The Fyre Mirror: An Elizabeth I Mystery: 1 (Elizabeth I Mysteries) Page 17

  “Don’t leave this tent until you hear from Her Majesty again,” Clifford ordered, and went out. Gil just rolled up into a ball, wishing he could die, preferably in Dorothea’s sweet, round arms.

  The queen’s exhaustion had finally caught up with her. Wearied, worried … in the late afternoon she sat with Kat and Floris in her bedchamber window, half nodding off, watching her women lace long-stemmed daisies into necklaces. In the privy garden below, Elizabeth could hear the buzzing blur of men’s voices raised in some sort of argument.

  Her people were too packed in down there, too nervous about another fire, she thought. Their tempers were tightening too, like those ropes on Kendale’s tent flaps, the rope controlling Dr. Dee’s big mirror, those holding tight the shutters and doors of the Mortlake death trap.

  As much as she hated to admit it, she needed to head back to London, even though she would be greatly hampered there in the murder investigation. If only she could stay a few more days, ride the area incognito, even back to Mortlake to talk to others about the running boy, or to the little village of Cheam on the far side of the hunt park. After all, the boy might have fled in that direction. But duty called … duty and sleep and London, where a forest of chimneys trailed their smoke into the sky … .

  Her head jerked, but she thought she fell asleep again. Her eyes had nearly crossed signing papers lately, listening to her advisers talk and argue policy … agonizing with Cecil about Mary of Scots’ marriage and a possible uprising in the northern shires.

  The fresh air and sweet sun felt so very good as they sat here. They’d played cards earlier; she’d let Kat win. Strange, how Kat could remember how to play cards but not what year it was or who was on the throne—even when that person was right in front of her. Floris had told them about her last employer, a wealthy old man who had known Lord Arundel’s father. Arundel himself had recommended her for a job with Elizabeth Tudor’s beloved Lady Kat Ashley. Yes, Kat was beloved. They had clung together through shifting times to get the throne, to outlast Elizabeth’s worst enemies, enemies who had always been her family. But Kat was her family now; even Cecil, Robin, Meg, Jenks, and Ned were closer now than her father or sister, even Edward, had ever really been … .

  Somehow the sun flashed past her eyes, illuminating her closed eyelids so they went bloodred. Elizabeth dragged them open and blinked. There it was again. And then she saw the beam of light slicing straight through the window at a sharp downward angle, where it sat like a brilliant spider on the skirt-covered knees of the sleeping Kat Ashley.

  Kat’s gold damask skirts had begun to steam—no, to smoke! But how did the beam come so high into this second story? No tree was that tall. The roof?

  Elizabeth knew she could sneak to another window or even to the roof to see who shone a mirror this way. With enough time, she could trace the beam and trap whoever was at the other end of it, but then she would give herself away, and Kat’s skirts might be in flames. A picture of poor Garver the Carver’s burned body popped into her mind. Kat was so afraid of fire … . And the terror had now come inside the palace!

  The queen stood and yanked one heavy drapery from the window and threw it over Kat’s legs. “Floris, wake! Get Kat—everyone—away from that window!”

  Instantly alert, Floris leaped to her feet as the other ladies in the chamber started and screamed. Flowers, playing cards, and lapdogs dropped to the floor. As the dogs yipped in protest, the queen stood in the window and tried to follow the shaft of light.

  Suddenly it leaped into her eyes as if to blind her, flickered, and disappeared. Though that last flash still made pulsating dots before her gaze, she pushed past her ladies and ran for the council-room door, pulled it open, then rushed across the room to the hall door.

  “Someone has a fire mirror on the roof and just tried to burn Kat Ashley!” she shouted to her yeomen guards as she raced down the hall toward the stairs. “Up, straight across from my windows! We’ve got to trap him there!”

  Her guards went for their weapons and pounded after her, but she was quicker as she lifted her skirts, opened the door to the roof, and tore up the stairs.

  Chapter the Twelfth

  AT FIRST GLANCE, ELIZABETH SAW NO ONE ON THE BROAD expanse of palace roof. Suddenly the crenellated walls reminded her of widely spaced teeth in a huge, open mouth. The culprit could be hiding behind those distant decorations or the ornate chimney stacks.

  Buffeted by the rising breeze, she shaded her eyes to scan the roof areas accessible from here. In the shape of a large, squared letter C, they encompassed both wings of the palace and were linked by a walkway wide enough for three men abreast. She saw no one on this first section of the roof above the royal apartments. But the beam of light had come from the other side, across the courtyard.

  Clifford and three other guards bounded up and joined her, pikes at the ready and swords drawn.

  “Where?” Clifford shouted. He pointed to the staircase itself and lunged around the enclosure. “No one back here!” he cried.

  “Look all around—and over the sides!” she ordered. “The flash of sunlight came from over there!”

  With the guards, who stopped occasionally to look over the sides, she rushed across the connecting walkway. From this side of the roof, she could see the windows of her apartment. Yes, someone could look into her bedchamber from here. An icy shudder racked her, and the breeze cooled her damp skin.

  She shaded her eyes and gazed across the courtyard again. The sun had evidently come in on the perfect slant for this time of day. The person with the mirror could have hidden behind these raised sections of wall and held out the mirror in the aperture between. Although in London Elizabeth usually kept all draperies of her chambers closed at night, at Nonsuch she had kept them open to catch spring breezes. Had someone been spying on her, just waiting for an opportunity to start a fire, perhaps to trap and burn her?

  “Over here, Your Majesty,” Hammond, a yeoman guard, shouted, and pointed over the side of the walls facing the hunt park. “A dangling rope someone could have climbed down!”

  “And climbed up,” Clifford said as they pressed into the two nearest openings to observe the slightly swaying rope. She saw it was actually several knotted together. The knots were at equal distances; she counted three of them, which meant four ropes. The top one was looped around and secured to an ornate drainpipe. Did the ropes yet sway, she wondered, because someone had just gone down them, or was the breeze moving them?

  She shaded her eyes again and scanned the grassy area below, where the tents had first been pitched, then the park itself with its newly leafed trees hiding whatever moved beneath. She could not quite see the meadow with the stone hole from here.

  “Hammond, take a contingent and scour those woods and the meadow beyond, including a small stone hole you will find there. Bring to me anyone—even if it is a child—whom you find lurking in or running through that park.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” he said, and headed back around toward the staircase at a jog.

  “So,” Elizabeth muttered to herself as much as to her three remaining guards, “our prey can scale more than trees, but how did he get up here to tie those ropes on in the first place? I smell a plot. Clifford, fetch Secretary Cecil for me at once.”

  “Aye, Your Grace.”

  As he hurried away, she moved closer to the massive stone drainpipe, one of a matched set of four that cleared rain from the corners of the roof. Each was adorned with the carved stone faces of forest animals which were hunted here, deer, fox, and, in her father’s times, wild boar. The top rope was secured around the head of a fox, but that was not what caught her eye. The rope was not tied haphazardly but knotted in a flat bow. And that bow was similar to the very type Floris and Kat had been using to lace flower stems the day of the first fire and just now.

  “Leave those ropes exactly as they are, but one of you stay to guard them—and this roof,” Elizabeth ordered. She went as quickly as her skirts would allow toward and down
the stairs, where she met Cecil, who was coming up.

  “Your Grace,” he cried, “I hear the mirror fire ignited your skirts and you beat the flames out with your bare hands!”

  Despite her haste, she almost laughed. “I am astounded how quickly tales become embellished at court, even one in the countryside. No, it was Kat’s skirts, which did not ignite, and which I smothered with a drape. My lord, go up on the roof to view the ropes above, then come down to me. I must speak with Floris Minton.”

  “Ropes above?”

  As their gazes met and held in the dark stairwell, she nodded. “The wielder of the fire mirror may have an accomplice,” she said, “one in our midst with access to the roof.”

  “You know the old adage ‘The better part of valor is discretion,’ Your Grace. We must leave Nonsuch for London, where you—all of us—will be safer.”

  She nodded. “Come down to the council room when you’ve seen the ropes,” she said, and pushed past him on the stairs.

  The women had dispersed from her chamber, and Elizabeth sent the rest of her guards except Clifford to join the chase. But for the drape she had pulled down and some scattered, wilting flower necklaces, nothing looked amiss. She stooped to pick up a daisy chain and examined the knot. Was it the same? And so what? Had she overreacted?

  Pushing the half-completed necklace up her sleeve, she went out in the hall and to Kat Ashley’s chamber. Quietly, she opened the door.

  Kat lay on her bed, still clothed but curled comfortably, asleep. Floris stood near her, leaning against a bedpost, just watching. Kat looked peaceful, but Floris’s face was wet with tears.

  When the nursemaid saw her, she swiped at her cheeks and came on silent feet around the bed and to the door. “Step out,” Elizabeth mouthed before the woman could curtsy. They stood in the corridor, and Floris quietly closed the door behind them. The queen saw Clifford was back on her own door, but ever watchful of his queen.

  “Your Grace,” Floris said, using that less formal form of address for the first time the queen could recall, “I beg you not to blame me.”

  “Blame you,” she said, her tone neither questioning nor condemning. The queen’s heartbeat kicked up, and not just from her fear and physical exertion in the last half hour. What was Floris going to confess?

  “I should not have fallen asleep like that in your chamber, even if Kat and you did,” Floris began, gripping her hands across her waist. “I should have been more watchful, for I know how much she means to you—to me, too, now, I swear it. And to think that after her fearful memories of that other fire where she could have been sent away from you for good … Your Grace, I beg you not to send me away from Kat for failing to keep a good watch on her. That is no doubt the crime she would have been punished for years ago when she tended you.”

  “I cannot hold what happened against you, Floris, for I never suspected the fire demon could reach us inside the palace or that my very bedchamber was not safe.”

  “But I fear I’ve disappointed you terribly. I was so honored to be helping you to look into these dangerous events, to be trusted. Protecting Kat is my main concern, and I know I failed in both things, Your Grace, but just as you kept Kat near you when she began that fire long ago—”

  “But you did not begin a fire.”

  “I did not imply that. And I don’t mean to sound like a madwoman loose from Bedlam, but I could have died when I woke and saw her skirts smoldering. Do you think the murderer meant to harm Kat, or just show his power to strike—or could he have thought it was you whose garments he ignited?”

  “Yes, I fear that’s possible.”

  “The thing is, we were all so close in the window together, with the sun on all our lower bodies but not on our faces so someone could see who was who.”

  “I know only that the mirror murderer is getting closer and closer, coming inside, nearer to those I care for—and so to myself.”

  “But that’s dreadful, so dangerous for you. Then we’ll be heading back to London where we can escape him?”

  Floris was bright, that was certain. And, of course, she wanted Kat to be well tended, for several reasons. Elizabeth had no doubt of Floris’s affection for the old woman—and, on a practical note, if anything happened to Kat, there would be no more reason for Floris to be so royally tended herself.

  “London, soon, I think,” Elizabeth said. “Very soon.”

  “And you will not send me away?” Floris went on, gripping her fingers so tightly they went white as sausages. “Your Grace, Kat reminds me so of my own mother, whom I nursed and then lost. I cannot bear to lose Kat, too.”

  “Nor can I, so we are sister spirits in that. You have been most careful and kind with her. And to think that when all of this happened,” Elizabeth mused, “we were simply playing games and chatting and making these.” She reached up her sleeve and pulled out the wilted flower necklace. “Wherever did you learn to do such designs with the stems?” she asked, hoping she sounded nonchalant.

  “The lacings and ties, you mean? My mother was a seamstress in Bromley who made lovely busks and corsets and bum roles—all undergarments. She tied them like that. I’ve known many others who make their knots that way, including Kat, who has no doubt dressed you from time to time.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Elizabeth said, placing the partial necklace around Floris’s neck. “This has taken so much out of me of late …” Her voice trailed off as she realized she was coming to think of this woman not only as a trusted servant, but almost a confidante, as she did Meg.

  “You were reared in Bromley, then,” Elizabeth said. “It is but a day’s journey from here. And you lost your mother young?”

  “I was young, but she had borne me when she was older. Perhaps it’s why I’ve always felt honored to nurse the elderly, and having Kat in my care is a little like having her back—a silly thought, I know.”

  “Not silly at all,” Elizabeth assured her, annoyed she was so suspicious of everyone lately. Next she’d be accusing Kat of something dire.

  Down the hall, she saw Cecil striding toward her chambers. “I have work to do, but I hope you too will rest for a while, Floris. I was just thinking that your name means ‘of flowers,’ so perhaps your mother loved flowers to name you so.”

  “She did, Your Grace,” the nursemaid said, her eyes misting again. “Especially spring daisies just like these.”

  The queen gave the orders to pack for London, with the news that they would be leaving first thing in the morning. The hubbub began, especially in the privy gardens below, where people were crowded into tents.

  As evening came on, the queen paced in her council chamber while Cecil stood at the window. They spoke of plots, of the diabolical ingenuity of this one with mirrors and fire.

  “And with Queen Mary using mirrors to try to frighten or threaten me,” Elizabeth said, “I cannot rule out that it could be a political plot.”

  “All plots near a monarch are political one way or the other, Your Grace.”

  Clifford’s knock on the door startled them both. “Enter!”

  “Your Majesty,” her yeoman cried as he opened the door, “your guards have found someone in the forest, someone known to all!”

  “Who is … ?” she got out as two of the tall guards dragged Giles Chatam to the door. “You!”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong, I swear it!” the actor cried, trying to shrug off the big, burly guards. “I was simply off by myself, walking along at sunset, learning my lines. Your Majesty, you do not believe I or the others in the company would be poaching in your hunt park?”

  “The other actors,” Hammond said, loosening his hold on Giles, “were camped at the edge of the palace property closest to Mortlake. But this one was in the woods itself, and that’s what you wanted delivered here, Your Majesty—man, woman, or child.”

  Once the guards had unhanded him, Giles swept her one of his embellished bows, although it looked a bit shaky this time. He had leaves and soil ground into the kn
ees of his stockings, and pieces of leaves or grass even stuck in his mussed hair.

  “Did you try to flee from or resist my men?” she asked.

  “Only at first, when I thought they were ruffians. It’s getting dark in the woods, Your Majesty, and robbers could be plentiful.”

  “Why, then, are you and the Queen’s Country Players in the darkening forest when you should be safely back in your attic rooms at the inn?”

  “None of us are sleeping there one more night, not with the innkeeper’s cottage burned next door and a vengeful ghost on the loose.”

  That took her aback, but she recovered quickly. “From whom did you hear about the ghost? It must have been recently, or you would no doubt have earlier found yourselves a better place for the night than the forest floor.”

  “I—yes, we heard just today.”

  “And you were told by …,” she prompted, getting angrier by the moment. She had just recalled a play she’d seen Giles in once, where he’d climbed to his lover’s balcony up a tree made of nailed and painted planks while carrying a looped rope over his shoulder so he could help his lady love escape her prison. And he’d slid down it handily while spouting verse in iambic pentameter!

  “I believe I heard it in the common room of the inn, Your Majesty. Dame Garver’s funeral was today, and everyone was greatly impressed with the mourners and meal you paid for, so perhaps word spread there, too. In short, everyone knows the queen herself saw the ghost of some boy and what it could import.”

  The queen spun her back to Giles and mouthed to Cecil, “Katherine Dee! She was a chatterbox before and is again.”

  “Am I under arrest, Your Most Gracious Majesty?” Giles dared.

  “Do you own ropes, Master Chatam?” she countered, turning back to face him.

  “Half a dozen at least,” he said with a slight shrug. “We tie boxes shut with them and secure them to our carts. We use them in certain plays.”