The Queen's Secret (31 page)

‘Why do you ask?’

The Welshman looked Goodluck up and down, presumably noting that his patched and rain-stained hood had seen better days and that his coat was a dull buff rather than blue.

‘You’re not one of Leicester’s men,’ the man sniffed.

‘I serve England,’ Goodluck replied shortly, then found himself baulking at such a reply. ‘Lord Leicester sent you to fetch me, did he not?’

Caradoc nodded.

‘Then let us get on. I’m missing breakfast for this.’

Goodluck crouched to examine the body the watermen had dragged out of the lake. It was a portly man with heavy thighs
and
a decided paunch, somewhere in his early thirties. His sodden blue tunic, pulled in by a large leather belt, and blue hose proclaimed him one of Leicester’s household. His muddied yellow hair had been razor-cut, short to the ears, and his beard – a strand of weed caught in it now – had been recently trimmed as well. A self-indulgent man then, his paunch speaking of late nights on the castle ale, but one who nonetheless liked to take care of himself, perhaps with an eye to the ladies?

Lifting the dead man’s left hand, Goodluck examined it closely. Tough, callused fingers spoke of daily labour but not hard, menial work, and his fingernails were short but unbroken. On his right hand he wore a broad gold ring inset with a small agate. His nose was slightly crooked – a fight in his past? – and above the mud smears to his cheeks, his bulging blue eyes were wide and staring.

Goodluck reached forward and gently pulled the lids over his eyes. It was all he could do to repress a shudder. To kill a man and dispose of his body afterwards was one thing. To deal with a sodden corpse first thing in the morning was enough to make the bile rise in any man’s throat.

He leaned closer, and prised the man’s stiff lips apart. There was an odd yellowish tinge to his mouth, and a sickly odour in the air. The unpleasant smell reminded him of something, but he could not place what it was.

‘The watermen found him, you said?’

‘Yes,’ Caradoc agreed, straightening up at his questioning glance. He had bent almost double to see what Goodluck was doing, clearly fascinated by his examination of the dead man. ‘They went out on the mere just before first light, as is their habit. The boat ran up against the body – with a right bump, they said – over there, nearly under the tiltyard wall. They pulled him into the boat, rowed back to the jetty, and the boy there ran to fetch help. That’s when I was informed. I’m assistant to the castle steward, see? It’s my duty to inform the coroner and the dead man’s next of kin, and see that the body’s properly taken care of.’

‘His next of kin? So you knew this man?’ Goodluck was startled. ‘Why didn’t you say so when I first came down here?’

Caradoc shrugged. ‘You didn’t ask. Besides, I didn’t know
myself
until I seen him close up. But soon as we turned him over, I knew it were Malcolm.’

‘Malcolm?’

‘That there is Malcolm Drury. He worked for the steward too. Though he didn’t want to stay on at Kenilworth after this summer. Said he was going to London, to make his fortune there.’ The man laughed, almost contemptuous. ‘Dreams!’

Goodluck said nothing. He had found it was often more useful to observe unpleasant behaviour than to comment on it. Besides, a pale sun was rising out of the mists along the lakeside, and the castle above them was beginning to bustle with life. He did not wish to draw more attention to himself than he already had. It was evident that Lord Leicester had wanted him to see the body and to report back to Walsingham on his findings. But in doing so, Goodluck ran the risk of being identified by those who constantly watched the goings-on at court and took reports back to their masters. Or by the Italians, who might even now be watching him.

‘Why did his lordship want you to see the body?’ Caradoc asked, still worrying away at the question in his head.

‘We’ve been missing a man since we arrived,’ Goodluck lied blithely, hoping he would not be curious enough to make his own enquiries and discover this was not true. ‘Lord Leicester may have thought this was him.’

‘Oh no,’ Caradoc said at once, shaking his head with the air of one who knew more than was common knowledge. ‘Couldn’t have been. This is his lordship’s man. Besides, this one,’ he said, and prodded the drowned man again with his shoe, ‘hasn’t been in the water that long. Well, I know that because I saw him two days ago with my own eyes. But a man who’s been in the mere a week or more, he’d look a good deal greyer than Malcolm here.’

‘I take it you didn’t like Master Drury much?’ Goodluck asked wryly, squatting back on his haunches. His stomach rumbled but he ignored it, not feeling too hungry now that he’d started the day with a sodden corpse.

‘We shouldn’t speak ill of the dead.’

‘He can’t hear you. What was it that made you dislike him?’ He glanced at the body. ‘Did he like to show off? That ring would
have
cost a year’s wages at least. Malcolm must have come from a wealthy family: he couldn’t have bought such a trinket with his own money.’

The man’s lips tightened. ‘No, that he couldn’t. But he wasn’t a wealthy man’s son. Old Master Drury kept a few acres west of here. Long dead now, his wife Goody too, and nothing to show for his sweat.’

Goodluck considered that for a moment. ‘So where do you think he got the money from?’

‘His new friends, I’d say.’

‘Who would they be, then?’ But the man seemed to feel he had already said too much, shaking his head and backing away. Goodluck had to press further, trying his luck with other ideas. ‘From the court, you mean? Those travelling with the Queen?’

‘He had no friends at court,’ Caradoc muttered scornfully.

‘The others, then? The drinkers, the hangers-on, or perhaps those who came here this week to make money by their wits?’

Glancing back at the dead man, Goodluck frowned. His attention had been caught by something. A mere cat’s whisker, it seemed, standing upright and tickling the edge of one bluish-white finger. He leaned forward again, and turned the man’s stiffening right hand upwards. Sure enough, something was trapped under the broad gold band of his ring.

Slowly, Goodluck extracted the whisker and held it up to the strengthening light of day – a long, coarse, black hair, such as might be yanked from a man’s head or beard in the throes of a struggle. It certainly had not come from the dead man’s own head, since he had been fair.

‘What’s that?’

Goodluck tucked it into the leather pouch on his belt. ‘Nothing. Go on, you were saying?’

But Caradoc had clearly decided that one drowned man was enough and he would not put himself in danger. He volunteered a comment about being late for his rounds, looked sideways down at the body and made the sign of the cross. Rather late for piety, Goodluck thought with a touch of asperity.

‘Remember, nothing’s to be said about this business,’ he added,
giving
the man a shilling for his silence and bidding him be on his way.

But Goodluck knew the watermen would not keep quiet, nor the boy who had run for help, nor the handful of commoners now gawking over the tiltyard wall.

At least in this hood he could be anyone. Well, anyone with a beard, he realized, fingering it ruefully.

So, Goodluck reasoned, Malcolm Drury had found some new friends this past week, friends who were prepared to dig into their pockets in exchange for information. For who better to tell them the secret ways into the castle than one of the steward’s men? A man with no pressing urgency to remain loyal to his lord when tempted by more gold than he had ever seen before.

Goodluck ordered the two waiting groundsmen to carry the body discreetly up to the castle, wrapped in sacking so as to disguise who it was. He dropped a few ‘indiscreet’ comments as he gave his orders, then walked back up the narrow path to the Watergate, secure in the knowledge that by the time the news of the death crept out, it would be claimed that Malcolm Drury had consumed a yard or two of ale, tripped over his own feet on the way home and ended up drowning in the mere. No one, it seemed, would mourn him. Least of all those who had arranged for the greedy and foolish Drury to meet his fate in this manner.

‘You there!’

The boy walking ahead of him stopped and looked round, fear in his thin, pale face.

‘Don’t worry,’ Goodluck said, giving him a smile. ‘I won’t bite. You were on the boat this morning when the watermen found him, weren’t you?’

The boy nodded. He looked to be maybe eight or nine years old, barely grown enough to be working on the boats. It was, however, a demanding trade and best learned early.

‘Tell me, were there any keys on his belt or about his person when your masters pulled him from the water?’

Warily, the boy shook his head.

‘Perhaps one of the watermen took the keys – not to steal them but fearing lest they fall into the water,’ Goodluck persisted. Still the boy shook his head. He tried another tack. ‘Perhaps the other
man
took them, then. The one who came down to see the body before me, the chief steward’s assistant. He wouldn’t have allowed the castle keys to just lie there, on a dead man’s belt, so he would have taken them away with him. That must be it, mustn’t it?’

‘There weren’t no keys on that one, master. Nor when we pull him out, nor when the other man come down.’

Goodluck frowned, pretending to be confused. ‘But … But he was working for the steward. He would have been wearing his belt of keys when he fell into the water.’

‘There weren’t no keys on his belt,’ the boy repeated stubbornly. ‘We would ha’ heard tha jangle.’

Flipping the boy a coin, Goodluck smiled grimly to himself in the shadow of his hood and carried on up the damp slope.

A dead man, a missing set of keys, and a heavy gold ring on the wrong sort of finger: the mystery of how the Italian conspirators intended to enter the castle was becoming clear at last. Yet one thing still bothered him. Even if they had the key to every chamber in the royal apartments, how in God’s name did they plan to get past the guards and into the inner court?

Thirty-three

THE MIRROR IN
Elizabeth’s hand showed a pale, pockmarked face, stripped now of her whitening paint, the short spiked hair on her head like that of a demented baby. She stared down at herself, her dry lips trembling, her eyes wide – still alert, with the watchful gaze of the young woman she remembered. Without her bright wigs, her potions, her jewelled gowns, the trappings of princedom, what was she but an ageing hag, a foul-breathed creature any man would pass by in the marketplace and shudder to imagine beside him at night?

Hating what the cruel light revealed, she threw down the gilt mirror so sharply that it cracked. She blew out the candle. Two candles remained lit, one by her curtained bed and another at the high window, flickering against lead-marked glass like a malevolent star. At least that one was far enough away not to be a threat to her beauty.

‘Leave me,’ Elizabeth said hoarsely, watching as her women curtseyed and filed out of the room. All except Mary, who was turning down the covers and preparing to rest on the narrow truckle bed that stood at the foot of the Queen’s bed. ‘You too, Lady Mary. Go sleep with your husband. I swear, you will be more comfort to Henry tonight than to me.’

‘But it is my turn to watch over you, Your Majesty.’

‘In God’s name, I do not need someone to “watch over me” as though I were a child and might hurt myself in my sleep,’
Elizabeth
snapped, pointing rigidly at the door. It was important not to appear too excitable, lest one of them suspect. Though of all her ladies-in-waiting, Lady Mary was the least likely to betray her. ‘Now leave me, I pray you, and bid the others not to enter this chamber until morning, under pain of death. I wish to be
alone
tonight, and wholly
undisturbed
. Do I make myself plain, madam, or must I go out there and repeat that to every fool in the outer room?’

Lady Sidney curtseyed low and withdrew at once, though her face was troubled. ‘I understand, Your Majesty,’ she murmured, closing the door behind her. Its loud click seemed deafening in the silence which followed.

I understand
?

How was that to be taken, pray?

From the busy Privy Chamber next door, Elizabeth heard urgent whispers that eventually died to nothing, leaving the night quieter and more still than any she had known since her arrival here. She turned away from the door and took a few paces towards the uncurtained window, stopping just short of the glass. She did not wish to be seen from outside.

My ladies will have gone down to their own sleeping quarters on the floor below, she thought, and Mary to her loving husband Henry. Only the guards would be left now, standing at arms in the dark and empty antechamber. It must be after midnight, she realized.

Her body ached with tiredness, though her mind was still racing, turning over the day’s events with pleasing alacrity. Her brain at least was still as young and fresh as ever. Her arms trembled though from being stretched out for so long while the women disrobed her, and her legs ached too.