she trusted no one as Cecil said, how could  she survive?
  Dear Lord in heaven, she prayed, keep  me safe and sane. I am going mad with fear and  doubt.
  "I admit it, Kat," she said softly. "I  feel beset on every side, swarmed and stung."  She didn't know why she had put it that way,  swarmed and stung. A fearsome memory flew  at her, but she shoved it back. "But I am going  --somehow--to survive by stopping this poison plot,  no matter what others want or will for me. It  is my will that matters--mine!" she cried, thudding  a fist to her breastbone.
  Kat had moved forward, arms outstretched, as  if she would embrace her, but at that imperious  tone she jerked to a halt. She looked uncertain  whether to curtsy or cry. For one moment they stared  at each other like strangers.
  "Help me finish dressing," Elizabeth  ordered, her voice a cold command. "I must find  Ned. Meanwhile, you will fetch Meg here to wait  for me. And tell her, I do not want to see  Sam from the stables hanging on her petticoats."
  "What? Sam, the groom? I don't  believe it."
  "Nor do I." Elizabeth's voice came  muffled from under her bodice as Kat pulled it  down over her head, then began to lace it the rest  of the way up the back. "I don't know when she  found the time."
  "Nay, 'tisn't a question of time. Meg  doesn't give a fig for anyone but Ned.  Pity, since it's cow-eyed Jenks been hanging  on her every word, so that's a pretty pickle you've  got to solve--"
  Elizabeth pulled away and spun to face  her.
  "I am going to solve nothing that petty but will  command them all to stop it, just stop it," she cried,  pacing and gesturing with both hands. "Ned cares  naught for Meg but to teach her to ape my speech and  bearing, and Jenks--Jenks cares only for  horses and me. This is a time for logic, not  wild emotions, especially personal ones!"
  
  Kat gave her that all too  familiar squinty stare, as if to ask who was the  pot calling the kettle black. Elizabeth  knew her moods swung and her temper seethed,  but she could not rein them in. But she alone had a  sound excuse. No one understood her, and she  might as well just face down that poisoner alone.  Yanking her snood from Kat's hands, she fastened  it in her hair herself as she stormed from the room.

  Elizabeth had calmed herself by the time she found  Ned in Lord Cornish's library downstairs.  She followed his voice along the hallway, for  he was declaiming a speech her grandfather, King  Henry VII, supposedly gave at
Bosworth Field when he seized England for the  Tudors to end the War of the Roses. The  monologue was from a drama called Triumph  at Bosworth, which he had done sections from the  other night for the Cornishes as well as Sir  Thomas and the overly impressed, applauding  Bea. Now he evidently did not even hear  Elizabeth when she opened the door, stepped in,  and quietly closed it behind her.
  She hated to interrupt a man so intense, so  possessed, but as soon as he went down on one  knee to pluck the crown Richard II had lost  in a thornbush, she loudly cleared her throat.
  "Forget Bosworth," she ordered. "We're  going to Leeds."
  "Now? Tonight?" He rose but nettled her  by going on with his playacting to pretend to place the  rescued crown on his brow with a flourish. When she  smacked his elbow, his distant gaze focused on  her at last.
  "No, but soon," she said, starting to pace again.  She could feel ideas and passions boiling in her,  rattling the lid of her composure again. "We must  get into Leeds to capture and question the poisoner--  if She's there. As soon as you can, pen me a  brief play our little company of you, me, and  Jenks can offer to give for Lord St. Leger there--  something, I'm afraid, that must be pro-Catholic  and pro-Queen Mary. Of dire necessity, we  shall be walking into a bed of vipers, anti-Boleyn  Irish who may be tied yet in loyalty  to Catherine of Aragon or even the Butlers,  whom the Boleyns insulted twice--"
  "Whoa!" he interrupted, mimicking pulling  back on the reins. "You've left me in your
  
dust. What of all that is to be in the  script? And you'll play what part? Mayhap you  had best write it."
  "You write it; I shall amend it," she  ordered, coming to a stop so fast her skirts belled  out around her. She pointed her finger at him as her  voice rose. "And I will brook no scenes where  actors go behind their mistress's back to consult with  lawyers, nor ones where a princess's staff  carry on secret romantic triangles, if  you catch my drift, Edward Thompson, alias  Ned Topside, alias King Henry the Seventh  and whatever other parts you choose to assume."
  "Now, that was quite a speech," he dared, grandly  sweeping both arms outward.
  She spun away, went out, and slammed the  door. But he had the mettle to open it and hie  himself after her down the long hall.
  "Do you want someone serving you who cannot think on  his own?" he demanded, keeping up with her brisk  pace. "Do you want a mere puppet show and not a  play, Your Grace?"
  "Keep your voice down and your damned cocky  spirits too."
  She darted a sideways glance at him. He  looked abashed.
  "I shall, truly," he vowed and hung his head.  She stopped to face him, going one step up on  the staircase so she could look down at him. She  could predict the impudent rejoinder he longed  to give: You have not kept your voice down. But  he was wily enough to bite back those words for some far  gentler.
  "I did not mean to displease Your Grace."  "Of course I do not want merely to pull  puppet strings--not exactly."
  "So you once made me believe. I was  to play a sort of fool, you promised, but never  truly be one."
  "Granted."
  "Then grant me one moment more and do not scold,  I pray you, even if my upbraiding is richly  deserved." He kept his voice lowered and touched  her elbow beseechingly to steer her back into the  library and close the door behind them.
  She folded her arms across her bodice.  "Say on, Ned."
  "I know you have not approved of how--how amusing  the Lady Beatrice Pope finds me. I  admit I have cultivated that."
  
  "Bea Pope? I was not even  referring to Bea Pope!" Elizabeth felt  jolted again. But, of course, she had other things  on her mind--important things--so she must have  overlooked such little affaires de coeur in  her people.
  "You will not tell me," she choked out, "that you have  become Bea Pope's paramour."
  "By hell's gates, no. Never. I adore  but one woman, yet from afar, however much we  argue, one above my star, whom I will serve forever  if she will allow it, I swear it."
  His words rhymed like pure poetry. His warm  voice roughened so convincingly, and his eyes were as  green as wet emeralds. She nodded to encourage  him to go on.
  "I must tell you, Your Grace, that the Lady  Beatrice has confided to me that she must needs  see her sister in Maidstone again soon."
  "Ah. When?"
  "That is the sticking point, what made me  suspect her all the more as the poisoner's  informant here in your household, one of them at  least. The lady is not certain what day she will  leave--when she is summoned, as she put it, but  she is packing now. And Maidstone is on the very  road and close to Leeds."
  "Indeed it is. Well done, Ned. Let me  know the moment she leaves. If I had a man  to spare, I would have her followed. And, whatever you  do, keep our plans for this play and the stage we  intend for it a secret from everyone right now."
  "To Leeds and soon," he said and pantomimed  lifting a goblet to drink a health. He threw  back his head as if to quaff it.
  "Your new-won Bosworth crown just tipped  off your head, sire," she said as she went out and  closed the door.

  The window in the bedchamber and withdrawing room  Lord St. Leger had given her surveyed the  six-acre lake that surrounded Leeds Castle.  Today the water looked as bog-dark as the sky from a  storm sweeping in from the Channel. She stopped  her preparations to lean her forehead against the cool  glass, catching her unveiled reflection for one  moment in its makeshift mirror.
  She could hear Colum McKitrick and his  henchmen's cries echoing from the inner courtyard as  they battered each other with their staves to control the
  
leather stoolball. In Gaelic they  shouted, making her yearn for her childhood days  at Carrick-on-Sur. Ordinarily, she  wouldn't care a whit if the lackbrains killed  each other, especially after they had made such a  ruin of executing Lord Carey, but she still needed  them for Elizabeth of England's coming judgment day.  Colum--and now he'd probably be a filthy,  bruised, sweat-soaked mess--was to escort  her to Ightham Forest this afternoon, rain or not.
  She sighed, glancing at herself in the wan  mirror the panes of glass made. She loved  to look at her countenance in window reflections but  usually at night. Since it was not a true  looking glass, the pits and marks from the pox, the  ruination of her beauty, never showed. That made her  think of times past again, but she must think only of  now.
  Still gloved, she returned to kneading the sticky  paste of aconite, hellebore, and  banewort-tainted honey in a wooden trencher.  These pellets must be stronger than those that had  felled the rabbits at Hatfield, for the prey was  much bigger this time. And red-haired, she thought, and  laughed aloud. With the help of her informer who lived  so close to the princess, it would bring great joy  to leave the corpse lying right in the bitch  Boleyn's own bed.

  Elizabeth came back into her chamber so  quietly that Meg, staring out the window at the  graying sky, one shoulder slumped against the  frame, did not hear her. Kat had gone out  somewhere, so they were alone. The princess frowned at  the girl's back, wondering if she were longing for  Ned or tended darker thoughts. But no, though  Cecil could be trusted to send her another swift  letter as he had promised, he had no right to judge  poor Meg.
  "A penny," Elizabeth said quietly.
  Meg turned so fast her curtsy went  atilt. "For my thoughts? I warrant they're not  worth even that much to you, Your Grace."
  "They are worth a great deal." Elizabeth  sat on the bench by the low-burning hearth and patted  the cushion next to hers. Looking suddenly wary,  Meg came over and sat.
  "I suppose," Meg said, using her crisp  London enunciation Ned was so pleased with  lately, "you mean my knowledge of the herbs. I wish my
  
own thoughts were worth something to me too. I  mean, the past I can't recall."
  Elizabeth turned to face her squarely.  She knew such worries weighed on Meg's  mind, but she hadn't expected her to bring it up  herself right now.
  "That's partly what I wish to speak about," she  explained, leaning forward. The girl nodded,  wide-eyed, looking totally trusting. Surely  such sincerity could not be a sham.
  "Do you think, Meg, that if you were asked  specific questions, not necessarily about herbs, it  might help you to recall your life before you were  kicked by the horse and taken in at my Aunt  Mary's? For example, has another name ever  struck you as sounding familiar, or are you sure you  have recalled your real one? And concerning places  you've lived--though Ned says you didn't sound as  if you came from there at first--have you ever been  to London?"
  The girl shook her head, then shrugged. "If  Ned says no, I guess not. He's so  awfully clever. We've agreed now if I work  hard on imitating the way you talk, he'll do  parts for me in return. He can do voices that  sound Italian"--she began to tick off on her  fingers--"Froggie--French, I mean--  Spaniard, Irish, and Scots, so witty."
  "Spanish and Irish too? He's not done those  for me. But let's see about names then. Turn your  back just as you did when I first came in.  Close your eyes and let me say some names  to see if any of them ... well, strike you."  She hadn't meant to proceed this way, but she  felt guilty setting this up with the girl staring at  her so eagerly.
  "If'n--I mean, if--you say so, Your  Grace." Dutifully, she turned away, her  backbone stiff, her shoulders straight.
  "Penelope," Elizabeth began, pausing after  the name. "Anne, Katherine or Kate.  Gwendolyn, Cynthia, Eleanor or Nell.  Jane, Philadelphia. Diana. Frances,  Sarah. How does Sarah sound?"
  "I like it--Sarah."
  "Think carefully. Have you ever heard of Sarah  Scottwood or Sarah Scutea?"
  Meg spun around, her face hopeful.  "Scutea's a funny name. And is that two  Sarahs or one? I think I knew some
  
Scottwoods once, but I'm not  sure. Why are you looking at me like that, Your  Grace? Is this a trick? Is that name  Scutea Spanish, then?"
  Elizabeth sighed and flopped her hands in her  lap. "I'll tell you straight, Meg. My  Lord Cecil says a girl your age with a  similar description was reared by an apothecary in  London. A girl by the name of Sarah  Scottwood, who used to be Sarah Scutea and  disappeared about the time her father died last year and  hasn't been seen since."
  "God save us! And he--you--think she--that  woman is me?"
  "Do you think it could be?"
  Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked them  back to mat her pale lashes in clumps. "And  what's the rest of it, then, Your Grace?" she  asked. "Is she one of them loyal to Queen  Mary you mentioned--ones with Spanish ties? And  if her sire was an apothecary, you think I know the  poisons, that I harmed your aunt and now--"
  "No, Meg, I am saying no such thing."  "I keep trying to win Ned over, but he's  against me, isn't he? Talk about poisoners.  Ned tries to poison your good opinion of me, and  I'm just trying to please everyone--you, Ned, Lord  Cecil too."
  "Meg, I do not think you are a poisoner, and  Ned has not said such either."
  She dashed a tear away and asked, "And  Master Cecil?"
  Elizabeth heaved a sigh of exasperation and  exhaustion. "Cecil advised me to be certain  everyone near me was to be trusted. Stop crying this  instant. If you are going to act my counterpart--  even in London someday perhaps--you must learn  to control your damned tears." Elizabeth ended  with a sniff herself.
  'So blood, all this was getting to her. Even  if Queen Mary died, she'd be a ranting,  raving bedlamite by then, not to mention that she couldn't  sleep or eat well anymore. Her  long-tended and hard-won control of her temper had  gone to hell in a handcart. She always wavered,  forgiving Ned when she meant to rebuke him roundly,  believing this girl when she could be someone from the very  bosom of the enemy camp. Thank God, Kat and  Jenks were beyond suspicion--surely they were.
  Meg stopped crying. She sniffled and started
  
to wipe her nose on her sleeve before  Elizabeth handed her a handkerchief. She nodded  and honked at first, once, before she began to mimic  the short puffs Elizabeth made. Elizabeth  could not help it; her heart went out to the girl.
  "May I say something else, Your Grace?"  "Of course."
  "When you said that Sarah Scottwood, I  liked the sound of it. But I don't think I ever  even saw a big city, and I'd be scared to death  to so much as set foot in London, though I'd go  there with you if you want."
  "Thank you, Meg."
  "But what I want to say is that--even if I  was this Sarah with all she might have done, I  recall none of it, so it isn't the real me now,  not Meg Milligrew. If I ever was this  Sarah, she's gone, just like she's dead, because I  am loyal to you now, Your Grace. I believe  that, but can you please believe it too?"
  "Truly. And if we do ever learn that you were  once someone else, we shall just rely on this Meg  to see it through, the Meg my aunt knew and loved  and trusted. And I too."
  Elizabeth pressed her hands over Meg's  fists, which clenched the handkerchief on her knee.  Though amazingly she didn't show it, the girl was  trembling so hard, her fear vibrated clear up  Elizabeth's arms to make them tingle.

  Ned was slumped over, writing the play for the  princess, when Lord Cornish's man opened the  library door without knocking. Ned stayed his  scratching quill.
  "Visitors at the gate for you, Master  Topside."
  "For me? No one in these parts knows me."  "A ragtag group of players. One says  he's kin to you--Wat Thompson."
  Ned banged his fist down so hard that ink  slopped and blotting sand flew. "At the front  gate?" he demanded before recalling there was but one  gate in this moated manor.
  He knew now he'd made a massive  mistake to so grandiosely announce to his  uncle that he was going to serve the princess.  They'd obviously tracked him through hearing where she  lodged. Who knew what mischief they intended?  No doubt they were down on their luck and wanted  to perform for a hefty fee or expected him to dole
  
out what coin Her Grace had entrusted  to him. And after Uncle Wat and Grand Rand--the  sodomites--had failed to use his prodigious  talents and had treated him instead like ... like one  of the lads.
  "I'll walk out to see them straightaway,"  he said. But he took his time, going to his room  far back in the warren of small servants'  chambers to wash his face and don a fur-lined  cape and his only plumed hat. His feet dragged  until he emerged from the inner court. Then he  strode directly out toward them, under the arched  gate, across the drawbridge, and over the moat  where they waited, all four of them, hats in hands  before Wat's horse and the cart and mule, laden with  scenery and costumes that looked to be a jumbled  mess. No one could ever pack their goods like he  could.
  He silently cursed not only them for coming, but  himself for having to blink back tears that prickled  behind his eyeballs but did not fall.
  "Uncle, Randall, lads," he greeted them  formally with a mere inclination of his head. The breeze  blew the plume before his face to tickle his nose  and make him want to sneeze. Tossing his head  to clear the plume, he stopped a good ten feet from  them. "Will you tell me you just happened to be in the  neighborhood?" he challenged.
  "We only wanted to tell you in person,  nephew," Wat said, stepping slightly closer,  "that we are very proud indeed of your well-deserved  success, are we not?"
  The others chimed in. Ned kept his narrowed  eyes on his uncle's countenance. They were down on  their luck, for certain. And they had not replaced  him yet.
  "We had just hoped," Wat went on, "for old  time's sake, in passing through, we would offer  to feature you for the princess, your patron, in a  piece. However bright you shine in her royal  eyes, my boy, we could make you glitter like a  gem set in golden filigree."
  "That is kind. But I did the king's speeches  in Triumph at Bosworth for Her Grace  and the entire household the other night. I may be  called her fool at times, but I play the best  parts now. And I'm writing a play for her at  her special, fond bequest."
  "Ah, and most excellent it will be too, I  warrant," Grand Rand dared to put in. Ned still
  
did not look his way. Their betrayal  pierced him again. True, he had sworn to his  father on his deathbed he'd give The Queen's  Country Players his loyalty, but Uncle  Wat had gone back on his word to be a second  father to him. He owed them nothing now but his disdain.
  "I regret I cannot ask you to stay and play  for the household here," he informed them loftily.  "The princess is under some constraints by her  guardian not to entertain overmuch, not with her sister  mayhap on her deathbed."
  His voice caught again. His father's wan, wasted  face came to him so very real, and his uncle's  face so resembled his father's.
  "I see," Wat said quietly.
  "You have heard of that?" Ned plunged on. "That  I soon may serve not an exiled princess but  the queen?"
  Wat and Rand exchanged lightning-quick glances that  said it all. They were willing to lick his boots  to curry her favor, and, as usual, they would use  and abuse him to get what they wanted.
  "Of course," Ned added, "I will ask the  Cornishes to send out beer and food to stay you for  your continued journey, especially since Ightham  is so distant from the other places you might play.  And may I suggest a venue," he said as the  errant thought hit him. Aye, this would even the  match between them, and if they ever ran into each other  again someday, he would be kinder to them after they paid their  penance.
  "Is another noble household nearby?" Wat  asked.
  "Not quite, but not far. I'll tell you the very way  to go. You must inquire at the Queen's Head in the  village of Edenbridge, where I've visited  myself, the place closest to Hever where the  Princess Elizabeth's own royal mother was  reared. Be sure to announce that you call yourselves  The Queen's Country Players, Queen  Mary's. And, Uncle Wat, remember the way  you always used to say you were fresh from London?  Emphasize that, too, but leave the lads just out of  town till you've set it all up, and then you can  enter in fine fettle."
  Ned felt only the slightest prick of  guilt.

  "Why can I not find anyone I want, when I  want?" Elizabeth groused as she left
  
Jenks, Sir Thomas, and their other  male companions in the inner courtyard after her  short, aborted ride an hour later.
  A flustered Lord Cornish met her at the  door and sent his man to fetch down either Kat or  Meg with a fresh pair of boots. Between rumblings  of thunder, something unseen in the forest had spooked  Griffin, and he had bolted to skim a hawthorn  thicket. Though she was not really hurt, Sir  Thomas had insisted they return to the manor  house.
  Jenks went immediately off to tend Griffin's  scratches, but Elizabeth wanted an herbal  wash for her own scrapes as well as a  replacement for this left boot on which she'd  broken a heel shoving away from a tree trunk.
  "Can't find your girl Meg," Cornish's  man reported, out of breath, as he came down the  central staircase. "And hear your Mrs.  Ashley's been overseeing the laundresses  getting things off the bushes out back afore it  rains."
  "Then fetch her from out back, man,"  Elizabeth ordered, trying to keep her temper  leashed. "Or else the Lady Blanche will do or  Lady Bea--"
  "I'll summon my wife forthwith," Sir  Thomas put in as he came clomping over to stare  at Elizabeth's snagged skirts. She  ignored the offer of his arm to limp on one heelless  boot toward the stairs.
  "Never mind, I'll tend to things myself," she  called back over her shoulder. "I believe it  is just not my day."
  She knew Penelope Cornish always took a  nap in the late afternoons, so she didn't ask for  her. Bea had not even appeared at breakfast, but  not being able to summon her household women vexed  her no end. She hobbled up the steps and past the  window at the turn of the staircase. From that  vantage she saw Kat and Meg. She had a  good nerve to open the casement and screech at them like  a Billingsgate fishwife.
  Kat was not only overseeing Lady  Cornish's laundresses harvesting the linens  spread on bushes and hedges but was lugging a big  wicker basket herself, so she'd be complaining about  sore muscles tonight, when it was her own fault.  And Meg stood beyond the moat at the forest edge,  though, thank God, she appeared to have neither Ned
  
nor Sam with her. Mayhap she was after  mushrooms again, but didn't the dolt realize  thunder portended rain?
  "'So blood," Elizabeth hit her fist on  the window frame and muttered, "we should be laying  plans for Leeds, and we're all at sixes and  sevens till Ned gets that damned play done."
  Though she knew her staff had never thought she  would be back posthaste after setting out, she banged  the door to her chamber open and into the wall. Where was  that bootjack, and would it even work since the heel  was missing? If she tried to just pull the boot off  bare-handed, she'd scrape herself with the protruding  nails, which kept tripping her on the  floorboards. Could English craftsmen make  nothing sound in these modern times? When she got    to London next, she'd buy a hundred pairs  of boots, all imported ones, Spanish leather  or not.
  As she plopped down on the hearth bench, she  saw the maids had not even straightened her bed  today, when it should have had its linens changed. No,  rather, it seemed, she realized, someone slept in it.
  She stood, bootjack in hand, and limped  closer to the bed as thunder rattled like cannonballs  outside. Her left heel snagged the carpet;  she almost fell. Some sunlight or a lantern  would help in this dimming room, but she discerned a  mussed coverlet, a nightcap, and the slightest  bit--tip--of reddish hair. But Meg was  outside, so ...
  In the half shadow of the hanging tester of the bed,  she put her hand out and gripped the corner of the  counterpane and top sheet. And pulled them back.
  Not a drop nor blotch of blood stained the  pristine white sheet around the corpse. But wearing  her favorite beribboned nightcap, its dark  eyes staring wide open, its tongue lolled out,  its black-tipped tail curled nicely around  its sleek red rump, a dead fox sprawled in  her bed. A delicate crucifix dangled from  its neck, the very one she had put on poor Will  Benton weeks ago in his grave at
Wivenhoe.

          Chapter The Sixteenth

  The real red-haired fox is next.  Elizabeth had reread the beautifully  embroidered words until they echoed in her ears and
  
rang in her brain: The real  red-haired fox is next.
  It was the boast--the threat--of the poisoner on a  small, unframed sampler found under the fox's  body, pinned to the crucifix chain when Ned  removed the corpse secretly from her bed. He  had carried the dead animal downstairs in a  laundry basket, and he and Jenks buried it in  the forest, but Elizabeth had kept the crucifix  and the menacing message. It was encircled  by three-leafed clovers, their long stems knotted  nooselike to match the style of the other hand-sewn  warnings.
  As exhausted as she felt, Elizabeth knew  she could not get back in her bed that night, though  Kat had scrubbed and aired the ticking and changed  the linens yet again. She would not rest there or  elsewhere, she had vowed, until she had discovered  the identity of the poisoner and rid this world of her.
  She had cross-questioned all her people--except  Jenks, who had been out riding with her. Kat, who  would ordinarily have been in the room but was out back  with the laundresses, claimed she had not seen or  heard a thing amiss. Prior to going outside,  Meg had been in the kitchen sorting herbs with the  cooks. Lady Cornish's pastry baker had  upheld her word on that.
  "Oh, you still nettled your girl warn't there when  you come back in with your boot broke," the portly  woman named Moll had dared to respond  to Elizabeth's question about Meg's whereabouts.  Elizabeth was amazed that petty gossip was the  real meat and drink of the downstairs staff and the  servants of the bedchamber, in small manors as  well as at court.
  "I am not nettled if she was helping you,"  Elizabeth assured Moll through the potent cloud  of garlic that enveloped her. "By the way, your  saffron crusts are excellent."
  "Thankee, ma'am--Princess," Moll  blurted while her florid face bloomed  brighter. "Aye, Meg was in and out of the kitchens."
  "In and out?"
  The woman shrugged her rounded shoulders so hard  her pigeon breasts bounced. "Tell true,  Princess, I figured she was sneakin' out to see  Sam in the stables, 'cause he gone sweet on  her of a sudden like she slipped him a love potion  or somethin'."
  "Say nothing of my questions," Elizabeth had
  
warned her. "I do not want Lady
Cornish to think I am displeased with any of the  efforts all of you make here in the kitchen."
  Moll's thin eyebrows had scooted halfway  up her high forehead. "Oh, course not,  Princess. Wouldn't think nothin' like that."
  Elizabeth had also been circumspect in  questioning the Cornishes' chief laundress. She  did not want the Popes to know any of this--if they  didn't already. She worried incessantly that  Bea could at least have expedited the fox's  arrival in her bed. As for Ned's whereabouts when it  was delivered, he claimed he had taken a  brief walk outside the moat but spent the rest  of the time in Lord Cornish's deserted library,  penning the short play In Praise of Our  True Queen.
  "Our true queen--Mary?" Elizabeth had  asked him testily, leaning over his shoulder to skim  the lines. She had to read by twin rush lights he  had lit, for the storm still raging outside had darkened  the day.
  "Of necessity, as you commanded," he told her  defensively, rising and looking rather guilty, she  thought. "You said, Your Grace, it was for the ears of  Irish Catholics. See, I've copied out the  parts for you and Jenks and kept him to a minimum with  mostly mimed actions, even a bit of  swordplay. We'll rehearse a few days--"
  "We haven't the time anymore, not since She  has clearly demonstrated she has the  most-intimate access to my person and my life.  'So blood, I am safer going after her than  waiting here--supposedly guarded--as Cecil would  no doubt have me do. We are greatly undermanned with  just you, Jenks, and me as players, but we must  ride to Leeds tomorrow night. If we but knew these  parts, we'd go tonight."
  "Tomorrow? But--"
  "You and I are apt pupils, and I need  something else to do but brood. Give me my part,"  she insisted and seized the sheet he'd indicated.  "And Meg tells me you can do an Irish  brogue or Spanish tongue, so you'd best  polish them too. Work on your speeches and then,  after I go up from supper, come privily to my  room and we will go over them. Damn, but I'd  give a fortune if we had a few more men along  to take our part. Something else is eating at you,  I can tell. Out with it."
  
  "I--nothing. I just mayhap need  to make a few revisions, write in a few more  parts," he said, snatching at her paper.
  She pulled it out of his reach. "More parts for    whom? It's far too late for that. The three of us  will have to do, whatever ill befalls. I will not wait  here to be poisoned in my bed by someone who  obviously has been watching me for who knows how  long. At least, I warrant, since Jenks,  my cousin, and I dug up that body at  Wivenhoe, for surely neither of them would have told  the poisoner that I put a crucifix--one my    sister once gave me--around poor, murdered Will  Benton's neck."
  "Your Grace," he said frowning, as if he were  hardly listening, "if I could fetch us a few more  players--two men, two boys--ones I know  well, ones who--"
  "What? But we need them now. Are they  hereabouts?"
  "If they haven't had their skulls smashed  in, as I--I arranged--and hoped for," he said,  sighing heavily. At least she was relieved  to discover that what made him look so guilty had  naught to do with her or Bea Pope. "If you  send Jenks on the road to Edenbridge," he  rushed on, "he might stop them in time and bring them  back privily. They'd need horses, but--"
  "Your old friends were here? Your uncle? And you  sent them on? I heard some players were turned  away but assumed the Pope was the villain. Ned,  how could you?"
  He flushed; his fine features clenched to make  him look the chided boy caught with his hand in the  sweetmeats. "They betrayed me," he blurted,  "especially my uncle. I didn't tell you  aught of what really happened. But vengeance felt  so good--so good. I still think they need watching, my  uncle and Randall Greene, but I warrant  we're desperate, eh?"
  She seized his shoulders and stared close into his  eyes. "Deadly so. Can we get them back  to leave tonight?"
  "Tonight? But you just said tomor--"  "But now all of you can do a set play, which will  give me time to look around. I'll go in as just  another boy, and they won't think a thing of it if  I'm not on stage while the rest of you keep their  interest. Send Jenks for your players, but keep  them in the forest here till we go out tonight. I am
  
sorry for the rain, but they cannot be seen here  with us."
  She thrust him toward the door. "Tell  Jenks to promise them horses to ride, food--  some coin. And Ned, I understand about betrayal and  vengeance, even in one's family. And may God  grant us no more surprises on this day."

  But three more came close upon the heels of her  words, and she hated things in threes. Death came  in threes, Tom Seymour had told her once,  referring to her father being thrice widowed--twice  by his own decree and once through the death in  childbirth of Tom's sister, Queen Jane.  Elizabeth had seen it other times, and everyone  believed it, high and low, astrologers and clergy  too.
  First Cecil's letter reporting information she had  requested came much faster than she could ever have  hoped. His man left the missive for Jenks in  the crotch of the dead chestnut tree as they had  arranged, and fortunately, Jenks met him in the    damp forest as he was leaving the missive.
  "Here it is, delivered safe into your hands,  Your Grace," Jenks said, out of breath where he  had found her sitting alone in the back of the gardens  after the rain passed. "I'll needs double my  speed now to get to Ned's people and bring them back.  Oh, forgot to tell you, Cecil's man said he  come straight from London, not from Stamford."
  She looked up, alarmed. "London?
Cecil said nothing of going direct to London.  But then," she added, "he did need to see his  usual sources immediately, and they're all tied to the  court. So then, he is near Queen Mary," she  added under her breath, "for she bides at St.  James's Palace." She closed her eyes  to picture the brick palace, lying just outside  London in the fields and marshes hard by a park  so large it seemed in her mind to swallow the forest  outside Ightham. Elizabeth had asked Mary  to go riding with her in St. James's Park that day  when Mary had ordered her away from London because,  she said, Elizabeth was poisoned by her mother's  Boleyn blood and by iniquity.
  As Jenks bowed and hurried away, she sat  staring after him. Surely, Cecil's getting near  his sources to help her was the only reason he would  hie himself to London without telling her. He had  admitted he was ambitious, but only for his
  
success through hers.
  Breaking the seal on his letter, she stood and  walked farther away from the house, past the  sundial, and sat wearily on the stone bench,  though it was still damp from the rain. Glancing around  to see that she was indeed alone, even scanning the  windows at the back of the manor house, she stared  at the first of two pages. No matter what words  came before her eyes, she kept seeing, hearing,  thinking, The real red-haired fox is next.
  She forced herself to read slowly enough to take it all  in should she be forced to destroy it soon. At least  it was in Greek instead of Latin this time, so that would  stop some prying eyes. First he conveyed something her  cousin Harry--so he was suddenly in London,  too, when she had told him to stay quiet in the  country--had wanted her to know. Harry thought that  Waldegrave's mention of St. Anthony's  fire could refer to a sort of plague that had  swept through France, feu de  Saint-Antoine, the French called it.
  "Smut rye!" she translated aloud as she  read on.
  "What's that, Your Grace?" Meg asked as  she walked up to join her. Kat was somewhere out here  too.
  "Sit down and listen carefully. Cecil  writes that St. Anthony's fire is not an  herb but a poison fungus that can taint rye  bread. If aught happens to me at Leeds, you    must get word to Jenks's friends at the tavern in  Edenbridge that Kentishmen loyal to me might be  in deadly danger from eating rye bread."
  Meg sat and leaned closer, her eyes wide  on the letter. "Oh, no," she said, squinting at  it. "Ned's been teaching me and I still can't read a  word of that."
  Another time Elizabeth might have laughed, but  she said only, "It's in Greek." She began  to translate the explanation Cecil had  included: "St. Anthony's fire is a  black fungus that infects grain, especially  rye. It causes nausea, vomiting, severe  head pain ..."
  She paused, recalling her own headaches  lately, but that was because of all the strain and because she  was heir to them by nature. She had not eaten rye  bread but only fine, stone-milled white  manchet, at least since Wivenhoe, hadn't  she?
  
  "Head pain and ..." Meg prompted  her.
  "Also, violent changes of temperament,"  she read on, with a shudder. She had that, but hardly  caused by poison fungus, surely not. "In  small doses it has some medicinal use, as you  well might ask your herbalist Meg--" she  translated before she caught herself.
  "Cecil means not to trust me, I know it,"  Meg cried. "I can read between his lines at  least."
  Elizabeth shook her head and went on.  "I have been informed that this fungus is properly  used after birth to make the womb contract    to normal size but must be used in small  measure, for the slightest overdose can be  fatal."
  She sucked in a breath at the next fact he  had written, then read it in a quaking voice.  "Your cousin says he heard that France had an  epidemic in which poison rye bread killed  thousands of people. Thousands," she repeated, whispering  that last word.
  She hit one palm against her forehead. "That's  it! Not only does she want the Boleyns out  of the way--especially me--but also my loyalists  around Leeds, thousands of them, and she's going  to murder them with food poisoning. Meg, go fetch  Kat and come back to me instantly, but do not  run."
  Without another word the girl obeyed. It was then  that the second surprise of the afternoon interrupted her  continued reading of the letter. Ned walked up behind her so  quietly, she nearly jumped out of her skin when  he spoke.
  "Lady Beatrice," he said, "has been  summoned to her sister's in Maidstone."
  She twisted around to see him. "Oh, Ned.  When?"
  "Just about the time you found the fox."  "I swear Bea got it in my bed for that  poisoner, then fled so she could not be questioned. Or  they mean to strike at me here, and she has cleared  out. Actually, now I ... feel more vulnerable  here, just waiting ... for something."
  "Maybe She sent the fox to force you  to Leeds."
  "Then I will outfox her. I've done everything  by night before--dug up Will Benton, went  to Bushey Cot, then Hever. Our approach in
  
broad daylight at Leeds must take  them unawares. You'd best go pack what  costumes and scenery you've assembled, in case  Jenks does not find your Queen's Players.  Nothing must stop us from riding to Leeds this night."
  She hardly paid attention to his fading  footsteps as she began to read Cecil's  second page. He was trying to trace Sarah  Scottwood again, but knew it would take time they  might not have. And he had given her a bad bit  of advice when he told her that James  Butler's bastard daughter had gone back  to Ireland when he died eleven years ago at a  feast, along with sixteen of his retainers,  evidently from food poisoning.
  "God save us," she muttered and gripped the  pages so hard against her knees that the stiff  velum crinkled in her hand.
  Though the Butlers had served the Tudors,  she read on, your royal father never had James  Butler's death investigated--a third insult  to their family from your royal parents. Butler's  daughter and her mother--once Butler's longtime  mistress, whom he had cast off--went to Ireland  for a time, but that was before Butler was poisoned. The  mother died there and the daughter returned alone, even  served at court, though in some minor capacity as  the Princess Mary's beekeeper.
  Again a shudder racked Elizabeth, but she read  on: Where she is now, I cannot discover; like  Sarah Scutea, she has vanished. I have  heard, though, that Butler's daughter--I have not  learned her Christian name yet either--suffered through  an outbreak of the pox at court, and her face was  scarred for life, so deeply that in the old days  she would have become a nun and taken the veil.  ...
  Elizabeth stopped reading. Food poison.  Beekeeper. The veil. St. Anthony's fire  and a poisoned fox wearing a crucifix Queen  Mary had once given her. And a buzzing, swarming  danger to her very person. ...
  She tried to hold shut the floodgates of  memory, even tried to cling to that promise of  God from her favorite psalm by whispering,  "They compassed me about like bees; they are  quenched as the fire of thorns: for in the name of the  Lord I will destroy them."
  But even that could not stop the terror of being  destroyed herself. As if in a trance, she stood and
  
walked slowly toward the corner of the  frost-blighted garden, closer and closer to Lady  Cornish's beehives and to the greatest--and worst  --surprise.

  Elizabeth had been eleven years of age that  day of memory and thrilled to be back at court  after numerous, painful childhood exiles from her  oft-married sire. His sixth wife, Katherine  Parr, was a loving stepmother to all three royal  children, playing ambassador of goodwill to their  irascible and increasingly ill royal father. Queen  Katherine encouraged their educations and treated them with  love and warmth.
  Mary and Elizabeth's younger brother, Edward,  as heir, held sway. Yet Elizabeth's  rooms were hard by those of the queen at Whitehall  Palace in London, and Mary was allowed her  own small household, including a beekeeper  who was also an herbalist.
  Mary was twenty-eight that summer, still sadly  unwed. Her girl, who provided all the fine  honey for the queen's table, was twenty and sometimes  made up Mary's nosegays and  tuzzy-muzzies too. The beekeeper seemed  moody and quiet, but at times she spoke with a  gay lilt and sang among her flowers and her  hives.
  In the warm afternoons Elizabeth often sat and  read in the gardens with her new governess, Kat  Champernowne--her name before she wed John  Ashley. But today Elizabeth had closed her  book of Ovid's Metamorphoses and now she  strolled the gravel garden paths alone, past the  old sundial--her father fancied sundials--and the  splashing fountain painted Tudor white and green.  Beyond the barge landing, the bustling River Thames  lay broad and blinking in the summer sun.
  In that hot afternoon, shadows slanted sharply as the  Princess Mary's beekeeper appeared around the  turn of privet hedge with something in her  long-gloved hand. A good number of bees buzzed  about her.
  "Oh," Elizabeth said, "you gave me a  start in that veil and draped and gloved, but I know  you now." She wondered why the girl did not dip  her at least a hint of curtsy. Had Mary  given her such largesse? But she was not too shy  to speak.
  "My father," she replied, with no apology in
  
her voice, "was always teasing to say my  face is my fortune, just like my mother's, so I'm  always careful of stings, that I am."
  "Of course. Is not the Princess Mary about  today?"
  "Of course," she said, her voice lilting and  almost mocking as she echoed her words. She came  closer. Elizabeth smiled to see the bees stay  with her, like tiny, trained, flying dogs bouncing off  her veil and shrouded shoulders.
  "The Princess Mary studies the queen," the  girl said when Elizabeth had almost lost her  train of thought, "because she will be a queen."
  "The Princess Mary?" It was most  disconcerting to have to talk to someone when she could not see  her countenance. "Only, I warrant, if she  weds a foreign king. Our brother will rule after our  father, and his heirs after him," Elizabeth  explained.
  She shook her head; her veil swayed. "She  must be queen, as her own mother was. My family  served hers well--serves the Tudors too.  We are the Irish Butlers, Dukes of  Ormonde. You have heard of us, of all my father  does for the Tudors no matter what affronts  are given by upstart elements like your mother's  family, have you not?"
  Even in her tender years it annoyed the  princess to be rudely lectured. This girl  dared speak to King Henry's daughter like this--that  her Irish family was important and had done  great things? Elizabeth had heard that this girl had  been born on the wrong side of the blanket, so  who was she to boast so? And yet Elizabeth's own  painful heritage, where she, too, had once been  declared illegitimate, made her hold her  tongue on that.
  "Your mother was the Boleyn," the girl went on,  "who took the place of the Princess Mary's mother  in the king's affections, even after the king took your  dam from betrothal with my father."
  Elizabeth backed away now, wary of the  girl's approach with outstretched hand. People at  court knew speaking of Elizabeth's Boleyn  heritage was forbidden. And though young Bess had  been cuffed once or twice years ago, her  father's power--and now Queen Katherine's favor--  had of late surrounded her with a hedge of  protection. But something unfathomable yet fearsome  blew from this girl like an ill wind.
  
  Elizabeth darted a look back in  the direction of the others. Where was Kat? Why had  not someone come to fetch her?
  "I've been wanting to show you something, if you  think you will ever be queen in the Princess Mary's  stead," the girl said, extending her gloved hand  farther and unflexing her fingers.
  Elizabeth saw nothing there at first, then noted  a single, large bee staying in one spot, going  dizzily in circles. Rather than running as she  should--though princesses never ran--she stood  mesmerized while the young, veiled beekeeper  placed the large bee on Elizabeth's shoulder  and lifted her other hand in the air as if to give  someone a sign.
  "She's the queen," she said. "See what  happens if you dare."
  The bees that had been bumping lazily into the  girl's clothes seemed to multiply and swoop  straight for Elizabeth's shoulder. They covered  her sleeve, her bodice and hood. Her neck,  her face, more of them, swarming with a deafening buzz  around her ears while she stood frozen in stark  fear.
  She waited for stings, for help, for something.  Eternity came and went. Their fuzzy bodies and  shifting legs covered her tightly closed eyes,  her mouth. She would die here. She wanted  to scream, to run, but she was trapped. She held  her breath, terrified they would crawl up her  nostrils or in her ears. She felt dizzy,  nauseous. Her head pounded. Helpless.  Caught. Cursed. She shook all over but  mostly deep inside.
  They writhed and buzzed on her hands, on each  long finger people so admired. She dropped her  book. But not one stung her as they moved and  hummed and swarmed. And then Elizabeth heard  salvation--her sister's distant voice.
  "Desma! Desma Ormonde. Where are you?"  Her tormentor laughed and touched Elizabeth's  shoulder.
  "Here, Your Grace. Coming!"
  If she left, would the bees go too? If  someone came along and screamed or started swatting  at them, what would happen? And if Princess  Mary saw what her girl had done, would she  punish or praise her?
  She got her answer then. Though she dared not  open her eyes to see, she heard her sister's
  
voice closer--a quick laugh, an
"Oh!" as she must have seen Elizabeth standing there  beset. Would she go for help? Had she known of this  before?
  "I shall not have their venom in you now, Boleyn,"  the girl said, her voice low and menacing and very  close. "After all, you are already full of  poison, that you are."
  Instantly, as she turned away, the bees  left, every one of them, whirling after the queen bee  on Desma Ormonde's glove. Elizabeth  heard the girl's fading footfalls on the  gravel path, on the grass--and another's too.  Mary had seen and simply laughed and gone.
  Elizabeth stood in the garden, leaning against the  prickly hedge, quivering, before her legs gave  out and she collapsed to her knees. She covered  her face with her trembling hands. Her skin  crawled, solid gooseflesh. Had that indeed just  happened, something so bizarre and dreadful?
  At least the bees had gone away. She  wanted it to all go away. And if she never  confronted her sister--never told Kat or the  queen what that bastard Irish girl had done--she  could keep it buried deep, deep down, just like the  bitter loss of her mother and her father's hatred when  he had called her, more than once, you  Boleyn bastard!

  "Your Grace. Your Grace, what happened?  Are you ill?"
  It was not Kat's young face bending over her but  one with lines, wreathed in silvered hair. And  someone else there, her younger self stepped from the  mists of memory. No, it was Meg, Meg  Milligrew.
  Elizabeth saw she was on her knees in the  back gardens at Ightham Mote near Lady  Cornish's hives, which buzzed, muted now, like  her thoughts. Her letter from Cecil lay on the  ground. There were no Tudor hedges, no bright  green banners, no Whitehall Palace--and  no bees coating her like a second skin. She  shuddered so hard, her body jerked.
  "I--I know who She is," she whispered  to them. "The poisoner. And why--partly why--She  wants me dead." They helped her rise. Her  face felt wet in the crisp air. Surely  she had not been crying. But she was dazed enough  to swipe at her wet cheeks.
  
  "The letter from Cecil gave her name?"  Meg asked, as she retrieved it and the two of them  led her back to the bench and sat her down.
  "No, but I remember. She wears the veil  not only because she used to keep bees and now wants  secrecy. Cecil says she's disfigured from the  pox. She used to be beautiful, but she's scarred  for life."
  "And blames you?" Kat asked, looking as  puzzled as Meg.
  "Not for that, but she hates me. Her name is  Desma Ormonde, or Butler, or whatever  she calls herself now. Do you recall her, Kat?  And," she added, though she nearly choked on the  words, "she used to--mayhap yet does--serve  my sister."

         Chapter The Seventeenth

  That night the sky was sable with no moon or  stars, as dark as their quest. Yet Elizabeth  held to her belief they must go now.
  "Where is that girl?" she asked Kat, then  turned to stare at Ned. They were to gather in her  bedchamber, but no Meg. "I'll have her head if  she's got tangled up with Sam."
  "Ned might not want to say so," Kat put  in, lifting her eyebrows, "but she's probably  dawdling wherever he sat or stood last, or  mooning over his every word."
  "That aside," Ned added hastily, "she fears  sleeping in the bed where you found that dead fox."
  "I can't fault her for that," Elizabeth  admitted, shaking her head. "We're all on  edge, but we must set personal thoughts, even  fears, aside for now. Surely Meg is just  delayed. When she arrives, Kat, put her  to bed with her--with my--headache, and keep a watch  lest Thomas Pope comes knocking on the  door."
  Kat nodded stoically and pressed  Elizabeth's hands hard in hers. Elizabeth  longed to hug her farewell, but her emotions were  jagged enough. She tugged away and sent Ned first  down the back servants' stairs, then, in her  boy's garb, quickly followed. They tiptoed out the  side door and rowed across the moat.
  Although Jenks was not in sight, The Queen's  Country Players waited with the extra horses  he had hired from Edenbridge so none would be
  
missing them from the stables here. Elizabeth  greeted each player when Ned introduced her.  The two men swept into graceful, courtly bows  they had no doubt done in numerous plays. The  boys just gawked until Ned gave them a quick  cuff to make them follow suit. Elizabeth had  worried about taking the lads into Leeds, but their  presence would help to mask hers.
  But still no Jenks. "They can't have gone off  somewhere together," Elizabeth muttered. She began  to pace, mouthing rich oaths she had learned in  earshot of her father years ago. Ned smacked his  gloves repeatedly across one palm, while the  others hovered.
  "Your Grace," Ned said finally, "I  suppose Jenks could have gone back to have words with the  stable man Sam, since they are both--well,  fond of Meg. You see, she's been using him--  Sam, I mean--to make me jealous, so--"
  "You always," his Uncle Wat put in with a  snicker, "did draw the ladies like flies  to honey."
  "Enough." Elizabeth shuddered at the mere  mention of honey and rounded on them as if they were  to blame. "I want Jenks here now. This is not  like him, damn his eyes!"
  They heard running feet from the fringe of the forest.  Ned drew his sword and Elizabeth the dagger from  her belt. She was glad to see both Wat and  Rand were quick with weapons too. Ned stepped in  front of her. When Wat jerked a thumb toward  the lads, they darted behind a tree trunk.
  Jenks ran into view, his sword drawn too.  "She's gone!"
  "Shh!" Elizabeth hissed. "Meg? Gone  where?"
  "Don't know. It's all my fault. I  told her, when she got garbed like you, to just come out  to say a quick farewell--for good luck, you know. So  she said she would afore our dangerous duty, as she  put it. Didn't see her, but found her herb  basket out there a ways," he said and thrust it at  them. "Even playing you, Your Grace, she had that  basket."
  "That is hers indeed," Elizabeth whispered.  "I've used it. And she would not just abandon it."
  "I looked everywhere," Jenks went on, his  voice breaking. "Even lit a rush taper.  Found tracks of horses and one or more woman's  footprints. I--I don't want to think it, but
  
she may have been taken."
  "Taken by whom?" Wat asked, but everyone  ignored him.
  Elizabeth bounced her clasped hands against her  lips for a moment. "Show us the prints. Is it  far?"
  "Just back in the forest a bit. I can relight  the rush with my flint box."
  "The rest of you, wait here," Elizabeth  ordered, keeping her dagger out.
  It was dark as pitch, but their eyes became  accustomed to it as they moved farther away from the wan  lights of the manor house. Jenks led her and Ned  to the general location, though he had to find the very  spot by where he'd discarded the rush light.  Elizabeth gritted her teeth for the interminable time  it took him to relight it. The three of them bent  down to look closer as the wavering flame threw  pockmarks and shadows on the muddy forest floor  where it was not obscured by wet leaves.
  "See," Jenks said, pointing. "At least  two horses, that much I can tell. This boot  print's mine from when I was here afore. But this one's  a man's and not mine, and those two are narrower."
  "And different sizes," Ned observed.  "Hold that rush closer. Aye, definitely  two women. I'd say this one is Meg's. She  still walks a bit pigeon-toed, though I've  blazed away at her about it."
  "I'll wager you have," Jenks muttered. "Like  with horseflesh, folks just mistreat others, so  why she cares one whit for y--"
  "Silence!" Elizabeth commanded. "This other  print, long and narrow--it would match those slippers  I saw in Bushey Cot. I remember thinking  that the poisoner's foot must be even bigger, yet  thinner than mine. See?" She straightened, put  a hand on Ned's shoulder, and dangled one booted  foot over the print.
  "Someone's got her, all right," Jenks said,  "and we got to get her back. Bet if we  looked about more, we'd find signs of"--his  voice broke--"a fox poisoned near here."
  "But," Ned said, "I see no signs of a  struggle here, or even hesitation."
  "Nor," Elizabeth added reluctantly as  both men stood, "that she might have been drugged--  no drag or stagger marks--and therefore forced to go.  And yet," she said, looking into their faces lit  by flickering flame, "I maintain she is to be
  
trusted. My aunt believed her, and I  too."
  "But we cannot rule out," Ned persisted as  Jenks stomped out the rush light and they started  back toward the others, "that she went willingly with the  woman who hit me over the head at Bushey  Cot. I've been thinking that Meg might have been  like Nettie at Wivenhoe, or the one who  visited the veiled woman at Bushey Cot,  another herb girl in thrall to Desma  Ormonde, alias She and the Lady of the White  Peacock."
  "You and your fancy speeches," Jenks  muttered, shoving Ned's shoulder. "More like she's  innocent and they mean to poison her!" His fists  up, Jenks spun to a half crouch, but  Elizabeth slapped his arm and he backed off.  When Ned still rounded on Jenks, she yanked  Ned's elbow to swing him around to face her. They  stared close at each other, nose to nose.
  "I will not have us fighting each other. And we cannot  rule out," Elizabeth insisted, "that Desma  Ormonde mayhap took Meg to spite me.
Or, God help her, since she was out here in my  clothing, carrying herself like me, mayhap practicing  my speech, then--"
  "Hell's gates," Ned whispered, "they think  they've taken you!"
  "Then I would fear for her even more. But we will  know when we find her, and find her we must. Now."
  Jenks ran ahead and was madly untying  horses' reins from tree limbs when she and Ned  rejoined the others. Jenks swung the two lads  onto the same horse, then linked his hands to give  Elizabeth a boost up.
  "You truly care for her," she said quietly,  looking down at his upturned face.
  "Can't help it," he whispered, his face so  solemn. "Lately--forgive me, Your
Grace, Meg reminds me of a great lady I  always look up to, one I'd die for. But I'm  your liege man, no matter what befalls."
  "Well said, better than Ned Topside ever  spoke," she murmured and reached down to squeeze  his shoulder before raising her voice. As the others  scrambled for their saddles, she announced,  "Jenks will lead the way, but you are all in my  charge, and I in your debt."
  They picked their way through the forest before bursting out  onto the road at a steady clip, plunging even
  
deeper into the dark heart of Kent.

  "Lock her in the room at the top of the  Maiden's Tower, but keep her bound and gagged  tight too," Desma ordered Colum
McKitrick. She smacked their prisoner,  sprawled over his broad shoulder, on the rump  to show her utter contempt. In protest, the  captive grunted and squirmed. Soon it would  all be perfectly, completely over, Desma  thought smugly--justice accomplished, execution  carried out.
  She felt flushed and warm, however chill the  air. Though it was a good two hours after dawn, the  stiff breeze swept across the lake to lift her  veil so high she had to hold it down under her chin.  She saw Colum try to peer beneath it. She glared  at him; he could not see but must have sensed it.
  "Aye, your high and mighty Irish majesty,"  he teased and started away. "I'll truss  Elizabeth of England like a pig in the top  chamber of the Maiden's Tower, that I will."
  "I had no notion we'd return with such  booty," she called after him with a delighted laugh  to make him stop and turn back around with a tenuous  smile. "We'll celebrate tonight, but now I'm  exhausted. So I will take care of her later, that  I promise you. She has seen my poisons  work, haven't you, Boleyn bitch?" she demanded,  walking to them to yank at the flowing red hair.  "Let her be stewing on what's to come for a while,"  she concluded with another laugh.
  Desma watched Colum grin and cart the  woman off as if she were a bail of hay--or her  precious rye steeping in its poisons in the bins  of the Maiden's Tower, which St. Leger had told  her she could use before he'd gone to London. The  castle staff obeyed her well enough, better  than Colum and his men, whom she had sent for from  home.
  In her chamber in the main castle, Desma  sent her plump, blond herb girl, Nan,  downstairs to fetch bread, ale, and her own--her  good--honey. Famished after that long ride, that she  was, but she didn't want the household  servants in her room with all the herbs and  fungus stored and mixed here. Nor did she  want Nan underfoot any more than she had wanted  poor Nettie or the others, but she needed them  at times.
  
  She slumped in a chair to rest; she  must not get in bed or she would sleep till  doomsday when she must be wary of unwanted  visitors--pursuers. And her belly was about  to cave in, no denying it.
  She rose, removed her veil, and washed her  hands thoroughly, always wary lest some of the poisons  from the pellets would cling and taint her own food.  As she rinsed and dried her face, her stomach  rumbled in strange harmony with her albino  peacock's screech outside. Where was that  simpleton Nan with her breakfast? A quarter  hour must be gone.
  She replaced her veil and stepped into the  corridor. Perhaps Colum had joined his men at  breakfast, for she heard the distant rumble of deep  voices from downstairs. She would box Nan's  ears if she found her dawdling about with those  ruffians again. But then she heard another sound.
  Muffled, but nearby. A man's murmur, that  it was. A giggle?
  She listened at the door next to her own. With  Lord St. Leger's entourage in London, most  of these chambers should be empty, including this one.
  She banged it open and saw Colum, still mud-  and road-stained, and still riding hard. But now he was  playing stallion to her girl Nan while her  white legs flailed the air.
  "I gave you both orders!" Desma  shrieked.
  Nan squealed to silence and stopped wriggling.  Colum, the cur, merely craned his neck and  grinned, despite the blatant view he  flaunted of his white flanks. Panting, covering  neither of them, the wretch dared to smile at her as  if they'd merely met in the corridor on the  way to chapel.
  "And I did what you said," he told  Desma. "As for this, you wouldna let me have the  merest glimpse or taste of you, mistress. A  man's got to take his ease somewhere."
  "You whoreson bawdy bastard. You are loosed  from your service here. Go back to Ireland--or  to hell!" She went out and slammed the door.
  Breathless, shuddering, she leaned against the walnut  paneling in the hall. Colum's dragging Nan  into a nearby bed did not disgust her but made her  recall another man. Her father had been so  besotted with her mother that he had coaxed her  into empty rooms in broad day and tumbled her in
  
garden bowers, heedless of who spied on  them, back when Desma had the same beautiful  face, for her da had told her so.
  No longer hungry, she went back into her  chamber and slammed that door too. She sank  onto a cushioned chair, leaned her head against the  carved back, and stared up at the festoons of  drying herbs and strung mushrooms along the  ceiling. After today she would have to take them down,  pack them, and move again. Ireland--perhaps she'd  flee there as once before, especially if Queen  Mary died, with her supposed heir, the Boleyn  bastard, dead too. Aye, back to Ireland where  her grandmere, Magheen, had taught her the  poison herbs, that's where she'd go.
  Desma slumped over her knees and wrapped  her arms around her thighs, chin on knees, letting  her veil fall away so she stared straight down  at the floor. She shut her eyes tight and  tried to pray to the patron saint of unwed women,  Brigid of Kildare, who had received the veil from  the holy hands of St. Patrick himself. Desma  had taken the veil of revenge and swore on her  life the destruction of the Boleyns and those loyal  to them. For insulting her father and having him  poisoned. For ruining Queen Mary's mother's  life--for turning England away from the true church  --for everything.
  She sat bolt upright at the knock on her  door.
  "Just leave the food, you whore," she cried.  "Don't you be disturbing me or showing your shamed  face, don't you dare."
  The voice came in roughest Gaelic to make  her shudder and her thighs clench. "'Tisna Nan,  mistress, but Colum come a-calling. I'm the  one disturbed and wanting to see you now, see that  face you hide, if you dare."
  "You've been dismissed," she answered in  Gaelic. "Keep clear of me."
  He dared to open the door. "But you see,  mistress, I canna keep my thoughts clear of  you." His rakish face appeared around the edge.  "I've e'en dunked myself in the lake to dare  approach Her Irish Majesty." He grinned,  stepped in, and swept her an awkward bow. His  matted hair still dripped water. His garments  molded themselves to each muscle and angle of his big  body.
  "Besides," he cajoled, "if you'd but be giving
  
me a peek beneath that veil and smile my  way, I'd never e'en been touching the likes of the  wench Nan."
  "You lecherous liar. Will you be trying to turn this  fine castle into the worst of stews by tupping my  girl?"
  He came closer, slowly, his big hands  palm out as if to ward off an attack. "I'm  done with Nan. And I thrive on a dangerous  challenge e'en as you do." His grin was as crooked  as his heart, and his flattery as thick as his brows,  but she let him come on. "Now, 'twood be a  challenge," he said, "putting me hand and the point  of me own private sword up the skirts of the  Boleyn bastard, but I dinna fancy her like I  do you."
  "Leave off your stupid sweet talk with me,  Colum McKitrick. I'd never take my  girl's leavings or someone who tupped the  Boleyn, make no mistake. And my face  is mine to share or not so--"
  "The challenge of serving you--in every way--  shivers me as much as it does you. And you canna be  trusted either, Mistress Desma." Another  grin, sly, seductive. "But I always say,  danger stokes desires, that's the truth. I was  feeling a thrill to shoot those poison arrows of  yours at Lord Carey and his man, but--"
  "And missed the mark."
  "--b I'd not miss the mark with you. And bedding  you, I'd know you were dangerous as death and revel in  it."
  "You're mad, man."
  "Only for you," he crooned, coming yet closer  while she glared at him through the fog of her veil.  "I'd be getting close enough to adore your body and  face, and what a tumble we'd share."
  "Never!" she said with a sniff that sucked her  veil against her nose before it puffed back out.
  She stood and moved closer to the window, leaning  one elbow on its deep stone ledge. He  fancied himself an Adonis and witty to boot, that  he did. Yet his raw intent excited her, even  as he said. However rough and crude was Colum  McKitrick, he had a true Irish heart  and the gift of words, just like her da.
  "Good," he said, with a cocksure nod as if  she'd vowed to submit to him. "I dinna hear you  say no and see no poison pellets nor  tankard of hemlock nor rye bread coming my
  
way. So willna you let me touch you,  mistress mine, let me ..."
  She held her breath while he extended his  big, calloused hands to finger the rolled hem of her  veil. Her breath came fast as he slowly  lifted it and peered beneath.
  He flinched and gasped as if she'd slapped  him.
  She felt the stab of desertion again, the fury for  herself, for her meek-willed mother. Seventeen years  a pampered mistress ... mistress mine.  Bearing a child, loved and pursued, coddled,  flattered. And then cast out for another woman,  younger and more comely, just the way the queen's beloved  mother had been by that whore Anne Boleyn.
  "Your face doesna matter," he whispered,  obviously steeling himself from the shock. "Your body  --let me touch you--all of you--e'en your heart."
  Desma's mother had died of a weak heart, they  said, but Desma knew it was a broken one. Her  own--it was broken too. Still, she left Ireland  to go back to her da's house in London. She was  there that night someone poisoned his rye bread with  St. Anthony's fire, him and all his false,  fawning fools.
  Before Colum could step away, she embraced  him in an iron grasp. He lowered his hands  to clutch at the soft globes of her buttocks  right through her riding breeks and ground his hard hips  against her softer thighs and belly. No longer did    he try to kiss her lips but lowered his head to nip  and nibble on her neck.
  While he fed on her flesh and his splayed  fingers molded and squeezed her, she thrust her hand  into the pouch still at her waist and lifted out the small  dagger she kept there. It was a mere four-inch  blade, anointed with the very honeyed oil Colum and  his men had shot at Lord Carey on the road  to Wivenhoe.
  As if she embraced him, she positioned her  hands behind, then neatly stabbed him in the back, near  his heart, forcing the blade all the way in.  Shocked, he sucked in a huge, wet gasp.  When he shoved away from her, she did not let him  go. He tried to flee, but she tripped him. She  clung. He shouted for his men, but perhaps they still  guffawed over their raucous meal down in the great  hall.
  She held to him while he panted and struggled,  but weaker, ever weaker. It often killed within a
  
quarter hour. Only the mushrooms she  called death caps worked quicker. She let him go  at last, only to watch him crawl toward the  door, then topple on his side, slightly  curled, mouth open, eyes glazed, like that fox she  had sent the Boleyn.
  "You will not be leaving me for another," she told  him. "You will not cast me out." She shook her head  to clear it. This was not her da, but Colum. "And  I will be taking care of our prisoner myself, when  she has had time to fear death like this--just like this. But  first I will torment and torture her."
  She went across the chamber to kick once at his  big body. He did not budge. She walked  away and straightened her veil, leaning unsteadily  against the big, carved bedpost. If Nan knew  he had come in here, she would simply claim he  had left. If his men looked for him, she would  say she had paid him what she'd owed and he must have  ridden off with the bounty. By the time anyone found him--  smelled him--she would have the Boleyn bastard dead  and the rye sent to all the local mills in the name  of the Princess Elizabeth.
  Staggering with exhaustion, she bent to seize  Colum's booted feet and dragged him closer  to the bed, then rolled him onto his face so she could  retrieve her dagger.
  He left a trail of mingled blood, moat  water from his damp clothes and head, and worse from his  insides letting go. She took a bolster off the  bed to wipe the smears from the floor and clean the  dagger blade before she rubbed more aconite on it and  returned it to the pouch.
  She kicked the bolster under the bed, then shoved and  rolled the body there, finally drawing the hems of the  counterpane to the floor. For one moment she heard  herself screaming again, just as when she found Da's  body, when she cradled it, then tried to hide it  so no one would come to take it away. But no, that  last scream--her peacock outside again. She  collapsed to her knees, hearing it echo, echo in  her head.

          Chapter The Eighteenth

  "That lake puts any moat I seen  to shame," Jenks said, squinting off into the distance as  they rode closer to the castle. "I just pray  God we find Meg unharmed there."
  "We will," Elizabeth promised, but her
  
voice broke and she had to clear her  throat. "We must."
  "It's too lovely a setting to house  evil," Ned added.
  But it did not look lovely to her. They could  see from this vantage of a slightly cresting hill  that, besides the main castle itself, several separate  towers and buildings surrounded a grassy, inner  bailey. Then Elizabeth realized why the mere  sight of the place chilled her so completely. She  almost turned her horse and fled. Despite its  lack of tall outer walls, the color, style,  and layout reminded her of the sprawling Tower of  London hunkered down on the River Thames.
  She shuddered, then began to shake, praying her  voice did not betray her fear. "Rein in,"  she called out.
  Side by side instead of single file, they  halted to survey the scene through the scrim of naked  trees. Sometimes whispering to each other, they  studied and discussed the plan of the place a local  man had given them.
  A stop to talk to him and the ride had taken them  longer than she'd expected, especially with one  wrong turn, so it was just after midday now. And  Elizabeth had made them dismount and walk their  horses through the small village of Maidstone  before dawn not to wake anyone, especially  Beatrice Pope, wherever she slept there--if  she did. At times Elizabeth feared they'd  find her here, with the master poisoner.
  They were dog tired, but they had rested a mile  back to eat cold venison pies, cheese, and  drink from a stream, so that would lift their strength and  spirits--she hoped. At least anticipation and fear  would jolt them more alert, for she felt her pulse  pounding. The final act of this drama was about to begin,  and she could only pray it would be a historic one  for her and not a tragedy.
  She shook her head at that wretched comparison,  but the players had rehearsed their parts much of the  way. With a few new lines praising Queen  Mary and the "true church," they had hastily  adapted an old revenge play called The  Royal Specter with ghosts, hauntings, and  curses--and moved the setting to Dublin. That ought  to suit the Irish, she thought. Mainly, the drama  suited their needs with its many disguisings, entrances,  and exits for the minor parts, one of which she would  take.
  
  She had convinced Ned that he must  assume the part of an actor born in Ireland and  brought early to England and orphaned, so he could  claim he recalled little of his beloved homeland.  He had gone along but had fairly gloated when  she informed his uncle that Ned--Niall  McGowan, they were calling him--would speak for the  troupe and pretend to be its master.
  She finally spoke again to halt their whisperings.  "That old farmer told us all else we're  likely to know about that place without seeing it  inside. Let's ride."
  They funneled toward the single, narrow  causeway that led to the protective  drawbridge, double barbican, and gate tower.  The buff stone buildings seemed to sink their darker  reflections in the pewter-hued lake. The  horses' hollow hoofbeats and the caw of crows were  the only sounds. Until they heard the screech.
  Shrill and shocking, it echoed out over the lake  --and in her heart. They reined in just before the  portcullis gate. Elizabeth saw Ned jerk  in his saddle before he twisted around to look at her.  She could not see his expression clearly, but her  stomach cartwheeled at the memory of that night at  Bushey Cot.
  "She's here," she mouthed to him, and he nodded  grimly.
  "What in kingdom come is that?" Randall  asked, missing what had passed between them. "I  swear it sounds like some woman in travail or  torment."
  Jenks's back stiffened, and Elizabeth could  only pray he would not spur his mount ahead in  search of Meg. Did this Randall have no sense  or compassion at all?
  "No," Ned said, "it's a white peacock on  the grounds."
  "White?" Wat said. "Bloody hell, even  if it is, you can't see it from here. Are you sure  you haven't been here before, like that trap in  Edenbridge you admitted?"
  "Keep your voices down, all of you,"  Elizabeth commanded quietly from the rear. "Water  makes sounds carry. And we are not here to bicker  or accuse. That cry gives us warning and hope that  our quarry is within, for Ned and I have seen her  white peacock up close once before, that is  all. Ride on, and everyone must play his part."
  She was so intent on their task that she had
  
nearly learned to ignore her pounding head  pain. It had not lessened one whit since she'd  found that fox, and Kat had coiled and pulled her  hair up too taut under her boy's cap for this  grueling ride. Poor Kat, she thought: Was she  managing to cover for Meg's absence too?  Thomas Pope had been told Ned and Jenks  had been allowed to go to Edenbridge, but Kat was  probably at wit's end over Meg gone  missing.
  When a guard called down at them from the  crenelated parapet to halt and send just one on,  Ned glibly gave his false identity and  spurred his horse ahead. The gaping maw of the  portcullis seemed to swallow him whole.  Elizabeth ached to hear what was passing between him  and the castle guards. Mayhap he'd been taken  to Lord St. Leger or Desma Ormonde herself  in the long time the rest of them waited.
  She drummed her fingers on her saddle and  fidgeted. She hated not being in command. She  detested subterfuge. When she was queen,  surely she would do everything aboveboard, mayhap  except for foreign policy. No more domestic  plots against her, no murders of someone dear, no  more frustrations or fears when she could act from a  position of safety and power.
  She held her breath while Ned--Niall  McGowan--rode jauntily back out to them.
  "Lord St. Leger's in London, my lads,  but when the steward said I talked just like some of the men  who are staying here--Irish guests, he said--he  agreed we could give a performance tonight. Says  there's a lady guest here might like a wee bit of  an Irish play in honor of Her Majesty and  old Ireland too."
  Elizabeth remembered to breathe. Her hopes  had plunged, then soared. At least they would not have  to outsmart St. Leger and his retainers. And she  had correctly surmised that Desma would be here.  She prayed that this time they could outfox her and not be  the ones trapped.
  They were soon inside. Like the others, she  scanned the grounds and buildings, simply  pretending to gawk at their archaic grandeur. The  old farmer they had questioned about the place had  described the main castle and the even older,  attached section called the Gloriette on its  own tiny island--a last stand if the place were  attacked in times of yore.
  
  Across the grassy inner bailey from the  castle proper, she noted, stood the separate,  four-story, rectangular edifice called the  Maiden's Tower. Under this gunmetal-gray  sky, its windows stared blankly down on them.  Mayhap its lower floor was a makeshift stable  or barn these days, for a cow was tethered near the  door and sheep cropped the green where a single  white peacock strutted, fanning its huge  tail. As they passed closer to the Tower, she  noted watering and feeding troughs and a pile of ripe  manure, from which the stench drifted their way.
  "A pox on them," she mouthed. It would be just like  Desma Ormonde to deface and desecrate the  Maiden's Tower as she had other places once  dear to the Boleyns. The old farmer had said  Elizabeth's father had built the place as a  small pleasure palace in honor of her mother,  Queen Anne.
  "The tower 'twas built," the rustic had  explained, obviously eager for an audience,  "years after the rest of Leeds, years after. And by the  great King Harry hisself. And ha' been  visited by his poor Kentish Queen Anne  Boleyn herself too. A local girl, ye ken,  and her girl, Elizabeth, ha' nary a foreign  drop of blood in her veins, not like that bloody  one now. Elizabeth, aye, she'll make us a  queen, pure English someday. ..."
  Even now Elizabeth treasured his words. How  much she had wanted to thank him for his loyalty, but  she had stayed back with the lads while Ned questioned  him. Also, she had wanted to warn the old soul not  to eat rye bread, but that might start a panic,  when there was one already rampaging in her heart to stop  Desma Ormonde's mass slaughter of such  folk.
  Her pure English father, whom she had both  feared and adored, had been cunning and wily but  evidently not enough to realize his Irish  ambassador St. Leger, to whom he gave this  place, had played both sides to harbor  hatreds. And now the traitor must have dedicated  himself to keeping Desma Ormonde's curse going  against the Boleyns. Let him hide out in  London. When she was queen--
  Elizabeth almost leapt straight out of her  saddle when Ned--in an Irish accent--shouted  at her.
  "I said, lad," he repeated, pointing
  
rudely up at her, "help the others  unload our goods while I go ask where we're  to stow them. Get a move on those lazy bones  now, or I'll take a stick to your  backside."
  For one moment she glared down at him, not  moving. In all this danger, with lives at risk,  the blackguard was enjoying this. She noted that his  uncle and the others glanced nervously at Ned, then  back at her.
  She scrambled to obey.

  Meg had never been more terrified, though Ned  would be proud. This woman--She, in the flesh--  was so convinced a mere herb girl was Princess of  England, she was going to kill her for it.
  The woman came closer with a narrow, open  leather box containing glass vials and small  pewter cups. Meg bucked hard against the  ropes, but it only made her limbs go more numb  and her breath come harder against this gag.  Wide-eyed, she quieted as the woman Her  Grace had called Desma Ormonde moved  behind her and set her burden down with a clink, then  went back to close the door.
  Meg had been studying this room in the tower for  at least two hours but saw no hope of  escape. She was four floors up, and the single  door was heavy wood. She'd heard it bolted  outside when that ruffian Colum had put her up  here. Two other Irish louts had looked in off  and on, one called Brian; and now the master  poisoner herself, like some veiled vision from the dead.
  Since Meg knew she had no hope of  rescue unless her friends found her fast, her  dilemma simply was this: Whether she should save  her own skin by telling the truth here--though Desma  could poison her anyway--or whether she should  play it out to protect the princess by her death,  or at least earn her a bit more time.
  "I'm going to remove that gag now so that we can  have a little discussion, Boleyn," the veiled woman  said, bending close to where Meg was tied, hands behind  her, her legs to the wooden ones of a heavy, carved  chair. Desma Ormonde smelled of herbs, but  dry, decaying ones, and Meg's nostrils  flared.
  "I want," the woman went on, speaking  deliberately and coldly, "to hear you admit you  are a treacherous bitch, spawn of traitors
  
to my family, just like your mother and your  aunt."
  When the woman fumbled with her gag, Meg could  have bitten her fingers off for degrading Mary  Boleyn. Now she knew for certain who had  poisoned her beloved mistress and left her  to take the blame from Lord Henry, whom Desma  had tried to kill too.
  "Come on now," Desma coaxed as she poked  in Meg's mouth to get a piece of the damp linen.  "Before we're finished here, I will hear you confess  and beg for your very life."
  At first Meg just planned to glare at her  silently, disdainfully, down her nose the way  Her Grace did. That would buy her more time  to decide whether to be Meg or the princess. But  when the woman yanked the linen strip from her mouth,  Meg thought her whole throat had come out too.  She coughed and gagged, wheezed and gasped.
  "Here, poor thing," Desma crooned  mockingly, "let me give you a little something  to drink."
  A clanging bell went off in Meg's head.  Poison for certain!
  Her captor produced a small cup from her  box and moved it toward Meg's lips while her  eyes streamed tears. Meg shook her head hard  and tried to turn away, but the woman grabbed her  hair, yanked her head back, forcibly wedged  her teeth apart, and poured the liquid between her  lips to make her choke again. Meg tried to spit  it out, though it tasted enough like water. The woman  threw the rest of it in her face and tossed the  tankard into a corner.
  "I said I just want to talk--at least right  now," she said, dragging another chair close and  perching upright on the edge of it.
  Meg's gaze darted wildly around the small  room, desperate for some way to fight back,  to run. Not only was she nearly immobile, but the  chamber was sparsely furnished, with nothing that could  help her, even if she could shove her chair  around. The single table was dwarfed by four stone  columns that stood sentinel in the corners. High  brass hooks where tapestries once must have  hung encircled the tall stone walls. Now they  bore only a single, faded arras of a lady with a  deer, mayhap the maiden for whom the place was  named. If only she could escape like that maid  into that embroidered meadow and forest.
  
  Reluctantly, Meg's eyes  refocused on the poisoner. She held herself like  a real lady, Meg had to give her that. But her  voice was bitter as bile, and it was so strange  never to see a face. Meg imagined it must be  ugly as sin, and cruel to boot.
  "A very special drink for you later,  Boleyn, I promise," she was saying with a  hollow laugh.
  Meg licked her cracked, dry lips and  took a deep breath. She tried to steady herself  by picturing the princess as, even in her bonds,  she sat up straighter and squared her shoulders.  She narrowed her eyes and glared down her nose as  she said her first words to this witch.
  "'So blood, how dare a lickspittle like you  assault my royal person!"

  "If we get caught here, we'll tell them  we are gathering cobwebs for the play,"  Elizabeth whispered to Jenks, who followed her  so closely he kept breathing down her neck.  "Ugh!" she cried as she wiped webs from her    face. She recalled Kat's warning that Desma  would be sitting at Leeds like a spider, waiting  to ensnare her.
  She heard rats skitter away again and  wondered how Wat Thompson and one of the lads were  faring in their underground kingdom of vermin, searching  whatever cellars and dungeons underlay the old  Gloriette. Ned was to be ferreting out who  slept in which upstairs bedrooms and perhaps taking a  peek in them, while Randall and the other lad set  up the scenery. She, supposedly with the nervous  Jenks to guard her, searched this dungeon of the main  castle.
  They stopped at the bottom of the uneven steps  and squinted into the vast, black cavern toward the  labyrinth of halls and cells beyond. The ceiling of  this central chamber was vaulted above two iron  doors with grills that the outer guards could look  through. As Jenks went to peer through the one in the first  door, she stood frozen. Her own captivity in  the Tower of London, the clank of keys in  locks leapt at her, but all was silence here.
  "I'm going to call her name aloud," Jenks  said, but his mere whisper echoed. Elizabeth saw  that her brave man was trembling so hard his candle  wavered. Coming down the stairs he had already singed  her sleeve with it.
  
  "No need to do more here," she said  suddenly, stepping down beside him to grip his arm.
  He started, gasped, and jerked around,  evidently thinking she'd spotted Meg--or her  corpse. But she lowered her candle and pointed to the  scabs of rust, years of it, encrusting the sets of  locks to both doors.
  "No one's been through here for decades,  Jenks, praise God."
  "But I was praying we'd find her here, just tied  or something," he said as they turned and made a quick  retreat up the narrow, crooked stairs.

  When Elizabeth saw the door to the upstairs  chamber Ned had told her of, she almost wished she  were back in the black dungeon. He had not  managed to search all the upstairs rooms but had  learned a bit about the Irish lady who was his  lordship's guest. Always veiled, she came and  went at will, one servant had told him, and was  somewhere about the grounds now. But they didn't know where  to go to invite her to the play, since she wasn't in  her chamber, first one on the third floor  overlooking the lake. Besides, she asked for what  she wanted and otherwise liked to be left alone.
  Yet, under the pretext of inviting her--and  to keep Jenks from charging upstairs to bang about in  every chamber looking for Meg--Ned had slipped up  the back stairs and peeked into the bedchambers,  including that very room.
  "Was Meg there?" Jenks had demanded the  moment Ned returned to where they were setting up  small bits of scenery before the play.
  "Not Meg nor the Lady of the White  Peacock, but it was quite a room," Ned had  announced.
  Elizabeth gasped. "Alike to her one at  Hever?"
  He nodded. "And to Bushey Cot. Strands of  stinking herbs and toadstools."
  "Did you make a thorough search?"  Elizabeth demanded.
  "If Desma Ormonde's not there, neither is  Meg," Ned insisted.
  "We must be sure. As soon as the play  begins and before my first entrance, I am going up there  to search that chamber for anything that may help us,  even a letter from my sister. If I don't make  my entrance, come after me."
  "Since the servants say she's not about and
  
they'll all be in the audience, I  warrant we can risk that," Ned had said. "But you  will not go off alone outside the castle until I  make my exit and join you."
  Elizabeth just nodded. He had become so  pompous she could have stuck him with her dagger  to deflate him. "After Act the Second," Ned  declared, "Wat and Rand can manage to carry it  alone long enough for you, me, and Jenks to search those  other buildings for both of them."
  "Join me in the kitchen, where I'll keep an  eye on the inner bailey in case she heads this  way," Elizabeth had said. "Besides, who cares  if a lad just steps out to get away for a precious  moment from an arrogant, scolding master of the  players? No one will recognize me anyway  if I--"
  "Unless," Ned had interrupted, ignoring her  jab, "it turns out Meg is here but not on our  side."
  "I told you," Jenks had insisted, "that can't  be, and Her Gr--this lad did too. After my  sword-fight scene I'll be there to guard you,  lad."
  She had felt pressed between the two of them.  "All right," she had said, "that's the way we will  play it. But time's of the essence. Both of you join  me in the kitchen as soon as you make your  exits."
  Now she stood, shaking, with her hand on the latch  to the chamber Ned had said was definitely  Desma's. She knocked lightly and, when there was  no answer, darted in. It was nearly dark  outside, so the chamber lay in shapes and shadows.
  The smell hit her first, stronger than the  usual in the woman's other chambers of horror,  but she did not hesitate to close the door behind  her. Tonight they must capture--mayhap execute  --Desma Ormonde. What putrid hatreds  and foul vengeance had driven her was not important  now, only stopping her.
  "Aragh," she whispered at the stench of the garlands.  She saw a veil tossed on a tabletop and a  sampler with a circlet of some sort of leaves  stretched over an embroidery hoop. She  ignored all that, even the coffer in the corner--the  one, no doubt, that held rotting mushrooms and  fungus, mayhap even the St. Anthony's  fire rye smut. She went straight to the bed,  praying that under it she would find the long, narrow box
  
she'd seen there in Desma's room at
Hever. She had wanted to peer into the box even  then. Although she had heard something in it clink together,  it could be where she kept privy messages,  mayhap royal ones.
  Holding her nose and breathing through her mouth, in  the dim light she lifted the counterpane high from the  floor. Boldly, she thrust her hand under the bed,    groping for the leather box.
  She touched an arm--a stiff human one. And  snatched her hand back out.
  She sat, kneeling, bent over with her hands  pressed to her mouth, certain she would be sick.  She had been wrong. Meg was here, dead. Her  sleeve was damp. With blood? Or had Desma  broken with her practice of poisons to drown  her?
  It was all her fault. Her fault for trying  to stop this poison plot, for using the girl like a  sacrificial lamb. But the body beneath this bed--  was that arm too thick, the corpse itself too long  to be Meg?
  She blinked back tears. She only wanted  to flee, but she had to know. She reached in again, then  decided she must have a light.
  She fumbled with a flint box she found on the  table before the window overlooking the lake.  Hurry. Hurry. Dusk and mist were swirling  outside as if to trap them here all night. The  flint struck; she lit the fat tallow candle,  then carried it back across the room to the bed.
  "If it's you, I'm so sorry, my Meg,"  she whispered, kneeling as if in prayer for the dead.  "So sorry ..."
  She bent to look under. "Oh, thank God.  But who are you?"

  Elizabeth emerged from the depths of hell,  shrouded in a sheet, waving her arms and weaving across  the rush-strewn floor. Playing a lad who was  playing a ghost here in the heart of the enemy's  castle, her voice quavered, but that was just as  well. At least her memorized words kept her  from shouting at the audience that they were all foul  traitors and harbored and served murderers.
  "I bring a curse to all," she  half-whispered, then moaned. "I curse all  who would harm our God-given Queen Mary and those  of the true and holy church." She could have vomited  at those words; her stomach had gone sour anyway.
  
  She banged her shin into the long bench as  she climbed on it, for she could barely see through the  eyeholes. She adjusted the sheet as she stood  rocking and shaking during the supposedly frightened  Wat's speech. Now she could scan the entire  torchlit audience as she had not been able to from behind  the arras before she made her entry.
  The likes of stable hands, scullery maids, and  laborers stood along the back wall of the great  hall, with its long single table on the slightly  raised dais still uncleared from the evening meal. The  players had been given supper, but Elizabeth  had told them to dump it down the public jakes  chute, however sure she was their ruse was working.
  The house servants with more status sat  cheek-by-jowl on long benches, behind the three men  they had come to call the Irish guards. That rabble  bore watching. They spoke little English to each  other, and what there was of it was rank and heavily  accented. They had been loud and rude at first--like  the groundlings in London, Wat had said  importantly--but they had quieted a bit now,  either nodding off or else intrigued by ghosts and  blood curses.
  But they had seen no one who could be Desma  Ormonde. No one veiled at all, except  Elizabeth and the two lads in their ghostly  attire.
  Suddenly, as she made her exit by slithering  to the floor to return to the bowels of hell, then  bending down to hurry out the door, an errant thought  pierced her. She realized how Desma must view  the world from behind her veil. The woman must feel  separate and secret. And very alone. Her poxed  face was like a second mask of the woman she had  once been. Mayhap all that had made Desma  believe she could judge and poison others and  hide from what was true and just.
  "Are you demented?" Elizabeth muttered  to herself. "No softness or sympathy here."
  In the corridor they were using for a tiring-room,  she whipped off her sheet and threw it on the pile  of costumes. From here on out there would be just two  ghosts--the lads--while Ned, Wat, and Randall  kept the crowd enthralled. Soon Jenks and Ned  could slip out to join her, and they would continue to search  for Meg, this time in the upstairs rooms of the  Gloriette and in the Maiden's Tower.
  She went out to the kitchen to wait for her men    to join her. Standing in the door someone had left
  
ajar, she looked out toward the now bare  gardens and the grassy bailey. Darkness had  obliterated dusk's mere shadows, and a thick  fog from the lake hovered like a blanket. But for the  strutting peacock, this had earlier looked like a  benign, deserted village green to her, sheep,  cow, and all. That was probably deceptive, just  as everything here was--including herself.
  And then she heard a woman's sobs, muted  on the breeze.
  Her stomach cartwheeled. Meg?
  Staying close to the wall, she sidled toward the  sound, the sort of crying and gasping where one could  barely get a breath. Emerging from the gray mist,  beyond a clump of frost-blasted hollyhocks, a  square stone well appeared. Could Desma have  put Meg down the well and she was gasping for  air? No, the sobbing came from behind it. Her heart  thudding, Elizabeth leaned forward, peered around, and  shuffled closer.

          Chapter The Nineteenth

  Even this close to the weeping woman, in the dark  and fog Elizabeth could not tell if it was Meg.  She was seated, slumped with her back against the rough  stones of the well, her head in her hands.
  But no, she was heavier than Meg. Something  told her to tiptoe away, yet why should Ned do  all the questioning here? Surely, this was not a trap.  She knew she'd have to try to sound like the lad she  looked.
  "'Scuse me, girl. Need some help?"
  The wench looked up through splayed fingers as  Elizabeth squatted down, her back against the  well. She could see her round face was smooth and  slick with tears. The girl shook her head  wildly.
  "Only if you got the stomach--I don't--  to make me take this stuff--to end it all," she  said, between gasps and sobs.
  The hair on Elizabeth's neck prickled.  The girl had gestured to a small pile of  mushroom caps at her feet. Could it be another  of Desma's herb girls?
  "What's happened, then? Can't be anything so
  
bad."
  "I'd do it flat--if it warn't for--the  babe," she said, wiping her face with her apron.  Her voice sounded as if she spoke from inside a  barrel.
  "You're a new mother and don't want to leave  behind--"
  She shook her head again. "Gonna be.  'Cause of that cur, Colum McKitrick."
  An Irish name, mayhap one of the guards  watching the play. "And now that you're with child, he  wants no part of you?" Elizabeth prompted.  She felt sorry for the poor girl, as stupid as  she must be to have trusted a man outside of wedlock  --or in. But she either had to get information fast about  the veiled woman or get back to wait for Ned  and Jenks.
  "Kind of," the girl choked out. "It's her,  my mistress. He always wanted her, and--he  left me and went to her room--and she kept him.  And she said he wants no part of me no more, and  I'm too scairt of her to cross her."
  "Your mistress ... the veiled lady? She  kept him in her room?"
  The girl nodded, then frowned, finally surveying  Elizabeth suspiciously from head to toe. "You  one o' the lads with the players?"
  "Oh, aye, and we wanted to invite the fine  lady we heard lived here, 'cause our play  is set in Ireland, but we couldn't find her. You  know where she is?"
  She shrugged. "Somewheres on the grounds. Best  keep clear. I am 'cause she got other things  to do, and now Colum's one of them." She began  to wail again, choking on her words. "He left here  --without me, she said--left to wait--for her."
  Elizabeth's hopes crashed as she watched the  wench pull her apron over her head and sob.  She knew she could make her an ally, tell  her that Colum was still in Desma's chambers,  dead. But the obtuse girl must not be privy to her  mistress's doings, including where she was holding  Meg. Besides, it would mean more hysteria for the girl  and time lost for Elizabeth. She had to get back  to the kitchen.
  As Elizabeth stood, she deliberately  ground the poison mushroom caps into the grass with  her boot toe. Then, recalling the dead  rabbits, she tried to shove the remnants against the  well, where even sheep could not eat them. She
  
crept away, but stopped in her tracks  when she heard a voice. She would swear it was her  own, drifting through the fog as if from the sky.
  "'So blood, treason it is, treason to touch  the next queen of England!"
  "Meg," Elizabeth whispered. "Meg as  me."
  She tore back to the kitchen. No Jenks,  no Ned. Was she early or late? She raced  into the hall, scrabbling in a pile of props for a  stage sword, though she had her dagger drawn.  Peeking past the arras, she saw that Wat and Rand  held sway on stage, with the two lads as ghosts,  but no Ned and Jenks. She had misjudged the  timing and they came out, saw she was gone, and went  looking for her. But where? Or had they heard  Meg's ringing tones and had gone to trace her  too?
  Just before she let the arras close, she noted that  two of the Irish guards were gone from their bench. She  had to warn her men about that, too, but get to Meg  first.
  She dashed out and across the green toward where she  had heard Meg's voice. It must have come from the  Maiden's Tower, one of the upper stories. Those  guards or Desma had Meg in the tower and thought  she was Elizabeth, and Meg, God bless her, was  brazening it out.
  She smelled the manure pile again before the  tall, solid tower loomed from the night and fog.  Yes, lighted top windows, four floors up.  She bumped into a clump of sheep, which shifted  easily out of her way, and then came face  to face with the pallid peacock.
  Elizabeth slid to a stop, staring at it,  waiting for its warning screech. Its tail still  folded, it merely pecked at grain on the ground  and walked disdainfully away.
  A good sign, she told herself. And thank  God she looked like a mere lad. If someone  stopped her she could say she heard a woman's  cries, seized a stage sword, and went  to help. She had no real notion of what she would  do to rescue Meg, but she had surprise on her  side.
  As she stepped inside the open doorway, she  saw that the single large chamber on the first floor  was indeed a makeshift stable and barn. A single  hanging lantern illumined the scene. The cow had  wandered in to munch hay from a wooden manger.
  
Piled hemp bags of grain cluttered  one corner--some yellow kernels had fallen from  one. Next to the single staircase going up, a  wood-slatted bin looked to be full of threshed  grain, too, but these were dark, pointed kernels.  Rye!
  She shuddered. The bin was narrow but seemed  to extend clear up to the second floor. Taking  the lantern, keeping clear of the dribbles of grain  that had fallen through the slats, Elizabeth edged  up the steps.
  "'So blood, you think my people won't trace  me and punish you?" Meg's voice rang out,  strangely echoing both from the windows and down the  stairwell. "Even if I'm dead?"
  Elizabeth froze as she heard a low laugh  --Desma's. She spoke, but her voice was  lower pitched and didn't carry, just as at Hever.  She gripped her sword hilt and dagger handle so  hard--she held the lantern in the same hand as the  dagger--that her fingers cramped and she had to flex  them. She forced herself upward again.
  The second floor appeared to be divided  into two chambers with windows, no doubt from which her  parents had once surveyed the pretty scene.  She went on, foot above foot, keeping her  back to the wall, which at the third floor changed  from wainscoted wood to raw stone. She tried the  four doors exiting the landing lest she needed a  hiding place when she and Meg escaped, but they were  all locked.
  The grain bin continued even up here, built  to fit into the side space of the curving stairwell.  Recalling her and Ned's entrance to Hever, she  considered starting a fire by catching the wood slats  with her lantern flame, but that might trap Meg  as well as Desma upstairs, and it would bring  too many people.
  She willed Meg to keep talking, but there was  silence above. Her feet felt leaden. She should  have taken Cecil's warnings to heart. She should not  risk herself, her future, like this, but Desma had  to be stopped before there was no future. Surely  Ned and Jenks must look here for her soon, unless  those Irish guards had followed them out into the  kitchen and the grounds.
  Come on, my Meg, she sent her command  silently upward, keep talking. In this  situation, I would keep talking.
  "'So blood," Meg cried from above, as if in
  
answer to her wish, "I have informed both  my Lord Cecil and my cousin Lord Carey who you  are and that you reside at Leeds, Desma  Ormonde, so you will not carry this off!"
  "Do you think I care if I am caught after  I'm finished with you here? Final judgment day for the  Boleyns, that's all that matters now, that and  Queen Mary ridding herself of her heir so that she can  name another before she dies--a Catholic kin,  even Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, would  do--that's all that matters."
  Elizabeth was so intent on Desma's words and  outraged at their import that at first the thud of  feet on the stairs below did not register. But  someone--at least two heavy-footed men--were coming  up fast. Surely Jenks and Ned would not make  all that noise, unless they, too, had heard  Meg's voice and panicked.
  Panic--she felt it now, hot coals and  ice in her belly all at once. Gooseflesh  peppered her skin, but she broke out in a slick  sweat. Her mouth was dry, and she felt she would be  sick. She turned down the wick to gut out her  lantern and left it on the side of the stairs.  Darkness closed her in like a cloak. She knew  she should try to make it back to the second  floor. She was surely snared here. She could  hide--but where? Nowhere but on up, hoping there were  extra unlocked rooms above. Whether it was  poison rye or not, she almost wished she could step  into this dreadful grain bin, which had small doors  at each level.
  As the footsteps came closer, she hurried  up to the fourth floor, feeling her way around the  last turn of stairs. Light seeped around one  door, from which Meg's voice boomed again.  Elizabeth jiggled the lock on another door.  She glimpsed a narrow third one that perhaps led to the  roof, but it did not budge either.
  The footsteps belonged to two of the Irish  guards. One with a lantern turned into view on the  staircase below her to shine it in her eyes, while  the other knocked her sword from her hand with his own.  She thrust her dagger in the back of her belt  to hide it as the one without the lantern laid hard  hands on her. Then the door behind her swept open  and a veiled woman's shadow loomed to block the  light.

  "Since this Gloriette was the place of final
  
refuge in a siege," Ned told
Jenks, "I thought it was our best bet."  "She's not here. That big tower, then the  barbicans, that's where we've got to look next.  Now!"
  They were both out of breath, both distraught. Not  only was Meg missing, but Elizabeth had not  met them where she'd promised, though Ned had  argued that didn't mean she was in danger.
  "Just remember," he told Jenks between gasps  as they ran back through the covered corridor that  linked the Gloriette with the castle proper,  "we've both known that red-haired lad to do what  he damn well pleased--no matter what we'd  been told. He may just have gone off on his own--  and will save Meg and our skins. You know," he  said, grabbing his rib cage to fight a stitch in his    side, "maybe I'd better go back up to that  poisoner's chamber--and look there again."
  "I think Meg's somewheres else on the  grounds. I swore on this very sword to someone  once--my first master, Tom Seymour--that I'd  see Her Grace on the throne someday or die  trying. But if I can't save her--Meg too--  I got nothing to live for--and maybe you don't  either," Jenks said. Deftly, he held the  blade of his drawn sword neck level before  Ned as they ran along together.
  "I see your point. Let's stick together,  then."

  "What is this?" Desma screeched. "I  told you to leave me alone, Brian, so I  did."
  "We canna find Colum," Brian said.  "But we did find this lad from the players  sneaking up the stairs," the other guard told her,    giving Elizabeth a hard shake.
  She was tempted to tell these men where they could  find Colum, but that might be useful later.  Mayhap Desma would just order her back  downstairs where she could get help from Jenks and  Ned before returning here. Thankfully, Meg was  keeping her mouth shut now.
  "What players?" Desma demanded.
  "A troupe led by an Irishman, still doing a  play in the hall, but we got worried about where  Colum went."
  "Irish? You dolts!" she spat at them and  bent down so low to study Elizabeth, her veil
  
belled out. Elizabeth was tempted  to rip it from her.
  "Not fools to stop this lad with a drawn  sword," the other man, taller and darker-haired  than stocky Brian, protested. He showed  Desma the weapon.
  "Only a sword from the play, milady,"  Elizabeth said, her head bowed. "Heard someone  cry, but guess it could've been that peacock--or  that herb girl out looking for someone named Colum  too. Said he was last in your  cham--"
  Desma slapped Elizabeth so hard across the  face her head snapped back into the wall.  Colors blurred before her eyes, and she tasted  blood. If the men had not held her up, she would  have toppled down the stairs.
  "In your chamber?" Brian asked Desma.  "We decided we'd keep it a secret--our  passion," she told them. "And now I've sent  him on another errand for me, but he'll be back  soon."
  The words--lies--blurred by, though  Elizabeth tried to seize them--to plan her own.  Her head spun and the stairs and even the wall behind  her seemed to slide and tilt. Should she say more  about Colum's demise? She could only stare  back at where she thought this woman's eyes must be  behind that veil. An icy aura seemed to emanate  from her on the scent of smoky herbs, the same  dank atmosphere so suffocating at her Bushey  Cot poison garden. She shook her head to try  to clear it.
  "But Colum's horse is still on the grounds,  right, Brian?" the man who held Elizabeth  said.
  "Then no doubt he took another," Desma  insisted. "Pluck off that whey-faced lad's  cap."
  The surprise at that command and the strength of  desperation flooded Elizabeth. She went  wild. She tried to knee the one called Brian  and shove the other down the steps, but they banged her  against the wall again. Her ears rang. Desma  herself leaned over to snatch off her cap to reveal the  coils and twists of red hair.
  Still, Elizabeth kicked and flailed. Then,  realizing she was trapped, she reached up and ripped  off Desma's veil. Desma shrieked. The  man called Brian started to laugh, until he
  
glanced up at Desma's face, lit  by the lantern he still held.
  "Judas Priest!" he cried, then spouted  something in Gaelic.
  Desma turned away into the room, and for the first  time Elizabeth saw that Meg was tied fast to a  heavy chair near the window. Meg cried out,  too, when she glimpsed Desma's pitted  face.
  Elizabeth opened her mouth to tell the men where  they could find Colum's corpse, but Desma  yanked her veil from Elizabeth's grasp and  thrust it into her mouth for a gag.
  "Bring the girl in here," she ordered the men.  Dragging Elizabeth up the last steps, they  obeyed. The gag made her feel she couldn't  breathe. Panic pounded against her throat and chest.  "Loose her hair and tie her with this," Desma  was saying as she picked a long linen strip from the  floor.
  Brian hesitated. "The two of them," he  said, "look a bit like sisters. Colum wouldn't  say direct who you brought back with you, but--"
  "I don't pay any of you to do my thinking,"  she insisted, advancing on him. "As Colum  told you, this is for Ireland, for all of us."
  Brian nodded and moved quickly, tying  Elizabeth's hands behind her around a narrow stone  pillar. The damp linen strip reminded her of the  corpse's clothes under Desma's bed. She  struggled and tried to talk through her gag, but  Desma slapped her again, scratching her cheek.  Elizabeth prayed no poison was caught there.  She blinked back tears of defeat and stared into the  green gaze in the once beautiful face. The  specter of the pox had always terrified her. But for  some reason her brain threw pictures of Will  Benton's corpse at her, all caught in that  shroud.
  She blinked hard. She had to concentrate on  summoning help and on surviving.
  "Well," Desma said, rounding on the two  men, "since this lad is a girl in disguise, go  lock up the other players. God knows what  mischief, or worse, they intend. And come back  to report to me when all is secured. Don't be  standing there. Go on!"
  Taking Elizabeth's sword, they left,  muttering, banging the door shut. Desma went  over to bolt it. Elizabeth could still feel her
  
dagger pressed between the small of her  back and the pillar, but it was nowhere near her hands  or bonds.
  "I heard you had a girl with you at  Hatfield and Ightham Mote who greatly  resembled you, but when I saw and heard her at first  ..." Desma said, letting her voice trail  off. She turned back and leaned against the door with  her eyes closed. "You almost tricked me again,  my little red-haired fox."
  Elizabeth noted she seemed to speak to both of  them. Perhaps, even if she had guessed the ruse,  she did not know who was who.
  "I cannot believe all you have dared," Desma  continued and strode over to pull her veil from  Elizabeth's mouth. Rather than donning it again, she  threw it on the table in the corner beside the long  leather box Elizabeth had searched for earlier.  "You are the Boleyn, I warrant," she said,  her eyes narrowed, her voice accusing, as she  strode back toward Elizabeth, "because I could not  fathom why you--she," she added, pointing at  Meg, "would be out in Ightham Forest alone at  night."
  "And can you fathom," Elizabeth challenged,  "I would be brazen enough to be dressed as a lad  here?"
  "Oh, aye, that I could." She grinned, her  smooth teeth so in contrast to her ravaged skin.  "I've seen you do it at Wivenhoe and then at  Bushey. And I daresay you went out the window at  Hever. Besides," she added with a sneer, "your girl  here starts nearly all she says with the old oath  'So blood, and I cannot fathom you would speak that  way.
  "And I take it," Desma went on,  obviously reveling in her power, "that one of the  players here today is that handsome rogue you took on  to entertain you, Ned Topside. I'll see to him  personally--to all of them, as soon as we are  finished here."
  "And I take it," Elizabeth countered,  fighting to keep calm, "that your informant in my  household was none other than Beatrice Pope.  Cecil knows that as well as everything, so he's in  London now to tell the queen--tell her you've  failed in everything except that you both used the  Popes as spies."
  Elizabeth knew it was a gamble to goad this  woman, but she had to know about her royal sister's
  
part in this.
  "Your half sister, I suppose you are  referring to," Desma said, coming closer, hands  on her hips in an almost masculine swagger.
  "Of course."
  "Another Boleyn lie. I, like others, know  you share no blood with her. Like your Ned  Topside who visits your rooms at night,  your sluttish mother kept a pretty bird, a  musician, always sprawled across her bed. It was  charged at her treason trial that among her other  lovers, her red-haired
Smeaton--"
  "I am my royal father's child!" Elizabeth  shouted. "Look at me, listen to me--dare to harm  me and you will see."
  Leaning forward as if she would lunge, she felt  her dagger again but had no notion how she could use it  to free herself. If she rocked her wrists up and  down, would the stone pillar wear a damp linen  strip through? She fought to calm her fury.
  "This is not only about you, Boleyn bastard, but  about me--about my loyal, loving father your family  insulted time and again."
  "I know of those things. They are unfortunate and  regrettable. But am I to be held accountable for  my parents' faults?"
  "The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children  to the third and fourth generation. But since you shall never  bear a child, all the poison will stop with you,"  Desma declared.
  "Then are you to be judged for your mother's being a  man's mistress or for your father's casting her  off?"
  "You know--you know of this?" she asked, her voice  awed. For once she looked stunned. "Then do you  know that when my father was murdered, despite his  utmost loyalty to Henry Tudor, the king did  naught to have his death investigated and punished?"  Her voice rose in volume and pitch as she  gestured wildly. "Just ordered them carted off and  buried like so much Irish refuse, that he did.  I say your family poisoned my father's food  and drink!"
  Elizabeth jerked as Meg spoke. "Just like you  poisoned my mistress, Mary Boleyn. You  sent the poisons in with that girl, so you wouldn't have  to even see what you did to her."
  Desma half-turned toward Meg, then back  to Elizabeth. "Oh, I'm going to see you two
  
die very directly. I'm going to watch  every writhing moment. I'll warrant Anne  Boleyn would have loved to watch Catherine of  Aragon die of poisoned food and drink--"
  "Poisoned food and drink," Elizabeth  interrupted, deciding to risk all on a hunch.  "Knowing you now," she cried, leaning forward again  to saw at her bonds, "makes me realize that you  are the one who poisoned--mayhap in his rye  bread--your own father because he cast off  your--"
  "No!" she screamed and pressed both palms  tight to her ears. "No. Her Grace wants you  dead, and I will finally do what I should have years  ago in the garden with my bees. But I'm innocent  of my dear da's death!"
  "As innocent as of the death of Colum  McKitrick, rotting under your bed?"
  Desma began a strange keening sound as she  dashed to her table with the vials and began to pour and  mix something. Elizabeth sawed openly at her  bonds. Something popped loose, but Brian had  wound them repeatedly around her wrists.
  Her past, her future, dangled before her like that  thornbush crown her grandfather had seized for the  Tudors. Desma carried a small glass  vial toward her with an amber-green liquid within,  greener than Cecil's invisible ink. But  Elizabeth could kick at her. She bucked  forward, only to hear her dagger come free from her  belt and clatter to the floor.
  Desma leaned down to retrieve it. She  dragged Meg's chair closer to Elizabeth, then  sat, smiling, calm, in control again.
  "Now," she said, "here's my final, only  gift to you, Boleyn. I'll let your girl go  so she can testify to the queen of your death. I'll  have my men get her fast to London."
  "I'd never--" Meg began, but Desma  pressed the blade of Elizabeth's dagger to her  throat to silence the girl.
  "But," Desma said, her glittering gaze yet  fixed on Elizabeth, "if you don't drain this  vial, Boleyn bitch, I'll cut her throat  and force you to drink it anyway."
  "My royal sister ordered you to do all this?"  Elizabeth demanded.
  "Let us say Queen Mary desires it and  approves," Desma countered, giving  Elizabeth a glimmer of hope Mary had not
  
hated her this much.
  "All right then. I see I am beaten. Let  Meg go."
  "No, Your Grace, I--" Meg began again  until Desma slid the blade so close across  her throat, she drew a hairline of blood.
  Elizabeth leaned closer, planning to stretch  out a farewell to Meg to buy more time, but Desma  thrust the mouth of the vial at her. Elizabeth  pulled back, then lunged. And toppled toward  Desma as her bonds gave way.
  Her hands still snagged behind her back, she hit  Desma hard and took her down with her.  Elizabeth rolled away, tugging at her  bonds. The vial broke on the floor, and  Desma slipped in the stuff, trying to scramble  up. Elizabeth yanked her hands apart, numb,  but--
  Desma made it to the door, fumbled with the  latch, got it open. She tried to flee,  screaming, "Brian McKitrick! To me!"
  Elizabeth pulled her by her skirts, seized  her shoulders, and threw her back into the room.  Desma's hips hit Meg, who was still tied, and  she rolled to the floor again, her hands in the  spilled poison. Elizabeth bent to retrieve  her dagger, which Desma had dropped.
  "Oh, no. Oh, no, it eats through skin!"  Desma shouted, then made it to her feet and charged  Elizabeth with both sticky hands raised.  Elizabeth swung the dagger at her in an arc,  managing to dance out of her way. Some advantages  to being dressed as a lad, she thought erratically.  For a moment they played a mad game of fox and  geese, with Desma trying to smear the stuff on  her. Elizabeth kicked her away and managed  to make a quick slice through Meg's bonds.
  And then they heard men's voices--in  Gaelic--as at least three of them thundered up the  stairs. Desma made another dash for the door,  and Elizabeth let her go so she could free  Meg.
  "Mistress Desma," a voice shouted in  heavily accented English, "we got all the  players locked up in the castle's wine  cellar."
  "Up here! I've got two traitors to our  cause we must rid ourselves of. Help me!"
  On her knees, Elizabeth sawed hard at  Meg's leg ties while Meg managed to free
  
her wrists. "They'll be coming up,"
Meg said, "too many of them. If they got our  men, it's just us. What can we do?"
  "God knows," Elizabeth muttered. "And if  He wants me to rule this kingdom as His realm,  it is He who must help us now."
  She dragged Meg out of the chair, though she  staggered from being tied too long. Desma had run  down to meet her men. They stood, swaying against  each other at the top of the stairs.
  Elizabeth's mind raced. She could shout  to Brian--who evidently had the same surname as  the corpse in Desma's room--that Desma had  murdered Colum and that she could prove it. She  could heave the vials of poisons in their faces  when they rushed them. But neither tactic would  guarantee salvation. Here she stood, everything  to lose, with a single dagger to fight them off.
  Below in the darkness of the turn of the staircase,  they saw jumbled shadows leap upon the walls.  Someone had brought a lantern up as they prepared  to rush them. Desma and two or three men. The  flickering shadows of sword points danced in the  air.
  Elizabeth thrust the dagger in Meg's hands so  she could have both hers free. She went down two  steps to reach the iron latch on the door of the  slatted bin. If this was Desma's poison  rye, even if it was not--
  A shout in Gaelic, then Desma's shrill  one: "Death to the Boleyns, even the royal  one!"
  The charge from below began. Elizabeth meant  to pull open the door of the bin, but it shoved out of  its own accord the minute she shifted the bolted  latch. A river of dark grain--and its musty  smell--roared out. She ran back up the steps  as it bounced and slid downward. The force of it  made her wonder if there was more on the roof, for it    spilled out until it was knee-high into the  onslaught of the men below.
  "Down! Back!" Desma shouted. "Don't  get it in your mouth! Let it pass us; go back  down."
  "Get me Desma's veil," Elizabeth  ordered Meg, "and some of those linen bindings. We  have to loose the grain on all the other floors."
  "What? How? They're down there waiting."  "Go!"
  Elizabeth slashed two eyeholes in the
  
veil, and then tied the hems around her  neck with the linen. She could not breathe well, but it  would keep her from inhaling or swallowing that grain  dust Desma had warned her men about. Slipping  on the rye, plowing through it and sliding where it had  piled up, she started down. She heard them coming  up again, but she prayed she'd get to the  third-floor landing before they did. She opened that  door, too, and steadied herself by hanging on the  slats in the dusty torrent.
  Shouts below. Scrambling. A scream.
  She risked it once again, sliding down to open  the latched door on the second floor. No good  retreating upstairs and trying to get out a window as  she and Ned had at Hever. Nothing to tie together,  and it was much too far. Besides, there was no going up  in this flood of grain, only down. Her men--she  had to free them.
  By the time this grain was gone, she heard no  footsteps below. Unless it was a ruse, they had  probably retreated outside the building to plan  another attack. But she could wait no longer.
  "Meg," she shouted up the stairs, her voice  muffled through the veil, "hold a piece of  petticoat to your nose and mouth and get down here.  Try not to breathe, though I think you have to eat it  to get ill."
  She continued down the now darkened stairwell,  sliding, skidding where it had piled up so deep on  the lower flights of stairs that she was amazed.  Absolute silence reigned below, and someone had  lit another lantern. The river of rye had come  to rest in a pool of it perhaps four feet deep on  the ground floor. A cloud of dust hovered thick  in the air.
  She heard Meg coming down. Then she noticed  a sword point sticking up through the rye.
  Someone had dropped it in their hasty scramble.  At least it would give them a weapon. Panting  through the veil, taking care not to cut herself on the  blade, she pulled at it carefully.
  It didn't budge. With her foot she shoved  grain away and followed it down. A hand held  it. A man's big hand.
  She cried out just as Meg slid around the last  turn. Elizabeth shoved her away from the  sword.
  Meg kept coughing; for the first time Elizabeth  realized her eyes were watering. Or was she crying?  And to see the world through this veil, as if she were that
  
ungodly woman ...
  "Why are you shoving me?" Meg protested, then  saw the man's hand. "Oh!"
  "I think--they may all be under here--somewhere,"  Elizabeth wheezed. "Feel for his pulse."
  For once, without question or argument, Meg  obeyed, plunging her arm into the depths. "Nothing.  I think he's dead."
  "Desma could be here too. We'll try to dig  them out, but we've got to free the others first. The  wine cellar must be under the kitchen. This may be the  only man here."
  "But here's a boot with a leg in it," Meg  murmured, pointing a distance over. "Can't be the  same one."
  Elizabeth seized her hand and pulled her  away. "We'll be hidden by the fog outside, but  be careful."
  They ran in the direction of the castle as  Elizabeth tore off the veil with her free hand.  Meg had the dagger, she the sword. At the  kitchen door they heard voices from beyond the  deserted room, so they darted into it and toward the  cellar door.
  "I only hope the key to the wine cellar  isn't on one of those dead Irishmen," Meg  whispered.
  "At Greenwich it's right by the cellar door.  One time, years ago," she went on, so nervous  and relieved she could not stop talking, "Tom  Seymour took me down and stole one of the king's  ..." Her voice faded as they saw that a light  burned down here. It could easily be that one of the  Irishmen stood guard.
  She gripped her sword handle. She was but  twenty-five years of age yet felt worn out  fighting her own battles. How she longed for an  army to command, a navy and--
  "Listen," Meg whispered and gripped her arm,  "what's that? Can't be singing."
  "I will personally bury those bastards in that  poison grain if they've gotten drunk in there  while ... while ..." Elizabeth sputtered.
  No one guarded the door, which was a fine oak  one with a bunch of grapes carved into it.  Elizabeth seized the big key from an iron ring  and unlocked it. Meg lifted the lantern.
  "A glorious sight, our next queen,  crimson hair loosed to the winds of heaven."  Wat spoke first and raised a mug in salute
  
to Elizabeth. Both lads and the four men  blinked into the brightness of the lantern. Mugs and a  leather bottle lay at their feet, and stacked  barrels hemmed them in.
  "Deliverance, earthly salvation," Rand cried  and staggered to stand to sweep her a bow, though he  fell over into a pile of heavy firkins, which  didn't budge. One had been uncorked and  dribbled dark wine across the flagstones.
  "They were drinking to your continued health, my  lad," Ned put in hastily. "They knew those  ruffians were no match for you. Obviously, you have  found and stopped the Lady of the White Peacock.  Jenks and I, even in the dark, were trying to pick  the lock with this iron barrel hoop, should you need  our help, right, man?"
  At least, she thought, Jenks had the sense  to look sober and sheepish. Yet he wiped his  eyes and grinned, going down on one knee before  Elizabeth with but a quick darted look at Meg.  "I told them no one could stop you, Your  Grace, and never the two of you together."
  "We have no time for chatter," Elizabeth  announced. "Wat and Rand, sober up and now, or  I'll leave you locked in here. Jenks, fetch  our horses and take them to the barbican and be  prepared to go up and force the guard to open the gates  for us on my signal. Let the lads sneak into the  corridor and try to gather what they can of the  costumes and props, especially the other  weapons. Ned and Meg, follow me."
  Back in the Maiden's Tower, the three of them  dug in the grain with their hands, then with the iron hoop  Ned still carried. There had been more rye than she  had ever imagined in that bin. Now it seemed they  shoved great piles of it around as it kept shifting.
  "I want to leave, but I have to know she's gone  for good," Elizabeth explained, falling to her  knees to dig harder, bare-handed.
  She knew she had to keep talking and moving or  she'd collapse. Her jaw throbbed in rhythm  with the head pain she'd borne for days. She was both  afraid Desma wouldn't be here and that she would.  Despite it all, she could almost pity the woman,  a bastard, betrayed by her father and bereft of her  mother.
  "It would be God's justice," she went on,  "that she killed by poison and died by it. I'll have  Cecil threaten Lord St. Leger that if this grain  isn't all destroyed--Ah!" she gasped and
  
gazed into the face of her nemesis, which  her hands had uncovered for the second time today. Ned  and Meg waded over and stared down in silence.
  Though she had suffocated to death, Desma  Ormonde seemed at peace. Like a swarm of  bees, dark kernels of rye rested on her  eyes, in her gaping mouth, even in her ears and  nostrils. Strange, she thought, how Desma's  poison decorated her in death. In the wan  lantern light, rye smut and dust glittered from  each pockmark on her face. Her raven-dark  hair, streaming out from her head, seemed adorned with  black pearls of grain.
  "Let's ride," Elizabeth said, forcing  back a sob and standing. "It's all over now.  Whether or not she worked for the queen or only because  of the queen, it's over."
  "Not until you're queen," she heard Ned  say, but, tugging Meg's hand, he was hard on her  heels out the door.
  Ahead of them as they neared the barbican through the  fog, Elizabeth saw that Jenks had not waited  for her word to open the gates. Everyone was mounted before  the raised portcullis and Jenks held her  horse. He had somehow recovered his sword, which  he held in his right hand. He gave a little cheer  when he saw them all safe, then turned immediately  to Elizabeth.
  "No one was there, so I raised the grate  myself, Your Grace."
  "I'm so filthy and thirsty, I've a good  notion to dive in the lake," she said as he boosted  her up.
  "If you'll forgive us, Your Grace," Wat  slurred amidst hiccups, "we did bring 'long  a few firkins o' St. Leger's wine. Din't  want him to owe us, as we're off 'fore they pay  our fee."
  If she had not been so sore and exhausted, she  would have laughed. But as she urged her horse toward  the gate, she seized the mug from Wat's hands and  downed the rest of the wine.
  Malmsey, she marveled, her father's  favorite. Never had it tasted so sweet and good.
  
                Afterword

  17 November, 1558

  Despite her triumph in solving the poison  plot against her, Elizabeth had been in a grim  mood the week since. Although she and her privy  plot council had not been caught returning  to Ightham Mote or accused--yet--for the deaths  at Leeds, she felt she had lost Cecil's  loyalty. And her cousin Harry was with him in  London, so Cecil might have swayed him too.
  Cecil had been the one to tell the queen that  crowds had cheered Elizabeth in Kent. Therefore,  he was the cause of the queen, even from her sickbed,  writing to Thomas Pope to take Elizabeth  back forthwith to Hatfield. Now, she waited here  again as she had for years, watched doubly close  by him. He was in as beastly a mood as she, for his  wife had not gone to her sister's house at all  but, rather, had disappeared--he felt that she had  deserted him. Still, not even that or a makeshift  picnic when Elizabeth just had to get out of the  house really cheered anyone today.
  "I suppose this long, boring winter," Ned  told her, juggling three walnuts, "we could  take up the mystery of where Bea Pope has  gone and discover whether she deserted the Pope  indeed or it is foul play."
  "Did you so fancy a real lady doting on  you, Ned, even an enemy spy, and now you long  to find her?" Elizabeth said, her voice more  goading than teasing. She didn't realize she'd  hurt Meg's feelings by that remark until she  saw her sour face, but she plunged on. "I  swear, I'd become Queen of Araby before I'd  lift a finger to look for Bea Pope, the  traitor. Besides, I warrant, our  mystery-solving days are over."
  She tossed an apple at his flying hands,  sending the walnuts tumbling. Ignoring Jenks's  hand extended to help her up, she rose from the  Moorish rug they had been sitting on and strode  down the lane toward the village. After she and  Jenks had outdistanced the Pope again the other  day, he had forbidden her to ride. She glanced  back over her shoulder to see he kept his distance,  but doggedly, he followed on foot, curse him.
  Ahead stood the tall, ancient oaks where she  had been caught in a storm the day her aunt had
  
sent that secret missive that began her  quest for Desma Ormonde. It seemed so long  ago and yet but a scattering of weeks. She did  not feel half as free as she had thought she would with  Desma gone. More than anything, Desma's words  that her royal sister might at the last moment name  another heir, a Catholic--Mary, Queen of  Scots--haunted her.
  "I can read your thoughts, Your Grace,"  Ned's voice interrupted her agonizing as he  caught up with her.
  She spun to tell him to leave off but watched,  chagrined, as he climbed into one of the oaks and  dangled upside down by his knees from the lowest  limb. "Family trees," he shouted. "Nothing  more upsetting or dangerous."
  She just waved him away and shook her head.  Never had she been less in the mood to tease or  laugh. Though she had paid his uncle well and sent  them on their way, she could hardly treat her own  kin that way.
  She heard hoofbeats before she saw the riders.  A group of them, all men, galloped headlong  toward her down the lane from the main road, their  dark cloaks flapping behind them like ravens' wings.  As ever--especially now--she instinctively feared  the worst. At the last moment, when the queen heard  that her plan to poison her Protestant sister  had failed or that she had killed Desma  Ormonde, had she sent guards to take her  back to the Tower--or worse?
  Ned came to stand beside her as Jenks ran up and  scraped out his sword. Thomas Pope, huffing,  hurried toward her. Meg and Kat were halfway  to the distant manor house, swinging the empty  picnic basket between them, but they dropped it.  She saw them lift their petticoats and come  running.
  "Go into the forest, Your Grace," Jenks  cried. "I don't like the look of it."
  She shook her head and stood her ground. The  one in front in this pell-mell band of men was  Cecil, with Harry right behind him. And,  broad-shouldered, her old friend Robin Dudley,  whom she had not seen since her time in the Tower.  Her stomach cartwheeled.
  Boldly, she stepped out into a sudden shaft of  sun.
  Cecil almost vaulted off his horse and went  immediately to one knee, with Harry kneeling close  behind him and Robin uncovering his head and  going down too. The others--several of her father's  old advisers, two of her brother's, none of  Mary's. She clasped her hands tightly and  pressed them to her lips, waiting.
  "Your Grace--Your Majesty," Cecil  said, out of breath. He extended to her in his square  palm the onyx coronation ring that left the  monarch's hand only upon death. It glinted in the  sun. Elizabeth stared wide-eyed at it, not  moving, not daring to believe.
  "Your royal sister--I regret," he said,  looking up and biting back a smile that lit his  eyes, "that she has sadly departed this life, this  vale of tears, and left to you the throne and realm of  England, Scotland--and Ireland."
  Tears blinded her eyes, but she blinked them  back and took the ring. Shaking, she thrust it on  the fourth finger of her right hand. It was too big, but  she would fast get it fitted.
  They were all kneeling now, even her own people and a  trembling Thomas Pope, staring up at her.
  "This," she said in a clarion voice, "is  the Lord's work, and it is marvelous in our  eyes." She breathed in hard, lifted her face  to the heavens, and smiled.
  "Rise, all of you," she commanded, turning  toward the house. "We have much to do. Cecil, I  see now why you wanted me back at  Hatfield, and I charge that you shall become my  principal secretary and counselor."
  "Yes, Your Majesty, with pride and--"  "And purposeful ambition," she finished for him  with a little laugh. She realized her head pain was  gone for the first time in weeks. It made her almost  light-headed as she began to stride toward the  house.
  "Dear cousin Boleyn," she went on  to Harry as the men scrambled after her, dragging  horses, "I have missed you, missed you all.  Robert Dudley--Robin," she added and blushed  as the smiling, handsome young man came close and  managed to kiss her hand, even as she walked,  "I shall need a Master of the Horse, and I have just  the man to work for you, Stephen Jenks by name.
  "Gentlemen"--she stopped for one moment and they  clustered around her--"Hatfield is not a grand  place, but I shall hold my first council meeting  in the great hall yet today, where my royal parents  used to entertain in their happy days."
  She glanced back to where Meg stood  between a grinning Jenks and wet-eyed Ned, while  Kat sobbed into her apron. "All my people," she  called to them, gesturing with one raised hand. "I have  need of all. Come on then." She waited long enough  to see Kat wipe her face and Meg take both  Jenks's and Ned's hands to tug them forward.
  Elizabeth the Queen began to walk briskly  again, but she could have soared.