The Poyson Garden (2 page)

To kill wolves and foxes: Her other words echoed in his mind as only two riders came into view, slowing their mounts for the turn, just as he had hoped. Wolves and foxes.

"Now!" he yelled.

Four bows spewed arrows. One rider shouted, then screeched. As the other noisily drew his sword, his horse panicked, reared, and whinnied, throwing him. Both were dressed alike and on first glance, looked alive. But it didn't matter: They had to kill them both.

When he strung his next arrow and ran out slightly into the road, one horse had fled. One man lay writhing on the ground, three arrows in him. Hellebore worked quick all right, and that was certain. Still, he stood astride this one and, slinging his bow briefly over his shoulder, seized the arrow protruding from his stomach. The man squinted up at him, perhaps hopeful of help. With both hands he thrust the arrow deeper with all his weight. Pinned to the road, the wretch grunted, groaned, then lay stone still.

"Is that one Lord Carey then?" his man at his elbow asked.

"Hell and be damned if I know," he said with a shrug, stepping back to look around.

His other two men came out of the woods. He saw the second horse standing not far down the road. "The other one," he cried. "Where is he?"

"Don't see 'im," someone behind him said. "Thought we 'x 'im too."

"Beat the bushes. A knife or sword blade will do, but these poison arrows be better."

Shaking with shock and agony, Henry Carey huddled behind a fallen tree in a bramble thicket just off the road. He was certain he had broken his sword arm when his horse threw him. And there was blood on his hand when he touched his chest. Had one of the brigands' arrows nicked him, or had he gotten cut by his own blade when he fell and rolled?

"A pox on you. Canna you jackanapes find him?"

That voice didn't have the local burr, or had he been away too long? It was the first thing they had said that he could discern. He heard them come closer, thrashing through the brush and dry leaves. But with his arm useless and this cut, with his pistols in his saddlebag, he would die. His mother was dying too, but he'd never see her now this side of heaven.

"Someone's coming on the road."

That voice came so close he knew they'd find him. He squinted his eyes shut tight in pain, in childish hope they would not see him. He tried to picture his wife, still in Switzerland with his sister, Catherine. And in his last moment he cursed himself that, once again, he dared not--could not--just stand up and fight for what was good and right.

"We canna be leaving this half done." But Henry heard his chance at deliverance now: more than one man's voice in some rollicking song. Or had he died and was being welcomed at the sacred gates to leave behind this regret, this fear and pain?

"Let's fly then, and we'll be settling later with them all."

The next cry clanged in Henry's ears like doomsday bells.

"Down wi' the bloody Boleyns--e'en the royal one!"

Edward Thompson, alias Ned Topside, stopped singing when he thought he heard some sort of shout just up ahead on the road. He couldn't

discern the words, but it was definitely not someone joining in his romping chorus of "Between your thighs your beauty lies."

"You hear that, Uncle Wat?" he asked, turning his head to survey the new leader of their troupe. Wat Thompson had taken over when Ned's father had died of the sweat this summer. Wat rode their only horse at a plodding pace that kept up with the cart the mule pulled. When they emerged from this dense woods, Wat would ride ahead to a tavern or manor house to inquire if they wished a revel, masque, or play from The Queen's Country Players.

Meanwhile, Randall Greene, a pompous popinjay Ned secretly called Grand Rand, rode the cart because he felt peckish today, the sot. The two boys, Rob and Lucas, who did the women's parts, walked as Ned did, their high voices echoing his deep tones.

"Don't think that man's shout was a hurrah we're coming, sounding clear out from Colchester, not out here," his uncle said, seeming to rouse himself a bit. "Best fetch our pikes and stage swords in case we meet up with some rural louts ahead, eh, lads?"

But Ned had already reached for one of the ax-headed pikes that protruded from the bundles of costumes and makeshift bits of scenery. He was not a tall man, but wiry and strong. Despite his shock of curly black hair and boyish-if-rugged face, he'd long yearned for the meaty roles--the Italian dukes, English kings, even villains--the ones Wat usually took himself or gave to Grand Rand. Ned wearied of his uncle making him play the fond lover or young captain just because the ladies liked the turn of his leg and the mere hint of his smile.

But worse, he hated playing the fool, the clown, the country rustic whenever a comedy came along, however good his ear for it. And right now he was sure that voice up ahead had not been some rural lout at all. Though he could not discern the words, it had been a defiant if lilting shout.

Gesturing for them to slow, Ned strode ahead on the bend of road and came first upon a nervous horse, well-fed and curried, lathered yet from a run. He smacked its flank to send it along the road to his companions.

"Stay back," he warned when young Rob came first around the bend. Wide-eyed, the boy nodded and

seized the horse's dangling reins. "And tell them to halt the cart till I call the all-clear."

Warily, Ned advanced, then stopped and stared. A body studded with arrows lay ahead in the middle of the road, not moving. Eyes darting both ways, Ned shuffled carefully forward. A corpse dressed well enough, with his jerkin all bloodied and his warm wool cloak splayed out under him black as night. His first instinct was to hurry everyone past, for some folks didn't trust the likes of traveling troupes and might blame them. But that would be unworthy of him and of what he promised his sire just afore he died.

And then he heard a rustle in the bushes. Instinctively, he shouted and charged with his pike, just as he did in act the third of Victory at Agincourt.

But in a sudden bramble brush he banged his shins and took a tumble over a tree trunk--and a second body. Gasping, Ned knelt over him. The man's pale face clenched in pain. He was bloodied, but at least for now he was among the living.

"I am bored to death with all this waiting," the tall, red-haired woman muttered to herself as she dismounted. "To death."

The sudden cloudburst wet Elizabeth Tudor clear through to her skin, but she turned her face up, reveling in the strength and sweep of it. No dangerous lightning or thunder with this, but it still suited her mood. And it pleased her that she managed to be out here nearly alone when the Popes had gone back with her Barbary falcon, the servants, and the remnants of the food.

She dismounted and leaned against the strength of the great oak for what cover it could give. Gazing into the distance toward her small rural realm, she sighed. The old palace of Hatfield House where she lived in exile--watched closely by the queen's man Sir Thomas Pope and his wife Beatrice--would have to do since she could not be at court. She could yet be rotting in the Tower of London if her royal brother-in-law, Spanish King Philip, hadn't taken a fancy to her and asked Queen Mary to be kind while he was away.

"But that is as kind as it gets, Griffin," she told her favorite horse and stroked the black

stallion's muzzle to quiet him. "Some of my people at least have been returned to me, and you, of course, my dear boy."

The horse whinnied as if he understood and cherished every word. "'So blood," she whispered and patted him again. "Sweet talk to horses, that's what has become of the most marriageable virgin in the kingdom."

"You say this place has you talking to horses now, Your Grace?" her faithful lady Blanche Parry teased as she pulled up under the tree and dismounted. Unlike her princess, Blanche huddled in her hooded wool cloak to avoid the wet.

"At least," Elizabeth said with a smile, "I know they are to be trusted."

They shared a little laugh that faded, drowned not by the downpour but by quick horse's hoofs. As with hearing someone running in a house, Elizabeth had learned to fear fast feet of any kind, for they had seldom boded well for her.

But it was her groom, Stephen Jenks, whom she jestingly called her Master of the Horse in Exile. He usually stuck to her skirts like a burr, her unofficial bodyguard and one she relied on, but she thought she'd lost him in the storm somewhere.

"Your Grace, beggin' your pardon, but you want to go back in now? You'll catch the ague out here," the young man blurted as he dismounted.

Jenks's wit was for horses. Elizabeth was quite sure that when he talked to them they truly listened. As for people, he was good at taking orders but not usually at giving them. Still, strangely, he looked as if he'd like to command she go inside right now.

"I'd only get wetter going back to the house," she told him and patted his slick shoulder. "And I'm in no hurry to return to the watchful eyes of Her Majesty's second-most favorite Pope."

But she startled when Jenks pulled one side of his leather jerkin open to flash a folded letter at her, then patted it to his body again as if to preserve it from the rain and prying eyes.

She studied his eager face. His blue eyes were alight with a message she, for once, could not read. His chestnut eyebrows lifted to touch his straight, sodden hair, cut low across his forehead. Though Blanche was one of her two trusted

ladies, he had cleverly blocked even her from seeing what he had.

A secret letter for her. Pray God this did not mean a new attempt to snare her in another plot like the one that had cost her her reputation and Tom Seymour his head, or the aborted Wyatt Rebellion, which had put her in the Tower.

"You know, Blanche, I think Jenks has a point. The rain looks to be letting up. Let's ride back."

With his linked hands under her foot, Jenks gave her a quick boost up, then helped Blanche remount. Because of slippery grass and the warren of rabbit holes in this meadow, they went slowly toward the russet-brick Tudor palace, now gone shiny in the rain.

Eighteen miles north of London,

Hatfield House had become her refuge, though the queen had seen to it that it was invaded by far too many spies. Yet Elizabeth loved its quadrangle overlooking the central courtyard. She admired the modest great hall, not that she ever dined or entertained there, but her parents had in their brief happy years together before the Boleyn downfall. On sunny days the solar was her favorite haunt, even for her studies, for it overlooked the fish pond and flower gardens. But today that letter loomed.

When they dismounted in the courtyard, Jenks thrust the letter quickly into her hand. She folded it once and shoved it up her sleeve just before Thomas Pope and his lady, Beatrice, called Bea, came out to greet her. Elizabeth saw that they had both dried off though not yet changed their riding garb.

"You mustn't go off by yourself like that when we are all out riding, my lady," Sir Thomas scolded by way of greeting. "It is our duty and honor to protect you."

"The storm and skittish horses separated us, my lord, not I," Elizabeth told him, brushing quickly past. "I'll change these sodden garments and see you a bit later for supper."

She could feel it now against her skin, the letter. She would read it once and burn it if it were anything to incriminate her. Didn't they realize --those most loyal to her who wanted to raise a rebellion--that only in this solitary waiting game in exile could she hope to survive?

"Oh, no, I knew it," Kat Ashley, her childhood governess and the closest thing

Elizabeth had to a mother, cried when she met her at the door to her chambers. Kat's plump face framed by graying hair was its own raincloud. She threw her hands up, then smacked them on her skirts. "Oh, lovey. Look at you, soaked to the skin. Drenched hair despite the cloak and quite bedraggled."

"Yes, Kat, I know."

"I'll not have you catching your death of cold or anything else."

"Do not fret, my Kat. Just build up the fire, and I'll undress before it. And lock the door," she whispered as she swept in and went directly to the hearth. "Blanche is no doubt changing, but she'll be in here fussing over what I'm to wear soon enough."

"Just so she doesn't bring the Buzzard with her," Kat muttered. She closed and locked the door and hurried over to throw a new log on the others in the broad, open hearth, but she kept her eyes sharp on Elizabeth.

"The Buzzard" was Kat's name for Beatrice Pope, who she said was always hovering, watching, just waiting for bones to pick. Despite the fact Elizabeth knew Bea was sent with her husband to keep an eye on her, she appreciated Bea's quick wit and even temper--and her beautiful handwork. She'd had far worse jailers, and she'd even overheard Bea sticking up for her privileges in private when the Pope had ranted on about keeping her more closely confined. Still, Kat at times seemed so put out by Bea that she looked as if she'd like to stab her with her own sewing needle.

While Kat hurried to the clothes press for a dry linen smock, Elizabeth put a foot up on the iron fender and pulled the now-damp letter from her sleeve. Though both Kat and Jenks would know she had a missive, unless she chose to tell them, they'd know nothing else of it.

But now she saw something caught in its tiny loop of red ribbon the sealing wax held. She recognized it instantly and sucked in a silent breath.

A three-tiered pearl eardrop, the mate to the other the Duchess of Norfolk had given her years ago during the Twelve Days of Christmas--Catherine Howard was queen then, briefly.

This was your mother's once, one she wore the day

she was arrested, the duchess had whispered, so do not wear it openly. I meant to get the other of the pair for you, but I hear someone in your mother's family has it for a keepsake. Hide it, and do not speak of it, she had insisted as she thrust the dainty thing into Elizabeth's palm and fled back into the crowd of masked, laughing courtiers.

Now, as new flames at her feet caught and leapt, Elizabeth's eyes widened and her lower lip dropped in shock. She skimmed the letter in the delicate but shaky scrawl.