The Fyre Mirror: An Elizabeth I Mystery: 1 (Elizabeth I Mysteries) Read online

  “Did Dr. Dee have someone about the house or laboratory helping him the day the mirror disappeared?” she asked Katherine.

  “He was not at home that day. He’d gone out to prepare for his annual May Day celebration, where a bonfire is built on a distant hill. He amuses everyone with his big mirror by sending signals from it, flashes of lights in some sort of code. I’ve never seen that event, but everyone far and wide in these parts looks forward to it. It’s an old Celtic custom—forgive me, Your Majesty, but quite pagan in origins.”

  “Now that is something I would like to see.”

  “I know he planned to invite you today, Your Majesty—and your courtiers at Nonsuch. Since Richmond Palace lies close by Mortlake, perhaps you could move there for the celebration.”

  Elizabeth studied the young woman in the sun. She seemed so sincere, yet there was something too planned out about all this. “Though this is your first year here at Mortlake, Katherine, do you know how large a signal glass he uses for his May Day revels?”

  “It’s under a shroud in his workshop. As big as this,” she said and, childlike, rounded her arms over her head so her fingers almost touched.

  “I’d almost forgotten,” Elizabeth mused aloud. “He’s spoken to me before of wanting to experiment with large mirrors from fortress to fortress or from ship to ship in some sort of code.” Though she did not let on, she also recalled that Dr. Dee himself had mentioned how Archimedes had burned ships’ sails from afar with his huge concave mirror. But all this meant nothing. The profound Dr. Dee and his flighty new wife were not under suspicion for anything yet, though, indeed, they had ridden into Nonsuch shortly before the tent caught fire. And Dee had let slip that his wife took a walk in the woods just after they arrived.

  As if her thoughts had summoned him, the queen saw John Dee in the kitchen door, an anxious look on his face. “When you did not return, Your Majesty,” he called out, “I thought it best I look in on both of you. Besides, the Earl of Leicester believes it is time for you to head back to Nonsuch.”

  “And so it is. Katherine, you will speak with your husband on the missing mirror. Dr. Dee,” she said as she passed him, “I bid you good day and tell you I have accepted Katherine’s invitation to join you this year for your May Day celebrations. I shall bring a party of forty or so and will leave a man here tonight to find us accommodations. Richmond Palace is being cleaned, and I’d rather not move everyone there for just one night.”

  “But of course, you may stay with us, Your Majesty,” Katherine put in, hurrying behind. “As for forty, though …”

  “I would not impose. As I said, I will leave my man Jenks with you this night and will see you again in but a week. Until then, Dr. Dee, I shall send for you if there is more you can do in the matter of the fire murders.”

  She swept through the kitchen and into the small solar, where her retinue amused themselves over a chessboard. Clifford and Jenks jumped to their feet while Robin and Rosie stood more slowly with a bow and a curtsy. Cecil must still have been outside.

  “Jenks, to me,” Elizabeth said, and stepped into the narrow hall with him. “I am leaving you here one night to do two things. Arrange for myself and a party of forty or so for May Day in the Riverside Inn just across the way.”

  “That big old place? But Richmond is so close—”

  “Do as I say. I want to be near events, not walled off in a palace which is being cleaned. Except for that one night, I am determined to stay at Nonsuch until we find our arsonist.”

  “Yes, Your Grace.”

  “Also, keep your eyes and ears open for whatever passes between the Dees about a lost mirror. And while you’re about all that,” she whispered, “see if you can butter up that serving girl Sarah to find out if she saw what happened to the mirror Mistress Dee says she left on the garden bench before it simply disappeared.”

  “Like magic?” Jenks lowered his voice even more. “Some say John Dee knows all the sorcerer’s arts, you know.”

  It was later than Elizabeth had intended when the royal retinue returned to Nonsuch, so she did not summon her artists to paint her. Instead, to help foster the feeling of normalcy, she hosted a dinner set up on plank tables in the outer courtyard, followed by a recitation of rural love sonnets by her master of revels and principal player, Ned Topside. The festivities, the queen had announced, were in honor of Lord Maitland’s visit. He was leaving for Scotland the next morning, so she and Cecil spoke with him in private after everyone else was dismissed to return to their tents.

  “I charge you to continue to counsel my dear cousin Queen Mary not to wed Lord Darnley,” Elizabeth told Maitland as the three of them sat in her outer chamber over wine. Though she had set this marital trap for Mary, she wanted to clear her conscience somewhat. “Tell her the man’s character is not well proven.”

  Maitland shook his big head. “Unlike you, Your Majesty, Queen Mary has little wit for knowing whom to trust truly, especially when it comes to dashing men.”

  “Or she would trust you more, would she not, my lord?” Cecil needled him. Elizabeth was ever amazed by how well the two of them, considering their opposing loyalties, got on.

  “I wish it were a laughing matter,” Maitland replied. “Indeed, not only her passion for Lord Darnley, but her leaning so hard on the Italian upstart, David Rizzio, shows how misguided she has become. The man began as one of her musicians and has become her closest adviser!”

  “Is he handsome, then?” Elizabeth asked, and sipped her wine.

  “Strangely not, Your Majesty. Dark and swarthy, but he favors her match with Darnley. Rizzio’s getting as arrogant and greedy for power as Darnley himself,” Maitland groused, twisting his big signet ring on the middle finger of his right hand. “I tell you, I do not look forward to going home. But is there any other message you would send to Her Grace?”

  “Yes,” the queen said, rising and setting her goblet down so hard that wine sloshed from it as both men also stood. “Tell her this, my lord, word for word. If she must gaze in mirrors to admire herself, best she not be so dangerously confused she does not realize she sees only the Queen of Scotland there and no other.”

  “And,” Cecil added, “tell her if she does anything to incite our northern shires to rebellion, she might as well break every mirror in her kingdom and add up seven years of bad luck for each. The Queen of England will not allow her people or her places to be inflamed against her.”

  The next morning, the queen posed for Lavina, Henry Heatherley, and her Gilberto Sharpino in the meadow between the hunt park and the palace. Cecil had counseled against it, but she wanted to demonstrate she was not afraid to sit near the spot where the tent had burned. Despite the tragic loss of Will Kendale and his servant boy, life must go on.

  Besides, she’d argued, if her posing drew out the arsonist with the mirror, so much the better. Next time, they would catch him. Ned Topside had reported that no one he’d interviewed had seen anything unusual the morning of the fire, so she was getting desperate to flush someone out.

  Her people seemed to be defiant too, for both courtiers and commoners from the palace and the encampment sat or strolled nearby, enjoying both the weather and the sight of their queen, sitting still as a statue for once. Floris had brought Kat out, and both women sat at their apparently favorite pastime when outside, stringing flower necklaces for everyone. But it warmed the queen like the sun to have her Kat content.

  “I must admit, Your Majesty,” Henry Heatherley pronounced, grandly flourishing a crimson-tipped brush, “this is the best light an artist can have. It will help me keep the colors true, and it brings out your fine features.”

  “It casts wonderful, stark shadows,” the queen heard Gil murmur under his breath, though no one reacted to that.

  Lavina said, “Oh, yes, I like it too, Master Heatherley. Your Majesty, being in the sun of late has put the pink back in your cheeks.”

  Elizabeth was tempted to say, So I no longer look so whey-faced? but she kept
silent. Posing here was much better than sitting within the confines of a palace in London or even inside Nonsuch. The air was fresh and cool, and she did not feel trapped. And no foe, threatening fear at the most and fire at the worst, was going to steal all this from her.

  “Gil, how is this alfresco studio for you?” she asked as she rose to take her first stretch of the morning. Hoping to lighten his mood, she was anxious to see how the lad was doing after all that talk of Italy, Titian, and live models. She handed her scepter and orb to Rosie and loosed the heavy ermine mantle from her shoulders to let it fall back on the large chair which the artists would transpose to a throne.

  “I am barely begun,” Gil said as she strolled toward him, “but I much favor these conditions and this style.”

  “Oh,” she said, peering at the vibrant multicolored sketch he had made of her on stretched canvas. “Despite how I’ve posed, you don’t have me looking straight ahead. But a foursquare gaze traditionally evokes an aura of royal power and vigilance.”

  In her peripheral vision, she could see the smug look on Heatherley’s face, and Lavina elbowing him as if to say, The upstart boy has gone too far already. Floris and Kat had come closer with some others to gaze at Gil’s work too.

  “I realize, Your Grace,” Gil said, still finishing the sketch, “that other English artists tend to turn the head a bit but not the eyes. Yet you sent me abroad to learn what I could. As I said, I admire Titian, and he often paints his royal and noble subjects not only turned to the side but looking to the side.”

  “But our queen,” Heatherley put in, “cannot be compared to others. Turning the head with the eyes makes her seem uninterested, even reticent.”

  “Never our queen!” Gil flared. “This position says she is so great and powerful that she need not watch us directly, and yet is in command of all things. Why, even now, she glanced aside to see her artists smile when she questioned me. What, exactly, is she thinking? people will wonder. How at ease in her power she is, how in control, and hardly stiff and still but living and so genuine and real!”

  The queen could not help but smile. She and Cecil in their quest to promote her power through a portrait could not have said it better. Gil’s style was fresh and free, but solid, too. Yet she regretted that Heatherley looked livid, and she was sure Lavina would soon start spouting her vills and dats.

  “I believe I like it,” the queen pronounced. “One of my mottoes is Tutto vedo and molto mancha—I see everything and much is lacking. I rather think it conveys that idea.”

  “Vell,” Lavina put in, “his colors are goot. Brought pigments back from Italy, I guess.”

  “Just this yellow and red to mix for Her Majesty’s unique and glorious hue of hair,” Gil answered, pointing to the outline he’d done of her coiffure under the crown. “Titian paints Venetian women with rich hues, especially red-gold hair, though theirs is bleached, then tinted with henna. Our queen has no such need of artifice. And these lines suggest movement, not a static figure needing to be copied by mere tracery as we do here in Eng—” Gil stopped in midword and looked around as if he’d just emerged from a dream—and perhaps stepped into a nightmare. “I don’t mean to sound as if I boast,” he said haltingly, almost as if another person spoke.

  “So,” Heatherley said, stepping even closer and squinting at Gil’s canvas, “is there some other way the Italian artists reproduce a portrait? If yours cannot be copied with punching and tracing the outline, what good is your work, for our queen will order her official portrait reproduced time and again.”

  “I didn’t mean it could not be copied,” Gil clipped out, looking suddenly stricken. “Your Majesty, may I take a moment away, if you please?”

  “Of course,” she assured him, but she was greatly vexed that something was wrong. Each time her young artist spoke of Italian artists’ techniques, it seemed something frightened him, something he could not say. Gil had never been one to keep secrets, even when he and his mother made their living from climbing trees or crawling in upstairs windows to spy out what goods could later be stolen with their long-armed angling hooks.

  “I wouldn’t doubt,” the queen overheard Henry Heatherley say as Gil walked rapidly toward his tent, “he simply copies paintings he’s seen in Italy. He told me the first day we met that he’s been working on reproducing his favorite Titian, called Woman at the Mirror. I glimpsed that canvas. And this one”—he gestured at Gil’s portrait of the queen—“may be just another version of that.”

  Elizabeth’s insides cartwheeled, and not at Heatherley’s snide insult. She turned to him and Lavina. “Gil told me his favorite work by Maestro Titian was the Venus of Urbino and never mentioned painting someone with a mirror.”

  “The mirror portrait is the one the boy’s been painting on the sly,” Heatherley replied, placing undue emphasis on those last three words.

  Fretting over Gil’s behavior and realizing she must interrogate him about it, the queen sat to pose again. As if he’d been watching, Gil returned quickly and began to work. Most courtiers had gone back to their own pursuits, but Floris and Kat stood watching Gil, and Elizabeth let them stay. When the queen finally stood to stretch again, Floris came up to her with Kat close behind.

  “Your Majesty,” Floris said, keeping her voice low and ignoring Kat, who insisted on putting a laced crown of daisies on her head, “I’ve been thinking about that fire, especially after Ned Topside asked everyone if they had seen anything suspicious that morning.”

  “Yes, Floris?” Elizabeth said, holding up a hand to keep her ladies back a moment.

  “The boy,” Floris said. “What about the boy being the cause?”

  Elizabeth held her breath, for it seemed Floris had guessed her own fear, her need to question Gil further. “You mean my young artist?” she whispered.

  “Oh, no, of course not. I can see how you favor him. I just mean that everyone assumes it was your artist Kendale the fire demon meant to harm. But what if everyone is barking up the wrong tree because the target was that poor dead boy Niles?”

  “They say Gil Sharpe’s taken a walk in the woods, Your Grace,” Ned Topside reported to the queen when he returned to her privy chambers without the young man. She had just come inside; the three partially completed portraits were still sitting outside on their easels drying while her courtiers amused themselves.

  “’S blood!” she muttered. “Best he be careful out there. Then I shall keep my eyes open for him, because I intend to walk into the hunt park too, to see how Dr. Dee’s sketch matches the trees there. Ned, since Jenks has not returned from Mortlake yet, come along with me, and fetch Clifford too, unless he’s out somewhere guarding Kat and Floris Minton.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” he said, starting for the door. She appreciated his immediate acquiescence to her wishes for once. Though Ned Topside was trusted and appreciated, the same bright talents which made his onstage dukes and kings leap to life sometimes made him more cocky than circumspect with her.

  She began to pace but kept talking so that Ned turned back at the door. “I shall tell everyone that I mean to take a short constitutional walk without my ladies, that’s it,” she said. “And when I return, I’ve a good mind to ask Floris Minton to join our Privy Plot Council. How could I—all of us,” she added, hitting her forehead with an open palm, “have ignored that the boy Niles could indeed have been the target? It’s not as likely as that Kendale was, but I pride myself on following each lead to its possible end. Kat used to be a part of our council, but now she could be replaced by Floris. She’d be able to join us only when Kat was sleeping, of course, but we often meet at night.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Ned said, and hurried out, even as Meg came in.

  “Are you feeling well, Your Grace?” Meg asked.

  “Just vexed with myself,” the queen admitted, still pacing. Her heart had dropped when Floris had first said “the boy” could be the cause. Though she hated to admit it, even to herself, Niles aside, she must acknowledge that her
dear Gil must now come under some suspicion.

  The queen stood on a knoll as high as a man within the edge of the hunt park, with the encampment in view, including the charred grass where Kendale’s tent had been. Yes, the sketch of trees Dr. Dee had done clearly matched ones she could see here. And two of them, as he had noted, had big limbs or crotches where someone could have elevated himself slightly to catch the sun in a mirror. If she were in boy’s breeches, she’d climb the trees herself.

  She peered up each of the two trees, then had Ned scale them to look for snags of cloth or hair. She had Clifford with her too, for Floris had taken Kat into the palace and didn’t need him just now, but Clifford was too big and bulky to climb well. Ned, just as agile as he had been when she’d taken him away from his life as a roving actor with the Queen’s Country Players six years ago, went smoothly up and peered down at her.

  “Shall I recite something lovelorn as from a balcony or parapet, Your Grace? And Clifford can, of course, play the disapproving father.”

  “Stow the ad-libbing for now, man,” she clipped out. “Do you see any signs someone has climbed that tree? Broken branches? Anything?”

  “Nothing here, but I do see a brown deer yonder, standing as still as this investigation of ours is going.”

  “Enough! Come down then.”

  As she stepped back from the tree and nearly stumbled down the slope, it struck her that this treed knoll was similar to the grassy one on which Kat and Floris had sat stringing flowers the day of the fire. Did this area simply sprout random yet similar hillocks, or were these matching, man-made rises? Strangely, both of them had some remnants of weathered stones, perhaps the foundations of some sort of very small buildings, such as watchtowers. Perhaps that was what these hillocks had once held. The elevations had no use now, but had perhaps served some purpose, even before the long-lost village of Cuddington was built.