The Fatal Fashione (20 page)
Read The Fatal Fashione Online
Authors: Karen Harper
Tags: #Fiction - Historical, #England/Great Britain, #16th Century, #Mystery, #Tudors
“You remember that now?” she said, trying to sound soothing when her heart was about to beat out of her breast. She tried to move Marie closer, but the girl didn’t budge beyond letting the queen lift her left hand.
“Yes, and his voice wasn’t Badger’s when he struggled with her—when I heard them and should have helped her.”
“If his voice wasn’t Badger’s, whose was it? Come here and tell me, Marie. It’s cold out here, so come in with Sally and me through this window and get warm.”
“I looked through the window of the starch shop,” she repeated. “I wanted to fly, to climb through the window, but I was frozen—afraid.”
“Everything’s all right now. This isn’t the same window. You don’t have to be afraid of what you find in here.”
“I didn’t cause my mother’s death. You said I didn’t,” she insisted, turning to look at Elizabeth at last.
“No, you did not. Nor did you cause your aunt’s in any way. Sally needs you, Marie. Come in here with Sally.”
The girl moved at last, shuffling sideways closer, though the queen feared she still might fall or jump. Then she wrapped the girl in her arms and pulled her inside, collapsing to the floor beside Sally with Marie sprawled across her lap.
The three of them huddled there, the two girls sobbing and Elizabeth weak with relief. Finally, sniffling, Sally said, “Even if Badger didn’t kill anyone, he’s still really mean. He’s a killer, too,’cause he was going to kill us, going to drop us down a hole under that closestool to the river.”
Elizabeth glanced at the crude wooden jakes. The wooden closestool itself had been shoved back over the hole hastily but not positioned properly.
“We cut both him and Celia, Your Grace,” Marie put in. “With scissors and some other glove-cutting tool.”
“Maybe if they’re bleeding bad,” Sally said, “you can follow their path, but I guess it’s getting dark outside.”
Elizabeth glanced around the dimming room. She had not noted it before, but perhaps that wasn’t just the water she had dripped on the floor. It could be smeared blood. At least, if she found Badger and Celia, which she doubted after they’d done all this, their wounds would prove the girls’ story.
“I wager one thing,” Marie said, seeming fully alert at last. “Their cuts might slow them down if you mean to chase them, Your Grace.”
“’Cause,” Sally added, “bet we know now who hurt Marie’s aunt.”
From the mouths of babes,
the queen thought, sitting up straighter, then scrambling to her knees. “Tell me,” she said. “Marie said it wasn’t Badger she saw in the upstairs starch house window, lifting Hannah—that it was a man in Badger’s clothes. Who, then?”
the queen thought, sitting up straighter, then scrambling to her knees. “Tell me,” she said. “Marie said it wasn’t Badger she saw in the upstairs starch house window, lifting Hannah—that it was a man in Badger’s clothes. Who, then?”
“He’s called the stocking man,” Sally said, and Marie nodded.
“But who’s that?” the queen countered.
“One time, Sally, don’t you remember that Celia said the stocking
market
man?” Marie said. “And Badger got angry at her for that, like she gave too much away?”
market
man?” Marie said. “And Badger got angry at her for that, like she gave too much away?”
“The stocking market man,” Elizabeth echoed, still sitting on her haunches. “Did they say aught else about him?”
“Two things,” Sally said. “One, that the stocking man would have their heads if they didn’t get things out of us. Two, that Marie was worth a fortune no matter what the stocking man said’bout final revenge meaning more.”
“Final revenge … the stocking man … the stocking market man,” Elizabeth repeated in a monotone while her mind raced. She felt fury flood her again. Why hadn’t she reasoned that out before? But she had needed the motive to put all the pieces together.
She stood in her sodden skirts and shoved her wild hair back from her face. “Guard!” she called. The splintered door, which no doubt told another tale of horror, opened immediately to reveal not one but three of her yeomen guards, including Bates.
“One of you stay here to be certain these girls are taken by my barge to Whitehall to be reunited with Marie’s parents,” Elizabeth ordered. “Bates and Stiller will go with me on horseback.” She would have to ride astride, but, truth be told, she preferred that.
She walked to the still-open window. The royal oarsmen had managed to pole or row the barge away from the bridge. She pointed back toward the Old Swan Stairs, where they had put in earlier today. Though dusk was falling, they saw her, waved, and bent their backs to row.
“Where are we going, Your Majesty?” Bates asked as she accepted the man’s cape he offered her and wrapped it around her shoulders. It came only to her knees.
“To see the stocking man,” she told him, striding for the street as he and her other yeoman, Stiller, hurried along behind her. “And the first place we’re looking is Smithfield Market. Nothing quite so fatal a fashion as final revenge, but I shall turn it to queen’s justice.”
DESPITE DEEPENING DUSK, THE QUEEN AND HER two yeomen started for Smithfield. At least the bridge was not so crowded now. They must ride nearly the width of the City, and she hoped the gates would not be closed before they went through.
Approaching night had greatly cleared the streets. Despite the fact she had only two guards, she was relying on surprise to take Dauntsey, if Badger and Celia had not managed to get to him first. If she could trust what Marie had finally recalled she’d seen through the starch house window, Hannah’s murderer had not been Badger himself but someone wearing his clothes. How clever of the popinjay Dauntsey to exchange his usual flamboyant fashion for Badger’s plain garb. No wonder eyewitnesses noticed no one unusual.
Besides, both Dauntsey and Badger were short, nearly the same height. Another thing had finally hit her, too. Those dark smudges on the linen rolls of fabric that had been placed to hide Hannah’s body and perhaps the killer, too. The rolls had bluish blurs on them, which she’d attributed to smears from the dye in Hannah’s gown. But could they have been ink stains from Dauntsey’s fingers?
Elizabeth had no way of knowing how much of a head start Badger and Celia had or even if they were heading for “the stocking market man’s” place at Smithfield. If not, she might have to drag the wretch out of Paulet’s house. Worse, if Paulet were also involved, she’d have to bring him down, and that would cause more upheaval in Parliament.
“Where at Smithfield is Dauntsey’s establishment?” Bates asked as they turned onto Thames Street to follow the river westward.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. Giving up on keeping the man’s cape she wore pulled over her head like a hood, she let it flap behind her. Should anyone recognize their queen in hot pursuit, she would be gone before they could blink. “I just know he needs to be arrested and questioned,” she told her men. “If we snare Badger and Celia, that will be a bonus, but I’ll have a hue and cry out for all of them by dawn.”
As they rode past the corner of Dowgate Street, on which sat the Skinners’ Guildhall, Elizabeth hoped her men had found Meg. She wondered if Nigel Whitcomb would back down when she insisted his prisoner be freed. She’d like to toss him in prison, and drum him out of Parliament, too, but perhaps she was going to have to handle the Lords and Commons as she did potential suitors—coddle rather than confront them. She might be her father’s daughter, but these were not her father’s times.
“Will we go to the palace for more men?” Bates asked over the clatter of their horses’ hooves on cobbles.
“I’m trying to decide whether to send Stiller for help or keep him with us.”
“You don’t intend to ride into Smithfield this time of day—night? We should go for help, and you can remain at the palace while guards go out to find—”
“Bates, I favor and trust you to help me keep order, not give me orders.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Her horse was in a lather, and so was she as they rode through Newgate and plunged outside the city walls. It was even darker out here, for lanterns or torches were fewer and farther apart.
With their horses wheezing from the pace she’d set, they cut up St. Sepulchre’s Alley. Smithfield lay beyond, a large, dark pentagon under the slope of night sky.
When the breeze shifted, the sudden assault of the stench almost staggered them, but Elizabeth discovered that if she took several deep, dusty breaths, the potency lessened. She remembered Meg saying she sometimes, her nose being overfull of them, couldn’t smell the sweet herbs she handled; it must hold true for reeking aromas, too. The sounds of vast herds kept here until the big Wednesday market tomorrow blew at them with the smell.
Their mounts tried to pull back, even as the three of them reined in. Torches at sporadic distances framed the field; their lights flared doubly, reflected in the wooden water troughs at which the animals drank. Now and then, the sharp silhouettes of watchful herdsmen cut through the lights.
“Bates, walk up and ask one of those fellows if he knows the location of the stock market office of Hugh Dauntsey. If the man doesn’t know who Dauntsey is, describe him—peacock-hued clothes and strange, pale eyes.”
He dismounted and walked away but was back in a trice. “The clothes were the key,” he called to them, sounding almost jaunty as he remounted. “Hugh Dauntsey lets a twostory building at the corner of Long Lane, across the field.”
“Let’s go, then,” Elizabeth insisted, and turned her horse the way he indicated.
They picked their way along between water troughs, which helped to pen in the herds, and the encircling buildings. Despite how her stomach knotted and her pulse pounded, the queen fought to stay calm. No more jousting knights in mock battle here, but at least no martyrs’ screams as they were burned to death—murdered—either. It was, she hoped, the perfect place to catch a killer.
“Must be that building there,” Stiller said, pointing. “Look, lights upstairs and down.”
“A bull’s-eye,” she said, noting that one of the shutters stood ajar. “Stiller, I will ask you to take these skittish horses around to the back door of the place and block any rear exits with them. Bates will go with me, but we will try peeking in that front window first to see who is within.”
Stiller yet hovered while Bates looked as if he’d like to argue again, but he dismounted and helped her down. “Draw swords, both of you,” she ordered, “and one of you give me a dagger.” She held up her hand to Stiller, and he handed his to her, hilt first. He dismounted and led the three nervous horses away while Elizabeth and Bates peeked in the dusty window.
She gasped. Indeed her bad fortune had turned, for, in the light of a single lantern, Niles Badger slumped at a table, looking exhausted, filthy, and bloody. She could not see Celia or anyone else. She wondered at first if he was unconscious, but he lifted his head and one arm, then put to his mouth a small carved wooden object with a bowl and a stem from which he seemed to be sucking smoke.
“Even if Dauntsey’s in a back room or upstairs, I want to take that man now,” she said in a normal voice, to be heard over the noise of the animals. “He looks too beaten to fight back, or else I’d send for more men. Let’s try the door, but if it’s locked, you kick it in. I don’t think the herders will hear with all this noise. If Dauntsey or Celia should be here and dart out the back, Stiller will stop them.”
Among the lowing, snorting cattle, someone was singing “Bonny Barbara Allen” in a fine tenor voice. A dog barked. In that instant, sounds and scents seemed to assault the queen more clearly. She thought she even smelled the smoke Badger was drinking.
Her efforts to slowly lift the latch failed. It stopped partway up.
“Let me try a trick with the sword before we startle him,” Bates said.
Elizabeth nodded and went back to peer in the window. Wreathed in smoke, Badger looked as if he’d topple over in a stupor. This might be easier than she’d feared, but she deserved a boon in all this.
She watched Bates jiggle his sword tip in the crack between the door and the frame. “Now!” he cried, startling even her as he slammed the door open and, sword raised, vaulted in.
Elizabeth rushed behind him, closing and relatching the door. Badger leaped straight up, then seemed to droop back over the table. Though the queen was wearing a man’s cape, he evidently knew her instantly.
“You—here!” he cried, and started coughing so hard his shoulders shook.
“Is Dauntsey here, too? And Celia?” she demanded.
He shook his head. “Fled. I was too weak with blood loss from those two little bitches.”
She almost slapped him, but she needed him to talk, and he already looked ashen. Still holding the dagger in one hand, suddenly exhausted herself, she sat on the other bench across the table from him. Between them lay wet, bloody cloths he’d evidently tried to use for bandages. The smell of his tobacco was strong, but she preferred it to the stench of the animals.
“Tie this man, then watch the staircase, Bates,” she said. “He looks done in, but he’s not to be trusted. We don’t need him trying to dive out a back window the way he forced the girls to.”
Badger looked surprised at that. The yeoman took his smoking piece away and put it on the table, then tied him with torn cloths to the room’s only chair, which he shoved to the end of the table, close to the queen. Quickly she glanced about at stacks of parchment neatly aligned on the shelves. Several big leather-bound boxes sat on the floor; those should be searched, too. Yes, this looked like a place of business and not some sham. She wondered, if she’d come in pursuit of a stock market criminal instead of a murderer, was enough evidence here to have Dauntsey arrested and convicted?
“Unless you want to be charged with double murder,” Elizabeth told Badger, rapping her knuckles on the table, “you’d best tell me all about your relationship with Hugh Dauntsey. I take it you’re working for him as well as for Gresham, but Dauntsey has your true loyalty.”
“Paid better,” he said with a snort. “Gresham’ s filthy rich, but Dauntsey paid better. Can I make a bargain with you, then?” His voice was slow and barely audible. “I explain things, and you let me walk out of here—if I can.”
“No bargains. By noon tomorrow, I’ll have him as well as you in prison being examined by much more skilled interrogators than I. How long have you worked for Dauntsey?”
“Let me put it this way, Your Majesty,” he said, strangely rolling his eyes upward before he looked at her again. Was he going to faint? “My first big task for Dauntsey was shooting a firearm at Gresham in Flanders the day his horse crushed his leg. I was to kill him and missed.”
A hint of a rueful grin crimped his mouth. “Dauntsey was furious at first,” he went on, “’til he realized how much pain the man was in, even after his leg supposedly healed. He relished that, making him a cripple. Decided to take his reputation, too, ruin his family’fore killing him … so my missing him that day worked out for the best.”
His words slowed even more; he seemed to drawl them. Again his eyes rolled upward before he squinted across the table at her.
“You need medical help, Badger, so answer my questions quickly, and we shall get some for you.”
“I just need a puff on that pipe—if I’m to go on.”
Elizabeth nodded, and Bates came over to put it to his lips. The man drew on it greedily before Bates put it down again. The big guard peeked out through the front shutters and rechecked the latch on the door. He went to peer out the single back window. “Can’t see Stiller since there are shutters closed from the outside,” he reported, then returned to his post at the bottom of the stairs.
“I assume,” Elizabeth questioned Badger, “you took Sir Thomas’s signet ring and made certain it appeared in the starch bath in which Hannah von Hoven drowned?”
He nodded almost imperceptibly; his head lowered, and his eyes closed. She must know so much more and couldn’t let him slip away before she learned the truth—if he was telling the truth.
“Did you harm and drown those two women or did Dauntsey?”
“They were just pawns to him … it’s Gresham he’s hated for years. Dauntsey killed the starcher to set him up, the whitster to shut her up. Rich bastard Gresham got Dauntsey’s position, ruined his dreams, kept close to you. I just did what Dauntsey said, set things up, got the ring, the
chocolata
drink he took to the laundress—told her it was sent from you.”
chocolata
drink he took to the laundress—told her it was sent from you.”
His shoulders heaved; he coughed again. Over the muted noise from outside, Elizabeth strained to hear him.
“Dauntsey found out,” Badger went on, “about the poison roots from the other starchers he did the books for. But he did the drownings,” he said, lifting his head and turning to give Bates a long look.
“Say on,” she prompted, when he seemed to forget her.
“I can’t—can’t.”
“Then I’m going to have to throw you over the rump of a horse and have you taken to the palace, where—”
“One more pull on the pipe, that’s all.”
She leaned toward his chair to put it to his mouth herself, then took it back and set it down on her side of the table.
“He loved to do the drownings, craved it—like I do that pipe,” Badger whispered, as if to himself. “Said so, more’n once. Boasted he drowned a playfellow, a pretty little girl, years ago in a fishpond and … the passion of it was like nothing else …”
Elizabeth’s lower jaw dropped. That last about the passion of murder by drowning—Badger could not have made that up. She couldn’t let this man die, because she’d need him to testify against Dauntsey when they found him.
As Badger slumped forward in his bonds, she told Bates, “We must look swiftly for more evidence, then get this man to my physician at Whitehall.”
“I’ll glance upstairs and try to call out a window there to Stiller.”
“All right. I’ll stand at the bottom of the stairs to keep an eye on this one, and you can shout down to me what you find.”
Bates went quietly, quickly, up the narrow stairs, which were lit from above. Their prisoner had sat up again but kept shaking his head and rolling his eyes upward, as if he could see through the ceiling and floor over their heads.
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