The Queene's Cure Page 5

  “Then,” Ned declared, “the maker of it doesn't know you at all, for you will not take this lying down—I mean—”

  The queen cut him off with a slash of her hand. The truth was she felt deeply, repeatedly shaken by it. Not only that someone had laid this thing out as if dead in her own coach, but that it had appeared as magically as if it had materialized from empty air, with a council table full of brilliant physicians, her own retinue, and the street full of people close by. Still, it was that ravaged face and hands, that hellish pox that made her go cold in the pit of her stomach.

  “And where would you have us look for the villain or villains, Your Majesty?” Ned asked with a sweeping gesture that seemed to encompass the entire city.

  “Here's my plan,” she said, “though of course, as always, when we meet in a Privy Plot Council, you may speak your minds.” But immediately, giving no one else space or leave to speak, she began to assign each a task to be done on the morrow.

  “Ned and Jenks, you are to take small saffron cakes from the royal larder to Knightrider Street at morning light and pass them out to people who returned from to-day's crowd.”

  “Saffron cakes?” Ned asked. “Wasn't there something bad about saffron Meg used to say—like it made one's head hurt?”

  “Stuff and nonsense. It's a good protectant against measles and smallpox. Besides, my new herbalist tells me that saffron crocus elixir makes one's head feel better and the senses quicker and livelier. Though,” she muttered, pressing her hands to her temples, “I had a cake this morning, and my head is hurting now. But saffron cakes it is, because I mentioned I'd had a craving for them and the cooks went overboard turning them out.”

  She was irritated to see Cecil rest his hand on his chin and his index finger over his pursed lips, which she had come to realize was his sign to her to keep calm when they were in public. It angered her even more that the man could predict a coming show of her Tudor temper. “And I'll not have chatter,” the queen went on in her most ringing, bell-clear voice, “about Mistress Milligrew to get me to miss her and take her back. She is banished, as is anyone who misleads or lies to me, hides a spouse, as she did, or takes my garments without permission as she did two years ago when we were at Windsor!

  “Now, as I was saying, Ned and Jenks,” she plunged on, instantly annoyed at herself for the outburst, “the two of you are, as circumspectly as possible, to question anyone from today's crowd you can find as to whether they saw something strange: someone carrying a covered form the size of the effigy, lurking in an alley, or toting a barrel or large box—anything suspicious.”

  “Even, I warrant,” Ned put in, throwing an arm over Jenks's shoulders to tug him close in a demonstration, “several people walking close who could hold this realistic woman up between them.”

  “Precisely. Now when Gil arrives,” she continued, “I intend to have him sketch this thing, though I am going to hide it in my library and have the door guarded. Meanwhile, I will search this form well. I am going to use my falconers' gloves, for they are thicker than riding ones, Cecil, to protect my hands when I search this effigy for clues to who may have secreted it in my carriage. The link to who sent it and what might be concealed on its person—that is, within its construction—can be the clue we need. Yet I will move as deliberately and carefully as a good physician on a diseased body, because we have seen before how hasty actions at the location of some crime can do us in.”

  “Haste makes waste,” Kat added, nodding sagely.

  “Exactly. Kat is going to try to trace how this thing could be wearing one of my gowns from the Royal Wardrobe storage, which is supposedly secure at Blackfriars,” Elizabeth continued. “And, though Mary Sidney has not helped us in investigations ere this, she stood close to me and glimpsed this effigy, so I might as well ask her to assist us.”

  “To fill in for Meg being miss—” Jenks said before he realized his mistake and shut his mouth.

  “Not to mention the fact,” Cecil put in, “if Lady Mary didn't see this thing, her brother has told her all about it. The man keeps secrets like a sieve does water.”

  Elizabeth flashed him a narrow glance. Cecil and Robin got on like bears and dogs in the baiting ring, though they had tolerated each other of late, publicly at least, for the sake of queen and kingdom.

  “I was going to say,” Elizabeth continued, “that I will ask the Lady Mary to try to find the source for this fashionably frizzed red wig, though, of course, that may be a dead end. Difficult, I mean,” she amended the way she'd put that. She had vowed to herself that this search would lead to no dead ends.

  “The Lady Mary,” Jenks put in, blushing slightly and perhaps trying to make up for his faux pas, “would be good for that with her sweet nature and all. She's kind to everyone and never raises her voice…” he got out before even he realized he'd done it again.

  “It's possible,” Elizabeth said, bridling her temper, “that anyone with lovely red hair could have donated it for misguided reasons and knew not how it would be used. But someone had to work it into a wig that resembles my own hair.”

  She gave her tresses a toss and felt the bejeweled headpins pull at her scalp. Realizing she had been so overwrought that she had not even removed her hat, she slowly did so. Kat scurried to help her.

  “All of you look at the hue of my hair,” Elizabeth said, shaking it loose to the style of maiden tresses she hardly displayed anymore. “Then look at that wig and tell me truly how close you think the color comes to my own. My hair has not been cut in months, so I wager that wig hair cannot be mine.”

  “The wig has none of your infinite, starry shine and lustre,” Ned began.

  “Leave off,” Elizabeth ordered. “The color. And this is dire business, actor of fantastical parts.”

  “All right, then,” Ned said, crossing his arms over his chest. “The wig's damn close.”

  “I warrant it is,” Kat admitted.

  “I'm afraid so,” Cecil concurred. “Someone selected and styled it who at least is a close observer, as I said before.”

  “Harry?” she asked, though she knew full well such comparisons were not on his horizon.

  He cleared his throat. “I like yours better, but it's set like what you've made the style, Your Grace, like my Anne wears now, frizzed and curled. And the wigmaker has aped that, for certain.”

  A flutter of knocks rattled the privy door in the queen's bedchamber, and Jenks went to open it for Gil Sharpe, Elizabeth's young artist. No one else knocked like that. The tall, thin lad had been mute since he was a youngster, but his mind was as nimble as his fingers and he could hear normally. He spoke only by hand signals and exaggerated facial expressions his mother, Bett, had taught him as a lad. None but Bett and the queen could communicate with him as fast; their talk often looked like a blur to others.

  “Gil has the artist's eye,” the queen declared. “He will be a good judge of color.”

  Though Gil was fourteen with one foot on the threshold of manhood, he still had the deceptive face of a cherub under a shock of fawn-hued hair. As ever, he exploded into the room with energy and verve, his velvet sack of charcoal sticks in one hand and a sheaf of parchment in the other.

  “Gil, is this a close copy of me, the coloring especially?” the queen asked, gesturing at the effigy.

  Gil gasped, then gaped at it. He walked carefully closer, then circled it, forcing the others to step back as he passed each. The lad looked wary, as if the thing would rear up and grab him. Finally, he touched it tentatively with one finger on its wrist, then, wide-eyed, pulled his hand back.

  He handed his things off to Kat, then said with his quick gestures and lively expressions: not enough breasts, though yours are small too. He cupped both hands on his own chest, then pulled and pushed at his nose. It has nose too short, not beaked, like yours. Maybe a mixture of wax or plaster. Here he made motions as if he were rolling or smoothing something. But an artist did the face and matched that hair color. A person with a steady hand
for small tasks and details, just like me—

  “All right, then, Gil,” she interrupted. She translated what he'd said as, “The shape of the bodice is too flat and the nose a bit unlike mine, but the villain may be some sort of artist, because the hair color and face is close. We are dealing, everyone,” she pronounced, “I believe, with someone of means for payments or bribes to bring all this together—artist, plaster, gown, hair—and the covert conveyance and delivery of the thing.”

  “But who is going to try to trace the plaster, Your Grace?” Ned asked. “I know it's used to build walls and for medicated dressings for physicians' plasters and heaven knows what else.”

  “Yes—for physicians and heaven knows what else.” She then went on to admit the idea she'd been hatching. “I am going to look into the plaster image myself by visiting some other effigies, royal ones too. Like all of you, I shall report on that at dusk tomorrow when we assemble here again. Suffice it to say for now that we must put out the story that some unknown admirer left this replica in my coach—and should someone ask or speculate on its complexion, say the skin somehow became scratched and scraped a bit. I want no word or idea of the pox to gain purchase.”

  She looked around at each of them again, waiting for more questions, but she saw only nods. “I thank God for each of you in this endeavor,” she told them. “And my Lord Cecil, I would have you visit the physicians of the Royal College to see if they saw aught or can suggest who might have put this thing in my coach—in their own bailiwick, so to speak. And heed with care their words, because they are as good at dispensing them as pills, and I trust them much less than I wish I could.”

  “Consider it done, Your Grace,” Cecil said. “The members of the Royal College are suspect indeed, since the effigy was obviously placed in your carriage by someone who knew your schedule and could somehow maneuver the form quickly from a nearby hiding place while you and your entourage were distracted.”

  “Indeed, though Robin had remained outside and should have seen something,” she said as an afterthought. “And John Caius had just asked me for corpses to dissect!” Kat cringed, and the others jerked alert. Cecil alone didn't budge.

  “I've heard, Your Grace,” he said, frowning, “Caius is a bit of an artist himself and sketches diseased bodies, palsied faces—”

  “Aha!” she interrupted. “Then digging to the bottom of this insult may be easier than we think. But now I'll ask all of you to disperse but for Kat and Gil while we search and sketch our best and only evidence, just as Dr. Caius evidently plans to do with real bodies.”

  AFTER ELIZABETH HAD SUMMONED MARY SIDNEY TO explain her task and give her a snippet from the wig, the queen, Kat, and the busy Gil, who was making sketch after sketch, were alone. “Now to examine this counterfeit at close range without taking it totally apart,” she said as she tugged on the hawking gauntlets.

  But the gauntlets were totally unwieldy, thick with suede and leather to protect skin from the hawks' talons. She soon threw them on the floor and donned riding gloves as Cecil had first suggested, though she'd not tell him he'd been right on this.

  Carefully, she removed the circlet of crude crown and lay it aside; it was all wires with a few paste and wax mock gems on it, the most shoddy part of this dreadful display. She peeked under the wig. The head was carved wood with the facade of the almost pliable plaster face laid over it.

  “Do you think the fiend who made this is implying you're a blockhead?” Kat queried, and Gil snorted his silent laugh.

  “This is deadly serious, both of you,” Elizabeth scolded.

  The wig was sewn to a silk base and stuck into the wood with flat-headed metal pins. They were mayhap the sort that dressmakers used, or some physicians to draw a small sample of bad blood when they didn't want the gush a lancet brought. Then too, she'd heard artists who desired multiple copies of a portrait would draw a master sketch, then make pinpricks in the outline and smear charcoal through the tiny holes onto another paper. That faint outline would then be inked or painted in.

  The queen felt through the wig with the tips of her gloved fingers, to be certain nothing was secreted in the curled hair, then lifted the wig off. “The work here is quite fine—small stitches in the silken skullcap. And no opening into the head,” she said and replaced the wig, even taking pains to straighten it so it looked right again.

  She pulled the narrow ruff aside and set to examining the neck of the thing—an extension of the wooden head—and then worked her way down the body. Kat untied the small bows attaching the tapered sleeves to the bodice and pulled them down the arms. While Kat turned the sleeves inside out, the queen carefully squeezed the arms. Finding nothing amiss, they rolled up the lower skirts to observe that the legs were much like the arms.

  “Linen skin stuffed with something soft,” Elizabeth observed. “Something a bit stiff and crunchy too.”

  “Straw?” Kat asked, carefully squeezing the limbs too.

  “I don't think so. You're just picturing the country scare-the-crows that used to stand in the wheat near Hatfield or those dummies-at-the-quintain that jousters took their lances to in practice. This is far finer work than that.”

  “I recall, lovey,” Kat said, “you once watched Robin Dudley make passes at the quintain with his sword and lance for hours at Windsor. His squire used to crudely dress his dummy like Catherine de' Medici, even with a wig and crown, and you laughed and laughed.”

  “I'm not laughing now. That was long ago I hung on Robin's every word and ploy to get in my good graces. No more!”

  “Whatever the stuffing is, it smells good, like your favorite strewing herbs,” Kat observed. Also wearing riding gloves, the old woman poked at, squeezed, and sniffed the effigy's arm above the lifelike plaster hands— long-fingered, graceful hands, just like hers, Elizabeth marveled. She saw Kat glance at the floor of the chamber with its herbs swept into corners by skirts and feet. Elizabeth knew what she was thinking. When Meg Milligrew was here, the floors were kept sweeter and fresher. The queen heaved a huge sigh, and saw Gil start as if the effigy itself had made the sound.

  “No, Kat,” Elizabeth insisted, returning to their task, “that's not this thing you're smelling. The meadowsweet and woodruff 's on the floor, and the hint of lavender's in our pomanders and garments.”

  Gil stopped drawing again and gestured to her, I think this thing also smells just like you. If Bett was here she could tell you what's inside with one sniff, and you wouldn't even have to cut into it.

  “I'm not sending for Bett now,” Elizabeth said. “Go sit over there and work until I call you back.” She let him think he was just getting in her way when she actually did not want anyone but Kat to see her disrobe the effigy. Gil shrugged and shuffled away to perch on the curved, padded bench under the oriel window where the fading outside light was better.

  “Now,” Elizabeth whispered to Kat, “let's look all the way up under my stolen skirts.”

  The petticoats were hardly as full as her own, but her mocker had not skimped on them, mayhap to keep the tawny brocade gown from dragging if the effigy was stood straight up. Each holding a side of the outer skirt, Kat and the queen lifted it up to cover the figure's head, as if it shouldn't see its own intimate examination.

  “That top petticoat's one of yours, I warrant,” Kat judged as she squinted at it.

  “How can you tell?”

  “If you ever helped dress yourself these days, you'd know. See here,” she said and pointed a gloved hand at a white embroidered circlet near the hem. “E.R., plain as day.”

  “There's nothing wrong with your eyes, my Kat,” Elizabeth told her, pleased at the proof and yet even more annoyed at her petticoats being pilfered too.

  “It's just I knew where to look,” Kat said as they peeled up the next layer of linen, then one of taffeta, then the next, until they came to the bum roll. The sausageshaped, stuffed bolster was knotted flat across the belly but bulged on the sides and back to push out the skirts. It was much more old-
fashioned than the current cagelike farthingales, but bum rolls were still in use.

  “We'll have to cut into that, too, but right now let's see the rest of her,” Elizabeth said as she exposed the linen hips and midriff, which looked rather lumpy with their stuffing. But as she got a knife and prepared to cut into a thigh, she hesitated. What if something dangerous was hidden within? Even if it wasn't, she half expected this thing to bleed.

  She steeled herself, then touched the knife to the cloth and drove it in, before they both startled at the rapping on the hall door. She'd given orders she was not to be disturbed. But 'S blood, she was disturbed by all of this!

  As the queen stayed her dagger, Kat went to the door and said through it, “The queen's resting. Who's there?”

  “It's Cecil, Lady Ashley. I shall just step in a moment, then, and leave these important papers for Her Majesty to tend to in the morning.”

  Kat glanced at Elizabeth, who nodded and moved to meet him just inside the door rather than have him see the half-denuded form. But when he stepped in and closed the door, he discarded his sheaf of papers on a chair and peered over her shoulder.

  “I see,” he said, gesturing at a discarded hawking glove on the floor, “you've thrown down the gauntlet.”

  She knew he did not intend a jest. No one smiled or laughed. Everyone stared now at the dagger she held in her gloved hand. Silence hung heavy in the royal rooms.

  “I am determined,” she told him, annoyed at herself for blinking back tears, “to ferret out the villain.”

  “Or villainess,” he countered, his brow furrowed. “I fear we might have more of those who wish you ill than we want to admit. Your Majesty, I returned not only to see what you have found. I believe we must indeed follow clues to uncover links to someone unknown. But we must also make a list of certain dangerous persons who are your blood kin, those we know would like not only to dismay or harm you, but also—”