The Fyre Mirror (20 page)
Authors: Karen Harper
Tags: #Fiction - Historical, #Mystery, #16th Century, #England/Great Britain, #Royalty
Still mired in her own thoughts, she merely nodded. “I wager that dwarf Dench has been playing with fire, though at whose urging we are yet to determine.”
“And if he thought he was playing with fire, he’s not seen nothing yet,” Jenks said. “Not with Lady Bess Smythe and her folks on his tail, I’ll tell you that.”
Ordinarily, the queen would have laughed, especially since the plain-minded Jenks had turned a clever phrase. But even though they now had more answers, a knotted web of possibilities was yet to be unraveled.
Gil figured he couldn’t afford to wait to see who peeked around the barrel and trapped him here. He shoved himself to his feet and tensed to run or fight.
Just a bulky form at first, but yes, the swarthy man! How long had he been searching for him?
“Stop, Meester Sharpino!” he cried in English heavy with an Italian accent. “I will hide you from zee queen’s guards. I have message and money for you from zee maestro!”
He also had, Gil could see, a dagger in his hand.
Hoping in this dry stretch of weather that the rain barrel might be nearly empty, Gil managed to tip it and roll it toward the man, who went down like a bowling pin. Trying to keep to the far wall, Gil edged past him and fled toward the street, even as the man tried to grab his leg.
No, he was cut—his ankle bleeding on his bad leg. It pulsated with pain, hot, then icy cold, as he ran toward the waterfront. Good thing it was dark, for he might be leaving a crimson trail for the man to stalk him like a wounded deer.
But he was determined to get to the queen. If he died bleeding at her feet, maybe she’d at least know he was no fire murderer.
Gil knew supplies for the palace came day or night to this landing, some surely from the upstream countryside. And at night, they must make their way back to reload. Dragging his leg, trying to swing it forward with both hands at each step, he looked desperately for any sort of craft which seemed to be setting out. He dared not even take time to look back.
The big horse- and foot-ferries were moored for the night, but barges and wherries still had boatmen in them. Yet it seemed nothing was setting out, or even ready to cast off. Yes, there, an empty lighter that unloaded the large barges. And the boatman had unwrapped the mooring line and was ready to pole out from the landing while two younger, big-shouldered crewmen hunched over, awaiting his orders to row.
“Help me, I beg you!” Gil cried. “A thief robbed and cut me and means to kill me—back there … .”
As he glanced behind him, he saw that the swarthy man was close. No knife in sight now, but the look on that foreign face must have decided the bold English boatman. In an instant, the lighterman lifted and swung the pole to send the Italian tumbling into the Thames with a splash.
“I kin see yer bleeding, my boy,” the boatman cried. “Shall we summon the constable or a leech then?”
“I just want to go home—to Mortlake in Surrey!”
“Come on then, climb aboard.”
The pain in Gil’s leg was so excruciating he almost couldn’t manage the climb, even with the boatman’s help. As he sank to his knees on board and clung to the side of the lighter, he scanned the inky Thames where his pursuer had fallen. Nothing but ripples, soon erased by the wake of their craft. He wondered if Italians could swim, for he saw nothing else but black water, and then nothing at all.
For the first time in weeks, a spring storm rent the Surrey countryside. Elizabeth and Rosie awakened to the rumble of thunder and flash of lightning.
“’S blood,” the queen muttered as they hastily dressed, “we’re going after Dench anyway. This has got to let up.”
The worst of the weather had retreated as they set out, though without Beeson, who had said he wasn’t well. But he’d come to the door of his son’s house to give them some parting advice. “His place won’t be easy to spot. It’s always deep in the woods, though he moves about from time to time, he does. So can’t really tell you where to look. Closer to Nonsuch than to Cheam prob’ly, always was.”
“Is it a sort of hovel?” Elizabeth had asked. “Partly underground? One greatly disguised by trees or sod?”
“Not Dench,” Beeson had said, rather proudly, she had thought. “Strange, you know, but you’ll have to look up to find him. Little as he is, he has more in common with the squirrels in the trees than with the foxes in their dens. He’ll be off the ground a ways in a sturdy tree, a little place built with boards and ropes.”
“With ropes …,” Elizabeth kept muttering to herself as the four of them rode into the damp, dripping forest, where she’d been on many a hunt before. She could not believe that a dwarf could climb trees, or palace walls, but perhaps with help from ropes—and someone else.
“He’d be easy to flush out in the winter without all these leaves,” Jenks observed as they scanned the trees above. “We ought to send to London for your yeomen, surround this place, and flush him out.”
“From treetop level?” Elizabeth challenged. “He’d just stay put. And why didn’t he strike at us before this spring, if he’s lived here for years? We’ve had tents in the meadow every time we’ve come to Nonsuch. Perhaps I should leave the two of you to search for Dench, and Rosie and I should ride to speak with Katherine Dee and Giles—if we can find him and his troupe. I’ll bet that night my yeomen guards found him in the forest here, the rogue had been meeting with Dench.” She halted her horse and sucked in a breath. “Clifford, do you recall that the yeomen guards who brought Giles in for questioning that day mentioned he was in the part of the forest nearest to Mortlake?”
“That day he was supposedly practicing his lines? Right,” Clifford agreed. “And we now know that Dench was in his employ as a drummer by then. Let’s try that section of forest. At least it’s on the way to Mortlake, where you would question Mistress Dee.”
Despite the hope of that lead, they were a sodden, sorry group after they’d scanned the thick trees for another hour. Rain dripped off their noses and down their necks. And then Rosie pointed up and cried, “What’s that? If he’s living like a squirrel, that looks like a big squirrel’s nest!”
“Keep your voice down,” the queen ordered as she rode closer to get the same vantage point Rosie had. “Yes, I warrant that is it.”
Despite her desperation to find Dench, a glimmer of sympathy shot through her. To be so small, to have to look up to everyone, except one’s playfellow Percy, and then to lose him … Her brother’s face flashed through her mind. How she had missed him when he died, and still did. That longing for him had made Gil even dearer to her, as if she could have Edward back to help and encourage.
“Your Grace, what shall we do now?” Clifford’s question shattered her agonizing.
“Let’s surround the place as best we can,” she whispered as they clustered together; “then one of you go up. There must be footholds on the tree, though I have no doubt now he is very adept with ropes, so he’s probably pulled them up after himself.”
“I’ll go up,” Jenks said. “I’m built a bit more for it than Clifford.”
“But I don’t want him to surprise you twenty feet above the ground,” she argued, more with herself than Jenks. “You must be careful, for I won’t have you hurt!”
Gil’s cut leg was crudely bandaged, but it hurt terribly, more than any other pain he’d ever felt—except having to leave Dorothea. And his heart pained him now, losing so much with Cecil, perhaps the queen.
He stirred stiffly and opened his eyes. It was morning. He lifted his head. The rhythmic thrust-pull, thrust-pull of the two rowers’ oars had rocked him to sleep for hours. The queen’s Richmond Palace was just coming into view, so Mortlake wasn’t far.
“You’wake, boy?” Lem, the boatman, asked. “I think you got a fever. Here’s beer if your whistle’s dry.”
“I’m grateful,” Gil managed as he accepted a proffered tankard and took a swig.
“From Mortlake, you say? I know the place, not far now. Who’s your family there?”
“Dees,” he said. At least, if he blacked out again, maybe this Lem would deliver him to their door.
“The magician?” Lem said, his voice awed. One of the rowers turned around and stared, though he didn’t miss his next pull.
“Just a wise man. Yes, Dees, Dr. Dee.”
He guessed he did have a fever, but he wasn’t out of his head. He handed the tankard back before slumping back down on the deck in utter exhaustion. Though he tried to picture his dear Dorothea, all he saw in his jumbled dreams was that drowned Italian, holding a magic mirror spewing fire and death.
“I’d like to go up there with Jenks,” Elizabeth muttered under her breath as she, Rosie, and Clifford watched him climb. He had found no footholds on the trunk of the massive oak which supported the small, ramshackle house in the tree, but had climbed a nearby chestnut with more limbs, trying at least to see into the makeshift structure.
He looked down, shaking his head and shrugging, for Elizabeth had told him not to call out, so they could surprise and capture a still sleeping Dench Barlow. Either he could not get a glimpse inside the little place or could tell no one was there. The queen was thoroughly frustrated and lifted both hands, palms up, to convey her uncertainty about how to proceed.
“I don’t see how he gets up and down with no footholds and no ropes visible,” Clifford said. “I fear you’re right that he must pull them all in behind him, so I’d say he’s up there.”
“And watching us, perhaps,” Rosie added.
“Cheam must have a thatcher or tiler who owns a long ladder,” Elizabeth said. “Clifford, if you think you could manage bringing it back on a single horse, ride to borrow or rent one while the three of us stay here. And bring back some ropes.”
“But with Jenks up there and me away, it’s not safe for the two of you,” he protested.
“This must be done. Nothing worth a risk is really safe, my man. Go!”
As Clifford rode away, Elizabeth gestured to the puzzled Jenks to stay put but hidden. Rosie tied the three remaining horses a slight ways off, and they settled in to wait. The forest smelled rich and dank, for the sun popped in and out, flashing shards of light, then shadows all around. Tired of standing, her neck sore from looking up, Elizabeth sat on the large trunk of a fallen oak. The wait dragged on; how long had passed she was not sure. She almost dozed, until a shrill voice resounded from above.
“Am I to be honored you’ve come calling, eh? I know she didn’t send you!”
Elizabeth jumped to her feet and looked up. Jenks was so shocked he barely kept from falling off his perch. No one was visible at first, but then she saw an angry face peer over the edge of the wooden planks high above.
“Good day to you!” the queen called, though her heart was pounding and her voice shook. “Dench Barlow, I presume? I’ve come from Giles Chatam with some coin for you and a request. Could you not come down?”
“You think I don’t know who you are, eh? After watching all of you for the last few weeks ere you betook yourselves away.”
“Who do you say I am?” she demanded.
“Spawn of the king who murdered my prince!”
He did know who she was, and was not only not impressed, but sounded dangerous, maybe demented. But would someone who helped to burn people alive not be so? Beeson had said he was not well in the head.
“I have deep regrets about the Moorings and your childhood friend Percy,” she called up to him. “I wish I could make it right.”
“Liar!” he screamed, so loud his high-pitched voice seemed to echo off the tree trunks. “You wish to get the land back from Arundel! All you Tudors lust for land and pretty things and power. You wish to have your likeness painted so all can see the grandeur of the Tudors! You want to enslave those of us who are left, and we will not let you!”
She fought to keep calm. “But who is ‘we’? Who is the lady you don’t believe sent me?”
“The lovely and the lethal,” he said with a sharp laugh. “One of the few who have been kind, always kind to him, of course.”
“Kind to whom? Is she a lovely lady from Mortlake who is kind to Giles?” she threw out wildly, hoping for a response. “I only want to talk—”
“Liar! You mean to trap me!” he screeched. “I see your man in the next tree, eh, I do!” he cried, pointing to the spot where Jenks tried to hide himself. “And that one there with traps and snares!”
She turned to see Clifford returning with a ladder balanced on one shoulder and ropes coiled about the other. When he saw or heard them, he spurred his horse faster, though she tried to motion him away.
“You plan to catch me and torture me to tell!” Dench accused, “but that will never be. I will never betray the one who will be the death of you, too, even of your people and places! And it’s already too late, so be prepared to suffer. I hear you thought I was a ghost, and I shall haunt you from my death to yours!”
“Please, just calm yourself and come down so th—,” the queen began, then gasped with the others when Dench stood to his full height at the edge of his lofty home. He unhooked a rope from somewhere, leaped into air, and swung directly down and at them—at her.
Rosie screamed, Jenks shouted, and Clifford dropped the ladder and leaped from his mount, but they were all too late.
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