The Fatal Fashione Page 4

  But as she glanced beyond him at the clusters of her ladies, chatting with each other and the courtiers who stood about, she saw Thomas Gresham himself coming down the corridor with great speed, especially for one who limped so badly. His walking stick thumped out a quick beat on the oaken floor as if someone were pounding on a door. He looked frantic.

  Thank God he was safe, but his haste boded nothing good. As she snatched the note back, she realized Gresham might have been to Hannah’s loft and found the body. He’d probably already reported it, and a public inquiry might turn up that Dirck van der Passe had been in the vicinity—or that her servant Meg was.

  “Your Majesty, may I have leave to speak?” Thomas cried out when he was yet twenty feet away.

  “Enter first,” she called to him, and gestured toward her withdrawing chamber.

  She could tell he was loath not to shout to her from where he was, yet he followed her into the room and went down on his good knee. “My dear daughter’s missing, Your Grace,” he cried before she even gave him leave to speak. “I and my men have searched everywhere near Gresham House and the exchange site, but I beg your help to put out a hue and cry for any news of her.”

  “Yes, of course. She’s twelve, I believe?”

  “Thirteen, Your Grace, but seems to believe she is older and more responsible than that.”

  “Ah, yes, I remember. Thomas, you haven’t been to either of the starch houses, have you?”

  “Why, no. I planned to go today, but we discovered Marie was missing and …”

  “I’ll summon men to help you hunt for her. You must try to calm yourself and think of places she might be, places you haven’t looked yet, or even admitted to yourself she might have gone. You must write a good description of her and perhaps what she was wearing for me to give my men.”

  “At once, Your Majesty. I warrant she had on her dark blue cloak on this windy day, a recent gift.” As he spoke, he seemed to stare into space. “Very blonde like the mother who gave her birth,” he went on, as if to himself. “Comely and fair, tall for her age, pert nose, graceful, delicate-looking, she is, but made of stiffer stuff than she seems …”

  “Get up, Thomas,” Elizabeth said, when his voice drifted off and it looked as if he would slump to the floor. She helped the trembling man to his feet and led him to a chair. “Sit here while I summon my yeomen guards, and do not fear.”

  The queen knew her words were bolder than her heart. She feared not only for a pretty female child of a rich and well-known man in big, busy London but for the female who floated, yet unidentified, in a vat of thickening starch not far from here.

  Meg was relieved Jenks knew a back way to Hannah’s loft through the vast royal mews and down a narrow, dim alley. At least their solemn assignment kept Ned and Jenks—and her, she admitted—from quarreling. They planted Bates, one of the queen’s elite yeomen guards, now wearing daily garb, near the place. Jenks led the way up the dim stairs she’d climbed earlier today; they were much darker now. Ned brought up the rear, silent for once. The breeze had picked up even more. A blast of air swooped down the enclosed staircase from above, and Meg recalled that the large window overlooking the fields had been open.

  “All clear,” Jenks whispered, and motioned them up into the loft.

  “Hardly all clear,” she whispered. “Oh!”

  “What?” Ned asked.

  “My sacks of roots I dropped right here and left behind. Someone’s dragged them off a bit—and two of them are missing! That’s precious herb they’ve taken!”

  “They who? And keep your voice down,” Ned ordered. “But are you certain? I mean, in your panic to flee and fetch help—”

  “Yes, I’m certain! You saw I had four sacks when you lifted two of them from my shoulders,” she whispered. Jenks frowned at both of them, but she had no time to explain. Ignoring his rival’s glare, Ned moved quietly but quickly to peer into the narrow rectangular vat she’d described to them. He squinted, trying in vain to see into the dense liquid.

  “What if the body’s been moved, too?” she whispered.

  “Stuff and nonsense,” Ned said. “I’d sooner say you imagined a hand floating beneath that viscous, opaque liquor.”

  “Stow the fancy words and dramatic speeches,” Meg hissed at him. “You may live in a world of fancy, but not I!”

  “Devil take it,” Jenks said, also trying to peer in, “the vat is shaped like a coffin, but I don’t see anything in it. Not hand nor hair nor hem of a gown.”

  “That can’t be!” She leaned over the murky vat, which seemed not as full now. The liquid looked much grayer than she remembered. “It’s just beneath the surface, that’s all,” she cried.

  “Corpses in the river sink until they’ve partly rotted, then they float,” Jenks put in.

  “Hell’s gates, would you stow it, man?” Ned demanded. “This isn’t the river.”

  Meg watched as the breeze, through the open window over the starch bath, made the surface seem to shudder. Both Ned and Jenks were making her so overwrought she’d like to shove their thick heads into this thick stuff.

  “Just find me a stirring stick or hand me one of those poking rods, and I’ll show you,” she ordered. “I know I saw part of a body in there, a dainty hand, graceful, too.”

  “Was it limp?” Jenks asked.

  “Not,” Ned said, “in a stiffening vat of starch.”

  “Leave off, both of you!” she demanded. As she took another step toward the vat, the soles of her shoes stuck slightly to the floor. She looked down and saw that they were standing in a half-dried, flaking puddle she was certain had not been there when she saw the hand. She knew she hadn’t splashed anything out.

  “Someone else has been here for sure,” she whispered wide-eyed, as Jenks thrust the long wooden stirring stick into her hands. Suddenly even more scared, Meg stood still as a statue. Air through the large window moved loose tendrils of her hair against her sweating forehead and cheeks. Out the window, she could see the patchwork of drying linens and hear in the distance a woman’s shouts. Shaking, she pushed the long stick down by inches into the starch bath and moved it slowly toward each of the sides of the vat, then the corners. Nothing. Nothing.

  “God as my judge, I saw a human hand in here!” she wailed.

  Ned took the stick from her and stirred to make slow ripples swirl. “Could it have been some sort of apparition? Some twist of light in this strange brew, perhaps a reflection of your own hand?”

  Almost ready to explode into sobs, she just shook her head wildly.

  “Then,” Ned went on, “the body’s either been pilfered or it’s taken itself for a walk. Maybe those were ghostly footprints on the stairs we came up.”

  “What?” Jenks challenged. His feet making light crunching sounds, he went over to stare down the steps. “Oh, those small spots of pale white? But they only go partway down and then seem to just fade into nothing.”

  “See what I mean—spirits abroad,” Ned insisted.

  Meg tried to speak calmly, rationally. “The queen will have our heads if we’ve been traipsing through footsteps and evidence and such and she decides to call a Privy Plot Council meeting to investigate.”

  Properly chastened, they searched the rest of the large, irregularly shaped loft and finally found six fat rolls of ruff fabric, two each of cambric, linen, and lawn, standing on end on a deep shelf in the farthest corner—a shelf that was dripping onto the shelf below and then onto the floor.

  “That’s just Hannah’s rolls of patching pieces,” Meg whispered. “They don’t make ruffs here.” She refused to go closer until Jenks took her arm and tugged her along.

  Without another word, the men lifted the partially wet rolls of fabric away to reveal a wet, clothed corpse on the shelf. The three of them gasped in unison, then stood, shoulder to shoulder, staring as if they worshipped at a shiny marble effigy of a saint on an altar.

  At first glance, the graceful, petite woman seemed asleep, but her slender body
was glazed with a pearly film, drying from slick to crusty. It matted her pale eyelashes to her cheeks and her long, loose blond hair to her head and neck, at least where her tresses didn’t stand straight out. Still sopped with starch, her sea-blue skirts formed fantastical shapes, but the edges, hems, and fringes—and her little neck ruff—had already gone sharply stiff.

  Chapter the Third

  “HEY, THERE—YOU, GIRL!”

  The woman’s voice meant nothing until she came close and stuck her face nearly nose to nose.

  “You all right, then?” the woman asked. “You been standing there for hours, I seen you. And I can tell by your clothes you’re not a street girl.”

  She hoped this woman would leave her alone. Strange, but she’d lost her voice, her thoughts. Lost herself. Desperately, she’d been trying to remember something—or was it to forget?

  “Not’scaped from a forced betrothal or some such, have you? You look frighted. Someone been bothering you? We’re whitsters, see? We wash, bleach, and dry linens, that’s our trade. You don’t belong here. You just keep clear of trouble on the streets, hear?”

  She nodded. Her head hurt, and her eyes ached from staring so long at the bright sheets in the wind and sun—and then at the high, open window across the way. Its slanted planes caught the sinking sun now and nearly blinded her, but she kept staring. She wanted to run from something, but her feet felt like lead, as in a nightmare. Was she dreaming? Something dreadful had happened. She’d seen it. But what?

  “You hungry?” the woman asked, holding out a hunk of bread with a piece of yellow cheese.

  She shook her head.

  “Cat got your tongue, then?”

  No, I’m fine, she tried to say, but she didn’t hear her own words, her voice. She just kept hearing a muffled scream—and then nothing else.

  But she did know one thing. The mere sight of food almost made her sick. She’d vomited in the hedges of this field earlier. She wanted to walk away from this place, this view, but she couldn’t bear to go home. Not now. She was not even sure where home was.

  “Here now, mistress,” the same woman was saying, “you look peaked. Can I fetch someone for you, then? My name’s Ursala Hemmings, so what’s yours, eh? I’ve a friend near here, has a starch shop, and you could rest there out of the wind and sun while we find your folks.”

  A starch shop … starch shop.

  Either she screamed No! at the woman or just thought she did. Some kind of sound like a shriek echoed, echoed, trapped in her head, trapped in a big attic. She gripped her laced fingers tighter as if she were praying. But she wasn’t. She was just trying to make all the grief and horror stop.

  Wending her way through the women with their linens, she turned away and started out of the busy field. Her shadow was long now, as if someone dark followed her. She didn’t feel her feet. It was almost as if she floated, as if she had to swim through a thick, white haze. She gazed one last time at the high, open window, then forced her feet at a quicker pace away.

  “You sent for the Reverend Hosea Cantwell, Your Majesty?” Cecil asked as he came in with a stack of bills and grants for her to sign. “He’s been put in the corridor anteroom to await you and seems mad as a wet hen—a dour Puritan one.”

  The queen stopped walking so fast her skirts swayed. She’d been pacing, waiting for word about the body in the starch vat. Cecil knew naught of that yet, though he’d been a key member of her Privy Plot Council. Over the last eight years, a small group of trusted friends and servants had helped her solve several murders that had struck close to the crown.

  Besides that distress, she’d been praying her men who had fanned out over the city with Thomas Gresham’s staff would find his daughter. Never had her little band searched for a missing person who was not a murderer, but she had silently vowed the Gresham girl would be found.

  “’S blood, yes, I sent for Cantwell, but it slipped my mind,” she admitted, and smacked the heel of her hand against her forehead so hard she rattled her pearl eardrops. “My lord, I cannot abide Cantwell’s public pulpit rantings against me. Or against current fashions, as he’s likely to damage the ruff-making industry or the starch market. That, in turn, would affect the dyers, the seamstresses, and the tailors,” she plunged on, flinging gestures.

  “I completely agree, Your Grace. Indeed, one man could affect the balance of crafts and trades, and just now while the mercantile exchange is being built.”

  “Exactly. Hosea Cantwell makes far too much out of little things, not to mention he’s one of the most vocal agitators in the Commons about my marital status.”

  “It’s not just you he harangues, Your Grace, I assure you.”

  “But it’s I who mean to have it out with him,” she declared, and headed for the door.

  His arms still full of papers, Cecil leaped to open it for her. “Then should I accompany you?”

  “I need you to stay here and inform me if Meg Milligrew, Ned Topside, or Steven Jenks returns.” She stepped back into the room and closed the door. “There’s been a strange death at Hannah von Hoven’s starch house.’S blood, just wait until Cantwell gets wind of that. Oh,” she said, opening the door again despite his stunned expression, “and let me know at once if there is word of Thomas Gresham’s young daughter being found.”

  “What? All that when I’ve been gone but three hours?”

  “I’ll explain the moment I have dealt with Cantwell. I have never met with him privily, but it needs to be done,” she concluded, and left him sputtering.

  If Hosea Cantwell had been, as Cecil had said, angry, that was not the case now, Elizabeth noted as he bowed before her and they exchanged proprieties. Rather, he seemed sure of himself, almost smug, not the wet hen but the cock of the walk. The man was much too handsome to be a Puritan cleric, or lay preacher, as he was often called. His hair shone like polished ebony; dark lashes fringed large brown eyes in a well-chiseled face. He had a Roman nose, which balanced a strong mouth. His manly form bespoke more of riding and sweating than of reading and sermonizing. No wonder more people than Puritans filled his pews lately. Elizabeth thought all that made him more, not less, dangerous.

  “Let me cut directly to the topic at hand,” the queen said as Cantwell began to comment on the windy weather. “Do you not have better things—more important things—to speak of from your pulpit and in the halls of Parliament than styles and starch?”

  “Ah, and I thought I was summoned for my stance on your marital state, Your Majesty.”

  “It goes without saying that I resent your trying to coerce your queen to that. But starch, man? Would you have us return to the old-fashioned days of paste wives with laces steeped in egg white or made rigid with beeswax and wire supportasses, which go all limp and poke one in the neck or wrist to boot? Is it true you have ranted that starch is ‘the devil’s liquor’?”

  “I pray I have not ranted. Counseled, perhaps. Pleaded. I plead guilty to that, at least, Your Gracious Majesty.”

  Somehow this man kept defusing her fury. With his wit and puns, she might think she was verbally sparring with Ned Topside. Was this the same person who had glared at her when she defied Parliament? Though she’d pictured him up close as stiff-faced with a stiffer backbone, his lips curled into a smile and his eyes twinkled. His voice was smooth and modulated, not piercing, as someone had told her it was when he preached.

  “May I explain, Your Most Gracious Majesty?”

  “You may try.”

  “While courtiers and the Londoners who ape them and the English who then ape the Londoners spend small fortunes and large amounts of precious time on what is on their backs—around their wrists and necks in this instance—they are being ensnared by the world of the flesh and the devil. The ruffs, like other personal tomfooleries, grow larger and larger. Forgive me, Your Majesty, but any fashion you set, all will follow. Starch is but one foreshadowing, no doubt, of a curse on our nation—a curse that can spread. You already favor black and white, not so far a reach
from plain Puritan garb, so why not simple collars and cuffs?”

  She’d like to cuff him, the queen thought. Yet, though she was ready to explode at his presumptions and his dire prophecy, he’d said that last with a little disparaging flourish of his hand toward his own garments. She felt entirely pent up about the Gresham girl and the death at the starch house. She had fully expected to berate this man, but his demeanor and delivery were not what she had expected. Was he one who could change his leopard’s spots quickly and at will, like Satan himself?

  This man bore watching, she decided, and not just because he was quite clever. She didn’t trust those whom she knew opposed her yet tried to get in her good graces. The man had criticized her garments, her judgment, and her morals, yet done it so cunningly she had found no sure footing to scold him in turn.

  “That is all for now, as I have much to do,” she told him, and waited until he bowed himself out. No good if he’d be hanging about to hear there could have been a murder in a starch house today—and in a vat of the very thing he had labeled “the devil’s liquor.”

  Elizabeth barely had time to tell Cecil that Hosea Cantwell was not only a critic of morals but a chameleon of moods when her trio of servants trooped back in via the privy staircase that faced the river. Her lady-in-waiting Rosie Radcliffe, now her most trusted confidante since her dear friend Kat Ashley had died, had opened the door for them behind the arras when they knocked.

  “We decided to come by this entrance, for you told us to go the back way, Your Grace,” Ned explained.

  “Good, but never mind all that. Was there a dead woman in the vat?”

  “No—and yes,” Meg said, out of breath. “Someone had lifted Hannah out—”