The Poyson Garden (29 page)

Panic--she felt it now, hot coals and ice in her belly all at once. Gooseflesh peppered her skin, but she broke out in a slick sweat. Her mouth was dry, and she felt she would be sick. She turned down the wick to gut out her lantern and left it on the side of the stairs. Darkness closed her in like a cloak. She knew she should try to make it back to the second floor. She was surely snared here. She could hide--but where? Nowhere but on up, hoping there were extra unlocked rooms above. Whether it was poison rye or not, she almost wished she could step into this dreadful grain bin, which had small doors at each level.

As the footsteps came closer, she hurried up to the fourth floor, feeling her way around the last turn of stairs. Light seeped around one door, from which Meg's voice boomed again. Elizabeth jiggled the lock on another door. She glimpsed a narrow third one that perhaps led to the roof, but it did not budge either.

The footsteps belonged to two of the Irish guards. One with a lantern turned into view on the staircase below her to shine it in her eyes, while the other knocked her sword from her hand with his own. She thrust her dagger in the back of her belt to hide it as the one without the lantern laid hard hands on her. Then the door behind her swept open and a veiled woman's shadow loomed to block the light.

"Since this Gloriette was the place of final

refuge in a siege," Ned told

Jenks, "I thought it was our best bet." "She's not here. That big tower, then the barbicans, that's where we've got to look next. Now!"

They were both out of breath, both distraught. Not only was Meg missing, but Elizabeth had not met them where she'd promised, though Ned had argued that didn't mean she was in danger.

"Just remember," he told Jenks between gasps as they ran back through the covered corridor that linked the Gloriette with the castle proper, "we've both known that red-haired lad to do what he damn well pleased--no matter what we'd been told. He may just have gone off on his own-- and will save Meg and our skins. You know," he said, grabbing his rib cage to fight a stitch in his side, "maybe I'd better go back up to that poisoner's chamber--and look there again."

"I think Meg's somewheres else on the grounds. I swore on this very sword to someone once--my first master, Tom Seymour--that I'd see Her Grace on the throne someday or die trying. But if I can't save her--Meg too-- I got nothing to live for--and maybe you don't either," Jenks said. Deftly, he held the blade of his drawn sword neck level before Ned as they ran along together.

"I see your point. Let's stick together, then."

"What is this?" Desma screeched. "I told you to leave me alone, Brian, so I did."

"We canna find Colum," Brian said. "But we did find this lad from the players sneaking up the stairs," the other guard told her, giving Elizabeth a hard shake.

She was tempted to tell these men where they could find Colum, but that might be useful later. Mayhap Desma would just order her back downstairs where she could get help from Jenks and Ned before returning here. Thankfully, Meg was keeping her mouth shut now.

"What players?" Desma demanded.

"A troupe led by an Irishman, still doing a play in the hall, but we got worried about where Colum went."

"Irish? You dolts!" she spat at them and bent down so low to study Elizabeth, her veil

belled out. Elizabeth was tempted to rip it from her.

"Not fools to stop this lad with a drawn sword," the other man, taller and darker-haired than stocky Brian, protested. He showed Desma the weapon.

"Only a sword from the play, milady," Elizabeth said, her head bowed. "Heard someone cry, but guess it could've been that peacock--or that herb girl out looking for someone named Colum too. Said he was last in your cham--"

Desma slapped Elizabeth so hard across the face her head snapped back into the wall. Colors blurred before her eyes, and she tasted blood. If the men had not held her up, she would have toppled down the stairs.

"In your chamber?" Brian asked Desma. "We decided we'd keep it a secret--our passion," she told them. "And now I've sent him on another errand for me, but he'll be back soon."

The words--lies--blurred by, though Elizabeth tried to seize them--to plan her own. Her head spun and the stairs and even the wall behind her seemed to slide and tilt. Should she say more about Colum's demise? She could only stare back at where she thought this woman's eyes must be behind that veil. An icy aura seemed to emanate from her on the scent of smoky herbs, the same dank atmosphere so suffocating at her Bushey Cot poison garden. She shook her head to try to clear it.

"But Colum's horse is still on the grounds, right, Brian?" the man who held Elizabeth said.

"Then no doubt he took another," Desma insisted. "Pluck off that whey-faced lad's cap."

The surprise at that command and the strength of desperation flooded Elizabeth. She went wild. She tried to knee the one called Brian and shove the other down the steps, but they banged her against the wall again. Her ears rang. Desma herself leaned over to snatch off her cap to reveal the coils and twists of red hair.

Still, Elizabeth kicked and flailed. Then, realizing she was trapped, she reached up and ripped off Desma's veil. Desma shrieked. The man called Brian started to laugh, until he

glanced up at Desma's face, lit by the lantern he still held.

"Judas Priest!" he cried, then spouted something in Gaelic.

Desma turned away into the room, and for the first time Elizabeth saw that Meg was tied fast to a heavy chair near the window. Meg cried out, too, when she glimpsed Desma's pitted face.

Elizabeth opened her mouth to tell the men where they could find Colum's corpse, but Desma yanked her veil from Elizabeth's grasp and thrust it into her mouth for a gag.

"Bring the girl in here," she ordered the men. Dragging Elizabeth up the last steps, they obeyed. The gag made her feel she couldn't breathe. Panic pounded against her throat and chest. "Loose her hair and tie her with this," Desma was saying as she picked a long linen strip from the floor.

Brian hesitated. "The two of them," he said, "look a bit like sisters. Colum wouldn't say direct who you brought back with you, but--"

"I don't pay any of you to do my thinking," she insisted, advancing on him. "As Colum told you, this is for Ireland, for all of us."

Brian nodded and moved quickly, tying Elizabeth's hands behind her around a narrow stone pillar. The damp linen strip reminded her of the corpse's clothes under Desma's bed. She struggled and tried to talk through her gag, but Desma slapped her again, scratching her cheek. Elizabeth prayed no poison was caught there. She blinked back tears of defeat and stared into the green gaze in the once beautiful face. The specter of the pox had always terrified her. But for some reason her brain threw pictures of Will Benton's corpse at her, all caught in that shroud.

She blinked hard. She had to concentrate on summoning help and on surviving.

"Well," Desma said, rounding on the two men, "since this lad is a girl in disguise, go lock up the other players. God knows what mischief, or worse, they intend. And come back to report to me when all is secured. Don't be standing there. Go on!"

Taking Elizabeth's sword, they left, muttering, banging the door shut. Desma went over to bolt it. Elizabeth could still feel her

dagger pressed between the small of her back and the pillar, but it was nowhere near her hands or bonds.

"I heard you had a girl with you at Hatfield and Ightham Mote who greatly resembled you, but when I saw and heard her at first ..." Desma said, letting her voice trail off. She turned back and leaned against the door with her eyes closed. "You almost tricked me again, my little red-haired fox."

Elizabeth noted she seemed to speak to both of them. Perhaps, even if she had guessed the ruse, she did not know who was who.

"I cannot believe all you have dared," Desma continued and strode over to pull her veil from Elizabeth's mouth. Rather than donning it again, she threw it on the table in the corner beside the long leather box Elizabeth had searched for earlier. "You are the Boleyn, I warrant," she said, her eyes narrowed, her voice accusing, as she strode back toward Elizabeth, "because I could not fathom why you--she," she added, pointing at Meg, "would be out in Ightham Forest alone at night."

"And can you fathom," Elizabeth challenged, "I would be brazen enough to be dressed as a lad here?"

"Oh, aye, that I could." She grinned, her smooth teeth so in contrast to her ravaged skin. "I've seen you do it at Wivenhoe and then at Bushey. And I daresay you went out the window at Hever. Besides," she added with a sneer, "your girl here starts nearly all she says with the old oath 'So blood, and I cannot fathom you would speak that way.

"And I take it," Desma went on, obviously reveling in her power, "that one of the players here today is that handsome rogue you took on to entertain you, Ned Topside. I'll see to him personally--to all of them, as soon as we are finished here."

"And I take it," Elizabeth countered, fighting to keep calm, "that your informant in my household was none other than Beatrice Pope. Cecil knows that as well as everything, so he's in London now to tell the queen--tell her you've failed in everything except that you both used the Popes as spies."

Elizabeth knew it was a gamble to goad this woman, but she had to know about her royal sister's

part in this.

"Your half sister, I suppose you are referring to," Desma said, coming closer, hands on her hips in an almost masculine swagger.

"Of course."

"Another Boleyn lie. I, like others, know you share no blood with her. Like your Ned Topside who visits your rooms at night, your sluttish mother kept a pretty bird, a musician, always sprawled across her bed. It was charged at her treason trial that among her other lovers, her red-haired

Smeaton--"

"I am my royal father's child!" Elizabeth shouted. "Look at me, listen to me--dare to harm me and you will see."

Leaning forward as if she would lunge, she felt her dagger again but had no notion how she could use it to free herself. If she rocked her wrists up and down, would the stone pillar wear a damp linen strip through? She fought to calm her fury.

"This is not only about you, Boleyn bastard, but about me--about my loyal, loving father your family insulted time and again."

"I know of those things. They are unfortunate and regrettable. But am I to be held accountable for my parents' faults?"

"The sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generation. But since you shall never bear a child, all the poison will stop with you," Desma declared.

"Then are you to be judged for your mother's being a man's mistress or for your father's casting her off?"

"You know--you know of this?" she asked, her voice awed. For once she looked stunned. "Then do you know that when my father was murdered, despite his utmost loyalty to Henry Tudor, the king did naught to have his death investigated and punished?" Her voice rose in volume and pitch as she gestured wildly. "Just ordered them carted off and buried like so much Irish refuse, that he did. I say your family poisoned my father's food and drink!"

Elizabeth jerked as Meg spoke. "Just like you poisoned my mistress, Mary Boleyn. You sent the poisons in with that girl, so you wouldn't have to even see what you did to her."

Desma half-turned toward Meg, then back to Elizabeth. "Oh, I'm going to see you two

die very directly. I'm going to watch every writhing moment. I'll warrant Anne Boleyn would have loved to watch Catherine of Aragon die of poisoned food and drink--"

"Poisoned food and drink," Elizabeth interrupted, deciding to risk all on a hunch. "Knowing you now," she cried, leaning forward again to saw at her bonds, "makes me realize that you are the one who poisoned--mayhap in his rye bread--your own father because he cast off your--"

"No!" she screamed and pressed both palms tight to her ears. "No. Her Grace wants you dead, and I will finally do what I should have years ago in the garden with my bees. But I'm innocent of my dear da's death!"

"As innocent as of the death of Colum McKitrick, rotting under your bed?"

Desma began a strange keening sound as she dashed to her table with the vials and began to pour and mix something. Elizabeth sawed openly at her bonds. Something popped loose, but Brian had wound them repeatedly around her wrists.

Her past, her future, dangled before her like that thornbush crown her grandfather had seized for the Tudors. Desma carried a small glass vial toward her with an amber-green liquid within, greener than Cecil's invisible ink. But Elizabeth could kick at her. She bucked forward, only to hear her dagger come free from her belt and clatter to the floor.

Desma leaned down to retrieve it. She dragged Meg's chair closer to Elizabeth, then sat, smiling, calm, in control again.

"Now," she said, "here's my final, only gift to you, Boleyn. I'll let your girl go so she can testify to the queen of your death. I'll have my men get her fast to London."

"I'd never--" Meg began, but Desma pressed the blade of Elizabeth's dagger to her throat to silence the girl.

"But," Desma said, her glittering gaze yet fixed on Elizabeth, "if you don't drain this vial, Boleyn bitch, I'll cut her throat and force you to drink it anyway."

"My royal sister ordered you to do all this?" Elizabeth demanded.

"Let us say Queen Mary desires it and approves," Desma countered, giving Elizabeth a glimmer of hope Mary had not

hated her this much.

"All right then. I see I am beaten. Let Meg go."

"No, Your Grace, I--" Meg began again until Desma slid the blade so close across her throat, she drew a hairline of blood.

Elizabeth leaned closer, planning to stretch out a farewell to Meg to buy more time, but Desma thrust the mouth of the vial at her. Elizabeth pulled back, then lunged. And toppled toward Desma as her bonds gave way.