Mistress of Mourning (28 page)

“But we did find a steer stolen from the royal herd, partly butchered,” he said. “And two more items of interest the earl says you are to have.” He lifted from the floor an open-topped wooden box with a leather neck cord nailed to it. “Some sort of a peddler’s box, we take it, with nothing inside—rainwashed. We did find two arrows in the bog. One we gave to the earl and one he sends to you.” From his belt he plucked an arrow with a wet shaft and fletching, and extended it to me. “Good even to you both then,” he concluded, and walked away.

The moment I closed the door, Nick took the two items from me. He studied the arrow closely. “I don’t think we even need to have the peddler’s box identified by the princess,” he said. “Our prey is unpredictable, cleaning up after a murder but leaving the blood-spattered ruins in the cave, if it’s the same man. Let’s hide these under your bed for now.”

“No—no, I don’t want them in here. Take them with you.”

“All right. We’ll talk more about everything tomorrow, when we ride into the village to visit the apothecary. Business first, but as for our betrothal—”

“Our playacting betrothal,” I interrupted. “We shall let it serve our purpose for now, but I won’t hold you to it, of course.”

“Yet maybe I shall hold
you
to it. I’ll sleep on it now—and then later, maybe we can sleep on it together,” he said. But his expression was still grim, and he had a tight grip on the arrow and peddler’s box. He kissed me quickly, then quietly closed the door behind him.

My knees shaking, I shot the bolt to lock myself in. Then, to steady myself, I leaned against the solid wood, torn between hatred of our unknown enemy and my growing love for Nick.

“V
arina,” Nick said, “I am placing you in the funeral procession next to me with the other guards. We’ll be riding directly behind the coffin. You’ll need to oversee keeping it dry if it continues to rain like this.”

“And that way you can keep a good eye on her too,” the Earl of Surrey said with a little smirk. “If this damned weather doesn’t let up, the road out of here will be even deeper than the bog I found her in.”

I ignored the fact that Surrey had hardly found me
in
the bog. Nick frowned but plunged on with explaining his plans. I don’t know how he found the time, but he had made labeled drawings showing the order of marching and riding mourners for the prince’s funeral procession. He had even drawn in a few horses, banners flying, and the draped coffin on its cart.

Today, in a corner table in the great hall, despite the mourners streaming through to pay homage to the prince,
Nick had laid out his ten papers. With a lantern held for him, the earl bent over each drawing as Nick named the order of those in the cortege.

Occasionally, Nick would shoot a question at me, such as, “Unless the skies turn fair, it will be pointless for anyone to so much as carry the unlit tall tapers before the coffin, right?”

“Yes,” I said, staying on the other side of the table from the men and the earl’s hangers-on. “Soaked candle wicks would not light for the funeral in the cathedral itself. But I do understand the reason I should keep the coffin in sight. After being jostled on rutted, muddy roads, it may need to be rewrapped. I’ll need at least one extra packhorse to carry the long tapers and the rest of the waxen shrouds.”

With a sharp look at me instead of Nick, Surrey interrupted. “You’ll see to that extra horse for your betrothed and her other needs, will you not, Sutton?”

I saw Nick bite back a comment with a clenched jaw. Why did the earl have to bait him like that? Did he not like anyone in charge but himself, or was he upset to be taking orders from a man of lesser rank? Or even, perhaps, because Nick had arrived in time to pry me out of his lordship’s arms? At least I looked like a woman today, for I had decided to abandon my ruined clothes and pretense of being a lad. And to stand up more for myself with the earl, just as I had finally done with Christopher. Surrey was still full of lusty glances my way when Nick was pointing out this and that on the paper, so I simply ignored him, the king’s official royal emissary or not.

Finally all was approved, we were dismissed, and Nick
and I met in the corridor between our rooms. He told me, “I wish you could wrap both of us in that water-shedding cloth, if we’re still heading for town to see the apothecary. The rain’s not hard but it doesn’t let up—nor does the earl.”

I agreed heartily but did not wish to argue. We yet had work to do for Her Majesty. “Do we need Rhys to show us the way, or do you know where the apothecary shop is?” I asked.

“I doubt whether there’s more than one of them in that little town,” he said, his voice yet on edge. Besides being in a snit over Surrey’s attentions to me, he was obviously feeling the grip of the vise we were in, to be leaving soon and not to have found the evidence we needed.

When we rode through showers and mist into gray stone Ludlow village, I realized again that Wales seemed such an otherworldly place that it cast spells on outsiders. Even now in the misty village, the stone walls running with rain seemed to weep and scowl. Since we’d arrived, strange things had begun to seem commonplace: Heroic ghosts from the past came and went, an aged woman sometimes looked young, and men appeared and disappeared at will. The past blurred so with the present that I had begun to imagine what it must have been like here when Glendower fought for freedom and when the Yorkist Richard of Gloucester, later to become king, lived at Ludlow with his loyalists who still might prowl these wet woods and spongy bogs.

Nick was on edge too, for the way our enemy here seemed to appear and disappear reminded him of his
archenemy, Lord Lovell. At least if the man was supposed to be hiding out on the Continent, he could hardly be the one causing havoc here. Despite the fact that we could not yet answer the queen’s questions about her son’s death, I was now counting the days until we could leave Wales.

I soon saw that other things that we expected would be as they were in England were different here too. In this outlying area of the Tudor kingdom, there was no such thing called an apothecary like in London. When we asked the location of the Garnock apothecary, a woman said, “A what? Oh, ye mean the herbal? Percival Garnock is an
herb-a-list
,” she said as if we were dolts. “Down that way then.” Nor did I see the familiar phoenix rising nor an extended tongue with a pill painted on the sign over the door, but rather the picture of a crudely drawn plant that I could not name.

Once we knocked on the door and introduced ourselves, Percival Garnock, balding, thin, and not as talkative as his son, swept us a bow and gestured us in. As we stepped into the herbal shop, a wave of yearning for the familiar things I loved hit me hard. The work counter held scales and weights, as in my chandlery. On the shelves, among pestles and vials and syrup bottles, I saw blocks of beeswax, though hardly for the purpose of molding candles.

“To make chest plasters, mistress,” Master Garnock told me when he saw me staring.

“Do you keep your own bees?” I asked as my eyes took in rows of small drawers and more shelves with glass carboys, funnels, and flasks displayed. I explained, “We can’t have them in the city but have our wax brought in from the country to make candles.”

“Oh, aye, right out back, hives by the brook where my sons like to fish—aye, they do,” he told me, gesturing toward a window running with rain. I knew I must forgo my feelings of longing for my son and shop, for Nick was standing on one foot, then the other.

“Your son Rhys was a fine help to us as guide,” Nick told the man.

“He was honored to be there,” Percival Garnock said with a sigh. “To see the words of Glendower painted on the cromlech walls—such an honor.”

I could tell Nick was going to put his foot in his mouth with the man. He’d been upset that Glendower and Lovell used the same motto, and that the Welsh stood in awe of their “ghost” when he hated his nemesis. A sharp approach wouldn’t do to get us answers or to ask for Rhys’s services in the future, so I quickly put in, “We came hoping you would share some of your vast herbal knowledge with us, Master Garnock.”

“Wish the prince’s physicians would have thought o’ that afore he died. All they did was send for embalming herbs after he was gone.”

“What would you have recommended for his cure?” I asked.

“What I had little of but could have found fast from old Fey in the woods. Rosemary, aye, for coughs and breathing troubles. Sent Rhys to fetch some from her for others, but he’s not back yet. Why, the prince’s physicians also asked me after the fact if the single case of the sweat in the village could have hurt the prince, but Narn Romney didn’t even have the sweat!”

Nick spoke up. “Master Garnock, what do you know of wild garlic in these parts? Can it be gathered this early?”

“Soon. A week or two—less if some was in a sunny spot, but doubt it.”

“Do you know of a local peddler who might sell it?”

“Not likely. Besides, you’d need someone with my knowledge of herbs—or old Fey’s—to be sure this time o’ year to get the right thing. I swear, but that woman’s been around so long she might know everything; aye, she might.”

With a shudder, recalling our interview with Fey, I forced myself to keep to the topic. “What do you mean, ‘to get the right thing’? Can it be confused with wild onions?” My conversation with Sim yesterday haunted me. He’d said his grandmother used to make him rabbit stew. But did his mother still live to mourn the loss of her son? She had no doubt been proud of his service to Their Majesties. Back in London, should I seek her out and comfort her—pay her something? Should I tell her I rued the day I’d taken him with me, and I understood the agonizing loss of a son?

But my thoughts crashed to a halt when Master Garnock said, “Once in a while, wild garlic gets confused with meadow saffron, which pops up even earlier than the garlic. They look alike—aye, they do. But the latter’s deadly, so’s one must be sure what’s what. More’n once, horses or cows graze it and get sick or die quick.”

Nick’s wide gaze slammed into mine. Deadly? Get sick and die? What if…what if the prince’s death was an accident? A peddler mistook meadow saffron for garlic and the prince did too? Or not really a peddler but a poisoner, one who knew the difference and had heard from Fey, from
someone, that the prince was seeking garlic, a favorite spice and aphrodisiac. The horrid specter of the dead steer in the bog flashed through my mind. Could the peddler-poisoner have killed it with meadow saffron too? But then why eat tainted meat? Or was that meat from something else and, for some reason, the heart from the big beast was the only thing the man wanted?

Master Garnock walked to his wall of small wooden drawers and went immediately to one, lifting something out with a wooden pincer he had hanging on the wall. “It won’t harm you a bit from touching it, but I like to keep the flora pure of skin flakes or soil. Dried meadow saffron—the last of last year’s,” he said. He showed us the dried plant he had plucked out. It looked like a dead crocus flower without a bloom.

Nick asked, “What are the specific symptoms of ingesting meadow saffron?”

“In small doses, measured out by an herbalist, it can help fight the smallpox. But too much—dreadful belly pain,” he explained, dropping the plant in a small paper packet and handing it to me. “A burning mouth, then thirst and great difficulty swallowing. Nausea, running of the kidneys, slowing breath, then death, depending on the size, strength, and health of the victim. You…you don’t imply the prince…”

“No, nothing of the kind,” Nick said. “We are simply inquiring, and appreciate your wisdom and your discretion.” Nick pulled two gold sovereigns from his leather pouch and placed them side by side on the counter with a finger yet on each coin, surely a fortune in a shop like this, even in my London shop.

“Payment for my silence?” Master Garnock whispered, wide-eyed.

“Not at all,” Nick said. “For your consideration that we might take your son Rhys with us in the funeral procession and so on to London. I will try to place him in the king’s household or, failing that, take him on myself. He said you had two younger sons more suited to the herbal trade and you might be so kind as to give him leave to try his luck in London for a year or so. You have been very helpful to us today, and I know your fine lad would be an asset to those of us who serve the king. Rhys is blessed to have a father who would consider letting him follow his head and heart.”

At that, strangely, Master Garnock glanced from Nick to me. I thought he would ask whether we were wed, or why I had been garbed as a boy yesterday, but perhaps Rhys had not told him so. If he could keep his tongue on that—though maybe the cromlech visit of Glendower’s “ghost” knocked everything else from the boy’s head—he would be a welcome help to Nick or the king indeed. I noted well that Nick made no mention of trying to place the lad with the Earl of Surrey. And I saw the apothecary kept the coin Nick had offered.

Percival Garnock said he would think on it and must speak to his wife. When we went back out into the rain, Nick told me, “I’m going to deliver you to the castle, then ride to talk to old Fey again. With this rain, she’ll be there.”