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Authors: Karen Harper

Tags: #Fiction - Historical, #16th Century, #Mystery, #England/Great Britain, #Tudors, #Royalty

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BOOK: The Hooded Hawke
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“Then he should have known when Norfolk and the other
two decamped—as should you, Ned!”
“The duke and the other two went out their window and down knotted bedsheets into the courtyard,” he explained. “And I’d vouch for this one telling true, since I could hear his snores through the door to the hall where I sat. I’d moved closer off the back stairs to keep a better eye on the door, and here they slipped out another way. Maybe they knew I was there.”
Elizabeth’s knees buckled; she sat down hard on a stool. Her head spun with all this. Yes, she believed this bedraggledlooking servant of Norfolk’s, too, for he was the one who had been left behind to watch the game of fox and geese last night when the other two knaves had disappeared, perhaps on some errand with a silent signal from Norfolk—perhaps to pack. Meg said she’d barely missed them in the hall. Did that mean Norfolk was intending to flee anyway? He could not have known his pillow was gone then.
“Ned, go back to Norfolk’s bedchamber and look under his bed for a pair of saddle sacks. It’s where Meg found the pillow. See if the three shirts in it have been disturbed, for then we’ll know if it was the loss of his pillow that panicked Norfolk—and if so, how important it must be to him and his schemes.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, and lit out.
“And this sorry barnacle?” Keenan said, stepping forward and gesturing at Norfolk’s wide-eyed man. “I half believe his story, for he’s not one of the duke’s guards but the one who packs and loads his wagon.”
“My guards are to hold him for further questioning. And, at first light, a search party is to set off to trace Norfolk’s path. Granted he’s gone north, but how far north? And to whom? Keenan and Cecil, stay with me a moment more. Rosie, you, too, though I doubt sleep will be back to visit any of us this night.”
She was suddenly glad Drake wasn’t here, because she knew she looked a fright. Yet she was grateful to Keenan for rousing her. She would see he had a fine mount to ride tomorrow, until someone could track down Norfolk, thief of horses and thrones.
M
eg jerked awake when little Piers cried out in his sleep. She and Ned had laid a pallet in the small herbal distillery room at the back of the Bramble Bush’s kitchens, hard by the flour-bolting room, which had made the boy sneeze. Ned had taken a nap between the two of them, but he was not back yet from his post outside Norfolk’s bedchamber.
“Piers, my boy, I’m here,” she said, as she rolled over beside him and touched him carefully. Sometimes he struck out if wakened too quickly from a bad dream.
“Oh, Mistress Meg,” he said, and wrapped his skinny arms around her neck. “I had that nightmare again. Where’s Sim?”
“Staying with Ursala and her little one, remember? They had to make do in the hayloft above the stables this night.”
“Oh, aye,” he said, pressing his face into her shoulder and not loosing her one bit. Rather than being pulled on top of him, she shifted her weight to lie beside him, holding him close.
“You were lost in the hedges again?” she asked. “Maybe if you tell the bad dream aloud, it will purge it. I heard once, if you bid it go away, it won’t dare come back.”
“It was all brambles and nettles catching at me again,” he began, his high voice still shaky.
“Since this inn is called the Bramble Bush, mayhap that reminded you.” From the large open-hearthed kitchen just outside their door, she could hear someone stirring where other servants from the queen’s retinue slept on the floor. They were stuffed cheek by jowl in this inn tonight and would be at their next stop tomorrow night, too.
“Mayhap,” Piers said, “but there’s men on one side of the hedge, ones want to hurt my father. I can’t see through who it is. I don’t know where he went. I have to keep looking for him, but can’t’cause I needs stay hidden or the bad men will get me, too. ‘A life-and-death matter … life and death,’ they say. Does that mean they kilt him? I can hear them but not see them. And I can’t run’way, can’t get my feet to move … and it’s not the spell of the fairies done it this time to me …”
“There, there, my lad, it’s all right. I’m here.”
“Where’s Ned, then?”
“Doing a service for the queen, that’s all. Jenks, too, but they’ll be back bright and early before we set out, so you’d better get some rest now.”
“Don’t let them—those bad men—find me and take me’way, too,” he said with a big sniffle.
“I won’t,” she said, her voice soothing. She finally let him go but continued to rub his bony back as he curled up in a little ball. “You just go to sleep now, and I won’t let anything happen to you ever.”
“Promise and cross your heart?”
“Cross my heart,” she told him, and rubbed his back lightly until his breathing evened out and finally slowed.
Cross my heart,
she thought,
for if I’d lose you, too, my heart would just break—break and—and stop, I’d see to that myself.
K
eenan, Cecil, too—another word with both of you before we call this a night, and a dreadful one at that,” Elizabeth said, and motioned them to sit at the small table in the outer chamber. They had just handed Norfolk’s nervous servant out the door into the custody of her yeomen guards, who were increasing in number in the hall.
But again a rap on the door. Clifford admitted Ned, out of breath and wide-eyed.
“Yes, the shirts were out of the saddle sack under the bed—which sack wasn’t there.”
“He found the pillow,” Cecil said.
“Which indicates,” the queen noted, “he probably slept with it every night.”
“And,” Ned reported as Keenan’s head went back and forth as if he watched a tennis match, “it looked indeed as if he hastily stripped the linens from his bed and knotted them, then went out the window with his other two men. The twisted sheets were still dangling partway to the ground.”
“Then,” she said, “Norfolk knows the pillow completely
gives him away. What Ned has found is also another piece of evidence that clears the third servant of the duke’s, for, if he were in league with them, he surely would have pulled up those bedsheets so they wouldn’t be spotted at first light.”
“The duke did leave this,” Ned said, thrusting a square of parchment at her. “It doesn’t have your name on it, Your Grace, but says
To Whom It May Concern.
”
“The wretch,” she muttered, as she opened the letter. “That’s his idea of a warped joke—and an insult to me. Well, if I cannot keep Norfolk under my thumb, I can stop him at the other end of his quest.”
“To free and wed the Scots queen?” Cecil asked. “Earlier this very night, Your Grace, you were reluctant to move against her.”
“We must stay nimble on our feet and adapt instantly to their maneuverings. Ah, how foolish of him to tell me this lie,” she said, as she bent even closer to the lantern to read aloud the words:
“Written in haste to protect all of the queen’s court and retinue—I fear that what I thought was a mere skin disturbance from poison nettle may be much more. Lest I have the red rash—”
“He’s claiming to have measles?” Cecil said.
“Yes, though, of course, he implies it could even be the pox, because he knows I—everyone fears that above all things.
Lest I have the red rash, and not wanting any harm to come to the queen’s precious person
—The lily-livered, churlish, ruttish maggot-pie!” she exploded. “I warrant he had this note carefully composed and did not just dash it off. He knew he might have to flee and tries to make it sound as if it is to help, not hurt me! And he dared to sign it
Her Majesty’s loyal servant, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk!
”
“And then,” Keenan spoke at last, “to go down bedsheets, as if by merely walking the halls of the inn to depart, he might spread the pestilence to you—to all of us.”
“Exactly. How dare he think I would believe such drivel!” she demanded, raking her fingers through her hair. “As soon as I arrive at Lord Sandys’s house, I will write to Lord Huntingdon.
I can surely trust him. I shall command him to ride north and be certain that Mary of Scots’s guardian, Lord Shrewsbury, has her moved from his Chatsworth Castle, where she resides as my guest but continues to abuse my hospitality. Like it or not, she is going back to Tutbury Castle, where she will be much more closely watched!”
“Do you want Keenan to take that message to Huntingdon?” Cecil asked.
“If you can spare him. It must be someone we can trust, so yes. Indeed, I will even charge you, man,” she said, turning to Keenan, who looked so alert it seemed he was ready to set out on the instant, “to ride along with Huntingdon to Shrewsbury to be certain my cousin is delivered safely to Tutbury and then report back to me.”
“Being sent to Tutbury and under guard,” Cecil said, “will send a clear message to her and to the rebels, Your Grace. She always did hate Tutbury.”
“So she wrote me more than once. I’ve never seen the place, but have you, Keenan?”
“When she was there earlier this year, I rode in twice.”
“Go on, man,” she urged, wishing he weren’t so closemouthed. “Is it as godforsaken as she claims?”
“Even in the summer, the sight of it chills one’s bones, Your Majesty. Though high up, it overlooks only the plain and the banks of the river there. You can see for miles, which surely grieves one closed in the tall tower. The castle is damp and noisome with a marsh under its walls, and the place is in ill repair.”
“I see. I should say I’m sorry for that, but I am only heartsick—and deeply hurt and angry—at all this deception and treachery from my own kin. You may both leave me now. We set out just after dawn, probably riding north on that traitor’s very heels—and, Keenan, on the hooves of your stolen horses.”
M
ary Stuart, the former Queen of Scots, deposed by the Scots lords so that her son may rule under their care, the former queen now residing in the realm of England, is to be forthwith removed from Chatsworth Castle to Tutbury Castle by order of Elizabeth Regina, Queen of England …
Elizabeth sighed and crossed out the last few words. Since she would sign this order as
Elizabeth R,
why should she include her name and title in this letter to Shrewsbury, as if he didn’t know who she was? Yet she wanted this missive Keenan would carry to Lord Huntingdon and then north to sound formal and formidable. She had rewritten it four times already and had a good mind to sign it
Your assured Elizabeth
, to see what Mary of Scots would make of that when they read it or showed it to her.
Still, this was only a draft of the letter. It had better be, since her hand shook and betrayed her impatience and ire. She did not feel safe, even as she sat at the table in this King’s Oak Inn where her entourage would spend the night before arriving at William Sandys’s mansion, the Vyne, in northern Hampshire on the morrow. She crumpled up the parchment and began again.
Elizabeth liked this inn even less than the one they’d stayed in last night. She wasn’t certain but that she preferred being housed in comfort by courtiers she didn’t trust, for it also made
her nervous when her party had to pitch their own tents or hire rooms in nearby farmhouses.
Other things preyed on her poise. The roof of this inn was thatch, and a few well-placed fire arrows could mean disaster. She’d been in an inn that had gone up in flames once, and that memory haunted her. Fire, like flying arrows, was a fearsome thing. Then, too, she’d risked keeping only half of her guards here and sent the others ahead on the road to see if they could overtake Norfolk or at least learn if he and two men on two fine horses had passed through. Drake had begged to go out also, partly because he was searching for word of his crewmen, Giles Creighton and Hugh Mason. She had not wanted to let Drake go, but she did, and he took two others with him. All her men were to return by nightfall, but none were back yet, and she felt undermanned.
She sighed as her thoughts snagged again on her treacherous cousin Norfolk. He was no doubt either heading north, home to Kenningham, his stronghold in Norfolk, or going to meet with other malcontents who favored Catholicism and a Catholic queen. Either way, he could be the firebrand that could ignite a seething rebellion.
A sharp rapping rattled the door to the hall. Here she did not even have two rooms adjoined but ones side by side, this privy chamber and her bedroom next door.’ S blood, but she was coming to hate furtive knocking on the door!
“Enter.”
She expected to see Clifford, but it was Jenks, whom she’d sent out at the head of one of the search parties. Her pulse pounded; she could read the excitement on his face.
“You have found word of our enemies!” she exulted, as he snatched off his cap and bowed.
“Yes, Your Grace, but not the ones you think. Far’s I can tell, Norfolk and his men are long gone, but I do have news of men on two horses came through here ahead of us.”
“Drake’s men who deserted?”
“No, but at a farmhouse’bout three miles from here, just off the main road, the Browne family took in two men on fine-looking, matched, blazed-forehead mounts four days ago.
Heading north they were, too. And, Your Grace, one of them spoke mostly Spanish, but the other one turned it into English for him.”
“De Spes’s bowman and his interpreter!”
“They thought the foreign one was called Wan.”
“Juan, no doubt. I believe Cecil was recently informed that the archer’s name is Juan de Vila. Can it all be coincidence that Norfolk flees in the same direction at the same time as those Spanish hirelings? They could be hunkered down ahead, waiting to shoot at me again. But it might mean we are safer now with no more arrow attacks on the road. Did you question the farm family thoroughly?”
“Aye, and they didn’t overhear anything useful,’cause their guests mostly jabbered away in Spanish. And they didn’t out and out see a longbow or a crossbow, but both men had long leather bags along the side of their mounts,” he said, gesturing with outstretched arms. “You know,’stead of saddle sacks’cross the horses’ croups.”
“And those leather bags could have held bows. That is invaluable information, Jenks. Did you give the family a coin for their help?”
“Aye, Your Grace, and that reminds me of one more thing. When the master of the house put the coin away in a leather pouch, I saw he had a shiny sovereign—like the other two what’s turned up.”
“Damn the Spanish. Doing their dirty work on my mint’s money with my face on the coins. Then they could be the ones who bribed Sheriff Barnstable to dispatch Tom Naseby, but I can’t fathom what link they could have to Drake’s cousin John Hawkins. Still, I wouldn’t put it past anyone working for de Spes, and ultimately King Philip, to even use my image on that coin for target practice! Did farmer Browne say for certain those two gave him that coin?”
“He did. Oh, aye, he did overhear one thing. Seems this Juan is trying to learn a little English, and he asked the other one what time the meeting would be at the church.”
“A meeting at the church? That’s all they overheard?”
“I could fetch them in, Your Grace, if you want to talk to them yourselves, old man Browne and his wife.”
“No, you’ve done very well, very well,” she said, gesturing somewhat absently that he might take his leave. “A meeting at a church,” she said to herself, as Jenks went out. It helped to reason aloud. She went on, “A beheaded vine, the sovereign’s head on coins, a flying dove within a strange wreath … Hell’s gates, I hate puzzles, but my life’s become one—with too many opponents and the prize at stake my kingdom and my life.”
F
or the second straight night, Elizabeth hardly slept one wink. Drake had not returned as had her other men, but he’d sent word with one of his companions that he was on the scent of his two men and would come straight to the Vyne to meet her.
Despite all her worries, her heart lifted the next afternoon to see the tall walls of the Vyne appear, just beyond the cheering crowds of the little town of Basingstoke. William Sandys and his wife, Catherine, met them with their family and retainers, as well as musicians and singers who broke into song as she alighted from her coach—her prison these last two days.
“Welcome to our home and hearth,” Baron Sandys greeted her with a prideful smile. Like Henry Wriothesley, William Sandys was a young man, but she knew instantly he had more sense. After all, he was a staunch Protestant and supporter of his English queen.
“I’d settle for a cool breeze through the windows, my lord,” she said, and dallied with each person, wishing all the while she could better stretch her cramped limbs with a brisk walk.
The Vyne was a grand home with a forecourt and a central gatehouse at the entrance. All structures were of rose-hued brick seemingly embroidered with black triangular patterns. But for the many tall, symmetrically set windows across the front façade, the place reminded her of Hampton Court. The Vyne could accommodate nearly four hundred guests in the bedrooms of its two long wings.
The queen had never seen the Vyne before, but years ago her father had visited here three times, twice with her mother. That made the Vyne instantly sweet and sentimental for her. The sites where her parents had spent time together as king and queen were few, and she treasured them.
“Those stands of oaks which surround the lawn are over a hundred years old, Your Grace,” Sandys told her, pointing, as she surveyed the deep blue-green of the forest, now lightly gilded with autumn colors. At least those woods lay beyond a meadow and a marsh and didn’t closely crowd the house, she thought. “A home on this site has welcomed travelers for centuries,” her host went on.
“I can see this house is quite new, so there must have been one on this site earlier,” she observed as he escorted her into the vast interior through the flower-bedecked central entrance.
“There are numerous Roman ruins in the gardens, Your Majesty. An important Roman villa or taverna stood here, hence the name the Vyne. Remains of the grape arbors are still visible if you dig round about. Since our little river, the Loddon, flows into the great Thames, we are nicely situated on a crossroads between east and west, south and north.”
Yes, she thought, the Vyne was near major roads and the great watery highway of the Thames that could take one straight to London, but it also linked this southern part of England to the north. Could the church meeting the Spanish archer mentioned be near this crossroads? And was it mere coincidence that the name of her sanctuary for the next few days was the Vyne when the pillow Mary of Scots sent Norfolk sported a twisted vine?
After all, this great house boasted a small church within, albeit, she’d heard, it was more of a chapel. Off to the side she saw entrances to many rooms. As if he had read her mind, Sandys pointed out the entrance to the chapel. Perhaps she should examine every inch of that, she thought, trying to keep a pleasant look on her face as her host led her up the grand staircase toward her suite of rooms.
D
rake traced the two men who had deserted his command not only by their descriptions but by those of their horses. The fools had taken the three mounts the queen and her men had ridden to the
Judith
. Such fine horseflesh as well as their trappings—especially in comparison with how ragged the two men looked despite their sailor’s shirts—made them easy to follow. The only problem was, they had gotten a good head start, and he dare not go north of the Thames if he was to return to the queen at the Vyne yet today.
“Hey there, goodman,” he’d called to more farmers and carters than he could count. “Have you seen two men in sky blue caps and shirts riding two fine mounts and pulling a third?”
“Oh, aye,” the last man, a drover surrounded by cattle en route to London, had said. “Thought they was queen’s men, couriers like the one come through these parts asking questions, but these lads looked kinda ragged and peaked,’specially one slumped over his saddle.”
That was when Drake realized they could actually be ill. That might have slowed them down or even made them halt, so he pressed on. Perhaps Giles and Hugh had told the truth about having the flux that day in the woods.
With Mountjoy, the queen’s man he’d kept with him while he’d sent the other one back to her with a message, he finally saw the horses. They were unsaddled but tethered to a stone well behind an isolated cottage just off the road.
“Wonder why they didn’t just ride on, Captain,” the big, burly yeoman said. “And to leave those horses just tied there, where they could be taken—or seen.”
“The two of them are skilled sailors but hardly strategists, Mountjoy, or they would never have taken the queen’s property or disobeyed me in the first place. I’ll ask you to wait here with our horses and those we must return to Her Majesty.”
Drake dismounted and put his hand on his sword hilt. He made certain his dagger was still sheathed in his belt. Since Hugh and Giles had deserted, he wasn’t sure if they’d obey him now, either.
He intended to knock on the front door of the black-and-white-timbered and neatly thatched place, but the door stood slightly ajar, so he chanced a bold offensive. He pushed it open and walked in. A portly woman was bent over a table making piecrusts with a wooden rolling pin, her hands and gown all floury.
“Oh!” she cried. “Oh!”
“Pardon the intrusion, mistress, but I must inquire about the two men whose horses are tied in back. Friends of mine …”
“Oh,” she said again, as if that were her entire vocabulary. Hoisting the rolling pin, evidently in case she needed to take him on, she said in a rush, “One took real sick, and my husband’s gone for the leech, said don’t go in, don’t let no one near them. Took pity on them, he did, the one near falling off his horse.”
Drake pondered if Giles and Hugh could be in league with the Duke of Norfolk, for he’d given out a story of being sick when he fled, too—but that meant Norfolk must have hired them just in the last few days, when Drake had feared they were working for his cousin Hawkins. No, he couldn’t see someone as clever as Norfolk hiring those two.
“In here?” he asked the woman, edging toward the door she’d glanced at more than once. “Just a word with them …”
He lifted the latch, drew his dagger, so she could not see it, and shoved the door inward. Hugh lay either asleep or unconscious on a low trundle bed in the tiny, sparsely furnished chamber.
To his surprise, the door slammed into him, rattling his teeth and his sword. When the door was ripped inward, he spun into the room. Giles lunged at him. Raising his dagger, Drake managed to sidestep, evading the first attack. He saw no weapon on Giles; the man meant to take him on with his fists.
“Halt!” he told Giles in his most strident captain’s voice. “Halt and stand to!”
The man hesitated, frozen like a statue for a moment. Drake glared at him and sheathed his dagger. “I’m here for the truth, and I will have it, Seaman Mason! Are you two riding to report to Captain Hawkins in London?”
BOOK: The Hooded Hawke
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