The Twylight Tower (32 page)

He crept closer to the manor house. The place lured him, as if it were a massive stage where a great drama had just been played out. Even the old, sunken graveyard and the half-toppled tower would make fine scenery. He imagined he could see each actor, especially the tragic heroine on her knees, hands clasped, giving her “deliver me from desperation” speech the Scotsman had mentioned. And of course the scene with the horrified denizens of Cumnor returning on a lovely Sabbath, laughing from the fair at Abingdon, only to shriek in dread at the sight of the corpse, before they expounded great speeches on the frailty of life. Someday mayhap he’d do that very play, though not for the queen and Lord Robert, that was certain.

Ned startled from his grand musings as a character—the doctor’s old widow—entered from around the house, leaning on a carved stick. His pulse pounded. She was alone and slowly, unsteadily coming this way as if it were fate he too should enter the scene to speak circumspectly with her. The queen had said not to meddle, but who knows what valuable proofs
this old beldam might have to throw light upon the plot?

Ned strolled her way, hoping he appeared nonchalant. He got so close without any reaction on her part that he realized she, like the old woman who had provided the ladder in Eton for Felicia’s escape, did not see well. Hell’s gates, then she’d not be one whit of help either.

“Who’s there?” she called, her voice scratchy. “Halt, for I can hear you.”

“Just a peddler passing through, milady,” he said, using a warm, friendly Kentish accent.

“A peddler and not another gawker?”

“A gawker at what?”

“What
kind of peddler, young man?”

He walked slowly closer. “Of, ah, mirrors, milady. See?” he said, and held the glass close to her face to test her eyes.

“A peddler who doesn’t know what happened here,” she said, tut-tutting. She put a parchment-skinned hand to the mirror and brought it closer to her face while Ned still held it. “Then you are new here and just passing through?”

“That’s right, milady.”

“Bah, nothing’s right anymore. Have you not heard of Lord Robert Dudley’s lady wife being dead of a fall?”

“Yes, but—you mean, it was near here?” he asked, pleased by the rising tenor of his voice.

“This very house, just down the hall from me—two doors,” she said with a decisive nod. “The coroner and
his jury asked me if I saw anything, but I didn’t. Nor did I hear her scream, as they asked that too.”

Ned figured, since this was going nowhere, he’d best make a smooth exit. “I must be on my way, milady. Got to make a living, you know,” he said, and stepped back.

“I couldn’t tell them a thing about hearing poor Amy stumble down the stairs either—two sets of eight each I take very slowly and always count—or when she hit at the bottom. You wouldn’t think eight stairs enough to take a fatal fall, would you? My hearing’s good, but I must have dozed off then.”

“Ah, yes,” he said, still edging toward the wood. If Jenks saw he was talking to one of the household, he might tell the queen he’d disobeyed her orders and then there’d be hell to pay.

“You know, they didn’t ask about the music, though,” she said almost to herself, shaking her capped, white head. “But then, I kept dozing off and it might have just been in my head—from my days at the king’s court, you know, always fine lutenists about in the old days.”

Ned froze in his tracks. “You heard music?” Ned asked, turning back. “Lute music?”

“Probably not. But lutes were always my favorite, so sweet and soft.”

Ned wasn’t sure what parting he made with her, for he ran for the fringe of forest and frantically signaled to Jenks before he realized he was only matching another darting dot of light on the tower. Whatever
Jenks had found within those woods, Ned was sure he could top him now.

MEG MILLIGREW KNEW HER LIFE WAS OVER WHEN SHE
woke in the morning. Bella Harington had brought to the room where she was being held her clothes wrapped in a blanket, a purse with coins, and a wooden chest into which someone had stuffed samples of most of her herbs.

“I grieve for you,” Bella had whispered, and squeezed her arm. “I know what it is to be sent away from her for—for deceits. Above all, Her Majesty must have those she can trust and who trust her in her care.”

Meg wanted to beg to see Her Grace again, but she was too numb to talk and the big lump on her forehead throbbed from where she’d fainted to the floor. She thought of poor Catherine Howard’s ghost at Hampton Court, which—even when the queen’s court was in residence there—ran down the hall at night to try to get past King Henry’s guards so she could beg for her life. But the guards hadn’t let her pass. Screaming her false innocence, like her ghost still did, the queen had been arrested, tried, and beheaded. At least Meg Milligrew was just being condemned to marriage with Ben Wilton back in London, she tried to tell herself.

This all seemed so unreal now, the days she had spent with Elizabeth Tudor when she was princess
and now queen. What a heady brew was the awe and thrill and challenge and joy of being her herbalist, even her friend. Dear Kat had mothered Meg just as she had the queen. Meg would miss Jenks and—Ned. Ned was not even here to bid her farewell, and when he heard that she’d been wed all these years, would he even pity her a little bit? So stuck on himself, would he ever know how her heart had flown when he so much as looked at her? Like being near the queen, when Meg breathed his air, she soared.

She sat slumped on the cot in the dim room, as if waiting for the executioner. But Bella had explained that Cecil had spoken with Ben Wilton and had cleared her of any possible treason. Meg shrugged. What did it matter now if Ben beat or abused her? What did it matter when the dream of one’s dreary life—a dream that had come true for a time—was gone?

She stood to face Ben when he came in.

“They said—the queen’s woman said,” he began, twisting his hat in his big hands as he studied her suspiciously, “that you got kicked in the head. And you din’t know who you was for a long time and still don’t recall much, Sarah.”

Meg nodded. She could just hear Ned correcting Ben Wilton’s grammar. And
Sarah.
She was no longer Sarah Scutea nor Sarah Wilton, not in her crazy head or in her hurt heart. Her true self was Meg Milligrew.

“They said,” he went on when she didn’t speak, “the coins you gave me and some more you’d have are for us to start life again in London and I’m to treat you
good.” He held up a small, fat purse, then let it drop from his belt again. “You go ’long with me and I’ll try,” he added, but she saw a vein throb in his forehead as if he was holding back. “Look, Sarah, the money’s enough for me to lease back your folks’ old ’pothecary shop on the Strand just down from Whitehall Palace so’s you can run it. Who knows the queen won’t shop there, give you a royal warrant and all.”

Meg shook her head as she gathered her things. “That’s all over,” she finally choked out.

“Her woman said Her Majesty’s relying on me to take good care a you. And that this paper”—he produced the parchment where she’d forged the queen’s name—”really was from her, delivered by you.”

Meg couldn’t stem the tears then, at Her Grace’s gift even in her anger. How desperately Meg desired to be here to help her through the loss of Lord Robin and all the troubles it had caused.

“Wait ‘til everyone hears who you served,” Ben’s voice droned on as they left the castle. “They’ll come flocking to the ’pothecary, put some real coins in our purse, eh? Now, see here, Sarah,” he said, spinning her around to face him just outside the walls, “I’m gonna try to take care a you, but you gotta do like I say. Come on now, woman.”

She moved quickly so he wouldn’t touch her again. She feared he’d take care of her, all right, one way or the other. Not looking back, she followed Ben Wilton down to the public landing where they caught a hired barge downriver to London.

But at the last minute, before the turn in the
Thames, she glanced back to see the top of the sturdy Round Tower before it disappeared with all she had left behind and would never have again.

“SO WHAT IS IT?” NED DEMANDED WHEN HE RENDEZVOUSED
with Jenks, who was gesturing at him madly not twenty yards into the woods. Ned couldn’t decide whether to tell him what he’d learned from the old woman or just save it for the queen, but he didn’t even have an extra moment to decide.

“A body,” Jenks told him, breathless, dragging him by one arm deeper toward a small, wooded ravine.

“What? Whose?”

“See for yourself.”

Ned smelled the corpse before he saw it. It had evidently been stuffed in a hollow log with leaves shoved in after it, for Jenks had not been too careful in its resurrection.

“Fletcher?” he asked, nearly gagging. The corpse was naked but for a pair of linen underbreeches. “What happened—that is, what did she do to him?” he asked, his voice nasal as he held his nose.

“Not her usual style,” Jenks observed stolidly. “Looks like she’s stuck some small dagger in his ribs from behind, then cut his throat.”

“And took his clothes so no one could trace him?”

“If that was her purpose, she wasn’t too careful. One of them dropped a note about payment they’re due that’s signed by some man with a Spanish-sounding name. We’ve got to ride,” Jenks said, kicking
leaves back over the corpse. “All we need is someone finding us with him.”

“Ride where? You mean to confront de Quadra? You think that’s where the girl’s gone?”

Jenks pulled the paper in question from his jerkin and began to unfold it carefully. Within were long hanks of brown hair.

“She stripped him of his hair too?” Ned asked.

“No. His was always short and thin. She cut her own,” Jenks explained as if Ned were the slow one. “I warrant in his clothes, hair cut like him, and on his horse, Hester Harington could make it past the guards to get back in Windsor. We’ve got to get back there and warn her. Like I said, let’s ride, and if you can’t keep up, that’s just too damned bad.”

ELIZABETH OF ENGLAND STOOD BY HERSELF
on the vast, flat stone roof of Windsor Castle above the royal apartments, waiting for Hester Harington to find her. For the second evening, she had ordered the guards thinned and had sent her ladies away. The door to the roof from her privy stairs stood open, but she did not yet have that old feeling she was being watched by someone who wished her harm.

Though the queen could command thousands, she had never felt more alone. That was as it must be tonight and mayhap always. It was partly penance for becoming besotted with Robin when she must never trust a man. It was atonement for ignoring the business
of her realm and her precious reputation, which she must now resurrect and protect at all costs.

“Like wearing a hair shirt now and hereafter,” she whispered as she scratched at Dr. Dee’s flying harness under her tight bodice. Her father’s fanatical first wife, Catherine of Aragon, had worn a hair shirt when she could no longer please him because Anne Boleyn had danced into his life. Now Elizabeth, their heir, must rid herself of Hester to regain the kingdom and the power and the glory. She must be the bait in her own trap.

Her legs and back ached from standing, her shoulders from the taut, thin, wirelike ropes of the harness attached to the turret above. Just as the sickle of moon sliced through the scudding clouds, Elizabeth saw a shadow emerge from the door. She could discern the pale silhouette of a slender man, mayhap Hester’s embodiment of Franklin Dove. From here the hair seemed much shorter, but then he—she—wore a cap pulled low.

“I never thought to find you here,” the soft voice, Hester’s indeed, said. The queen saw her look up, behind, and all around the dim area before she wedged something into the door to keep it closed. “I have ascertained you have no guards waiting below or hidden here to pounce on me in some sort of trap.”

“Where would I hide a guard on this vast stretch of roof?” Elizabeth countered, gesturing slowly. “I felt we must have a privy discussion and knew you would want to come here, even if just to peer in windows at the sorrow you have wrought. Dare I guess you have
been visiting my chambers again, niece Hester? I hope the royal food and drink, bathwater, and clothes suited you these last weeks I took you in.”

“Took me in—deceived me, that’s sure. You were falsely kind, then callous, then cruel. Nothing you have done since has suited me!” she cried, stepping forward with a bit of swagger.

“Why did you not come to me when you first ran away from home?” Elizabeth pursued, standing her ground. “Why did you not tell me the truth of your checkered Tudor heritage?”