The Poyson Garden (6 page)

"Wait!" the lady said in a voice both men obviously heeded. "I said I'd cut the winding sheet myself, and so I shall." The watching woman saw her put her lantern down and kneel, leaning into the grave.

For a moment all seemed silent. Then the sheet ripped in a long, screaming tear. The wind sighed. The lady spoke again.

"You did not tell me he was so fair of coloring and face, Harry."

"And of heart," he added with his arms crossed and head bent as if he were in prayer. So that man must be Lord Henry Carey himself. Such piety from a Boleyn almost made the watching woman vomit too. "He never sought profit or preferment," he went on. "Jenks, help me turn him to get at that arrow that went clear through his middle. We will have to cut it out his back. Can you hold that lantern up now?" he asked the lady.

As wan light leapt into her eyes, the watching woman instinctively pulled her veil down over her face. She crept back to become one with the shadows of the church. Leaning her shoulder against the cold stone wall, she wondered who the lady was and waited.

The stab of sorrow--and the stench--made Elizabeth's nose run and her stomach continue to churn. It wasn't so much the slick, writhing

worms that were already at the corpse but the white, fine, velvety coating that covered its skin--and how that contrasted to the dreadful black puddles of flesh. There were dried blisters where each arrow went in and even where the one poked out his back. Because Henry had only one good hand, Jenks worked quickly with his dagger to cut that broken shaft and tip loose. They were all wearing gloves, so those made Jenks a bit awkward, but Elizabeth had insisted on them. She had dreamed of poison, and poison this black festering mass could be.

"Harry, do you think," she said, her voice nasal because she held her nose, "it went so far through him because he fell on it, as you did your sword?"

"I saw him flat on his back, and he didn't look as if he rolled over onto it."

"Then perhaps the person who shot this arrow was especially strong," she said, her voice faltering, "or else ..." She began to shake so much the lantern light trembled.

"Or what, milady?" Jenks asked, as he freed the arrow point and broken shaft and held them up to her.

"Or, else," she said, reaching for it, "when they came across the road to look for Lord Harry, someone drove it deeper into W. But we need not know that to realize we are dealing with cruel or desperate men."

"Take that arrow and go on in," Harry urged her. "Jenks and I will finish up here, and we'll talk before you leave."

"I need to hold the light for you."

"Go look in on my mother," her cousin insisted, tossing his cloak off and helping Jenks awkwardly shovel soil back in, one-handed. "We've enough light here for this."

But to examine the arrow she held up the lantern, which threw light on it and full on her face. "Please go on, Elizabeth," Harry said, his voice annoyed.

Elizabeth was certain she heard someone's swift gasp, but it was neither man and hardly poor W. She set the lantern down and blocked it with her legs and cloak to scan the darkness better, but the light had temporarily blinded her. Was there sudden movement there, over by the church? Perhaps someone had heard them digging and come to see. But the wind was rustling leaves, and the spades were scuffing soil

into the grave. Yes, she would go look in on her aunt one last time before they rode out. But then she thought of it.

"Wait," she ordered and they both halted their spades. "You said he was loyal to me, cousin, that he would have served me. I want to give him this, though he will never know how truly he has pleased his future qu--I mean, his princess." She reached inside her shirt and took off the crucifix that swung by a delicate chain. Her sister had given it to her one yuletide, long before their father died.

"Someone else will find it when they dig him up and put his bones in the charnel house," Harry said, and she thought he would protest further. "But I tell you, Will would be proud of it--and mayhap he knows, eh?"

Elizabeth nodded, but whatever prayer she meant to say caught in her throat. Despite the fact Harry had told her to take the lantern, she left it for them and hurried through the gate. Her eyes soon became accustomed to the dark, then light from the distant house illumined her way. She clutched the arrow in her gloved hand; she would wrap and place it in her saddle pack. Later she would examine it carefully, perhaps find someone who knew about poisons to look at it.

Nearing the back door, she saw a girl going in ahead of her. She had not slipped through the back gate, so she must have come around from the front. Elizabeth did not recognize her from her silhouette. It was just after midnight, so why would someone be up but Glenda, who was sitting with her aunt? Elizabeth crept closer. She could tell that the lass looked young and slender. In her hand she had a bunch of flowers or maybe herbs. That reminded her she had meant to tell Harry she must meet Meg Milligrew. Perhaps this was she, but she seemed much shorter than he had described. If she could but glimpse her hair or coloring ...

Elizabeth watched as the girl first poked her head in the door, then disappeared inside.

Elizabeth went to the single back kitchen window and peered in. The place was deserted but for this strange girl lighting a rush taper from the single fat tallow candle on the table, opening what looked to be a cellar door, then disappearing down the stairs. All this time Elizabeth had seen only her back.

She looked around to see if Harry and Jenks were coming yet. Nothing. Silence and darkness, and she dare not shout for them. She went to the kitchen door and in. She removed her gloves with the long wrist guards she had borrowed from her aunt and placed them on both sides of the broken arrow shaft to protect it. She stooped to lay it in the corner of the room behind the hearth spit wheels and chains, where no one would see it and she could retrieve it later.

Straining again to listen for the men, she heard nothing but muffled noises down the cellar stairs. When in doubt, do nothing. But she had to be sure that the intruder was not lighting a fire or doing something else dire down there.

From the table Elizabeth lifted the candle impaled in its flat brass holder and started down the uneven stone stairs, trailing her free hand along the dank wall. She could tell the girl must have gone deeper into the vaulted darkness, unless she'd snuffed her taper and was hiding down here behind those barrels.

When Elizabeth heard her farther in, she left her candle on a step and edged carefully forward, her hand still along the wall. However much the cellar was used, spiders still ruled here. She grimaced and blinked rapidly as she walked through a web that clung to her eyelashes and damp face.

She came to an arched door and saw the girl just beyond. Positioning her nosegay carefully, she was hanging it up on a string that held many other herbal bouquets. Then she pulled something--a vial--from her bosom and uncorked it to pour a tiny stream of liquid into a wooden firkin. This girl was most certainly not Meg unless everyone was blind: Coal-black hair peeked from her cap, and her nose was pert instead of prominent.

"What are you doing there?" Elizabeth demanded. Her voice startled even her. The girl jerked around, wide-eyed. She dropped the vial. It shattered between them on the floor stones. Then she lifted the firkin from its wooden cradle and heaved it at Elizabeth.

She ducked. The girl snuffed her taper. Elizabeth felt her flee past.

"Hold there!" Elizabeth commanded, spinning to chase her.

The girl did not stop, but the candle on the steps etched her silhouette quite clear.

Elizabeth lunged and caught her. She swung the girl around by one arm.

"Halt, I tell you!"

Elizabeth felt as astounded as furious. She was used to being obeyed by servants, but not now, not by this wretch. Whoever she was, she fought like a fishwife, trying to kick, punch, and scratch. Rage drowned Elizabeth's control. That this chit would sneak in at night ... that she would not stop when bidden ... that she would try to assault her person ...

She pummeled the girl, boxing her ears soundly, getting in cuffs and kicks. She snagged her long fingers in that black hair, however greasy it was. If she had lice, she'd skin her alive. The girl landed two kicks and one punch to her shoulder, but never got the best of her. The more they struggled, the wilder Elizabeth became, as if this rage had been building in her for years.

Harry and Jenks thudded down the steps, the lantern still in Jenks's hands. Harry pulled the girl away and slammed her back against a pile of barrels, which bumped and rolled; he pressed her to the wall. Still, the girl did not cry out or say a word.

"What in creation?" he demanded, as out of breath as if he'd been in the fray. "Who in the deuce is this?"

"You don't know either?" Elizabeth shoved back her hair, which streamed loose from her boy's cap. "I caught her sneaking down here and pouring something in a firkin. Bring her over here," she ordered and took the lantern from the astounded Jenks to lead them into the next chamber.

She cast light upon the glittering, wet shards of broken vial--thin-blown venetian glass, it looked to be--then found the firkin where it had rolled into a cobwebbed corner. "This is what she was tampering with, corrupting for all I know," she told them, putting it back in its wooden cradle. Half filled with liquid, it was heavy.

"Speak up, girl!" Harry demanded.

"We've got you now. Who are you and what mischief was here?"

"And she hung this up with the herbs," Elizabeth said and plucked down the single nosegay. She shook it close to the girl's face. She flinched as if it would burn her but still said naught.

"Maybe she can't talk--she's dumb,"

Jenks put in.

"One way or the other, she's dumb," Harry intoned and gave her another hard shake. Her head jerked and her limbs moved like a rag doll's.

"Jenks," he said, "go up and knock quietly on Lady Boleyn's door and ask Glenda to send Meg Milligrew down here straightaway. I don't care if she still claims she's puking her insides out."

Jenks nodded and hurried away. Elizabeth could tell the girl was terrified, and yet she did nothing to ease her situation. No explanation, no pleas, just wide-eyed, sullen, or even stupid stares. Perhaps she had been drugged, but she had fought like one demented or under some spell.

Elizabeth's lower lip dropped when Jenks swiftly returned with Meg. Though wrapped in a rough wool coverlet, her strawberry-hued hair wild from her bed, her face pinched and pale --yes, but for the wench's broader face, Elizabeth had to admit, at least to herself, it was like gazing in a looking glass. Meg just gaped back, her mouth open too. "Good gracious" was all she managed to say.

Elizabeth forced herself to think again. "I am Lady Boleyn's friend, Lady Cornish,

Meg. Since you are her herbalist, tell me what this is the girl tried to put among your hanging herbs. These are the herbs you hang here like in the garden shed, are they not?"

"Yes, milady. Could I have the light on this one then, an' you please?"

Jenks took and held the lantern for her. She frowned intently at the cluster of limp leaves on the stalks, then felt and sniffed at them. "Why, 'tisn't true saffron like I got hanging here to make the mistress's favorite honey saffron cakes," she declared. A frown furrowed her high brow. "It's got much simpler leaves and not sharp-edged, see? And they're longer and darker, but when they get mixed in and dried, Cook might not know the difference. Meadow saffron, milady, that's what this is."

Elizabeth just frowned, but suddenly Meg looked aghast. She drew in a sharp breath, then launched herself at their prisoner. "You mean you been poisoning her?" she screeched. "By mixing with my herbs? Meadow saffron's poison, you whey-faced bitch!" Meg's hands, still holding the

herb, spread like claws around the girl's neck as if she'd choke the very life from her.

Harry cursed and, with Jenks's help, pulled the two apart. Elizabeth seized Meg's arm and shook her once. "Listen to me," she said, putting her face close to hers. "If someone is poisoned with meadow saffron--maybe put into honey cakes--what would be the signs of it?"

"Don't truly know, but could be gradual--not a big dose that way. All I know is, someone must have told me not to get them mixed, 'cause it's a poison for sure," Meg insisted, hanging stiff and still in Elizabeth's strong grip. Meg seemed suddenly cowed by her. They were eye to eye. The girl even had freckles sprinkled across her nose and cheeks, just like hers that Kat had worked so hard to whiten with lemon and buttermilk.

"I just work with simples for cures," Meg insisted. "Don't know much about poisons. But I'll tell you if she was tampering with that firkin there, that's the Lady Mary's privy cask of honeyed mead."

Elizabeth knelt to feel what had broken on the floor in that shattered vial. It was golden and sticky. "It is honey," she said. "Can honey be poisoned? Can it?" she shouted, first at Meg and then at their captive.

"I've heard of it happening natural," Meg put in. "You know, if the bees feed on something harmful 'fore they make their honey. But I s'pose someone could do it a-purpose too."

Harry sagged against the wall, loosing their captive. She was blocked in by all of them, but that moment's freedom was all she needed. Not moving quickly to cause alarm, she took another, smaller vial from her bosom and gulped its contents.

"She'd kill me if I din't," she mumbled her only words in a slurred voice. Then she dropped the vial and covered both eyes with her hands and pressed herself back against the stone wall as if to wait for death.

Elizabeth yanked the girl into her grasp. "So you can talk. Speak, and right now. Who put you up to this? Jenks, get a cup and pour some beer in it. We've got to make her drink it, dilute that venom. Listen to me, girl," she said, shaking her, "I am the Princess Elizabeth, the queen's sister, so you must tell

me directly."

She'd forgotten Meg didn't know, and at that revelation the girl evidently swooned against Jenks. Elizabeth made no move to help her. So what if she'd been ill? She was in charge of these herbs and should have kept them safe. But what sickened and infuriated Elizabeth most was the memory of herself just this evening lifting that tankard of mead to her aunt's lips. At least now Mary would have no drink or cakes that were not inspected.