The Twylight Tower (31 page)

“Your Grace, I will tell you flat,” he said before he took a sip as she hovered over him, “that Lord Robert is guilty of overmuch ambition and arrogance, but I truly don’t believe he is stupid enough to have his wife murdered, not since he knew that she was dying. He wanted his marriage over and admits that. And, of course, the man is greatly self-serving and that can be dreadfully dangerous in one close to the monarch.”

She backed up several steps and sank into her chair, her hands gripping the carved, clawed arms of it. “I know, I
do
know. But it was not long ago the same things were said of me, when my sister was yet on the throne. And I killed no one to advance myself, though I am sure my enemies would have delighted to prove I did.”

Kat drew their attention as she began to sputter about something, then stamped to the door, opened it with her good arm, and went out. Mayhap, Cecil thought, she was going to order that infernal pounding stopped. Elizabeth just shook her head as her worried gaze pinned Cecil to his chair again.

“And there are other things that Robin—Robert—and I have in common,” she went on. “We each lost a
parent to the headsman’s axe, each was sent to the Tower and feared for our own lives. In terrible times, he stood by me, believed in me, comforted me—yes, even loved me from afar. He helped me to pull through.”

“It’s true then that he sent you flowers when you were in the Tower after the Wyatt Rebellion?” he asked.

“Oh, yes.” Her taut mouth bent into a hint of smile, and she closed her eyes as she spoke, tipping her head against the high-backed chair. Cecil leaned forward to hear her better through the racket from above. “One time he sent a small nosegay of early spring posies he bribed one of the guards’ sons to bring me,” she said, her cheeks taking on a deep blush that reminded him again of Dudley’s power. “And the boy was to say that someday he would send me gems the same color as those primrose and forget-me-nots. They lasted for days stuck in a pewter mug of my wash water, and then I pressed them in my Bible. I have them yet.…”

She opened her eyes and sat up straighter. “Later he sold the only meager piece of land he had and loaned me a pittance that was a fortune to me when Queen Mary would have gladly seen me go about in rags in exile. He stood by me always when others turned their backs, my lord. Sometimes he’s nearly like a brother, my other self—”

“Then, if he is completely cleared and returns, treat him as a brother, Your Grace, the way you do Harry. Favored, but not the favorite.”

They spoke of all else Robert had said when with
no warning, the door to the room banged open. As they both shot upright, Cecil jumped in front of the queen, his hand going for the sword he realized he didn’t have. But it was Kat, out of breath.

“Oh, lovey,” she said to the queen, coming toward them, “I’ve solved the mystery of who has been wearing your clothes and impersonating you.”

“Katherine Grey, or is Hester Harington back?” the queen cried, rushing to Kat.

“I know you kept her partly because she looked like you and Ned trained her to speak like you, but now—without permission—she’s … she’s trying to become you! I saw Meg Milligrew traipsing back to the castle in your clothes and then saw her take them back to the royal wardrobe. Your blue velvet cloak and jade-green skirt and sleeves with heavy ruching and the salmon sleeves, you know the ones. Oh, lovey, surely it wasn’t Meg Milligrew harmed those other men for serving you, for I thought Geoffrey was her friend.”

“Where is she now?” Elizabeth demanded.

“Gone to her room and taken to her bed again. I followed her there and peeked in.”

“Sit down and rest, my Kat, but first send a guard to bring Meg to me. My Lord Cecil, I have tired you out, I fear,” she said, turning back to him as Kat obeyed, “so you may go if you wish.”

“I will stay, if that’s permissible, Your Grace. I want to hear the upshot of this too. I’ve been racking my brain to find who, close to you and unassuming, could be spying in your court for the illustrious new Spanish ambassador.”

“De Quadra? ’S blood, we knew from the first not to trust him. It can’t be Meg, can’t be,” Elizabeth whispered, but he saw her backbone stiffen, and he backed off across the room to a safer seat.

“IT IS THE WONDER OF THE AGE THAT THIS OBSERVATION
glass brings things up so close and clear,” Ned whispered as he and Jenks took turns with Dr. Dee’s device from their night hiding place up in the old tower overlooking Cumnor House.

“They ought to call it a spyglass,” Jenks said as he moved it to gaze from window to window.

Ned, itching to take the device back, now had a fairly good idea of the layout of the downstairs of the house. They had crept around the grounds and, keeping their distance, peered though windows with the observation glass. They’d even glimpsed the fatal staircase, short and shallow as it was from a landing that evidently divided it into two flights, a “pair of stairs” most folks called them.

It was a warm enough night that no one had closed draperies, so they’d glimpsed lighted activity within and had also identified where the various people lived in the chambers across the backside of the manor house. It seemed that Amy Dudley’s rooms were on the eastern side—a nervous-looking woman who was probably her maid, Mrs. Pirto, paced in a large chamber there, and an old woman, who was probably Mrs. Owens, King Henry VIII’s doctor’s widow, appeared to have the western set of windows.

Anthony Forster and his family evidently lived in the building’s only wing, so he and Jenks could perhaps eavesdrop on them if they wanted to risk it. Too bad the queen had told them to steer clear because, of course, by affecting varied personas and voices, Ned was certain he could pry a great deal of valuable information out of the players in this tragedy.

“This is as close as we’re getting,” Jenks whispered, as if he’d read Ned’s mind, “or Bess will have our heads. One wrong move where someone links us to her, and people’s tongues will start wagging again. I won’t have them saying she has something to do with it, though I can see them pointing a finger at Lord Robert.”

“Since kings and queens get the praise, it’s only right they sometimes take the blame,” Ned muttered. “It will be our Bess’s challenge over the years to see it’s much more praise than blame. Here, give that back a minute!”

The light had gone out in old lady Owens’s rooms, but Ned was certain she stood now at the window, a pale ghostly form in white. That is, if Amy’s spirit wasn’t haunting the place already like any self-respecting ghost in an English castle or manor should. Surely a lamp from the house had not caught the glint of this glass to warn old lady Owens—no, her eyes couldn’t be that sharp. And Mrs. Pirto was still pacing, so she didn’t suspect a thing either. Ned wondered if Dr. Dee fully grasped that he could elevate the art of spying with this leather and glass tube and those little signal mirrors. They each carried one of them in a
pouch slung over their shoulders because they didn’t dare to leave them back in their camp in the woods.

“Too bad we can’t stay tomorrow to watch the goings-on from this perch,” Jenks said.

“We could get trapped up here, though it doesn’t look like this tower’s ever used. Let’s go. Tomorrow at first light, we’ll watch from the woods, then search the forest for a possible camp. After all, there is a slight chance Felicia and Fletcher—”

“And Firkin—”

“—might still be about. There’s no other good place where they could have hidden close by, we’ve seen that. Here, I’ll carry the glass, and let’s watch those crumbling steps.”

They edged slowly down, creeping from stair to stair, sometimes sitting, feeling their way, helping each other in the blackness. Too bad, Ned thought, Amy Dudley hadn’t been this careful in the house, because she could have saved them all a lot of bother.

WHEN ONE OF THE QUEEN’S GUARDS ROUSED MEG FROM
her bed, she prayed that Her Grace only had the need for more curing herbs. But when she saw the look on the royal face, she knew it wasn’t that. She immediately felt more nauseated than facing Ben had made her.

“You’ve been seen outside wearing my clothing, Meg,” the queen clipped out, “evidently impersonating me without my command or permission.” Her Majesty sat in her high-backed chair, while Cecil and
Kat stood by the dark windows. Cecil’s presence made Meg doubly apprehensive. “Don’t just stand there gaping,” the queen said. “Why, girl?”

“I—I haven’t felt well, Your Grace.”

“I am aware of that. So are you implying your stomach complaints have affected your brain, to make you take my clothes and go outside in them? Or are you claiming forgetfulness, as you did when you came into my aunt’s employ to meet me the first time?”

“No, but what does the Lady Mary Boleyn have to do with this? It’s just that today, Your Grace, I had to see someone, someone who would listen to me more if I looked fine.”

“And that person was …?”

Covering her face with both hands, Meg burst into tears. She was doomed. The queen would brook no excuse, no lie, nor was there one that Kat or Cecil could not ferret out and expose. She saw no other path but to throw herself on the queen’s mercy and tell her about Ben. Her Majesty might be angry every time one of her ladies went behind her back to see a man, but— queen’s double or not—Meg knew she was only the herb girl. Besides, she tried to buck herself up, Her Majesty hadn’t wanted to be married either and had said more than once she didn’t trust men.

Meg fell to her knees, her head down. “It’s Sarah Scutea keeps getting me in deep distress, Your Grace, not Meg Milligrew.”

“Lift your head, as I cannot hear you when you talk to my feet, not with that work on the roof this late. But
you told me you had renounced your previous name and life.”

Meg gaped up at her. “I wanted to, Your Grace,” she said, raising her voice. Yet she didn’t dare to look the queen in the eyes. Remembering Ned said a good way to avoid stage fright was to look slightly past a person or over the heads of the audience, she tried that.

“Before my—her—mother died in London and while you let me nurse her, I found out I—Sarah Scutea—was wed to a rough, hard man, one Ben Wilton, a bargeman and a bridge shooter.”

The queen leaned closer, gripping the arms of her chair so hard her long fingers went white. “Wed? You are wed? And you’ve known this nearly two years? You’ve been hiding a husband from me for nearly two years?” Her shrill voice rose to a shriek.

“But I couldn’t remember him—couldn’t love him. I—I told you I’m not Sarah.”

“But you’ve known all this time. So the person you went out dressed as your queen to see was …”

“He’s here with your latest crew of bargemen, Your Grace, brought in from London when the others put you on the rocks. He’s a brutal man, I heard, and I cannot bear to—”

“Then you should have come to me months ago,” the queen cried, flinging wild gestures. “I will no longer be accused by anyone at any level of keeping husbands and wives apart! This Ben no doubt would have you, if he had been at least told his wife was back from the dead.”

Meg saw Kat had come closer, slack jawed in shock, though Cecil wisely kept his distance. “But—please, Your Grace, I’ve sent him away happy and none the wiser with some coins and a letter. And he doesn’t know I’m back and alive, since he thought I was you.”

“What letter, if you do not want him to know of you?”

Meg gazed up in sick awe at her queen. She had risen and loomed over her, a face carved from white marble with flashing eyes.

“I—in your name—I asked him to return to London to do his job there and praised him too.”

“But what letter? I must tell you, when I summoned you here tonight, I feared that you might have betrayed me—politically as well as personally—and be spying for some foreign power. After all, Sarah Scutea is the daughter of Spanish-bred loyalists of my sister’s Catholic cause. Have you played me for a fool all these years when I trusted you too? And now I learn you are sending letters by some bargeman into London. De Quadra is still in London, I believe, my Lord Cecil?” she demanded, turning toward him so fast her skirts swooshed across Meg’s tear-streaked face.

This was pure nightmare, Meg thought, worse than the one with Ben. Her beloved queen was now talking of spies, and that meant prison or worse. She had forged the queen’s name, though not for some evil cause. But fears of torment or prison were only slightly worse than being forced to return to Ben Wilton as his wife, she was sure of that.

“I wrote him a short note on a piece of your parchment,
Your Grace,” she continued her confession, the volume of her voice amazingly picking up as she went. “I signed your name—”

“You know better than forgery, girl,” Kat interjected.

“Actually,” Cecil cut in, “considering it’s the queen’s name, it’s treason.”

“I cannot abide such deceit,” the queen went on, ignoring them both. “Even if you have not betrayed me to an enemy, you have made yourself my enemy by not trusting me with the truth. ’S bones, I’d have thought people learned their lesson when I sent the Haringtons away. I am going to have you confined until my Lord Cecil questions this Ben Wilton and then …”

The queen’s voice faded as a dark shroud wrapped tighter and tighter around Meg’s thoughts. The noise from the roof, the pounding of her heart … Then everything just stopped as Meg hit the floor.

IN THE SHORT STRETCH OF TIME BETWEEN DAWN AND
daylight on the morrow, Ned and Jenks had scoured the woods within a half-mile of Cumnor House, reasoning that if Felicia-Hester and Edmund Fletcher had stayed in the area, they would not have risked residing with anyone or even staying at an inn. They had found the remnants of several camps and the skeletons of two fairly fresh campfires in the woods, but nothing that pointed to their prey.

While Jenks, who had better skills in tracking anyway, continued to survey the area, Ned tied his horse
to a tree near Cumnor House. Wishing he had brought the observation glass, which was back in Jenks’s saddlepack, he at least had one of the signal mirrors with him. If one or the other of them located something important, they had found they could play sunlight from these off the side of the tower that faced away from the house. Every so often, Ned glanced up at the lofty ruins but saw no flash of light from Jenks yet. He took his mirror from its pack so that he would have it at hand if he needed it.