The Queene's Cure Page 15

  “No. It's Meg with her husband. See?”

  Elizabeth did see. Meg was at the tiller in the stern of a small skiff while Ben rowed mightily against the tidal current. Gil began signing something to Meg about no talking yet. The queen looked into Meg's eyes in the moment it took to pass their small craft at close quarters. So much for not being recognized, at least by Meg, Elizabeth thought, but the girl sat silent and stoic as a fine lady while that big-shouldered lout Wilton hooted. Meg looked sad—angry too—and hardly happy to see her queen.

  “I've noted her before when we've been on the river,” Ned said, “but usually when we were in the barge of state.”

  “Hard to miss us then with all that red and gold, queen's coat-of-arms, and thirty men-at-oars,” Jenks muttered as he craned around to see the last of the Wiltons.

  “Yes, but what coincidence they passed us now,” Ned mused, “and we're supposedly making this jaunt in secret.”

  “Meaning what?” Elizabeth demanded. “Heading the opposite direction, they can hardly be following us.”

  “Nothing,” he murmured, but she saw his mouth silently move to add, “yet.”

  “I told you Ben Wilton claims he saw a man peering over the privy garden wall and volunteered to come in to testify,” Elizabeth pursued the topic. “No doubt it's a question of his angling for more reward, for I fear the man is lazy but greedy.”

  Ned nodded, looking surprised, she supposed, that after all these months she was willing to discuss the Wiltons. “I am no longer angry with her,” she said, looking straight ahead again. “I simply find it best not to speak of her—of those early days, for they distract me from my necessary business, that is all.”

  But it was not memories of Meg that moved her as they approached the hamlet of Chelsea. Despite its proximity to her capital city, she had not visited it for years, though she had oft seen it from the river as her royal barge passed by en route to her several palaces to the west.

  In sleepy, rural Chelsea, Elizabeth had once lived happily with her stepmother, Katherine Parr, and her husband, Tom Seymour, before everything had gone to pieces. Elizabeth had been sent away for losing her young, yearning heart to Seymour, a man who merely wanted her for what she was, a Tudor princess, then but two lives from the throne.

  “Her Majesty wishes to put in at the public stairs,” Ned's voice interrupted her agonizing as he called to the men-at-oars.

  Chelsea seemed ever the same, Elizabeth observed. The facades of the manor houses that could be seen from the river were set back across gardens and wide lawns, each with its own water gate and stairs. Smaller, thatched village houses hoved into view. Chimneys, tall ones on lofty roofs and squat ones on cottages, peeked above treetops and trailed crooked fingers of smoke into the brisk September breeze.

  “There's the house which used to belong to my stepmother.” She pointed it out as the barge made for shore. “And that one farther down was once Sir Thomas More's, though he was dead years before I lived here, and one of his heirs had the house then. And, of course, Pascal has it now.”

  “After we see the wig woman, you still want me to knock on its door and order him to Whitehall to see you forthwith, Your Grace?” Jenks asked. “If he hasn't returned to the city yet, I mean.”

  “Let's decide after we hear what old Dame Wyngate has to say.”

  Ned helped her out. Grateful no crowds gathered as in London, they made their way onto the grassy village green and waited, the queen with Jenks, Gil, and the six guards, while Ned went into the only tavern to inquire after the wig-maker's location.

  “Cottage at the end of the village,” Ned called to them as he emerged and led their little procession across the green. “They say she's deaf as a stone and has a granddaughter living with her, who's been apprenticed to the trade. In other words, we can either shout our wishes at Dame Wyngate, or the girl will do it for us.”

  “At least she's still alive and obviously isn't going anywhere,” Elizabeth said as they spotted the hunchbacked thatched roofed place on the opposite end of town from the finer houses.

  Honoria Wyngate's dwelling was grown higgledypiggledy all on one floor. Its plaster had grayed, and its wig of thatch looked ragged and balding. A once-tended garden sprawled to riot and ruin, with everything blasted by early frost so that only dead hollyhocks bobbed in the breeze.

  “Ned, Jenks, with me,” the queen said, “and the rest of you wait here within call.” She nodded and Jenks, his hand instinctively resting on his sword, rapped sharply on the door while she and Ned stood back a few paces. Jenks knocked again, his fist rattling the door in its frame, but no one answered.

  “I said she's deaf, Jenks, or are you too?” Ned needled him. “Knock harder or just shout for her granddaughter.”

  “You're the one with all the fancy, foreign stage voices you can throw about!” Jenks shot back.

  “Stop carping at each other and look in the windows,” Elizabeth ordered. “They are fine glass, so you'd think she'd have the money to keep this place up better than this. Knock on the glass, as the sound may carry better.”

  The men worked their way around the irregularly shaped exterior, knocking on windows. Elizabeth, trailing four guards and Gil, walked to the back door. An oriel window overlooked a length of lawn to a small, noisy stream, and morning sun poured through the many leaded panes of glass.

  Honoria Wyngate loves sunlight to see by and warm her old bones, the queen thought, in a sudden rush of affection for the old woman. And, no doubt, she needed light to do her fine work of sewing strands of hair.

  Feeling like a Peeping Tom, Elizabeth nonetheless stepped up to the bow of window and glanced in. Baskets of hair sat beside a long workbench directly under the window, all lit by splashes of sun. Raven-dark hair; nutbrown, blond, russet tresses, and the same red-gold hue as the effigy's wig.

  “She'll have answers for us,” Elizabeth said as Jenks, Ned, and Gil joined her. “Or her granddaughter will.”

  The queen stood on tiptoe and looked beyond to a ladder-backed chair near the empty, cold hearth. Her own shadow fell across the sunny space. Then she saw the old lady, sitting on the floor with her head on the seat of the chair. But the tilt of her neck was strange, and those thin, old limbs were sprawled in sleep at an awkward angle.

  “Jenks, open or break down that door!”

  He obeyed, but before he could draw his sword to lead the way in, Elizabeth pushed past him.

  THE TENTH

  Venus claims dominion over the herb meadowsweet or

  mead sweet. Therefore, it is good to stay bleedings and

  for other women's problems.

  NICHOLAS CULPEPER

  The English Physician

  THE EVER-SWIFT JENKS REACHED THE WRINKLED, hoary-headed Honoria Wyngate with Elizabeth, and Ned came close behind.

  “Is she dead?” the queen whispered.

  “Mayhap she just stumbled or got a dizzy spell and knocked herself out!” Jenks said, resheathing his sword with a loud scrape.

  “Or she's just asleep and didn't hear us,” Ned offered.

  Elizabeth touched the wig-maker's arm as if to rouse her. It was stiff and cold. “See,” the queen said, her voice still hushed, “a puddle of blood on the chair seat where she must have struck her head. But let's make certain she's gone.”

  When she did not budge to touch her again, Ned felt for a neck pulse, then shook his head.

  “If a long life is any kind of good life, she had that,” Elizabeth said, as if pronouncing a benediction. “She looks so frail. No doubt she could have slipped and fallen, but in this instance, I cannot help but be suspicious.”

  After all, she thought, this would not be the first time lately that someone she needed to question had been snatched from her grasp. No one had seen the effigy placed in the coach on Knightrider Street; both Lucinda, the lace girl, and her paramour had disappeared; and a corpse had materialized in the royal privy fountain of a crowded palace with no one to question but a greedy bargeman l
urking outside who saw but shadowy form with no face. And now this.

  She stepped back and turned away to survey the room. It was immaculately kept, but for one thing. The ashes from the cold hearth were trailed and smeared far into the room, even across a Turkish carpet the old woman surely must have valued. The queen walked closer to the hearth.

  She knew her people watched her, waiting for a command to leave this sad scene. She straightened and stepped back. “Guards,” she called to her four men who had followed as far as the door, “two of you draw swords and search this house for an intruder or signs of one.” They instantly obeyed, clattering through the single interior doorway to the sprawl of small rooms.

  “Despite her age and frailty, you're thinking foul play, Your Majesty?” Ned asked, coming to stand beside her at the hearth.

  “I'm fearing it. Look at this.”

  She bent closer to study the ashes that marred the clean-swept floor and bright-colored carpet. This soot told a tale as clearly as one of Gil's charcoal drawings.

  “Gil,” she said to the boy who had begun to sketch Honoria Wyngate, “draw the pattern of these ashes on the hearth first, then the body.”

  “I see what you mean, Your Grace,” Ned agreed.

  “I believe someone set this room aright, but either in haste or carelessness forgot to clean this evidence left underfoot. Something has been dragged through the remnants of charcoal residue. And see here,” she said, pointing to the smears on the old woman's skirts and slippers.

  They all jumped when a guard asked from the door, “Shall we search this room, too, Your Majesty?”

  “No, just the others,” she said without looking at him.

  “We did and no one's hiding here'bouts and nothing seems amiss,” he reported.

  “Two of you stay at the back door and the others search outside for fresh foot- or hoofprints. For anything!”

  The men clomped out again, but Elizabeth kept staring at the fine, filmy trail of ash that was thick on the edge of the cold hearth but dissipated near the chair. “See,” she said, pointing, then blocking their approach with both arms when Ned and Jenks came too close and nearly tipped Gil into the ashes. “The proof of her struggle, feeble though it may have been, is written on the hearth and on the bottom of her skirts. She is what was dragged or lifted to the position she is now in.”

  “Maybe her granddaughter helped her to the chair when she felt faint, and ran for help,” Jenks surmised.

  “And never came back?” Ned challenged. “More like it was their family argument that put the old thing here like this. Perhaps the girl wanted to take over the trade sooner than Dame Wyngate thought she should. Or the girl had a lover of whom the old dame did not approve,” he added, pointing to the prints. “It looks like a man's and a woman's steps here.”

  “It does indeed, and not Dame Wyngate's,” Elizabeth theorized. She turned back to remove a linen slipper from the woman's right foot. “See?” she said as she held the ash-smeared slipper over the print of a woman's shoe. “Honoria Wyngate's foot is smaller, and there is no heel on this slipper as the other woman wore. We must find her granddaughter to see if this could be hers.”

  “Then you credit my theory the girl—a girl, at least— could be guilty?” Ned said, his eyes lighting.

  “I suppose that could be one reason she's evidently not come back and the body has already gone into what the doctors call rigor mortis, which takes several hours. But what if foul play has struck the girl too? Mayhap she has been abducted from here.”

  “To what purpose?” Ned asked.

  Elizabeth shrugged as she placed the slipper back on the woman's foot should the local sheriff or justice investigate this. “The possibilities do boggle the mind,” she admitted.

  “The man was big, I warrant,” Ned surmised, dangling his own foot over that longer print.

  “It may be the very sole that Robin and Henry Sidney obscured in their fall off the ladder in the privy garden,” the queen mused. “Jenks, when we are ready to go, I want you to run ahead to inquire in the village whether the granddaughter's been seen. And get a description of her in case she's guilty and a fugitive. But we will not report this murder until we are ready to leave, so that Gil has time to complete his drawings. Meanwhile, Ned and I will minutely inspect this place for any correspondence or receipts she may have naming someone who bought a red wig.”

  Dear Dr. Clerewell,

  I must, of necessity, ask that you to treat this as privy correspondence. You saw the results the other day of our being discovered together talking overlong.

  I thank you for your help and for not claiming a fee in the matter of Gil's learning to speak so he can, as you say, “tell his tales.” Meanwhile, I am pleased to keep your secret while putting on trial the V.M.E.

  But as to the business with the Queen's Evil: by tradition she enters the Abbey through the main west door just before ten of the clock. She will progress the entire nave to the high altar where the poor victims await her. The ceremony is very well guarded and goes by rote, so there is no hope for success there.

  However, after it, as she recesses, it is possible to approach her. Have your friend kneel in the aisle, close in front of the queen to stop her. You will then both have a quick moment's access to her, especially if she is caught off guard. I must needs remain hidden so none of her retinue spot me, though I will get you into place and be there watching—and praying—for victorious results.

  I shall meet you both at Westminster Palace river stairs.

  Mistress Sarah Wilton

  Meg was proud of this letter, for she seldom wrote out that many words at once. She wished she could show it to Ned, who had taught her to read and write. She even wished she could show it to Her Majesty, to prove how far she'd come since Her Grace took in that bedraggled, befuddled kitchen herb girl four years ago.

  Sadly, she'd never dare show it to either of them. But to buck herself up for what momentous deed lay ahead, Meg made a copy of the missive. Drying the ink carefully, she rolled it up like a little scroll and stuffed it down her darned stocking with the note from Dr. Clerewell.

  But as she started down the stairs, she began to fret. Ben might not read well, but he could pick out people's signatures. So she went back, took both notes, and hid them instead in an herbal drawer downstairs behind the alabaster box of Venus Moon.

  LOOK, YOUR GRACE,” NED CRIED, FLOURISHING THE small piece of paper he'd found stuck on a nail in a raft of others on the mantel. “Maybe Dame Wyngate meant to burn this but didn't get to it. It was under these other receipts.”

  Annoyed he took so long to tell her what it said, Elizabeth snatched it from him. “ ‘For a fine red wig with a slight sheen of blond, two pounds, four shillings,’ ” she read aloud. “ ‘To be in upswept fashion in current court style, suited for light coronet.’ That's it, Ned, for all the deuced good it does us when she's dead, because there is no name of the buyer here. Do those other receipts have names?”

  “Most do,” he muttered as he scrabbled through them. “Just a few without, and I don't see any pattern. Some have dates, some don't.”

  “This one doesn't. Then we must immediately locate her granddaughter, and she will know who bought the wig.”

  She heaved a huge sigh. “Keep looking here,” she ordered him, “and bring Gil out with you when you're done.”

  Elizabeth motioned for her two guards to remain at the door and stepped out into the sun. The little world of a woman's works and long life had suddenly seemed to close around her with foreboding. The stench of death was not yet in the room, but she felt it was, like some foul disease clinging to her skin or hair, or insidiously seeping into her lungs. What could be the link between the demise of an anonymous young woman bled to death by leeches in London and an old woman who hit her head to draw blood in her home in Chelsea?

  She spun and rushed back into the house. “I didn't want to move her body, but lift her head off the chair,” she ordered the startled Ned.


  He looked as if he'd argue, then obeyed, pulling the body up a bit by the shoulders and awkwardly lifting the head from the sticky pool of blood. It had pulsed from a small, neat, shallow stab wound in her temple, at the very site physicians bled patients for disorders of the head and mind.

  “A lancet wound,” Elizabeth said. “She's been bled too! First a poxed effigy that looks like me, then a young woman leeched in the pattern of the pox, then an older one, lancet-bled. Definitely done by a doctor!” she cried. “I knew it—one of those Papist physicians who holds a grudge against his queen!”

  “Or some layperson or quacksalver who's worked cures in the past when she or he shouldn't have,” Ned mumbled.

  The queen strode back outside. Sucking in a breath of fresh air, she walked the stretch of lawn toward the brook. Beyond it, frost-blasted, tall grass waved in a fallow field mostly gone to weeds. She stared at the remnants of wildflowers and herbs, trying to calm herself. But instead, back leaped that tormenting memory of that long dead day she'd seen the poxed mother and her children begging near the herbal fields of Chelsea, though at the other end of the village. And then it hit her.

  This field had obviously been full of meadowsweet and woodruff this summer, the two herbs with which the linen body of the effigy had been stuffed. Those herbs could grow elsewhere, but things were starting to point to someone who had a certain familiarity with Chelsea. Mayhap the old woman did not include the name of the buyer of that red wig because she knew him and where to find him, just on the other side of the village, ensconced in the home of his deceased friend and mentor Sir Thomas More.

  “Ned, Gil, guards, to me!” she cried.

  Two of her men emerged from the bank of the stream on a dead run, as if they'd already been on their way. The others gathered around her too. “When we get back, I'm issuing a formal warrant for the arrest and questioning of Dr. Peter Pascal,” she announced. “But right now, we are going calling on him at his house on the other side of the village.”