The Fyre Mirror (15 page)
Authors: Karen Harper
Tags: #Fiction - Historical, #Mystery, #16th Century, #England/Great Britain, #Royalty
“Thank God,” Cecil said, shaking his head, “that there was no wind to fan sparks on other roofs.”
“Mere sparks would probably not ignite good thatch,” Dr. Dee put in, gesturing toward the roof of the inn as well as the burned ruins. “Densely packed, thatch is more likely to smolder than ignite, unless something like a strong-burning torch is put directly to it, or a flaming roof actually abuts another. It’s one reason, Your Majesty, that London’s roofs should be converted from thatch and shake shingles to tiles. Packed in as the city dwellings are, if one goes, many could.”
She shuddered but merely nodded. For once, no one else so much as looked surprised at one of Dee’s bits of random knowledge or far-thinking theories. Everyone knew they needed to keep to the task at hand.
“You did all note last night,” Elizabeth said, “that, like the tent fire, the blaze started high and spread lower?”
“But,” Cecil said, “it certainly wasn’t the sun in a mirror that began it this time. Dr. Dee’s mirror and the pole were down by then, and a bonfire two miles away could hardly start a fire through reflection as the sun’s rays can.”
“Indeed it could not!” Dee said. “By the way, Simon doesn’t recall a thing that happened before the heat awoke him,” he added hastily, as if to shift the subject. The old man was being nursed at Dee’s house rather than at the crowded inn while plans were being made for his wife’s burial in the graveyard next to Mortlake Church. “The old man said,” Dee went on, “he thought he’d fallen asleep outside, and the blaze of the sun had awakened him—and then he thought he’d died and gone to hell.”
They were all silent for a moment before the queen said, “I noted something significant from the window at the inn this morning. Though the torches for the Maypole dance were extinguished last night, most were left in their sconces—all but one, there, between the inn and the burned cottage.”
“Indeed,” Cecil said, craning his neck, “all the others seem yet to be in place. I suppose that one could have been taken during the fire, but it was hardly needed, since the flames illumined everything so brightly. Shall we theorize that someone relit and threw that missing torch onto Garver’s thatched roof to start the fire?”
“If so,” Elizabeth said, “the evidence has probably been consumed too—as have the ropes which tied the shutters over the windows.”
“And tied the door shut,” Jenks said, gesturing toward the big oak door the Maypole had battered down last night.
Elizabeth looked over at it, charred, broken amid the ruins. The ropes which Jenks had said bound latch to hinge were also naught but ash.
“Jenks,” she said as a new possibility struck her, “even in the frenzy, do you recall if the ropes at the front door were laced in any particular way? From a distance, I couldn’t clearly see the ones holding the shutters closed.”
Everyone stopped and looked at the door, then back at Jenks. “Just wrapped haphazardly, I think,” the big man said, closing his eyes tightly as if trying to picture it again. “But there might have been a sort of flat bow this time, too.”
“Might have been …,” the queen repeated. “It’s not just that you are picturing the lacings from Kendale’s tent?”
“I don’t think so, Your Grace, but it all went so fast that I’m not sure.”
“About those ropes, Your Majesty,” Dee said. “I surmise they were cut from the one by which I moved the mirror. After the Maypole came down last night, I left it behind, and I see it’s missing this morning. Yet that fact doesn’t point to any one person,” he said, almost defensively.
Elizabeth wondered if her brilliant philosopher had finally inferred that he too—and his wife—could be under suspicion.
“But note,” Dee went on, walking away from the ruins toward a pole with a sconce which still held a torch, “that the handle for this intact torch has a leather casing. And over here,” he went on, striding to the pole with its torch missing, “this one has been pulled out with its leather holder. As you recall, Will Kendale’s leather jerkin made it through the first fire, so we might assume we can locate at least the leather remnant of the death torch—if that is what began the conflagration.”
“So you have been out already this morning, examining these torches?” Elizabeth asked Dr. Dee.
“I have.”
She decided not to press him publicly on it, but wondered why he hadn’t spoken of it sooner, especially when they discussed the torch. Though some of the embers still seethed, she and the others poked among the ruins with tree branches, occasionally turning up recognizable pieces of household goods.
“And what is this?” the queen asked, pointing to a diamondshaped lattice which had fallen away from the blaze and was barely burned.
“Hm,” Dee said, stroking his beard. “Perhaps Dame Garver’s rose trellis.”
“It’s tall,” the queen observed. “Even though the cottage roof was not far off the ground, where a torch could have been thrown atop it, perhaps the fire setter knew that good thatch, as Dr. Dee said, doesn’t catch easily. So he climbed this trellis with the torch to start the fire in several places.”
“Climbed like a tree in the hunt park,” Cecil mused. “Yes, that’s very possible, though this lattice wouldn’t hold most men.”
Elizabeth shivered. That boy running last night and in the hunt park … That boy who had simply disappeared—twice. But he couldn’t have climbed a tree to escape Clifford’s pursuit, for Clifford had followed him in an open meadow. She’d like to see the very spot herself.
“You’ll have to ask Gil about tree climbers, Your Grace,” Cecil added. “After all, he used to scale trees and buildings to get in windows.”
“Since he broke his leg, he doesn’t climb anymore,” she insisted. “He even limps sometimes.”
“Chatam pretended to limp in that play yesterday, and he’s hale and hearty,” Dee said quietly, glancing toward the actor, who had evidently just joined the crowd watching them.
Elizabeth felt doubly sick. She recalled that Gil had jumped up and down in excitement at Dee’s fire mirror last night, and he’d hustled about fetching things for him earlier. Perhaps Gil was putting on a show about that leg. She’d best hie herself back to Nonsuch and set up a series of examinations there. And, again, she must include Gil.
“Look!” John Dee cried, and freed from the ashes a small leather handle that looked as if it had been tanned or petrified. “What did I say! Leather came through here, just as in the tent fire at Nonsuch. A different method was used to ignite this blaze, I surmise, but the very same murderer set this fire.”
Two hours later, before her entourage headed back to Nonsuch, Elizabeth took Meg with her to visit Simon Garver. The Dees had made a bed for him on the first floor in their solar, where Dr. Dee had rigged a covering for modesty. It did not quite touch his burned skin, but was a tent of sorts over his naked, burned legs and arms. Though Elizabeth could tell he was in pain, he looked solemn and stoic as she stood over him.
“Near forty years wed,” he whispered as Katherine Dee, who evidently was tending him personally, left the room. Just Meg stood with the queen, though Elizabeth didn’t doubt that the Dees might be hovering outside.
“I am so sorry, Master Garver. I pray you will hold to the happy memories of your beloved helpmeet while you are healing at least your body if not your heart.”
His eyes misted. “I’d like to live long enough—to carve her an oaken grave marker.” He spoke brokenly, through puffy, blistered lips. “Wonder how long it would last—for both of us there—in the churchyard.”
“Your work will be a lasting monument to you at Nonsuch.”
“Least the inn didn’t catch too.”
“Simon Garver, I will be sending extra soothing salves and potions from my privy herbalist here, Mistress Milligrew. I will have prayers offered for you and personally keep in touch with the Dees to see you are being well tended, for which I am grateful to Mistress Dee.”
“Aye, Your Majesty. A blessing to me, that she is.”
She only hoped Garver’s observation was true. But without accusing the Dees, how—and to where—could she have him moved?
“Never had children,” the old man said, and began to cough. “Her only regret, she said—”
“Rest now. Katherine!” the queen called. Almost immediately, Mistress Dee came in with a drink in a cup to tilt to the old man’s lips.
Elizabeth scolded herself for ever doubting the Dees, even Katherine. Didn’t the young woman care well for her old mother-in-law and want her husband’s approval and love? Didn’t she nurse this old friend of her husband’s with care and concern? Elizabeth lightly squeezed the young woman’s shoulder as she left the room.
Dr. Dee was waiting by the front door with a book in his arms.
“I thought you might wish to take my mirror book with you, Your Grace, to peruse it in your own good time.”
“Thank you, Dr. Dee,” she said, taking it from him. “I shall do so, as I am getting desperate for any clues which will lead to this fire murderer.”
“You know, Your Majesty, the Catholic Church—before your father led his realm to a better way—opposed all experiments with mirrors.”
“Do not worry that I shall insist you stop your trials with them. But why were they once so feared?”
“The old belief in demon possession,” he explained, his voice a mere whisper, though Meg had gone outside to await the queen in the yard. “Some thought a mirror’s reflection could trigger a trancelike state. The gazer’s attention was captured, blinded, turned inward—narcissistic behavior, in other words. And then a demon could snatch the soul.”
“It is superstition that we of this enlightened age must never fear.”
“But there is one thing I’ve especially noted for you in that volume,” he added, pointing to a piece of red ribbon which protruded from the pages. “In light of what I told you about Queen Mary of Scots peering in mirrors and implying she wants your throne, I thought it might be of some interest, however arcane it seems. As you know, she’s insisted that the symbol of England—the lion rampant—be quartered in her coat of arms when she has no right to that.”
“That was reported to me several years ago. I believe she delights in tormenting me from afar. For now, I shall take the high road and merely keep an eye on her. Then, if she oversteps … but what is the information at this place you’ve marked?”
“It tells of the old legend, Your Majesty, that only a virgin holding a mirror is able to tame a unicorn. As you know, the unicorn is the symbol of Scotland as the lion is that of England.”
“But what of that old tale? The widowed Queen Mary is no virgin, and since I am, I should be the one who tames the unicorn that is Scotland, not the other way around. But tell me straight what you are thinking, Dr. Dee, for you are speaking in riddles.”
“Ah, there is a riddle which begins this book, Your Majesty, one about a mirror. But here is what I am theorizing. I had heard, though it made no sense to me before, that Queen Mary had lately ordered a huge painting for her throne room which depicts a lion bowing before the unicorn, tamed by a mirror in possession of, not a virgin, but that same triumphant unicorn.”
Her heart pounding, the queen clutched the book to her. She was surprised how her voice trembled. “The insult in that painting aside, you mean, then, that she is fascinated by mirrors?”
“I do.”
“And it might amuse her to send someone to torment me with mirrors somehow—as she tries to do from afar.”
“We must not lose sight of the fact she is an avowed enemy, Your Majesty, however much she tries to cloak that behind her letters and Lord Maitland, whom you and Secretary Cecil evidently trust.”
“Dr. Dee, I thank you for your wise counsel. As for my royal cousin, I shall continue to keep my eyes wide open. In dealing with Queen Mary, it is as the Bible says: ‘Now we see through a mirror darkly but then face to face.’ I shall be ever watchful and tread carefully.”
But as she turned to leave, holding the big book, the queen caught her toe on the Dees’ threshold stone and would have tripped had not Meg Milligrew darted close to catch her.
OTHER THAN HER GUARD CLIFFORD, WHO STOOD INSIDE the doors of her council chamber, Elizabeth faced her artist Henry Heatherley alone. Her entourage had been back at Nonsuch for barely an hour, but she intended to waste no time in pursuit of a villain. Nor were Giles Chatam and Katherine Dee off the hook, though Ned Topside had covertly searched the actor’s possessions for the missing mirror and found only two old ones, which were unbreakable polished steel.
“Which, of course,” Ned had said, with a dramatic roll of his fine green eyes, “doesn’t mean the rogue didn’t hide the stolen mirror or give it back to Mistress Dee for safekeeping. Or that the sun’s rays concentrated on a plain polished-steel mirror could not ignite a fire as well as a concave one.”
“You are my master player but not my philosopher,” the queen had replied to Ned. “Best you only gather evidence and leave the theorizing to the likes of Dr. Dee and me. But I do intend to question that tosspot Heatherley soon.”
And soon was now. Though the queen had meant to present a calm demeanor to her artist, the hot patch of late-afternoon sun streaming in the window on her skirts made her so nervous that she shifted into the shade of the table. She saw that her not having greeted him when he entered had disconcerted him even more.
“Your Majesty,” Heatherley said as he straightened from his bow, “dare I hope you have summoned me to continue your portrait? So much time has passed since you first invited me to that honorable task, yet I have been working on it every moment I could spare.”
“Every moment you could spare from drinking with Will Kendale the night he died and with anyone else in the Mortlake tavern last night?” she demanded. His countenance fell, but he swiftly cloaked his surprise at her words and tone.
“If I may reply to your implication that I waste my time and talents by spending too much time drinking, Your Majesty.”
“Please do, Master Heatherley.”
“Though I sometimes relish the pleasures of life, I do not believe my efforts have been unprofitable,” he said, his voice sounding both hurt and haughty. “You will be pleased to know that I have successfully covered the scorch marks on your portrait and have much improved it since. Indeed, it is nearly completed, so I have brought it with me for your perusal. It is just outside.”
“I shall see it later. You must know, I take a care about foreign spies lurking near my person and my people. So what can you tell me about the Italian man who was drinking at the Mortlake Inn with you last night?”
“Oh, him,” he said, looking much relieved at her shift of topics. “He said his name wasn’t of import, but I thought him a man of goodly learning and discernment.”
“Because?”
“Because he was fascinated by the artists of our nation, Your Majesty, most impressed by my work, first under Holbein and now for you.”
“Was he an artist himself then?”
“A patron of the arts, who heard there was a festival and came to see it.”
“Then spent his time in a taproom, drinking.”
“He was much disappointed in the rustic nature of the displays, a far cry, evidently, from what passes in his homeland. Oh, yes, his knowledge of wines was discerning too.”
“And that rustic inn had in its cellars the Italian wines he favors?”
“Your Majesty, he favors drinking exactly what I like, French Bordeaux, which I had brought along myself. But he asked about your artists, and I told him of Will’s tragic demise, not that he’d heard of him,” he said with a sharp sniff as he tugged down the cuffs of his sleeves.
“He asked about your work and anyone else’s?”
“Oh, indeed, Mistress Teerlinc’s—though I told him you thought she painted faces too puffy and pasty, even a perfect face like yours.”
“Forget the flattery, Master Heatherley. And Gil Sharpe? Did this nameless Italian patron ask about him, too?”
“He was interested that the lad had been sent to study at Urbino.”
“So you told the man that Gil had been to Urbino?”
Heatherley looked blank for a moment. He frowned. She wondered how much of this was being resurrected through the haze of too much wine, or whether he was making it up as he went.
“Why, I’m not certain about that,” he admitted, shaking his head. “Perhaps someone else had told him that, because I believe I said only that the lad had been to Italy but not where. The point is, Your Majesty, I have brought my beautiful portrait of you near to its conclusion. And since I have surmised that the need is pressing for a fine painting to be copied and sent throughout your realm, mine is ready to convey your power and presence to all. May I not fetch it in then?”
She stared the man down, wishing she could see inside his soul. Could his burning ambition have made him decide to eliminate his rivals, and so to attack either their portraits or their lives? Though she had seen no artist but Gil in the hunt park near the time the portraits were marred, Heatherley could have put scorch marks on his own work to draw sympathy, while he could easily repair that damage. Perhaps he thought it would allow him to leapfrog the others in the competition she had decreed. But would he go so far as to burn the Garvers’ cottage just to confuse her? How unstable did this man become when he was drunk?
“I will see the portrait,” she said.
He bustled to the door and brought it in, turning it to her with a flourish.
It was quite good, though he’d managed to make her look stiff and ponderous. Or perhaps it was simply that his style—Holbein’s style—had an exacting yet flat quality compared to the suggestion of depth and movement in Gil’s work.
“I know,” Heatherley said, “you hate to pose, Your Majesty, and selecting this as the official portrait will eliminate the need for more of that. Once in your possession, this work will be safe from secret slashing or public burning by some demented person who wants to ruin all our efforts.”
“Do the other artists know,” she said, ignoring his clever ultimatum, “that you have worked on this not from life but from memory to outpace them?”
“Not yet, but whatever you decide—”
“Exactly. Then did you tell Will Kendale the night he died that you intended to race forward with your work?”
He looked instantly distraught again. “Why would I tell him or anyone, if I wanted to surprise them and you, Your Majesty?”
“Perhaps because you are too often in your cups, Master Heatherley, so that you brag and say too much and hardly recall what. And if you did tell Kendale, would he have been angry or threatened to tell me—or said he’d like to set your work afire or some such thing which made you very angry while you were very drunk?”
“Your Majesty,” he said, gasping in a great breath on the word
“Your.”
“You read in far too much. I only know, as an artist, I must protect my work at all costs—but never that way. Never.”
“Your.”
“You read in far too much. I only know, as an artist, I must protect my work at all costs—but never that way. Never.”
“Best guard that portrait until I see the completed works from Lavina and Gil Sharpe,” she told him, rapping her knuckles on the tabletop. “At that time I will judge which one I prefer. And I shall hope by then also to answer who is the one who shall be arrested and tried for Kendale’s death, and perhaps for Mistress Garver’s in Mortlake, too. On second thought, Master Heatherley, best guard yourself as well as your work, lest the mysterious fire demon put you in his sights.”
Standing at his tall writing desk in his laboratory, John Dee hunched over the proposal he had written for his queen. Now that she’d seen his Maypole mirror work, surely she would listen to reason about testing signal mirrors on naval vessels. Now if only he had some excuse to ride to Nonsuch to share this with her. He’d told his Katherine that. She’d said he should simply go and volunteer to help with the queen’s investigation into the arsonist’s identity, but he’d told her he’d best not, with nothing new to offer.
“John!” He heard Katherine’s excited but distant voice. She sounded happy, not alarmed, so he kept working. “John, guess what I found? You won’t believe it!”
Does she want to wake poor, burned old Simon? Dee fretted. She’d said she would go mad if she didn’t get out for a few moments, so she’d gone for a short walk. The queen’s Dr. Forrest was resting, and Sarah was keeping an eye on the injured man. Perhaps Katherine has come across some patch of strawberries, Dee thought, or she’s turned up some coins someone dropped at the fair yesterday on the green, something silly but sweet.
Dee stayed bent over his work, hastily putting the final touches on the diagram below the written section. It might take Katherine a minute to find him, a few more moments of peace … .
“There you are!” she sang out, standing in the door with her hands behind her back. “You will never guess what I found!”
“I don’t like guessing games, my dear.”
“You should! That’s what you do all the time, guess at some wild theory, then set about to prove it,” she said, pouting prettily, he must admit.
“All right, then,” he said, straightening behind his drawing board, “what is it?”
“Look!” she cried, and held the missing mirror out toward him. “I couldn’t believe it!”
“You had misplaced it in the house all this time?” he cried, rushing to her.
“No, I was walking toward the fields to get some sun and fresh air, and stumbled on it, hidden in a patch of violets, mirror side up so it caught my eye. I warrant whoever came over the wall to take it decided not to be caught with it and simply tossed or dropped it.”
He took it tenderly in his hands. “Thank God, it did not break,” he whispered, turning the mirror over to check its back, too. The frame and surface weren’t so much as dirty or smeared, but perhaps Katherine had cleaned and polished them.
“So now,” she said, her cheeks flushed rosy with the excitement of her great find, “I am back in your good graces, and you have a reason to visit the queen again. And I will gladly go along to explain to her. I shall tell Her Majesty that it’s almost as if some magic hand put it where I could find it again, some sprite or guardian angel—”
“And not the evil one who spirited it away?” he said, a sharp edge to his voice. “Katherine, I must go to her with the mirror, but alone this time. You’ll need to stay with our patient.”
“Well, at least tell the queen that I am not there because I’m sitting with him and keeping company with Mother Dee. You know,” she added, plucking at his sleeve, “all Dame Glenda Garver did was sit and look out her front window at people passing. I felt she was watching me all the time.”
“When one is deaf, one’s world shrinks, my dear.”
“I suppose. But Mother Dee prefers her own kitchen and hearthside. She has many memories of times long past, but she’s not a busybody like Dame Garver.”
“My dear, best not to speak ill of the dead, especially with her husband in our house. But I am grateful you brought me this precious mirror straightaway, for I believe one like it could have been used to burn that artist’s tent at Nonsuch. Before all this happened, had you ever heard of such a thing?”
“Of course not, my lord. I know you have many ideas for mirrors like this, but it is of use to me only in my toilette.”
He wanted to believe that Katherine had simply found the mirror. Its return did give him the perfect reason to ride to see the queen again. But it all seemed too easy, too—fantastical.
He studied her face; Katherine stepped quickly closer to embrace him. As he hugged her back, over her shoulder his eyes fell on the drawing of the signal mirrors he’d done for Her Majesty. He had to admit that in reflected light as in life, certain angles could create distortions—and then one couldn’t read the signals right at all.
When Clifford reported that Gil Sharpe was in his tent in the privy garden, ailing—retching and puking, that was for sure, he said—Elizabeth ordered Meg to dose and keep an eye on him. Gil was not to leave his tent until he was much cured and the queen sent for him. Then, before the sun set, she went to see the patch of ground where Clifford had sworn that the running boy had simply disappeared. Leaving everyone behind but Jenks, Clifford, and Robin, garbed in hunting attire and riding her favorite palfrey, she set out through the hunt park toward the meadow.
The shadows of tree trunks slanted sharply sideways, making her blink as first sun, then shade shot past her gaze. “Start us exactly where you first spotted the lad, Clifford,” Elizabeth ordered as they drew their horses up.
Robin reined in beside her and asked, “You don’t really believe some strange child pops up here and there to set the fires, Your Grace?”
“I am pursuing each fork in the road—and there are many.”
“I warrant,” Clifford said, surveying the area, “it was nearly here. Though he was running away, I hardly reacted at first, set on looking for an adult.”
“Could you tell if he had anything in his hands as he ran?” Elizabeth asked.
“Too far to tell, though I guess he could have hidden a mirror. Then, when I spotted no one else around, I rode through that break in the trees to follow him a bit, but he disappeared.”
“Disappeared,” Robin said. “If you were a good distance from him, perhaps he simply lay in the grass or ran down a hill. A child from one of the surrounding villages could have sneaked in to have a peek at the queen or court and then taken off when the hubbub began. Cheam lies on the other side of the hunt park, though it is a good four or five miles through thick woods and dales.”
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