The Fyre Mirror (19 page)

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Authors: Karen Harper

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

BOOK: The Fyre Mirror
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Gil wanted to protest, but he knew better. His own half-truths had done him in. As he was hustled past Cecil, Gil overheard him whisper to a guard, “At first light tomorrow, you’ll ride with word of this to the inn at Cheam, then, if need be, on to Dr. Dee’s at Mortlake.”
Gil’s mind raced as fast as they were forcing his feet up the back servants’ staircase. He could understand John Dee being informed of this fire, for it was obvious he’d been helping Her Majesty look for the fire setter through logical deduction. But who was staying at the inn at Cheam?
Paul Beeson, called only by his last name, was a wizened old man with a bird’s nest of white hair and a face that looked as if it were tanned leather. The queen thought it ironic to find him by a belching farrier’s fire with leather bellows. She thought too of Dame Dee, sitting by her hearth fire, for this seemed not to be Beeson’s place of employment but retirement. It turned out another of Beeson’s sons worked this forge, just the way one owned the stables.
“Greatly honored to make your acquaintance, milady,” Master Beeson said more than once, nodding his head, when Elizabeth introduced herself as Bess Smythe from Coventry. The old man had evidently decided on his own that she was a lady, and she didn’t correct him. She saw that he was nearly blind; one eye was cloudy, and the other never focused on or followed her.
“And I am honored to meet you, Master Beeson. I dare say your hoary head and wrinkled visage bespeak not only many years but much local knowledge.”
“Used to tend horses at a great house near here, I did,’fore its fall.”
“Its fall?” she prompted as the old man walked her away from the heat of the forge and the huffing hiss of the bellows that fanned it. He did not pick up his feet when he walked, but shuffled. Yet he moved as if he had the placement of everything memorized. She hoped she was dealing with a sword-sharp mind.
“Aye, the Moorings’ manor house at Cuddington,” he explained. “You’ve heard how it was torn down, manor, church, and town, I warrant.”
“Oh, yes. You knew the family?”
“Knew the sire, Master John, who loved to ride and hunt. Like everyone else, admired from afar Mistress Malinda, a rare beauty. But taught young Master Percy to ride, I did,” he said, thrusting out his thin chest.
Elizabeth’s heartbeat quickened. “But even after Cuddington fell, as you say, you stayed in these parts while the palace was being built?”
“Nowhere else to go, and had family here,” he explained as they paused between the blacksmith shop and the inn. Chickens scratched and scurried about their feet, but she ignored them. From here she could see into the public stables, where her horses were being curried by local lads, perhaps Beeson’s own grandsons.
“My good man,” she went on, “do you know of anyone in these parts who worked to adorn Nonsuch—painting, carving, and the like? That would have been anytime after 1538.”
“Hm, how many years ago is that?” he asked, stroking his chin. “Must admit I sometimes pay no heed what year or month it is, though I still got my memories, that I do.”
“It would have been just over twenty-seven years ago.”
“Damned Tudor king, and most folks in these parts still feel the same, e’en when the young queen comes calling across the hunt park,” he groused. Both Clifford and Jenks stiffened at that, but she shook her head at them. “Well, milady,” the old man went on, “I can think of two who might have suited, but they’re both dead and buried.”
“Of old age—natural causes?”
“Tell you true, both of unnatural causes. Old Friar Rolland—he wasn’t no friar, but wore his hair like that, you know, milady, cut in a tonsure—he fell off a roof. He was a tiler, see, but no one knows how he slipped,’cause the roof he was doing then, just down the way there,” he added, gesturing vaguely, “wasn’t that steep.”
“At least it wasn’t a fire,” Elizabeth muttered to Rosie, who stood beside her.
“Now, how’d you know that,” Beeson countered, “’cause Will Croydon worked on setting them Roman emperor’s portraits into the walls of the inner courtyard of Nonsuch. And got hisself kilt by a hearth fire what spread to his bed clothes one night and burned him to death in his own bed, it did. Always said I’d like to die in my own bed, but not roasted like a pig in a poke.”
Elizabeth shuddered. The pattern and possible motive for the attacks on Will Kendale and Simon Garver matched these deaths. Someone was killing, mostly by fire, the artists or craftsmen who had worked to adorn Nonsuch. And had those vengeful acts then spread to attacks on other artists—her artists? Or on the queen’s ladies and the queen herself?
“Master Beeson,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “can you tell me anything about the two strange hillocks which are to the east side of Nonsuch?”
His eyes widened as he seemed to regard her anew, though his vacant gaze looked slightly past her. “You hain’t been staying in Nonsuch, have you?” he asked, his voice shaky.
“I am simply interested in this area,” she assured him. “It is very beautiful and the local history fascinating.”
“Best not be riding onto Lord Arundel’s land and what’s still a royal hunt forest, e’en though they say the queen’s gone back to London,” he warned. “Trespassing at best, poaching at worst.”
“I’ll remember that,” she said, taking two gold crowns out of the pouch she wore on her belt.
“The Moorings were formerly a Cath’lic fam’bly on the climb,” Beeson said. “I don’t know for sure, but I think that was another reason—besides the fine prospect of their land—that the king good as beggared them. Supposedly, they were compensated,” he said with a derisive snort, “but it wasn’t nothing like what they lost.” Elizabeth listened raptly, holding the paltry coins in her perspiring palms before she slipped them back in her purse. “Proud of their manor and the church and little town what sprung up around, they were. And of their two fine children.”
“I noted well your pride, too, when you mentioned how you taught the heir, Master Percy, to ride,” she said. “Can you tell me what happened to all of them when they had to move elsewhere?”
“Bitter and broken, all of them. But Master Percy never had to turn his back on his birthright and ride away like the others. You asked, milady,’bout those hillocks, aye, man-made, they were. I helped haul in the soil and pile it up.”
“For watchtowers or hunting platforms or blinds? I note there are remnants of building foundations there, and something once made of the same stones in the meadow.”
“Who are you really, then, milady?”
“Someone who regrets what happened here and wants to be certain such never happens again.”
He nodded and started to walk again, past the inn, out toward the high street through the village. Elizabeth, trailed by her trio of companions, hurried to keep up.
“Once we reach the green, you’ll have to steer me the rest of the way,” Beeson declared.
“Where are we going then?”
“I think it’s time, milady, you paid a visit to Master Percy.” This tiny room might as well be a prison cell, Gil thought as he rolled over on his lousy, sagging bed. He hadn’t had lice for years, but he would now. Still, he lay there, fingers linked under his head, staring up at the ceiling.
He felt he might as well have burned up in that fire too. He’d lost everything he valued, the painting which was his past and the one which was his future. His very supplies, Italian, costly. His clothes, but for these work ones on his back. The queen had his mirror, and could even have his life when she returned.
He figured she’d gone back to Surrey to oversee an investigation of the murders, for he’d seen her do such before, leaving Meg Milligrew in her place and just shutting her doors to everyone but Cecil and Lady Ashley for a day or two. If he could only get to her, plead his case, tell her the truth—and warn her that the fire setter was here at court but was not the person the zealous Cecil had locked away.
Gil groaned and sat up. He had to get out of here. His eyes still stung, not only from the smoke, but from the sight of his beloved Dorothea blackened, and the queen, so regal and so real, gone up in flames, as had the works of Kendale, Lavina—but not Heatherley. Oh, no, that braggart had repaired his well enough! If Gil had to pick someone to blame, it would be that blackguard with his grandly scrolled HH on each portrait that might as well mean his idol Hans Holbein as well as his own name. A good thing Holbein was dead so he didn’t know what leeches artists could be to copy another’s works by hook or by crook! Heatherley was as bad as the Italians, mimicking others’ works, though they did it with their damned mirror tricks and not a pack of lies.
Gil forced himself to his feet and stood on tiptoe to look out the single, high window of this tiny room. It let in light but no breeze. If there hadn’t been a guard on his door, he’d have broken the glass and risked his neck trying to get up on the roof. But everyone knew it was guarded now, lest the fire setter walk freely here as he had at Nonsuch.
He heaved a huge sigh and fiddled with the window latch. In olden days, before he grew so tall and broke his leg, he would not have feared going out that window, grabbing the roof tiles, and getting himself out of here.
To his surprise, as if it were a sign, the latch lifted and the window shoved easily, silently outward. Sweet air and the late-afternoon sun came streaming in like a beckoning finger. He tried to shove the single chair under it so he could look out, but the legs grated against the stone floor. He knew a guard was on his door. And if he heard a sound or came in, Gil had no doubt that Cecil would take an escape attempt as a sign of further guilt. So he lifted the heavy chair to move it silently. Climbing on it, he saw he was not under the eaves but on the next story down—the one, he could see, that had the narrow decorative ledge running under it.
He closed his eyes and prayed hard, not in Italian, as he had done when he was in Italy, but in good, solid English.
Oh, Lord God, if you could just get me out of here and spirit me to the queen, I could set everything right
…
let truth and justice prevail
…
warn her that her palace and people are in danger here. I could keep her throne safe for all Christendom. Please give me a sign if this is what I should do.
He sensed no answer, and stuck only his head out to look down at a ledge the old Gil would have danced along in delight. That is, he sensed no answer until a lark flew into the nearby ivy, fluttered its feathers, and sang him its sweet song.
“Those heavy ivy vines run all along this side,” Gil muttered. “I’ll just walk on the ledge and hang on to the vine, and hope the roof guards don’t look down or across the court.”
With nothing but the clothes on his back—and frantic fear in his heart—Gil glanced around the room, then lifted himself up by the lintel above the window, and got his feet out first. He writhed through the small rectangle, wishing he were little Gil again. Turning over, belly down, he held on to the sill with his legs and backside dangling and felt with his booted toes for the ledge beneath.
How far below? Where? At first, his feet windmilled nothing but air. Cecil would think him a double liar now for claiming he never climbed anymore. There! One toe on it. If only his old skills—and old courage—would come back.
His shoulders got stuck, and when he tried to wrench them free of the window, he nearly fell backward away from the building. He grabbed for the thick vine. Twigs and ivy tore free from the brick; the lark darted and protested, as if he were after its nest. But he held tight.
And then he made the mistake of looking down. Three stories below lay the patterned pavement of Sermon Court. The black and white diagonals seemed to waver, the corners to round and shift. He closed his eyes tightly, then looked up and out over the thatch, shake, and tile rooftops of London toward the broad river.
That steadied him somewhat, and he made himself a vow. He was going to get down from here and to the queen or die trying.
GIL PRESSED HIS BACK TO THE IVY-LACED WALL, ARMS straight down to grab the thicker vines behind his bum, and shuffled along the narrow ledge high above the pavement. Several courtiers walked below, even two of Cecil’s scriveners, earnestly nodding in conversation. He thanked God that none of them glanced up, nor did he see the queen’s guards on the opposite roof.
His bad leg began to ache, then to tremble. No, he was shaking all over. If he got caught, he might as well have fallen. Cecil considered him guilty of the fire murders. Worse, Gil knew that he’d used up all his favors with the queen. And now that his portrait of her had been destroyed …
He gulped as he came to the corner which would take him around to the Kings Street gatehouse. This would get him outside the bounds of the palace proper, but it presented two problems. More people would be on the street below to see him. And the ivied wall was about to be left behind.
However would he get down from this height to the public thoroughfare to make his final escape? He could never manage a flying leap to the nearby trees. And then, without a farthing to his name and looking like the street urchin he once was, how could he get all the way to Cheam or Mortlake to throw himself upon the mercy of the queen—if indeed she was in Surrey?
The corner terrified him, when he would not even have slowed for it years ago. He and his mother, Bett, had been the best of anglers, crawling in second- or third-story windows to steal or at least survey what to steal later with their long angling hooks. Now he held to the last of the ivy vine for dear life and managed to turn inward to the building to chance the corner. He scraped his face and chest as he went around it. Yes, the thick mat of ivy ended here; he was on his own with just a ledge barely as wide as his painter’s palette.
Old advice he’d heard as a child from other anglers came back to him. Don’t tense up. Don’t look down. Remember to breathe. If only he could find a window open at this height. Otherwise, sliding down that distant drainpipe would be the only option.
The late-afternoon traffic in the street below began to make him dizzy. Foot travelers, carts, horses, wagons, people with supplies for the palace, streamed by. Down the way he noted the guards on the palace gate where Cecil had gotten him in when he came back to London with high hopes just a fortnight ago. Now he was high, but his hopes were—
“Look! A lad up on the gate! Look, Evan!”
Others gazed up, gawking, pointing, calling out to him. Their voices blurred. Were they saying “Jump” or “Don’t jump”? The guards on the gate looked his way. Though they didn’t leave their posts, he assumed they would summon someone, and soon Cecil would have him caged again. He tried to anchor his back and shoulders to the wall to risk motioning the crowd away, but their noise and numbers grew. Did they think he was performing for their pleasure?
And then he saw a man looking up at him from the sea of faces. It was the one he’d been sure was after him in Dover, even in London. A swarthy man—perhaps the Italian in the Riverside Inn at Mortlake—staring up with a smirk that seemed to scream,
I’ve got you now!
Could he be the fire-mirror murderer, meant to torment and threaten Gil to silence—or kill him—and he’d simply missed so far?
“But you said young Percy Mooring died,” Elizabeth protested as old Beeson led her around the edge of the town green toward the church.
“Aye, but you can still pay your respects,” he told her. “He’s in here, his mortal remains at least, and a lot can be read from that.”
“His tomb, you mean?” she asked as Jenks leaped ahead to open the church door Beeson headed for. “With an epitaph perhaps? How did he die, Master Beeson?”
“When you see it all, I’ll tell you all,” he said, and shuffled inside.
It was dim within the church, lit only by natural light from narrow windows. A chill seemed to seep from the cold stone bones of the arches and pillars. Creeping in from somewhere, a draft breathed in their faces to stir hair and garments. She saw few memorials carved into the paving stones to signify crypts beneath, and fewer effigies on graves above the flagstone floor.
But one ornate and grand tomb stood out. In finely carved stone, it was the life-size effigy of a boy, lying on his back and staring upward with his hands stiffly pressed together in perpetual prayer. As with many of the fine tombs in St. Paul’s and Westminster in London, the figure was painted in lifelike colors. A long Latin inscription snaked around the big black stone casket on which the effigy lay as if it were a bed.
“That,” Beeson said, and his voice echoed strangely as they approached the tomb, “is how much they loved him.”
“‘Percival Mooring, departed this mortal life at ten years of age,’” she translated the Latin script. “‘Died defending his home which was under attack’? A mere boy defended Cuddington, Master Beeson? Will you tell us the story you promised?” she asked, gripping the ornate iron rail which encircled the monument.
“You asked, milady,’bout the man-made hillocks and remnants of stones. The lad loved to play gallant knight and soldier. So his father built him three small stone towers, he did, two on gentle rises and one in the meadow. Master Percy pretended to guard Cuddington manor house—this was e’en before they knew the king would take it. And on the very day the king’s men rode in to tell the Moorings all must be swept away, Master Percy threw stones at one of the royal surveyors striding around the grounds.”
“The king’s men surely did not hurt the boy!” she cried.
“Of course they did, though not the way you mean. See, in throwing stones, he tumbled down and broke his neck. I think that broke Master John’s spirit to fight back, though he cursed the king, and Mistress Malinda threw her mirror at them and cursed them too.”
“Threw her
mirror
?”
“Oh, aye, bad luck, curses on them, you know. She was the loveliest of women, though my wife used to say all she did was comb her long hair in the sun and look into that mirror.”
“And the mirror broke to curse the king?”
“No, saw what happened myself, I did. It landed in the grass and didn’t break at all.”
“But all the Moorings are dead now, are they not?”
“So’s I heard. The daughter not so long ago, maybe two years, the others earlier, and none of them but the boy buried here. Should have been interred in the church at Cuddington, course, but that was …”
“ … To be torn down,” Elizabeth finished as if in chorus with him. She gripped the metal railing around the monument even harder. “Such tragedy,” she whispered.
“My lady Bess,” Jenks said, his voice somber, “you don’t think the so-called running boy in the woods could be related to this dead boy Percy do you?”
“I told you, we are putting stock not in ghosts but in reality, man.”
“What running boy?” Beeson asked. “Never heard of no running boy ghost round these parts. If there be ghosts, they’re over there at Nonsuch, on the site of the old Cuddington church with its graves disturbed. Read more of those Latin words there, milady.”
With a shudder that was not from the physical chill of this place, Elizabeth read the rest of the script on the tomb, translating it aloud for everyone: “‘Beloved son, not even to lie with his ancestors in the Cuddington church to be torn down.’ Oh, look,” Elizabeth said, “they’ve carved a dog at his feet on this side.” She turned the corner of the rectangular monument. “And who is this little boy here at Percy’s feet opposite the dog—his playfellow?”
She had to squeeze her skirts between the church wall and the monument to see better. It was so dim here, yet even as the others pressed closer, she recognized what the carving depicted.
Both hands flew to cover her open mouth. What a fool she’d been! This was not the statue of another boy. Why hadn’t she thought of this possibility?
“If you mean the dwarf,” Beeson said, edging around behind her, “that’s the children’s playfellow, Dench Barlow. I know I told you to keep clear of Nonsuch forest, but Dench lives out there somewheres, has for years. Never was quite right in the head since young Percy got kilt and Cuddington ripped down. No one’s seen him much in years,’cept recently.”
“You’ve seen him recently?” she blurted before she realized she should not have put it that way.
“I heard,” Beeson said, “he played a drum and cavorted for a few coins with a traveling players group what’s been in the area off and on.”
Gil froze in fear. Master Giorgio
had
sent someone to silence him about the way he and some other Italian artists rigged mirrors not only to copy paintings but to create realistic portraits from life. Their secret was to have been shared with Gil only after he took a blood oath never to reveal it to others, but he’d fled before that, and—in trying to overhear information for the queen—he’d seen how the so-called camera obscura with its mirror and darkroom worked. And so this man must be an assassin sent after him.
At that instant, as the swarthy man began to push his way through the crowd, a hay wain, probably carting its pile of feed for the royal stables, passed under the gate. It was going the wrong direction, but Gil saw it as his only chance.
Feet extended, he threw himself out and jumped into it.
Despite the amount of hay, he landed hard on his back. He sucked in a huge breath of chaff and dust. Trying to ignore the pain in his bad leg, he rolled out of the wain and bolted back the other way, pushing through people, though the gate. Behind him, some laughed, some cheered.
He turned toward the river, for the crowd coming up from the public landing was thicker. He plunged through them, hoping, if the man gave chase, to lose him. The Thames could take him upstream to Mortlake if he could find a boat to hide on.
Panicked, he darted into a narrow passage between two buildings near the public-landing stairs and threw himself behind a large wooden rain barrel, his heart nearly beating out of his chest. At least it would soon be dark, one hour, two at the most.
He caught his breath, and his heartbeat slowed. The sounds of the street were muted here, so this would make a good place to stay until night fell. Some small craft plied the river at night with lanterns on their prows. He’d try to catch one heading upstream toward Richmond and hope he could tell when they passed Mortlake in the dark, lulled by the river, rowing on and away … .
He jerked awake. He must have dozed, how long he didn’t know, but it was sometime between dusk and dark. What had awakened him? Surely not just the distant cries of ferrymen tying up for the night or the thinning rush of passersby. He stretched his aching legs and arms and back.
Then he heard a shuffling sound nearby, coming closer. He stopped breathing. Whatever it was, it was not a rat or some stray cat, but bigger. Wishing he had a weapon, he felt behind the barrel but touched naught but grit and grime. Nothing nearby, not even a stick. He could jump up and bolt again, but the passage narrowed beyond and might even lead to what scared him most—a dead end.
The moment they returned from Cheam’s church, Elizabeth had Clifford order partridge pie, cheese, and bread sent up to her and Rosie’s chamber at the Black Swan. But so far only Clifford and Jenks were eating. She and Rosie were both so nervous they could barely stomach even the sugared wine the innkeeper had sent up gratis. But the cider was so far out of season, it would have knocked them all on their ears. Indeed, Elizabeth felt so shaken, she might as well have been as drunk as Henry Heatherley.
“At first light,” she told her crew, “we’re going into the huntpark forest to find this Dench. He could well have a motive for revenge. And I want to take Beeson with us, even if he can’t see farther than the length of his own nose. We will describe the terrain to him, and if we can find Dench, having Beeson with us may keep him from trying to flee.”
“We get anywhere near him, we’ll get him this time, Your Grace,” Jenks vowed, his mouth full of food. “Can’t get far on those little legs.”
“He has before,” she countered. “I can’t believe,
cannot believe,
I didn’t realize that the running boy could be—especially with those squat legs—a dwarf! I’ve seen dwarfs at court, especially those my father favored.”
“Well,” Clifford put in, “I saw the running boy and didn’t think of a dwarf either. And if he’s been working for Giles Chatam—”
“Exactly,” Elizabeth said, hitting the table with her fist so hard the pewter plates rattled. “Even if Dench lit one or more of the fatal fires, it doesn’t clear Giles of collusion. And if Giles is possibly linked to Katherine—’s blood, I shall forgo this disguise and question Giles and Mistress Dee tomorrow too.”
“And what about that magic mirror of Mistress Mooring’s?” Rosie put in.
“It was hardly a magic mirror,” the queen chided.
“It didn’t break when she threw it,” Rosie protested.
Elizabeth just shook her head. It reminded her of Dr. Dee’s tale that Katherine had found his stolen mirror lying unbroken and unscratched in a patch of violets, no less. Oh yes, she was surely going to question both Giles Chatam and Katherine Dee again.
“Clifford and I,” Jenks said, spearing another chunk of cheese with his knife, “will be taking turns sitting outside your door in the hall tonight, Your Grace.”

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