The Poyson Garden (26 page)

She listened at the door next to her own. With Lord St. Leger's entourage in London, most of these chambers should be empty, including this one.

She banged it open and saw Colum, still mud- and road-stained, and still riding hard. But now he was playing stallion to her girl Nan while her white legs flailed the air.

"I gave you both orders!" Desma shrieked.

Nan squealed to silence and stopped wriggling. Colum, the cur, merely craned his neck and grinned, despite the blatant view he flaunted of his white flanks. Panting, covering neither of them, the wretch dared to smile at her as if they'd merely met in the corridor on the way to chapel.

"And I did what you said," he told Desma. "As for this, you wouldna let me have the merest glimpse or taste of you, mistress. A man's got to take his ease somewhere."

"You whoreson bawdy bastard. You are loosed from your service here. Go back to Ireland--or to hell!" She went out and slammed the door.

Breathless, shuddering, she leaned against the walnut paneling in the hall. Colum's dragging Nan into a nearby bed did not disgust her but made her recall another man. Her father had been so besotted with her mother that he had coaxed her into empty rooms in broad day and tumbled her in

garden bowers, heedless of who spied on them, back when Desma had the same beautiful face, for her da had told her so.

No longer hungry, she went back into her chamber and slammed that door too. She sank onto a cushioned chair, leaned her head against the carved back, and stared up at the festoons of drying herbs and strung mushrooms along the ceiling. After today she would have to take them down, pack them, and move again. Ireland--perhaps she'd flee there as once before, especially if Queen Mary died, with her supposed heir, the Boleyn bastard, dead too. Aye, back to Ireland where her grandmere, Magheen, had taught her the poison herbs, that's where she'd go.

Desma slumped over her knees and wrapped her arms around her thighs, chin on knees, letting her veil fall away so she stared straight down at the floor. She shut her eyes tight and tried to pray to the patron saint of unwed women, Brigid of Kildare, who had received the veil from the holy hands of St. Patrick himself. Desma had taken the veil of revenge and swore on her life the destruction of the Boleyns and those loyal to them. For insulting her father and having him poisoned. For ruining Queen Mary's mother's life--for turning England away from the true church --for everything.

She sat bolt upright at the knock on her door.

"Just leave the food, you whore," she cried. "Don't you be disturbing me or showing your shamed face, don't you dare."

The voice came in roughest Gaelic to make her shudder and her thighs clench. "'Tisna Nan, mistress, but Colum come a-calling. I'm the one disturbed and wanting to see you now, see that face you hide, if you dare."

"You've been dismissed," she answered in Gaelic. "Keep clear of me."

He dared to open the door. "But you see, mistress, I canna keep my thoughts clear of you." His rakish face appeared around the edge. "I've e'en dunked myself in the lake to dare approach Her Irish Majesty." He grinned, stepped in, and swept her an awkward bow. His matted hair still dripped water. His garments molded themselves to each muscle and angle of his big body.

"Besides," he cajoled, "if you'd but be giving

me a peek beneath that veil and smile my way, I'd never e'en been touching the likes of the wench Nan."

"You lecherous liar. Will you be trying to turn this fine castle into the worst of stews by tupping my girl?"

He came closer, slowly, his big hands palm out as if to ward off an attack. "I'm done with Nan. And I thrive on a dangerous challenge e'en as you do." His grin was as crooked as his heart, and his flattery as thick as his brows, but she let him come on. "Now, 'twood be a challenge," he said, "putting me hand and the point of me own private sword up the skirts of the Boleyn bastard, but I dinna fancy her like I do you."

"Leave off your stupid sweet talk with me, Colum McKitrick. I'd never take my girl's leavings or someone who tupped the Boleyn, make no mistake. And my face is mine to share or not so--"

"The challenge of serving you--in every way-- shivers me as much as it does you. And you canna be trusted either, Mistress Desma." Another grin, sly, seductive. "But I always say, danger stokes desires, that's the truth. I was feeling a thrill to shoot those poison arrows of yours at Lord Carey and his man, but--"

"And missed the mark."

"--b I'd not miss the mark with you. And bedding you, I'd know you were dangerous as death and revel in it."

"You're mad, man."

"Only for you," he crooned, coming yet closer while she glared at him through the fog of her veil. "I'd be getting close enough to adore your body and face, and what a tumble we'd share."

"Never!" she said with a sniff that sucked her veil against her nose before it puffed back out.

She stood and moved closer to the window, leaning one elbow on its deep stone ledge. He fancied himself an Adonis and witty to boot, that he did. Yet his raw intent excited her, even as he said. However rough and crude was Colum McKitrick, he had a true Irish heart and the gift of words, just like her da.

"Good," he said, with a cocksure nod as if she'd vowed to submit to him. "I dinna hear you say no and see no poison pellets nor tankard of hemlock nor rye bread coming my

way. So willna you let me touch you, mistress mine, let me ..."

She held her breath while he extended his big, calloused hands to finger the rolled hem of her veil. Her breath came fast as he slowly lifted it and peered beneath.

He flinched and gasped as if she'd slapped him.

She felt the stab of desertion again, the fury for herself, for her meek-willed mother. Seventeen years a pampered mistress ... mistress mine. Bearing a child, loved and pursued, coddled, flattered. And then cast out for another woman, younger and more comely, just the way the queen's beloved mother had been by that whore Anne Boleyn.

"Your face doesna matter," he whispered, obviously steeling himself from the shock. "Your body --let me touch you--all of you--e'en your heart."

Desma's mother had died of a weak heart, they said, but Desma knew it was a broken one. Her own--it was broken too. Still, she left Ireland to go back to her da's house in London. She was there that night someone poisoned his rye bread with St. Anthony's fire, him and all his false, fawning fools.

Before Colum could step away, she embraced him in an iron grasp. He lowered his hands to clutch at the soft globes of her buttocks right through her riding breeks and ground his hard hips against her softer thighs and belly. No longer did he try to kiss her lips but lowered his head to nip and nibble on her neck.

While he fed on her flesh and his splayed fingers molded and squeezed her, she thrust her hand into the pouch still at her waist and lifted out the small dagger she kept there. It was a mere four-inch blade, anointed with the very honeyed oil Colum and his men had shot at Lord Carey on the road to Wivenhoe.

As if she embraced him, she positioned her hands behind, then neatly stabbed him in the back, near his heart, forcing the blade all the way in. Shocked, he sucked in a huge, wet gasp. When he shoved away from her, she did not let him go. He tried to flee, but she tripped him. She clung. He shouted for his men, but perhaps they still guffawed over their raucous meal down in the great hall.

She held to him while he panted and struggled, but weaker, ever weaker. It often killed within a

quarter hour. Only the mushrooms she called death caps worked quicker. She let him go at last, only to watch him crawl toward the door, then topple on his side, slightly curled, mouth open, eyes glazed, like that fox she had sent the Boleyn.

"You will not be leaving me for another," she told him. "You will not cast me out." She shook her head to clear it. This was not her da, but Colum. "And I will be taking care of our prisoner myself, when she has had time to fear death like this--just like this. But first I will torment and torture her."

She went across the chamber to kick once at his big body. He did not budge. She walked away and straightened her veil, leaning unsteadily against the big, carved bedpost. If Nan knew he had come in here, she would simply claim he had left. If his men looked for him, she would say she had paid him what she'd owed and he must have ridden off with the bounty. By the time anyone found him-- smelled him--she would have the Boleyn bastard dead and the rye sent to all the local mills in the name of the Princess Elizabeth.

Staggering with exhaustion, she bent to seize Colum's booted feet and dragged him closer to the bed, then rolled him onto his face so she could retrieve her dagger.

He left a trail of mingled blood, moat water from his damp clothes and head, and worse from his insides letting go. She took a bolster off the bed to wipe the smears from the floor and clean the dagger blade before she rubbed more aconite on it and returned it to the pouch.

She kicked the bolster under the bed, then shoved and rolled the body there, finally drawing the hems of the counterpane to the floor. For one moment she heard herself screaming again, just as when she found Da's body, when she cradled it, then tried to hide it so no one would come to take it away. But no, that last scream--her peacock outside again. She collapsed to her knees, hearing it echo, echo in her head.

Chapter The Eighteenth

"That lake puts any moat I seen to shame," Jenks said, squinting off into the distance as they rode closer to the castle. "I just pray God we find Meg unharmed there."

"We will," Elizabeth promised, but her

voice broke and she had to clear her throat. "We must."

"It's too lovely a setting to house evil," Ned added.

But it did not look lovely to her. They could see from this vantage of a slightly cresting hill that, besides the main castle itself, several separate towers and buildings surrounded a grassy, inner bailey. Then Elizabeth realized why the mere sight of the place chilled her so completely. She almost turned her horse and fled. Despite its lack of tall outer walls, the color, style, and layout reminded her of the sprawling Tower of London hunkered down on the River Thames.

She shuddered, then began to shake, praying her voice did not betray her fear. "Rein in," she called out.

Side by side instead of single file, they halted to survey the scene through the scrim of naked trees. Sometimes whispering to each other, they studied and discussed the plan of the place a local man had given them.

A stop to talk to him and the ride had taken them longer than she'd expected, especially with one wrong turn, so it was just after midday now. And Elizabeth had made them dismount and walk their horses through the small village of Maidstone before dawn not to wake anyone, especially Beatrice Pope, wherever she slept there--if she did. At times Elizabeth feared they'd find her here, with the master poisoner.

They were dog tired, but they had rested a mile back to eat cold venison pies, cheese, and drink from a stream, so that would lift their strength and spirits--she hoped. At least anticipation and fear would jolt them more alert, for she felt her pulse pounding. The final act of this drama was about to begin, and she could only pray it would be a historic one for her and not a tragedy.

She shook her head at that wretched comparison, but the players had rehearsed their parts much of the way. With a few new lines praising Queen Mary and the "true church," they had hastily adapted an old revenge play called The Royal Specter with ghosts, hauntings, and curses--and moved the setting to Dublin. That ought to suit the Irish, she thought. Mainly, the drama suited their needs with its many disguisings, entrances, and exits for the minor parts, one of which she would take.

She had convinced Ned that he must assume the part of an actor born in Ireland and brought early to England and orphaned, so he could claim he recalled little of his beloved homeland. He had gone along but had fairly gloated when she informed his uncle that Ned--Niall McGowan, they were calling him--would speak for the troupe and pretend to be its master.

She finally spoke again to halt their whisperings. "That old farmer told us all else we're likely to know about that place without seeing it inside. Let's ride."

They funneled toward the single, narrow causeway that led to the protective drawbridge, double barbican, and gate tower. The buff stone buildings seemed to sink their darker reflections in the pewter-hued lake. The horses' hollow hoofbeats and the caw of crows were the only sounds. Until they heard the screech.

Shrill and shocking, it echoed out over the lake --and in her heart. They reined in just before the portcullis gate. Elizabeth saw Ned jerk in his saddle before he twisted around to look at her. She could not see his expression clearly, but her stomach cartwheeled at the memory of that night at Bushey Cot.

"She's here," she mouthed to him, and he nodded grimly.

"What in kingdom come is that?" Randall asked, missing what had passed between them. "I swear it sounds like some woman in travail or torment."

Jenks's back stiffened, and Elizabeth could only pray he would not spur his mount ahead in search of Meg. Did this Randall have no sense or compassion at all?

"No," Ned said, "it's a white peacock on the grounds."

"White?" Wat said. "Bloody hell, even if it is, you can't see it from here. Are you sure you haven't been here before, like that trap in Edenbridge you admitted?"

"Keep your voices down, all of you," Elizabeth commanded quietly from the rear. "Water makes sounds carry. And we are not here to bicker or accuse. That cry gives us warning and hope that our quarry is within, for Ned and I have seen her white peacock up close once before, that is all. Ride on, and everyone must play his part."

She was so intent on their task that she had