Murder at Hatfield House (15 page)

CHAPTER 11

N
ed’s father lived just beyond the edge of the village, in a cluster of older cottages. Most of them were tidy, but his had a distinct air of neglect about it. Kate studied the house from beyond the garden gate, unsure how she should approach the man in his terrible, violently wrenching grief. It had been hours since Ned was found, but she didn’t want to further distress his family. Yet she knew she had to try to find answers now, before whoever did this to Ned could get too far away.

Perhaps Ned’s father, with his palpable volcanic fury, knew more than he thought he did. Or perhaps he was more involved than she wanted to think he was.

In such complicated days, tangled up in twisted loyalties and religious ideals, anyone could be swept away on the bloody tides, even men who kept to themselves like Ned’s father. Perhaps she was wrong in her surety that Ned’s death had something to do with Braceton. Perhaps it was to do with Ned’s own family. After all, she knew so little about them, even though Ned had lived in the same house with her.

And yet some urgent instinct told her it
did
have to do with Braceton. Why else would poor Ned be dressed like a Catholic priest, unless it was to somehow get at the ardently Catholic queen’s man?

Kate shielded her eyes from the fading sunlight and studied the cottage more closely. Unlike Master Payne’s hut in the woods, it wasn’t falling down in squalor, but it was unkempt. The shutters were loose, the garden overgrown and tangled, but once it had been tidy and even somewhat pretty. It also seemed to be empty.

She glanced back over her shoulder to see that no one watched her. It was as if the terrible crime had already spread like a poisoned well. She would have to hurry back to Hatfield soon, as Anthony already thought she had done, or he wouldn’t have left her alone. But she wanted to find out all she could to tell Elizabeth. She didn’t have much time.

She pushed open the gate, which swung easily on its broken hinges, and hurried up the weed-choked path. Taking a deep, steadying breath, she raised her hand and knocked on the door. There was only silence.

“Please! I must speak to you,” she called, just in case the man was lurking behind the walls. Even as she said the words she knew it was a vain hope. The house was too still, and unlike in the woods, she had no prickling sense of any eyes watching her.

She walked around the cottage anyway, searching for any signs that someone was there, for any clues. She found nothing but more weeds, more peeling whitewash.

As she hurried back to the garden gate, she saw a woman in the doorway of the nearest cottage. The woman leaned on her broom as she watched Kate with frowning suspicion on her reddened face.

“You won’t find him there,” the woman called. “His sister came and took him away already. Drunk he was, almost falling down from it. He probably was at the tavern before he stumbled here.”

“His sister?” Kate answered. She could tell the woman wasn’t inclined to be helpful, but perhaps she would be nonetheless. Kate carefully shut the gate behind her and made her way toward the housewife’s doorway, trying to seem as nonthreatening as possible. “Poor Ned’s aunt, you mean?”

“Aye. She came to keep house for them once in a while, though you wouldn’t notice anyone cleaned at all. Not since he came back from the wars and his wife died,” the woman said with a sniff.

“He was in the wars?” Kate asked. The man had seemed in no fit shape to fight, but so often the war took men like that, making them not right in the head.

“Aye, once. I even heard he fought with that high and mighty lord that’s up at Hatfield now. Hard to believe.”

“With Lord Braceton?” Kate asked, shocked. Ned’s father somehow knew Braceton from long ago?

“Aye, so I heard. But you can’t believe anything he says.”

“And he is gone now? I need to talk to him.”

“I told you. His sister came as soon as she heard what happened to the boy today and took her brother away. He was shouting and angry, but at least he went with her. So you won’t find him there anyway.”

A sister. Kate glanced back at the empty cottage, remembering Ned cowering in fear at the veiled figure who fled Hatfield. “Does this sister wear a veil, perchance?”

The woman scowled. “Nay, never.”

That was one thought vanished then, that Ned’s kinswoman could have been the veiled woman. Unless of course it was a disguise of some sort. Kate murmured her thanks as the woman turned back to her sweeping, and then went on her way back to Hatfield.

The lane was deserted, silent, giving her room to think about the terrible thing that had happened. She was so lost in her thoughts, she almost missed the tiny thing snared on a bush, until a ray of sunlight caught on it and made it shimmer against the grays and greens all around. Kate knelt down and carefully plucked it off to turn it between her fingers.

It was a feather, a finely cut, small fragment in peacock colors.

She knew enough of weapons from playing archery at court when she was a child to see it could only be one thing—the fletching from an arrow. Was it the same sort of arrow that had killed Braceton’s servant not far from this very spot?

Kate tucked it carefully in her cloak and rushed on. It wasn’t a veil or a black cloak, but surely it was some kind of small clue that would help her in her search. She had to hold on to it and let it tell her its secrets.

CHAPTER 12

“D
ressed in priestly vestments? And you saw this yourself, Kate?”

“I did, Your Grace,” Kate said, as she stood before Elizabeth in the quiet of her chamber. The day was fading; outside the window, the light was tinged a pale rose-gold through the clouds, and soon night would be upon them. Braceton was still in the village surveying the gruesome scene, though he would return too soon. Kate was aching with weariness, but she knew that as soon as she closed her eyes, she would see poor Ned again. “It was—terrible.”

“I’m sure it was. You should not have had to see such a thing. That poor boy.” Elizabeth took Kate’s arm and led her to the chair by the fire. She poured out a goblet of wine and pressed Kate’s numb fingers around it. “Who would do such a horrible thing? And why?”

Kate shrugged. “I have been asking myself the same thing all afternoon. Surely it could not have been an attack on Ned himself. He has never hurt anyone at all. It seemed more like a—a message.”

“Aye, it does. But a message to whom? To what purpose? I have seen many strange things in my life, but none quite like this.” Elizabeth paced to the window and sat down on the cushioned seat. Her fingers tapped restlessly on the windowsill as she stared outside. “Did it look as if he had been killed there? Or was he moved from someplace else?”

Kate closed her eyes and forced herself to remember the details of the terrible scene in the church. “I know naught of murder, Your Grace, but I have seen pigs slaughtered in the farmyard before. I think he must have been killed there in the church, as there was such a quantity of blood on the altar and the floor. And it was beginning to dry, so it had not just happened. But—” She paused, frowning, as something struck her.

“But what?”

“But the vestments had very little blood on them at all. He was so carefully presented, as if he lay in state, like a true bishop. His hands were crossed with the crucifix and the rosary, and his eyes were closed.”

“So he was killed, and then dressed and arranged.”

“He must have been. I saw no signs of a struggle there either, Your Grace. I suppose he went to the church on his own for some reason, though I cannot see why he would go there at all.”

“Nor can I.” Elizabeth sighed and rubbed her hand over her eyes. “This whole matter has me puzzled exceedingly. Do you think the veiled woman you say Ned saw here had anything to do with it?”

Kate remembered the strange sighting here at Hatfield, the veiled figure she had chased and who vanished. The person in the cloak she heard about in the village. Surely they were one and the same, or at least connected? Mysterious figures such as that were a rarity in the neighborhood. She also remembered Ned cowering in fear, as if he knew something he could not communicate about the veiled woman. “I couldn’t say, Your Grace. I haven’t seen her again. It could very well be.”

“But no one in the village saw anything?”

“They say not. There was much confusion, especially when Ned’s father came running in, vowing vengeance. Meg and her daughter claim they saw naught before they discovered the body. Surely if someone
had
seen anyone about the church, they would say.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps not, and who could truly blame them?” Elizabeth said quietly, still staring outside. “In these days it would be terribly dangerous to be associated with anything that smacks of deepest heresy. Best to keep one’s head down.”

Kate nodded. Who would wish to come to Braceton’s attention, if they could help it? Poor Ned was dead; there was no help for him, and few would endanger themselves for a mute kitchen boy, except his own grief-stricken father. Yet Kate had to help Ned if she could.

“There was one odd thing, Your Grace,” she said. “Master Payne was not around the church. I did not see him at all.”

Elizabeth turned toward her. “The old vicar?”

“Aye, Your Grace. He is usually lurking about there, shouting about sin and hellfire to anyone who crosses his path. He hates the Catholics. This seems like the sort of thing that would have him in a great fit of passion.”

“Master Payne does seem mad, but usually harmless. I have never heard of him actually harming anyone, though if he thinks someone is in danger of damnation, who knows what he will do? I wonder where he has gone.”

“Perhaps he
did
see something, and has fled from fear. Meg’s daughter did say it was a demon who did the foul crime.” Kate shook her head. “Or maybe . . .”

“Maybe he did it himself.”

“It could be anyone, Your Grace. It feels as if madness has come upon the whole world.”

A shadow flickered over Elizabeth’s eyes. “The world is always mad, my dear Kate. And sometimes it claims the most innocent among us as its worst victims.”

Kate thought again of Ned, so white and still, and she feared the princess was right. The world was afire. Who would be the next consumed?

Elizabeth suddenly rose in a rustle of satin and paced to the other end of the chamber and back. “Finish your wine, Kate. ’Tis almost full dark, and you must get to the great hall soon. The play will begin directly after supper.”

“The play, Your Grace?” Kate asked, surprised. “But—won’t Lord Braceton stop it now? He never liked it.”

“Lord Braceton has not yet returned from the village. When he does, he is sure to be full of more fury and choler than ever, but it will be too late to stop the play going forward.” Elizabeth paused at the small looking glass on the wall and studied her reflection—the pale pointed face framed by a small frilled ruff, the red-gold hair drawn back under an embroidered cap. She had no expression at all. “I feel we could all use a little diversion, don’t you, Kate?”

“Of course, Your Grace,” Kate said uncertainly. She wasn’t sure of any such thing. She wanted her own fireside, a piece of music to study, her father to talk to. Quiet, familiar things. Yet she knew Elizabeth rarely did anything without a purpose. If she wanted a play on this most inauspicious of nights, there was a reason.

“You have worked a bit with those actors, Kate,” Elizabeth said. “Have you learned much about where they have been of late? What they were doing there?”

“Not very much. We mostly talked of music,” Kate said. She thought of the handsome Master Rob, how open he seemed—and then how mysterious. “They were at Gorhambury, then went to Sir William. Probably Sir Nicholas sent them there. I know not where they were before that. London, mayhap.”

“Yet Lord Ambrose is one of the queen’s men. A most devout Catholic, they say. Why would he send his troupe to houses known to be of the new faith?”

“They say Lord Ambrose is abroad right now.”

“Even curiouser, then.” Elizabeth turned away from the looking glass and picked up a gown that was draped over the clothes chest. Kate saw it was a kirtle and bodice of tawny silk with ivory ribbons, and an air of darker gold damask sleeves. Beneath it was the fine red cloak Kate had worn before.

“Here, Kate,” Elizabeth said. “Take this and wear it tonight. You have been working so hard, and deserve to look your prettiest.”

Kate took the armful of fine fabric in surprise. Elizabeth had given gifts of clothing and food before, but these were very rich. It had been so long since she wore anything like that. “I—thank you, Your Grace,” she stammered as Elizabeth fluffed one of the ribbons on the skirt. “But I will only be playing to the side of the stage. No one will see me.”

Elizabeth’s solemn expression cracked as she gave Kate a teasing smile. “What of Master Cartman’s beautiful nephew? So golden—a veritable Apollo.”

Kate had to laugh even as she felt her cheeks become embarrassingly warm. For had she not thought that very thing about the handsome, dashing Master Rob? The man had appeared in the neighborhood too conveniently, and could well have been involved in the violent murders. She would be foolish to entirely trust him. “He is only a player, Your Grace. I know they flirt and flatter, and mean not a word of it.”

“Most wise, Kate, for I vow almost all men are the same. Peril to the woman who takes them seriously. But what of your other friend? The young lawyer?”

“Anthony Elias, Your Grace?” Kate said, surprised again that Elizabeth knew Anthony at all, though Master Hardy had done some legal work for Elizabeth from time to time.

“Aye. He seems of a more serious bent of mind, and just as handsome as Master Cartman, in his own way.”

Handsome? Of course Anthony was handsome; Kate couldn’t help but see that. But he was her friend, nothing more. Surely he only saw her as that? And she had no time for anything else, from either Anthony or Master Rob. “Anthony and I are merely friends, Your Grace. Do you yourself not say a woman’s happiest state is the single one?”