The Fatal Fashione (19 page)

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Authors: Karen Harper

Tags: #Fiction - Historical, #England/Great Britain, #16th Century, #Mystery, #Tudors

BOOK: The Fatal Fashione
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“And saw what? Saw who?”
“No—no one was there. She was floating … dead.”
Marie felt she was floating, pulled under as the thick, sticky memories roared forth to drown her. Trying to swim upward, through the starch, she remembered now: She hurried back downstairs after she saw Hannah floating. On the stairs, she fell and rolled, hitting her head, but she got up and rushed into the field to stare up at the window. Through it, she saw someone lift her aunt Hannah’s body from the starch tub. She should have tried to pull her out, but she’d been a coward and fled. Through the window, she saw someone dressed like Badger, short like Badger—but if she said that, he would drop her through this hole. Maybe he meant to do it no matter what.
“What else did you see?” he shouted, shaking her like a cloth doll.
“N-n-nothing. The sun shone off the windows in my eyes. Everything was gone then, from my head, after I fell. That’s all I recall, I swear it!”
“We’ve got to hurry with the rest of this,” Celia said. “The glove maker will be back soon. That’s enough to tell the stocking market man.”
“Just the stocking man, remember?” Badger hissed at her.
“What’s the difference? These two won’t be round to tell!”
Who are they talking about?
Marie wondered, panicked as she stared down at the white chaos pounding against the pillars. The glover sold stockings, too?
“I still say she’s worth a fortune alive, no matter what he said about final revenge,” Badger argued. He eased up slightly on her neck. She turned to see that Celia had bound Sally with a roll of ribbon—and that her friend had managed to cut nearly through her bonds with a pair of scissors she had somehow got a hand on.
“I remember something else,” Marie added, hoping Badger and Celia didn’t look Sally’s way. “Let me sit up. I can’t breathe.”
Badger loosed her slightly, though he didn’t let go of her. She knew she would only have one chance to pull off this trick, and if she failed, she and Sally were gone for good.
Marie shrieked in Badger’s ear. Sally, free now, gave a shout and rushed Celia, knocking her sprawling facedown on the floor, swinging the big scissors at her like a knife. As Badger startled, then tried to get up, he loosed Marie. Instead of fleeing, she yanked him back and shoved. He ended up with his posterior from shoulder blades to the backs of his knees stuck in the drop hole, struggling not to fall through all the way.
Marie tried to help Sally, but the girl seemed a much better brawler. Celia’s wrist was bleeding, but she grabbed Sally. The scissors went flying. The woman backhanded Sally, slamming her into the wall. Furious, Marie pounded Celia’s back, but she knew it would do no good to scream for help unless the glover returned. The outside noise was still deafening.
Somehow Sally righted herself and scrambled for the scissors on the floor just as Badger got himself out of the drop hole.
“There’s a big club out in the shop,” Celia screamed at him, holding her bleeding wrist. “Fetch it to use on them. We have to hurry—”
The moment Badger ran out to get the club, Marie slammed the door behind him and shot the bolt. At least it would take him a moment to break the door down, if he dared, since Celia had said the glover would be back soon. Now, at least, it was two against one.
Sally had the scissors again, and Marie grabbed another glove-cutting tool. They swung them in large arcs to back Celia toward the open hole in the floor, but she cleverly skirted it. Still, she tripped over the closestool that Badger had shoved aside and crashed backwards into the wall, then sat hard on the floor.
“Grab her!” Sally shrieked as they heard the first bang on the door. “Push her halfway down and let her hang there. He’s going to get back in, and then we’re cooked.”
Together, as Badger battered at the door, the two girls grabbed handfuls of Celia’s hair, then shoved and pushed her head down into the hole to her waist, though her hips and wide skirts stopped her fall. Her arms had also gone through, but she spread her legs in the riot of skirts and petticoats to try to hold herself there.
“These tools won’t be enough against him,” Sally cried as she stood with Marie, staring at the splintering door. “Not with that big club. He must have drowned your aunt and now wants to drown us.” She ran to the single window overlooking the river. “There are boats out on the water, and there’s a ledge outside. Someone will see us out there and help.”
“Over that water—I can’t,” Marie said as Badger cracked the wood of the door, then bashed at it again with his club.
“We have to. Now! Come on!”
After a grueling interrogation, Meg was left, bound to a chair, in the upper room where she’d first been questioned. If she hadn’t known she was innocent of the murders of Hannah von Hoven and Pamela Browne, she would think by now that she was indeed guilty.
The chief constable was a haranguer and a tormentor, skilled at instilling terror. Yet she had no doubt he’d carry out his threats. Ears nailed to the stocks next time, he said, if she didn’t admit her crimes. Then the third time he questioned her, if she didn’t confess, ears cut off and forehead branded. He’d had his man show her the hot branding iron and singe her hair with it. Then, he vowed, when it was too late for the queen to gainsay or disprove all she’d confessed, he’d see she had a public execution by burning at the stake.
Despite her horror, exhausted, Meg floated into a halfsleep. She recalled that Ned had fondled and kissed her ears and called them seashells. He’d brushed his lips so tenderly against her “fair brow.” Ned had loved her complexion. And he’d said that he had burned to lie with her abed and love her forever.
She heard his luring voice even now. “I’ll ask you to wed again later, when death is not our business but life—together.” But now, still, death was her business, and the death just might be her own. Yet how close she had been to being Ned’s, in body as well as in heart, after longing for him all these years. How close but now so far …
She dozed but was wakened by voices—distant, stern, especially one man’s. Was she still dreaming? Those were not Ned’s cultured, ringing tones but a rougher voice, though one of authority and purpose.
Her hopes soared until one of Whitcomb’s louts rushed in and stuffed a rag in her mouth that made her gag so violently she almost couldn’t hear that new voice. But yes, she could catch words if she held her breath and concentrated hard on not choking.
“Queen’s demands … where … Milligrew …”
Yes! Yes, the queen had sent someone to rescue her from this place, wherever it was. After gasping for air and nearly dry-heaving, she held her breath again. Whitcomb’s voice, strident, strong.
“ … for questioning … mountain of evidence … until someone else confesses … bound over soon enough … my sworn duty …”
Meg prayed the queen’s man would not leave her here. Had he come alone? Hadn’t guards been sent, too?
It seemed so silent now. A door closed distantly, thudding an echo in this room, in her heart. She strained to hear more voices, even horses. But nothing now. Nothing.
The oarsmen had to row hard to fight the current as the queen’s barge headed across the river to the Southwark side. This close to the bridge, a gap-toothed maw sucking in the river, it wouldn’t take much to be swept closer and battered against the wooden starlings that protected the pillars. Elizabeth shuddered as she recalled nearly being capsized here when she tried to solve a woman’s murder seven years ago. Meg had rescued her in a rowboat; now Meg’s daughter’s life might be at stake. How things seemed to come full circle, she thought, as she prayed that both Meg and Sally might be safe.
“Your Grace, look!” Lady Rosie cried, pointing just past the center of the bridge. “Outside that window on a ledge. Two women are outside that window over the rapids!”
Elizabeth squinted into the sinking sun, then shaded her eyes with both raised hands. Prayer so quickly answered? Goose bumps gilded her skin.
“I think it’s them!” the queen cried, first to herself and then to her chief oarsman. The two were either small women or children, though neither had a cape or hood—no, the smaller girl was waving her brown one like a banner.
The queen pointed and screamed louder, “It’s them, the girls! Row the barge closer in case they fall! Row for that arch just beyond the center!”
Her men didn’t have to tell her it was dangerous, but they bent to their oars. The royal barge was too big to shoot through the arches, but it would take a bashing if they went sideways to block the rush of river. The queen saw that other river craft had spotted the girls, too, but dared not sail or row close.
She stood, bracing herself against a post that held up the plain awning, as the flow and tilt of water rocked the barge. Hoping the girls would see her, the queen waved broadly. They had gone out on either side of a window onto a narrow wooden ledge; each was clinging to a faded blue shutter.
Yes, she was certain they saw the barge, saw her. Thank God!
In waving her cloak, Sally nearly toppled and had to let it go. Like a brown autumn leaf, it sailed to the foaming water and was instantly sucked down. The shutter she clung to swung away from the outer wall, with her hanging on, feet flailing while the roar of the rapids drowned her screams.
 
HORRIFIED, ELIZABETH WATCHED SALLY HANG ON for her life.
“Closer!” she urged her oarsmen on the barge. “Put us under her.”
At least the girls were on the lower level of the bridge’s buildings, for some rose to three stories—but, even if Sally hit the awning, the fall was too far, and if she missed and went into the river … She prayed the shutter would hold Sally’s weight, that she could get her feet back on the ledge.
“Marie, don’t reach for her!” Elizabeth shouted up as the Gresham girl tried to lean over to help. But she was certain they could not hear her.
Clifford and Rosie ran to the queen when they saw they would hit the bridge. With a huge bump and crash, the barge banged once, then again, into the wooden starlings. The impact of the water pinned them, shoving them sideways, sweeping over the bow, soaking them with spray and waves while the oarsmen fought to control the craft. Rocked as if they rode a leaping, bucking horse, Elizabeth tried to steady herself by linking arms with them.
“Shout to them not to jump!” Elizabeth ordered Clifford. “Someone will come, and if Sally slips we are under her.”
“Don’t jump!” he bellowed, leaning back to face upward and cupping his free hand around his mouth. “Someone will come! Sally, we are here if you fall!”
We are here if you fall.
Elizabeth’s thought echoed his frenzied words. Hannah had been killed in water; Pamela, too. Now Sally and Marie might drown, the fault of England’s reputedly wise queen, who had not protected them soon enough or well enough.
Fury and anger stoked her strength. At any cost, she had to save them.
The room was growing dim as daylight ebbed outside. Still gagged, the rag now soaked with saliva and tears, Meg heard another new voice in the room next to hers. Her spirits fell: This was not Ned, either. It was probably a man delivering something to Whitcomb. Despite the harsh tone and unlearned speech, though, the new voice reminded her of Ned’s. Straining to hear, she sat up instead of slumping against her bonds.
“Eh, then, we be sent by the local constable from St. Martin’s fields, one Gideon Banks,” the new voice said. “Got more news of the murder of the second woman for you.”
They must be in the room just outside this chamber.
Was
it Ned? She’d often enough heard him adopt different voices in his acting, but he usually took the lofty roles of kings or generals, not some rough commoner.
“Say on,” Whitcomb ordered. “I’ve got the culprit here but can use more evidence to break her.”
“Oh, break her, eh? I always’mired—Geoff here done, too—how a bold fellow like yourself can keep the peace through power.”
“You got her’prisoned here,” another new voice put in, “’spite o’ her workin’ for the queen?”
Holy heaven,
Meg thought. Geoff sounded like Jenks. Ned had brought Jenks! If only she could cry out to them.
“How in hell,” Whitcomb said, “did you get so beat up, man?”
“The queen’s men,” Ned said. “They came to the local constable, looking for her herb’list. We wouldn’t say where she was being held—didn’t rightly know then.”
Meg’s heart went out to him, for Whitcomb’s bullies had hit that handsome face hard. At least the chief constable had not been there when his men dragged Ned off, so he didn’t know what he looked like one way or the other.
“Speaking of hell,” Ned went on, “there’s gonna be that to pay if’n you don’t hand that herb’list back,’cause the queen depends on her mightily.”
“That so? Mightily? Good!”
Meg could picture Whitcomb gloating. Ned was taking the wrong tack here, because the chief constable loved to be reminded he was hurting the queen by hurting Meg.
“This be a real fancy place, this Skinners’ Guildhall,” Ned said, blessedly changing the subject.
So that’s where she was! Nigel Whitcomb used to be head of the guild of skinners; he evidently still had access to it.
“Good place to skin a guilty cat, I’d say,” Whitcomb said, and guffawed. Ned and Jenks laughed right along with him, but then Meg heard a door open and a fourth man’s voice.
“Chief Constable, we brought the things you needed for—hey, then. You there. You’re the man was with the murderess we brought in from St. Mar—”
The rest was drowned in a chaos of shouts, overturned furniture, and the slamming of bodies into walls and doors. Meg imagined she could hear fists striking flesh and bone. As far as she could tell, it was Ned and Jenks against Whitcomb and one of his men—maybe more. She had never prayed so hard in her life.
“Look,” the queen cried to Clifford, pointing. “Near the far side of the arch across the starling. A wooden ladder affixed to the stone!”
“Hard to reach,” he shouted back, “but I’ll try for it. I’ll take a couple of the oarsmen to make a human chain, in case I fall climbing over the starlings.”
Above them, Sally had managed to swing the shutter back toward the wall, but she hung between the wooden slats and the building. Marie looked frozen in place like a statue, wide-eyed, looking not at Sally nor the barge but just beyond at the seething waters. She edged farther out as if she meant to jump. What was so dreadful inside the open window that she did not try to go back to safety?
Suddenly the queen’s head cleared. She beat down her own fears.
“No,” she told Clifford, “the oarsmen need to stay with the barge. You and I can make it to that ladder and up to the bridge.”
“But, Your Grace,” both he and Rosie chorused.
“You can go first,” she told him, taking off her cloak and handing it to Rosie. “If the ladder holds someone as big as you, it will hold me. I’m in my riding skirts. I can do it.”
The bargemen held the craft somewhat steady as Clifford climbed onto the starlings and helped the queen out. It actually felt better here at first, off the pitching deck, but she saw new dangers. Waves lashed the soaked planks, and stray debris, including tree limbs and boards, had jammed here.
The spray reminded her of a great rainstorm. Standing under the vaulted arch, she recalled that day her royal sister had sent her to the nearby Tower through the river entrance called Traitor’s Gate. There, in driving rain, the young Princess Elizabeth had sat down and refused to go in that way—with Lord Paulet insisting she must obey the queen. Now she was queen, and yet she was not free, not safe.
Once the two of them had stumbled and crawled their way to the ladder, sometimes holding to each other, sometimes bending over and scuttling sideways like crabs, they saw that the bottom three rungs were not only waterlogged but crumbling.
“They won’t take your weight!” she shouted at him. “Boost me above them.”
“Your Majesty, I cannot—”
“You can and will, man! You’ll be here to break my fall. Now!”
He hoisted her up to grab the fourth rung, then higher, so she could get a foothold. It felt so strange to have a man’s hard hands on her person, her back, waist, and hips.
She looked up as she climbed. What if she got to the top and this went nowhere, or she could not get over the edge of the bridge?
For the first time, she saw people gazing over at her from above. Someone threw a rope down; she wrapped it around her left wrist in case she fell, but she was hardly going to let them haul her up on it. At least this side of the bridge was sheltered from the flying spray of the other side.
Riding skirts or no, they were still a problem—heavy, a burden each time she went up another rung. A problem to be a woman and rule, she told herself, but she could do it. No matter how demanding the men of her Parliament became with carpers like Cantwell or renegades like Whitcomb, she would survive and thrive. Even if the northern shires exploded in rebellion, she would put it down. Her life would be spent helping all who were loyal in her kingdom, men and boys, but women and girls, too.
Many hands pulled her up over the wooden rail in an open spot between shops and buildings. People gaped at her, but at least they didn’t recognize their queen, looking like a drowned rat.
“Did you fall from a boat? What … How?” the growing crowd peppered her with questions.
Exhausted, she righted herself, pushed away, and shoved through the crowd, running toward the other side of the bridge. But exactly what building to enter to find the girls?
Then she saw a yellow glover’s sign and ran for that door.
Meg feared the worst when the sounds of the fight halted in the other room. She wished she could scream for Ned through her gag. What if he had been bested and Whitcomb or his man came in? But no, Jenks was with him, and she’d never known him to lose a fight.
Tears of gratitude blinded her when she heard both familiar voices shouting, “Meg? Meg Milligrew, you here?”
She tried to answer them but began to choke again. The door to the room banged open against the wall. Ned stood there, his once handsome countenance bruised and bloodied anew. Jenks towered behind him, not looking so good, either.
They rushed to her and had the rag out of her mouth in a trice, but she was so dry she still couldn’t talk and only coughed and gasped. Jenks sliced her bonds with his knife, but it was Ned who lifted her in his arms.
She held hard to him, pressing her cheek to his, even though her arms were numb and his face swollen, black and blue and slick with blood.
“He … going to torture and maim me,” she tried to say. “Hates … the queen.”
They took her out into the large front room but headed toward the back of the guildhall and out a rear door. Bless them, they must have sent that earlier fellow to look around the area, but how did they know she was here?
No matter now. She had never felt safer. The queen and Sally would sure be shocked when they heard what she’d been through.
The door to the shop was closed but not locked. The queen burst in. The other glover’s shop came to mind, where Celia struck Meg, then led her a merry chase out the back door. But the back door here was splintered and led to a small room in chaos and a window overlooking a steep fall to fastflowing water.
She heard several others behind her, but once she saw that the shop was empty, she didn’t look back. Hands on the ledge, she thrust her head out the window.
Like part of the carved stone of the bridge beneath, Marie stared fixedly into the roiling waters and Sally yet held to the shutter. Who to save first?
“Marie, I’m here. Just stand still. Sally, I’m going to swing the shutter out, then into the window and help you inside. Don’t be afraid, now,” she said as she glanced down at the barge, still held under the window by raging waters and her valiant men. “If you fall, they will catch you below.”
Holding her breath, Elizabeth slowly, steadily pulled the shutter toward her and grabbed Sally’s shoulders, then pulled her through the window, head first. Others pressed into the room, taking Sally from her as she turned back to Marie, still unmoving, pressed against the stone wall, staring down.
“Get back,” the queen told the people in the room, and motioned them away with one arm.
Though no one knew who she was, they obeyed, but for one tall, thin man who demanded, “What’s going on here? This is my shop. Just what is going on?”
One of her guards she’d sent to ride the bridge appeared, too. “Clear this room, but for this girl,” she said, pointing at Sally, collapsed and panting on the floor. Again, she leaned out the window and turned toward Marie.
“Marie,” she said, when there was only the sound of rushing river again, “give me your hand. Slowly, just give me your left hand.”
“I heard her struggling, then drowning, and didn’t try to save her,” she said, still not turning or moving. “Are Badger and Celia gone?”
“Yes, they’re gone.” Celia, the queen thought. She should have known the woman with Badger was Celia. “It’s just Sally and me. Give me your hand now, and I’ll take you to your parents.”
“They didn’t kill her, you know, kill my Aunt Hannah. I was afraid they did, but they didn’t.”
“I was afraid they did, too.” She was still terrified of the connection between Thomas and Badger—afraid that her financial genius might have hired Badger to rid him of a problem—but she said only, “Give me your hand, Marie. Your queen is commanding you take my hand.”
“But through the window—of the starch house—I saw who killed her.”
Elizabeth jerked so hard she grabbed the ledge and held on tight. “Who, then?”
“Someone dressed like Badger,” she said. “Badger’s height.”
“Are you sure it was not him?” The queen leaned way out and over. She had Marie’s hand now, but she was afraid to tug at her. The girl went even more rigid.
Dear God,
Elizabeth prayed,
don’t let her throw herself off, for I could never hold her.
“Yes,” Marie mouthed so quietly that the noise drowned her words. “I remember now that I could see through the window he wasn’t Badger, even when he picked her out of the starch and carried her away.”

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