Murder at Whitehall (13 page)

“Oh, Mistress Haywood, I am so sorry to im-impose on you in such a manner,” Lady Catherine said with a sniffle. “I just could not bear it. I couldn't be stared at a
moment longer, and I remembered you had a room here. . . .”

Kate nodded, thinking of how Lady Catherine's life was the opposite to her own. Kate did the watching, but everyone was always watching Lady Catherine, wondering what she was going to do next, what she was thinking of her treatment as the queen's cousin, if she wanted to be the heir. It must be maddening. “You are not imposing on me, Lady Catherine. I am happy to help, if I can. Here, let's go inside where you can sit quietly. No one will stare at you there.”

Kate opened the door and quickly ushered Lady Catherine inside. The lady's pretty heart-shaped face was splotched and reddened from crying, and it seemed she had no handkerchief. Kate found one of her own in the clothes chest, and pressed it into Lady Catherine's hand before she went to stir the warm embers of the fire back to life. She let Lady Catherine sit down on the stool near the hearth and compose herself a bit before glancing back to smile at her.

“I fear I have no wine to offer,” Kate said.

“You are so very kind, Mistress Haywood,” Lady Catherine said, wiping her eyes. “No one else here at court is like you. No one I have ever known, really.”

“You have many friends, Lady Catherine.”

Lady Catherine bit her lip and stared down at the handkerchief balled up in her hand. “I do know many people, of course. Everyone wants to find favor with a Tudor, even one as
out
of favor as I am. My mother loved parties, loved people and laughter around her, and I inherited the same from her. I could never do
without company. But—friends? I am not so sure, of late.”

Kate sat back on her heels to study her visitor more closely. The Lady Catherine of only a few months ago had been so confidently sure of her position, of her place at the center of her group of friends, but now she had changed. Was it just her mother's recent death—or something more?

When Queen Elizabeth asked Kate to keep watch on Lady Catherine, Kate had never expected the task to come easily. For Lady Catherine Grey to so eagerly reveal the vulnerability beneath her Tudor glitter. It made Kate feel a sharp, guilty pang to think of using the lady's sorrow, even to help the queen in these dangerous games of royal heirs and plots.

But Lady Catherine had been a courtier since birth. Her mother, King Henry's own niece, had been so adept at such games that she managed to save herself and her two remaining daughters, to find favor at court, even after her husband's execution for treason. Lady Frances Grey had steered her family through the perils of four monarchs, with her charm and beauty always intact. What if Lady Catherine took after her mother in political adeptness as well as her love of parties? What if this, too, was some elaborate masquerade?

Kate took in every detail of Lady Catherine's appearance. Her fine satin gown, the fur at her throat, the pearl-edged cap on her disarranged golden curls, her wide blue eyes still shining with tears. The faraway look in them, the way her hands trembled. Kate, too, had learned many things in the past year at the queen's
court, and from working on endless masquerades. She could see only real confusion and sadness on the lady's face—and a tinge of desperation.

And desperate people did such wild things. Lady Catherine had been friends with the last Spanish ambassador, the Count de Feria, and the count's English wife, Jane Dormer. She had been convinced they could help her in her quest to marry Lord Hertford. Was she
still
friends with the Spanish? With anyone who might help her in her romantic quest?

“Should I send for one of Mistress Ashley's herbal possets?” Kate asked.

“Nay!” Lady Catherine cried. “Not Mistress Ashley. She is one of the people I want to hide from the most. She is always watching me so carefully, always frowning as if she heartily disapproves of me.”

“She is only being protective of the queen. People say she was like a mother to Her Grace when the queen was a child.”

Lady Catherine frowned. “I mean the queen no harm! She is my own cousin. Why can't Mistress Ashley, everyone, see that? I would never want what she has. A throne means danger. Trouble. That is all. I saw what it did to my parents, to my poor sister Jane. Why would I want that?”

Yet Lady Catherine had acted in the past like she was affronted that the queen would not name her heir, not give her what was her due as a Tudor. “What would you want instead, Lady Catherine?”

“What every lady wants. Love. A home. Children. That is not so very much to ask, is it?”

Kate shook her head. They seemed small things; yet they were things she herself dared not think about. How much harder it must be for Lady Catherine. “Nay. Not so much.”

“My cousin thinks that because her heart is ice, so must be those of all her ladies. It is most unfair.”

It was certainly true that the queen seemed to think little of the prospect of marriage, even though she must one day choose among her many suitors and give England an heir. Kate could not blame the queen if she was afraid. Marriage for the royal family had not been a safe, easy thing for many years. All the queen's stepmothers, her poor, doomed mother, Queen Mary, and her pathetic love for King Philip, it was enough to frighten even someone as stouthearted as Elizabeth. But not enough to frighten Catherine Grey, it seemed.

“If you could be someone else,” Kate said, “would you?”

Lady Catherine looked utterly baffled, as if the possibility of being anyone, anything, besides Lady Catherine Grey was beyond her scope of thought. Yet Kate had seen her perform in masques, seen how adept she was at changing personas like a cloak.

“I think . . . ,” Lady Catherine murmured uncertainly. Then she shook her head, and something hardened in her tearful blue eyes. “I want to be myself, but without this infernal Tudor blood. It has caused me and my family naught but trouble.”

Kate nodded. She could not argue against that statement. Royal blood seemed to have brought little good to Lady Catherine, despite her beauty and vivacity, her
fine clothes. It had killed her father and sister, and made her little more than a pawn to move about at someone else's will.

Kate had sometimes felt wistful that she and her father were their only small family, no siblings or cousins to grow up with her, her mother long lost. With the revelation that Eleanor Haywood had been the illegitimate half sister of Anne Boleyn, Kate gained something of a new family. But it was a shadow family, a family that only she could really know about, not one such as Lady Catherine's—for good or ill.

In that instant, she completely understood Lady Catherine's desire to create a new family, a home and shelter free from the sorrows and mistakes of the past. Surely it would be wonderful to feel no longer alone against the cold world. But it would be a difficult thing, well nigh impossible, for a royal woman like Lady Catherine to create such a haven.

Impossible for a woman like Kate as well. There would always be secrets lurking in the corners of even the coziest of homes. What man would understand that, would help her?

She resisted the urge to snatch back her handkerchief and burst into tears herself. Instead, she smiled at Lady Catherine and picked up her lute. She ran her fingertips over the small initials
EH
etched into the neck.
Eleanor Haywood
. That always helped settle her mind. She still had to take the small false crown to Cecil and try to find out what Macintosh and Vasquez were
plotting, but just for a moment she could sit by her fire with her mother's lute.

“Shall I play us a merry song?” she said, making herself smile cheerfully. It wasn't just Lady Catherine who had learned about courtly masquerades. “'Tis only the gray coldness that casts us into such melancholy, I am sure. Yet it's Christmas, which is meant to be the happiest time of year.”

Lady Catherine laughed. “Oh, yes, please! I would love a song. I do so enjoy your music, Mistress Haywood. You have been too kind to me today. I know I should not take up your time thus, but your chamber is so peaceful and warm. I share a room with Juno—Lady Jane Seymour. She is my dearest friend, and we have such fun, but . . .” Her voice trailed away.

“But sometimes it is very hard work just to keep smiling.”

Lady Catherine looked startled. “Exactly so. But a song can always make me smile. What will you play? Something of your own?”

Kate quickly glanced through a stack of music on her table. It was just as she had left it, neatly stacked and held down by a small silver box that held her few pieces of jewelry—the garnet earrings her father had given her, a rope of pearls from the queen, Rob's enameled lute.

And yet the papers did not seem quite the same. Surely that was not the order of the songs?

“Is something amiss, Mistress Haywood?” Lady Catherine asked.

Kate pushed the papers back into a stack and made
herself smile. “Not at all. My father brought me some of his own compositions, pieces he wrote when I was a child and he served Queen Catherine Parr. He also brought me some other songs from that time, and I believe there was one written by Lady Frances Brandon.”

“My mother?” Lady Catherine said, her voice brighter. “You have a song of my mother's?”

“It was signed by her. Would it make you sad to hear it?”

“I should love it very much. My mother did take such joy in music, and she often talked to us of her time with Queen Catherine. I remember little about it, I was so small, but Mother said Queen Catherine was a woman of much culture and learning.”

Kate found the song among her father's pieces, and showed it to Lady Catherine.

“Aye, that is my mother's hand. How very astonishing, Mistress Haywood! It's like she is suddenly here in this room with us. I am sure she led me here to you today.” Lady Catherine bit her lip as she studied the spill of ink notes on the yellowing paper. “I do wish . . .”

“Wish what, Lady Catherine?”

“Her writing makes me remember. She had meant to send a letter to Queen Elizabeth requesting permission for me to marry. She was so sure if she could remind the queen of our family ties in the past, she would not
refuse. But Mother died before she could finish the message. And none can replace her voice.”

Kate swallowed hard, sad for her own mother, for all that might have been. “But she can be here with us for a moment. Here, I shall play, if you would like to sing this part here . . .”

And for just a little while, the world was lost in music.

Holy Innocents Day, December 28

“N
on, non!
I say it again—down on three, up on four, then
passe
and jump. Is not so hard! Again, again.”

Kate had to duck her head to keep from laughing as Monsieur Dumas, the tiny bandy-legged French dancing master, lost his temper yet again at the courtiers trying to perform his complicated version of a galliard.

It was a quiet hour in the palace. The queen had been closeted with her privy council since morning, and Robert Dudley had led some of the court to a hunt. Kate was happy to play familiar dance tunes for an hour's dance practice, to forget about everything else that was happening outside this warm chamber, heavy with fragrant green wreaths for the season.

She watched the dancers as her fingers moved over the strings. She had played this tune so often she had no need to look at the music, though the dance was a new version from France, which the queen wanted to watch at that night's feast. The dancers kept missing their footing in the complex series of jumps and tumbling down amid a tangle of embroidered skirts. When
they laughed and pushed each other down again, Monsieur Dumas became even angrier.

“Non, non!”
he shouted again. “Thees will never be done in time.
Imbeciles
.”

Kate bit her lip to hide her own giggles. She glimpsed Lady Catherine Grey whispering with Lady Jane Seymour across the room. Lady Catherine seemed to have regained her spirits after her tears of the evening before, and Kate wondered again at the Tudor changeability. Anger, tears, remorse, laughter, all in the course of minutes. Just like Queen Elizabeth at times.

It was said the queen also had a sizable share of temper from her Boleyn blood. Boleyns were legendary for their energetic tantrums, though Kate was glad she seemed to have inherited her father's steadier emotions rather than those of her mother's Boleyn relatives.

Most of the time.

Just beyond Lady Catherine, Kate saw Monsieur Castelnau, the French ambassador. Despite leaving Elizabeth's masque of warring queens, he had said nothing else about the play's message for Queen Mary, and was smiling today, as he always did. But then, he had a long diplomatic career behind him, years in Paris, Vienna, Rome, making sure his thoughts and those of his French masters were never really known. He would give little away, no matter how Queen Elizabeth provoked him.

“Now,
mesdames
, one more time,” Monsieur Dumas shouted. “This time with a bit of grace, I beg you. Just
because you are English does not mean you can be like the sheeps gamboling in the fields,
oui
?”

Lady Catherine led her friends back into line, and Kate played the first few notes of the song.

Suddenly, the chamber door burst open, banging against the paneled wall like a violent burst of fireworks in the sky. The dancers fell out of step all over again, and Kate jumped up from her stool. She spun around to see Sebastian Gomez standing there.

Lady Jane Seymour shrieked, making the others cry out and run, as if they would flee from what they knew not, and Kate could see why they were terrified. Senor Gomez, usually so handsome, smiling, and charming, his rich Spanish clothes impeccable, looked like a figure newly escaped from the lower depths of the Tower.

His dark hair stood up on one side, and his skin was grayish, pale and clammy. His purple velvet doublet was partially unfastened, and the white shirt beneath was stained bright red. More of the horrible scarlet stickiness covered his hands, and streaked across one of his cheeks. Yet it did not seem to be his own blood, for she could see no wounds.

He said nothing for one long moment, just stood frozen in the doorway as the ladies' shrieks spiraled louder and louder. Several of the queen's guards appeared behind him in a clatter of swords, but even they came to a bewildered halt at the strange sight.

Kate's heart pounded so loudly she could hear it in her ears, drowning out the screams. Time itself seemed to slow to a crawl around her, and everything but
Senor Gomez was hazy. Like a terrible dream, catching her in its sticky net—but this one couldn't be banished by waking. It was all too real. And she had seen things like this before.

Someone was dead.

She carefully laid her lute aside and moved slowly toward Senor Gomez. His frozen stillness broke, and he looked at her with desperation in his eyes. He held out his hands, and Kate saw they were shaking beneath the streaks of blood.

“El está muerto,” he gasped.

“He?” Kate asked gently, making herself move slowly, deliberately, to stay calm. When she had faced such terrible situations in the past, at Westminster Abbey and Nonsuch Palace, she had discovered that flying into a panic only made matters worse. So she remained calm, no matter how much she longed to scream and run away.

Something terrible had obviously just happened, in the queen's own palace. Running away to hide was clearly not a good idea.

She quickly glanced back, and caught Lady Catherine's eye. Lady Catherine did not seem to be as panicked as her friends, and she quickly nodded. She gathered Lady Jane and the others, and quieted their shrieks.

Kate turned back to Senor Gomez. “Who is dead, senor? Was there a duel?”

He shook his head, and something inside him seemed to snap with the movement. His face
crumpled. “Come with me, senorita. I think you are the only one who can help keep everyone calm in this moment.”

He spun around and ran, so fast that Kate could barely keep up with him. The guards followed her, staying close, and behind them was the French ambassador.

It was a cold day, but very still with little wind. Kate could feel the iciness down to her bones, but she pushed it away and kept moving forward. Senor Gomez led them to one of the spiral-shaped herbal beds, brown and crackling-dry with the winter. In its center, sprawled faceup, was Senor Vasquez.

Or at least Kate thought it must be Senor Vasquez, because of his clothing—a midnight blue satin doublet she remembered him wearing at the queen's banquet—and his dark hair. His throat had been cut, and dark blood splashed his lower face and his chest, matted in his hair and beard. His eyes were open and glassy, staring sightlessly up at the gray sky. Senor Gomez knelt beside him with a choked sob.

Kate swallowed a cold, sickening wave of nausea, and made herself tiptoe closer. She quickly scanned the herbal bed around him, the raked gravel path that showed no footsteps, the way a few of the dry branches were snapped. Though it was near midday, the gardens were empty, since the queen had not yet taken her daily walk and everyone else was tucked up near a fireside or practicing their dancing. She would ask later if any servant or stray courtier had seen anything, but she doubted they had.

“Did you find him thus, Senor Gomez?” she said gently.

He nodded, still staring at his dead friend. “He said he had an errand today for Bishop de Quadra, but we were to meet later at the tennis court for a game. I was late this morning, and as I was making my way there, I—I found him thus.”

“And there was no one else nearby at all?” Kate asked.

Senor Gomez shook his head. “I saw no one at all.”

Kate leaned down to carefully examine Senor Vasquez's body, knowing that these early moments were vital and she would not have another chance. She bit back the sick feeling, and made herself treat the scene as if it was a masque.

The smell, a coppery tang, was somewhat disguised by the cold. The blood was still a bright red, not much matted, which meant the wound should be fairly fresh. Had he met someone here in the garden, as he had with Lord Macintosh?

Senor Vasquez clutched a dagger in his hand, his fingers curled around the hilt like a claw. The blood was clotting on the blade. It appeared to be a scene of suicide, Senor Vasquez coming to the garden to kneel on the gravel path and slit his own throat. It was not impossible; Kate remembered his melancholy demeanor, his strange words, not to mention his mysterious plotting.

Yet something was not right about such a sinful scenario. It nagged at the back of Kate's mind as she scanned the gruesome scene again, trying to see what
was amiss. Then she realized what it was. The dagger was in Senor Vasquez's
right
hand, and the deepest cut was on the left side, growing thinner as it moved to the right. Yet when she had sat beside him at the queen's banquet, he had kept nudging her as he cut his meat with his
left
hand.

Even Kate knew if he cut his own throat he would use his dominant hand, and the wound would slash toward the other direction.

“What is the meaning of this?” someone demanded furiously. The gaping crowd parted to let Bishop de Quadra through. His aristocratic face looked dark and thunderous, his hands curled into fists against his rich black velvet robes. That expression changed at the sight that greeted him, falling into shocked dismay. He made the sign of the cross.

Kate stood up and slipped away through the people who were still gathering in the garden, many of them. She didn't want to be noticed any more than she already had been.

She saw that Senor Gomez had also vanished.

As she hurried back toward the palace, she saw Robert Dudley and his guards rush out, still dressed for the hunt. She glimpsed Cecil's bearded face at one of the windows. If the privy council had heard word of what happened, that meant the queen would know as well.

Kate had to go to her right away.

*   *   *

“Whatever drove that poor man to commit such a sin is terribly sad,” the queen said, anger tightly leashed in
her voice. “But why did he have to do it in
my
garden? And in the midst of our Yule season?”

Elizabeth stood by the window in her bedchamber, the glass open to let the chilliness inside, fighting against the warmth of the fire. Her ladies sat on their stools and cushions, sewing, playing cards, whispering, pretending not to stare fearfully at the queen.

“I do not think Senor Vasquez killed himself, Your Grace,” Kate said quietly.

Elizabeth spun around to face Kate, her dark eyes burning in her white face. “What do you mean?”

Kate quickly explained what she had seen in the garden—the dagger in the wrong hand, the way the blood had fallen.

“So he was meeting someone in the garden, someone who murdered him?” Elizabeth muttered. “The Spanish can be irksome, I admit, and everyone can be short-tempered when closed in here together by the cold weather. But why him in particular?”

“His friend Senor Gomez did say he wondered if Senor Vasquez had a—a romantic attachment of some sort,” Kate said. “He said he once glimpsed Senor Vasquez with a red-haired lady, but that he denied any romance. He was very devout, which seems to be another reason why he would not kill himself, I think.”

“A red-haired lady?” Elizabeth said sharply. “You
do
keep your ears open, Kate. Very clever. But he did not know who this lady was? If this was a mere personal disagreement, we could avoid much trouble, I think.”

Kate shook her head. “Senor Vasquez did not really
seem the flirtatious sort, Your Grace, though he did seem to have a secret.”

“And what was that?”

Kate told the queen of her encounter with Senor Vasquez and Lord Macintosh in the garden, what she had overheard between the two unlikely conspirators. “I wonder if the red-haired lady could be the
she
Lord Macintosh said seemed reluctant.”

“Lord Macintosh was keeping secrets with a
Spaniard
?” Elizabeth hissed. “What could they have in common? And both of them dare come here, demanding
my
help for their wretched causes. . . .”

“The Bishop de Quadra begs an audience with you, Your Grace,” a page boy announced from across the room.

Elizabeth tapped her coronation ring on the windowsill, her lips pursed. “Z'wounds, but I suppose I must see the man now. We will speak more of this later, Kate. In the meantime . . .” She paused, her dark eyes glittering with a hard, diamond light, glancing in the direction of her whispering ladies clustered on the other side of the room.

“Your Grace?”

“When the Spanish are here, perhaps you could take a glance at Senor Vasquez's belongings before they are packed away? If he is indeed involved in some conspiracy, with the Scots or anyone else, mayhap he was foolish enough to leave some letters lying about. Or something to lead us to this red-haired lady.”

Kate only had time to nod before the queen gestured
for de Quadra to be admitted. The bishop always seemed to be dressed for mourning in his black cassocks, but today there was fury as well as sorrow on his heavy-jowled face.

“Your Grace,” he said, his accent heavier than usual, “thank you for seeing me on such a sorrowful day.”

“Indeed, Bishop,” Elizabeth answered. “Trust my word, we shall find out what happened. The happy relationship between England and my brother's kingdom cannot be marred. . . .”

Kate slipped out of the room and made her way up the nearest staircase, down the twisting corridors to the wing where the Spanish embassy was housed, safely distant from the French. When Elizabeth first took the throne and the Count de Feria was King Philip's ambassador, they had stayed at Durham House on the Strand, once the home of Duke of Northumberland—and the site of Lady Jane Grey's lavish wedding to Guildford Dudley, as well as her sister Lady Catherine's union to the heir of the Earl of Pembroke, whom Lady Catherine did not seem to greatly miss. But Elizabeth had soon realized it was wiser to keep the Spanish closer and under her observation.

Not that close watch had stopped what happened to the unfortunate Senor Vasquez.

Vasquez had shared a small chamber with Senor Gomez beyond the bishop's lavish reception rooms, where King Philip's portrait watched over the scarlet velvets and carved chairs and tables of his embassy. She had not been sure how to get past the watchful Spanish
servants, but even they seemed to be in hiding after what had happened. The king's painted eyes watched over an empty room. But she knew she had to be quick.