Murder at Whitehall (11 page)

It was a most interesting crowd indeed.

St. Stephen's Day, December 26

“M
ake way for the queen! Make way for the queen!”

The guards at the head of the royal procession called out as they slowly made their way past the sparkling palaces of the Strand, through Cheapside, and toward London Bridge. Eventually they would arrive at Greenwich Great Park for the royal St. Stephen's Day foxhunt, but Queen Elizabeth seemed in no hurry at all. From atop her prancing white horse, she waved and smiled at the crowds as they cheered for her and tossed bouquets of winter greenery and herbs. The bitterly cold wind was forgotten in the excitement of seeing the queen. Even the court, after dancing all night at the Christmas Day banquet the night before, seemed enlivened by the happy clamor.

Kate studied the scene from atop her own horse, her hands gripping the reins as tightly as she could. She had grown up at court and in towns, and was always suspicious of horses. She had traveled these same dirty, crowded streets, beneath the almost touching eaves of houses that blocked the light with their tiles and
thatching, the smoke from their chimneys, so many times, going on errands to shops or searching out villains for the queen.

But as usual when Elizabeth went abroad, the city was transformed. The cobbles were scrubbed clean, covered by a new layer of straw and frost that had fallen in the night to make the city shimmer. Wreaths of Christmas greenery were draped from windows, where even more people crowded for a glimpse of the queen.

And Elizabeth rewarded them. Dressed in a riding costume of white and gold velvet, with a tall-crowned, plumed hat on her red hair, she waved and laughed.

“Good people, pray, do not remove your hats!” she called. “It is much too cold.”

But of course they did remove their hats, flourishing them in the air as she passed by, with Robert Dudley riding to one side and Lord Macintosh to the other. A long line of her courtiers snaked after her, a glittering train of red and green and gold.

Kate remembered Elizabeth's entrance to London for her coronation almost a year ago, on just such a cold day. The pageants and plays, the yards and yards of scarlet velvet and cloth of gold, the fountains running with wine, the ecstatic jubilation after all the gray years with King Edward and Queen Mary. The brilliant hope centered around the red-haired daughter of Anne Boleyn.

None of that had faded in the last year. The crowds jostled in the icy cold, far from their firesides, just to wave at Queen Elizabeth. That was one of the reasons why Kate was proud to serve her. With Elizabeth, there
was hope for the country. Without her, England would be an uncertain and bleak place.

It was work she was proud to do, and hoped to continue long into the future.

As they turned into Cheapside, the path took them past the tall, quiet, prosperous-looking house of the attorney Master Hardy, Anthony Elias's employer. Kate tried not to look, tried not to imagine that Anthony might be at the window with Mistress Derwood, but she couldn't help but take a peek. The shutters were drawn over the house, not even a servant looking out for a glimpse of the queen, as if the household was away. Kate sighed, half relieved, half disappointed.

She shook her head to clear it, taking in a deep breath of the cold air. It smelled of woodsmoke from dozens of chimneys, spiced cider from the vendor's cart near the walkway, fresh greenery, and the distant, sour tang that always hung over the city. She couldn't think about Anthony now, with her energetic horse frisking about and crowds pressing close on all sides. She had to keep her place in the procession, where she could keep watch on the queen, and not fall behind.

On the vast edifice of London Bridge, lined with looming, half-timbered structures of houses and shops that rose against the sky, Elizabeth stopped to listen to a children's chorus sing a Yuletide song for their queen. They stood on a dais, rows of tiny figures in white robes, silhouetted against the river as Elizabeth leaned closer to listen.

“Blessed be that maid Marie, born was He of her body! Very God ere time began, born in the time of Son
of Man.” Their sweet, high voices rang out in the cold air, like glass bells soaring over the earth. Their round little faces, scrubbed clean for this important moment, shone with nervousness, joy, terror, and giddy pleasure.

Kate smiled to see them, for she knew something of what they felt. When she was their age, her father had handed her a lute, specially made for her small hands, and bade her play for Queen Catherine Parr, who had smiled down at her indulgently. In that moment had been born her love of music, of sharing the joy of it with other people. She suddenly wondered if one day she might have a child to teach music to as well, just like those cherubs in their white draperies.

She glanced downriver, toward the chimneys and high walls of Whitehall, and thought of her father there, sitting around the fire with his old friends. How had he felt to see her play for a queen when she was a child? Protective, proud—afraid?

She turned back and found Rob watching her from his horse a few riders down in the procession. He was frowning, as if deep in thought, and then suddenly it turned to a smile when their eyes met. It felt like a touch of golden sun in that gray day, and she couldn't help but smile back—even as she hoped he did not know what she was thinking about.

She faced ahead again as the children's song ended, and a little girl with bright red curls stepped forward to shyly hand a bouquet of green herbs to the queen. Lord Macintosh leaned down to take the bouquet and
hand it to Elizabeth, who smiled at the girl and murmured a few words that made the child giggle.

In the midst of the lovely scene, Kate's gaze caught on the heads displayed on pikes high over the entrance to the bridge, a gruesome contrast to the sweet music and joyful cheers. Those empty, dark eye sockets declared silently that all was not entirely merry in the queen's realm, even at Christmas. Everyone had their secrets, and some led to pikes on the bridge. Kate thought of the drawing left on the queen's bed, of Queen Catherine's music pressed into Matthew Haywood's hands and hidden all these years.

They moved forward again, the long train of horses snaking over the bridge and out of London proper. As they skirted past the twisting lanes of Southwark, Kate glimpsed a tall woman with improbably red hair and a bright green gown standing on the riverbank with a group of other ladies in vivid gowns, and she recognized Mistress Celine from the Cardinal's Hat brothel. Kate happily waved at them before they were lost to sight in the crowds.

The narrow streets flowed off into snow-dusted fields and hedgerows, with the stone chimneys of farmhouses and fine manors in the distance. The tightly packed procession, so carefully lined up at Whitehall, fanned out as couples and groups found each other for laughing conversations and quick whispers. Kate saw Lady Catherine Grey whispering with Lord Hertford and his sister, though the queen seemed to take no notice as she laughed with Lord Macintosh.

Rob drew his horse alongside hers, and Kate smiled
at him. His hunting clothes were more somber than his usual garb, dark red velvet and black leather, but they fit him just as well as his courtly doublets and hose. Yet his eyes seemed to have sleepless dark shadows under them.

“How do you fare today, Rob?” she said, and he cringed at her hearty tone. He had stayed up later than the whole court after the dancing, vanishing somewhere with his new Spanish “friends.” Kate thought it best not to inquire too closely yet.

He managed to rally and gave her a smile. “Better now that I see you, bonny Kate. There is much I need to tell you. Your Spanish acquaintances are an interesting lot.”

Kate's curiosity was piqued, but there was no time at that moment for him to tell her more. The gates of Greenwich Palace stood open for them as they turned down a wide graveled lane. In the distance, the palace's redbrick towers loomed against the pearl gray sky. But they turned away from the castle itself, which would be closed and shuttered until the queen's next residence there in the spring, and rode toward the wide meadows and woods of the Great Park. The winding, sloping fields, so vividly green in the summer, were brown and gray now, streaked with veins of snow. The bare trees stood like black skeletons, frosted with sparkling diamond ice. It would surely be the last hunt for a while.

But Kate found she didn't mind the bleak landscape at all. The rush of cold, fresh wind against her cheeks, the crisp country smells, and the open space felt
wondrous after long days indoors. It felt free, and made a new song start in her mind.

“Are you thinking of music, Kate?” Rob asked as they all came to halt outside the gamekeeper's cottage. The Greenwich stewards had to give their formal greeting to the queen before the St. Stephen's Day fox and the pack of hounds were released.

Kate laughed. “However did you know? The wind sounds like a madrigal. Just listen!”

The fox streaked away across the gray field in a russet blur, and the hounds let out great howls. Elizabeth and Dudley spurred their horses in pursuit, and everyone else galloped behind them. The court became a bright stream of velvets and plumes, darting over the fields and between the trees. The horses' hooves were like thunder over the frozen ground, and they tossed their glossy manes, as if they were as thrilled as their riders to be set free into the world.

Even Kate, the least enthusiastic rider, had to laugh as she let her horse have its head. The wind caught at her cap and tugged strands of her dark hair from its net. The drawing in the queen's bedchamber, Queen Catherine's music, the Spanish and the Scots—they seemed to vanish with the earth that flew away beneath her.

“I'll race you!” she shouted to Rob, though she was quite sure she could never best him in a ride. He laughed, too, the warm, golden sound carried away on the wind. Their horses neck and neck, they followed the queen to leap over a shallow ravine and skitter around a sharp corner into the Greenwich woods.

The hounds howled in the distance, and the riders turned to follow the beckoning sound. Kate swung her horse around, with Rob close behind her. They galloped deeper into the woods, leaping lightly over fallen logs and ditches, veering between the stark branches of the winter trees. Other riders brushed past, and behind one of the trees Kate caught a glimpse of blue wool trimmed with white fir, golden hair—Lady Catherine, her horse standing still, drawn close to Lord Hertford's as the two of them talked.

Then they, too, were gone, left behind in a flash of movement.

Suddenly a scream pierced the air, long and high, higher than the wind and the pounding of hooves. Kate almost tumbled from her horse at the shock of the sound. Her heart pounded, but it also felt as if an icy calm lowered over her, and she saw the woods around them sharper, brighter. That strange calm had come upon her before, in moments of danger.

Another cry rang out, echoing from somewhere in the woods around them, followed by a man's shout. The other riders nearby pulled up their mounts as they looked around in confusion. Kate's horse laid back its ears, and she tightened her hold on the reins as she feared it might bolt.

Rob leaned over, even as he drew in his own horse, and grasped her reins to help her slow down and regain her balance in the saddle. He held her protectively close, his lean, athletic body taut as he raised his head to listen carefully.

Kate, too, held her breath as she listened. She tried
to decipher where the cries came from, but in the woods sound seemed both very distant and impossibly close.

The men around them drew their daggers and short swords, staying close to the ladies. Kate was glad of the weight of her own blade at her belt, its weight greater than a mere eating knife would be but still light enough to fit her palm. The lessons in using a dagger she had learned from one of Cecil's guards reassured her.

“What could it be?” she asked Rob quietly. In her mind, she saw again that drawing left in the queen's chamber.

“Stay close to me, Kate,” Rob answered, his actor's gaze, trained to miss nothing, sweeping over the confused courtiers around them.

Kate hoped the queen was already sheltered and safe inside Greenwich Palace. Elizabeth had been close to Robert Dudley at the start of the hunt, and surely he would not let the merest hint of harm touch her. Would he?

But what if it was the queen who had screamed?

Kate shook her head, enveloped in a haze of confusion. Everything felt most unreal, as if she were caught in a bad dream, or a masque gone horribly awry. The woods, so full of freedom and adventure only a moment ago, were suddenly dark and menacing.

Kate's throat felt dry, aching so she could barely swallow, and she nodded. Rob set out on the nearest pathway back to the palace, and Kate spurred her horse to follow him, listening to the distant clamor. The wind
tore at her hat, sweeping through the thick velvet of her jacket, and she shivered.

They emerged from the shelter of the woods to find a cluster of courtiers gathered near a low stone wall by a stand of old oak trees. At first glance, it could have been the capture of the hunted fox, but Kate could see the pale fear on the ladies' faces—and the fury on the men's, the flash of gray sunlight on their swords. Their horses snorted and tossed their heads restlessly.

Rob grasped Kate's horse's bridle again, holding her close as they edged cautiously nearer. They came to a halt just beyond the tangled edge of the crowd.

For a moment, Kate could see nothing—the knot of frightened people and horses was too close. But then it parted, and she glimpsed Elizabeth and Dudley, their horses drawn up beneath one of the bare winter trees. Dudley held his dagger aloft, unsheathed, and was shouting something in furious tones, but Queen Elizabeth just stared straight ahead as if frozen, her face stark white.

Kate followed her stare—and a cry escaped before she could catch it. Hanging from one of the branches was a poppet, with bright red silk yarn hair crowned with an elaborate gold wire diadem, and wearing a fine white satin gown streaked with what looked like blood. In the crook of one arm, the doll held a baby, also with red hair.