The Fatal Fashione (7 page)

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Authors: Karen Harper

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

BOOK: The Fatal Fashione
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“But she didn’t give her women a reason for their impromptu holiday?”
“Their what holiday? Was yesterday some saint’s day?” Ursala demanded. Jenks patted her shoulder. Meg reminded herself to ask the queen
not
to send him back to Ursala, but then, the queen should never have sent Ned to visit Hannah, either.
“No, not a saint’s day,” Meg explained. “But you were in the fields across the way after Hannah let her women go?”
“With my sister and our workers,” she said, nodding. “In that stiff wind, things dried fast, but we have to guard them. Lose a sheet or tablecloth sets us back a pretty penny.”
“I can imagine. So you saw nothing at all unusual that day?”
“Nary a thing. But—I just’membered a young lady what got lost, kept standing’bout, was mayhap mute or simple. Come to think of it, she kept looking up toward Hannah’s windows, she did.”
Meg’s and Jenks’s gazes met.
“So, mistress,” he said, “how was this young lady attired?”
Propping her elbows on the table, Ursala put both hands over her eyes. “Keep only seeing her scairt face. Ah … she wore a blue cloak, had fine shoes on, with soles not worn much, neither.” She looked at Jenks, then Meg, in turn. “I tried to feed her, but she warn’t hungry. Can I get something then for the both of you?” she said, popping up as if her interrogation were over.
The idea of having breakfast in a room with vats of lye and urine didn’t appeal to Meg, though Jenks looked as if he’d happily jump in one of them if he could please this woman.
“We need to go speak with the lady that sent us,” Meg said, and stood before Jenks could answer.
“But we’ll be back to be certain you’re well,” Jenks assured her, and reached over to squeeze her shoulder. As Meg took Jenks’s arm to propel him along, the door at the back of the workroom opened. Another woman, the very image of Ursala, stood there with an older man behind her.
“Who’s these folks, Lally?” the woman called out, but Ursala just followed them to the door.
“My sister Pamela,” she explained as they stepped out into the street. For the first time, Meg saw that Ursala’s sweet face was dusted with light freckles. “Born the same day,” she went on, “but I’m older by a bit, and people always mistake us. We’re not close, though,” she whispered, “not since she wed. That’s Peter, her husband, what owns this place and her now, too. Hannah and I”—her blue eyes clouded with tears again and she sniffed hard—“she took my sister’s place when I kind of lost her, but now—she’s gone … Hannah had a twin sister, too—we had that in common …”
Sensing Jenks was tempted to take Ursala, alias Lally, into his arms and wipe away her tears, Meg gripped his iron-muscled arm hard with her fingernails and steered him down the street. As they passed Hannah’s starch house, they saw Bates in front of it, earnestly speaking to the red-coated constable the queen or Secretary Cecil must have sent for.
Dingen van der Passe’s starch establishment was at a similar distance from the palace as Hannah’s, but, considering what Elizabeth hoped to accomplish, she knew it was no good trying to sneak there in disguise. Simply informing her servants that she wanted to see the van der Passe starch house, she went in her coach with Lady Rosie out the main palace gate and down the broad Strand toward Holywell Street. As ever, when she appeared with an entourage, townfolk, especially children, followed along or huzzahed as she passed.
“I’ll never become used to the jolting of my coaches,” Elizabeth groused to Rosie. “They may be the new thing in transport, but someone surely must find a way for us to have a smoother ride. This damned thing is likely to shake my teeth out of my head!’S blood, I just bit my tongue!”
“I must say, they are beautifully painted and carved, Your Majesty.”
“I’d hang all that for a gentle ride,” Elizabeth insisted, swallowing the tart taste of blood, then dabbing at the bite mark with a handkerchief. “For once, I think those with less wealth and position have the better way, to simply walk,” she went on with a bit of a lisp. “But it does keep the dust and rain off—and shelters me from anyone who would dare harm.”
“I know you prefer to ride ahorse, Your Grace.”
“But that can be dangerous, too. Thomas Gresham’s crushed leg came, you know, when he was ahorse on an errand for me on the Continent. A loud bang afrighted his mount, it reared, and that was that. He well-nigh died from his injuries, and the leg pain nearly cripples him yet.”
She thought again of Gresham’s pain over his daughter’s mental state. The parents had been relieved their child was not injured, yet was not the child’s malady worse than one that could be physically categorized and treated? At least, the queen had heard, Meg’s little Sally was well and being fed and bathed.
Both the queen and Rosie jolted and jerked as a wheel bounced through what must have been a hole as big as a pot. “Hell’s gates, Boonen,” the queen called to her coachman, and rapped on the ceiling, “keep a better eye out for those!” She would have slapped the leather curtain down over the window, but people were waving and cheering along the way between the Savoy and Somerset House, so she smiled and waved despite the jostling ride.
“At least a coach journey is usually smoother in the countryside,” the ever cheerful Rose said. “There the streets don’t have these modern cobbles, so is progress indeed better? But, Your Grace, is there anything special I should do when we arrive at Mrs. van der Passe’s starch house?”
“Do not let on that Hannah is dead until I inform them, and keep your eyes on their shop and on their faces. I’m sure Dingen will not appreciate an unannounced early-morning royal visit, but that is just too bad.”
The small scattering of Londoners from all walks of life cheered their queen as she emerged from the coach, smiling, nodding, surrounded by six guards who had dismounted. She waved at her people before she swept through the starch-shop door Clifford held open for her. Inside, there was much stir even before the twenty or so women bent over their tasks looked up to see—for all they knew—a grand lady with a small entourage cross their threshold.
Then, from the back, someone whispered, “Laws!’Tis the queen herself!”
Those closest curtsied, and the others followed; everyone gaped. One woman at the back of the room turned away and pounded up the back stairs.
Lady Rosie followed the queen in, and then came Clifford, who had ridden with Boonen. Clifford, Elizabeth noted as the van der Passes rushed down from their living quarters above the shop, was exactly the height and girth of Dingen’s brawny husband, Dirck.
“Oh, Your Majesty, a surprise and honor,
ja,
it is!” Dingen cried as she hurried through her women and curtsied low.
Her handsome attire indicated she might plan to oversee her shop, but not labor in it herself, for she wore both neck and wrist ruffs. Dirck was another story. Elizabeth noted he had hastily pulled on his black leather jerkin and a flat red-and-blue-striped taffeta cap. Sweeping off the cap, he sank into a bow just behind his wife.
The van der Passes were sturdy people of big frames and ample flesh with light brown hair, pale skin, broad faces with cheeks polished like pippins, and bright blue eyes. Elizabeth judged them to be nearly fifty years of age. It had always seemed to her that husbands and wives who had lived long together, especially if they oft worked side by side, began to resemble each other, and this couple attested to that belief. Both spoke with pronounced Dutch accents. Despite all the workers toiling here and her own fine attire, Dingen’s hands were rough and red, much more than Hannah’s had been.
“To vat do ve owe the honor of this visit, Your Majesty?” Dirck asked as he stood erect again.
“For one thing, I wanted to see this busy hive of activity. I have been proud to employ both you and Hannah von Hoven, so surely a visit is in order.”
“Oh,
ja,
” Dingen said, “but ve are bigger and better here dan her place.”
“Do you know that from mere hearsay or have you seen it?”
Though he had not been addressed directly, Dirck answered. “Got to know about one’s competition, eh, vife?”
“Oh,
ja,
and Hannah’s most welcome here in turn. Dat young voman trespass for sure, taking some of our London business,” she said, shaking a finger as if Hannah were here to be lectured, “but ve not call it trespass if she visit here. Perhaps she vould learn something to see a proper new mangle and our stirring stools instead of sticks.”
Dingen gestured to the three-legged stools that her women dipped in two big barrels to stir the thick, pasty starch mixture. That, too, looked different from what Hannah had been soaking in.
“May ve show you around, den, Your Majesty?” Dingen asked.
“I would count it a favor.”
At a flick of Dingen’s wrist, her women moved back against the walls to give them access to the array of tables, drying racks, and troughs of gray, thick starch a woman had been ladling out. But where was the large dipping vat?
The queen’s gaze snagged Rosie’s surprised stare; she gave her a barely perceptible shake of her head. She had planned to surprise the van der Passes immediately with news of Hannah’s death and then observe them, but she needed to see how this starch shop was different. That alone could have fostered competition and hard feelings between the two rival starchers.
“You see, Your Majesty,” Dingen said, holding up a thickbristled brush, “ve brush dis stiff starch paste in each fold of each ruff and dry it vell.” She gestured to rows of racks and shelves stacked with tiers of ruffs on wooden forms in the shape and size of necks and wrists. “Poor Hannah, she still use dat vat’ry starch—so I been told. Next ve dampen and set de ruff, de most difficult process. I tell you, it takes great patience—even teaching my vorkers takes great patience.
“Den, vit heated rods called poking sticks—ve are the only starch shop in all England can do it—ve set up to six hundred tiny pleats or S-curves of vide or small sizes and add a tiny dab of vax—one of my secrets, but I share it vit you—to fix the curves together so it not collapse like a ruined French egg
soufflé, ja.
”
It annoyed Elizabeth not only that Dingen kept subtly denigrating Hannah but that this Dutchwoman must enjoy French food. Even foreigners were now preferring things foreign.
“Oh, Your Majesty,” Dingen plunged on, her hands clasped before her ample breasts and her face nearly enraptured, “just vait til the next new ruffle fashions sweep your court!”
“If they sweep my court, I shall set the fashions while you set the ruffs, Mrs. van der Passe.”
“Oh,
ja,
of course, but it shall be dis starch house, not da small von Hoven’s place works vit you. I vill introduce—vith your approval, of course—colored starches, not just the ivory ones ve see now but yellows, pale reds, and lilacs, and encourage ruffs vit lace, tiny jewels, embroidery. I intended to beg for your permission, but since you are here—Your Majesty, I vould ask one boon.”
Elizabeth was becoming even more disturbed. What if these people—or even just Dirck—were actually guilty of harming Hannah? If the queen could prove that, what if, as Ned had mentioned and Cecil had suggested, this starch house collapsed in a flurry of suspicion and accusations over Hannah’s death? The queen knew she must indeed tread carefully here.
“Would both of you please step out into my coach with me?” she said, and, used to her merest hint being a command, started for the door.
She looked back to see the couple exchanging dire glances. Dingen wrung her hands while Dirck whispered to her, and they both nodded. Looking as if they were going to their doom, they followed her out and up the steps of the coach. Rosie climbed up, too, and, as a last thought, since Dirck looked large enough to harm a woman of any size, the queen gestured for Clifford to climb in as well. At her nod, Boonen closed the door on the five of them.
“Ask your boon, then,” Elizabeth told the nervous couple.
“That you keep,” Dirck spoke this time, “that Puritan cleric from our shop. He’s come more than vonce unbidden—to preach and threaten us vit fire and brimstone from heaven and a place in the very bowels of hell.”
“Hosea Cantwell?” Elizabeth gasped. “He has intruded and threatened you?”
“Twice,” Dingen put in, “and said he vould return.”
Then, the queen reasoned, he could have been to Hannah’s, too. Had he found her alone, threatened her, they’d argued and things got out of hand? No doubt many homicides began as arguments, which led to accidents, and then the murderer panicked and tried to cover things up.
“I assure you I will speak to Hosea Cantwell,” she said.
“Ve only bothered you vit this,” Dirck said, leaning forward on the leather seat, “since he’s a member of your own Parliament.”
“Hardly
my own
Parliament, but I will see to it. However, I have come for another reason besides seeing your thriving establishment or hearing your hopes for future fashions. I regret to tell you that Hannah von Hoven was murdered yesterday by a person or persons unknown.”

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