“There!” Jenks whispered, pointing ahead of them. “A clearing.”
At first the sight of the rough stone cottage with its ragged shake roof reminded Elizabeth of another place deep in a forest
she had once come upon during an investigation of a murder, the very autumn she became queen, eleven years ago. An enemy, the first one she and her Privy Plot Council had delved into and discovered, was a poisoner, and they’d found her hut and a garden of poison herbs deep in a forest. Unlike then, no deadly plants grew here to guard the premises, only a strangelooking wooden hedge. No, she saw it was a row of barrels and piles of wood stacked high.
They dismounted and walked their horses closer. In a single shaft of sun, which had somehow found its way through the thick canopy of oaks and horse chestnuts, a humpbacked, white-haired man with gnarled hands sat, holding a great, stringless bow.
“Heard you coming,” he called to them, looking up with vacant pale blue eyes as he rose slowly to his feet. His eyebrows looked like snow-covered thatch, and his pale beard was scraggly. The gaunt but wide-shouldered old man seemed as ancient as the trees. He held on to the longbow as if it were a staff to support and steady him.
“Greetings to you, Hern the Hunter,” the queen called out.
“’Tis five or six of you, I’d say,” he went on, “all ahorse, and hardly the earl or his lady with a retinue. To what, then, do I owe this honor?” His voice sounded muffled, as if he spoke from within one of his barrels.
“Your fine reputation as a bowyer is well known in these parts,” Elizabeth went on. “No, we are not the earl and his lady, but how did you know that?”
“They ne’ er visit, but would know the way and ride quicker.” He inclined his head in her direction and seemed to study her as if his blind eyes could take her in. “You one o’ her women, then, or someone come in wi’ the queen’s party wants a bow for her lord, milady? If so, it’s for display or sport these days, not to defend the realm no more.”
So he could tell by her voice that she was at least a lady, she marveled, and, even in the forest, word had spread of the royal visit.
“Yes, I would like to buy a longbow,” she said.
“Making’em keeps me young, you see,” he added, and his
shoulders shook with silent, wheezing laughter. “There’s some ready enough out back, in their last stage of seasoning after being soaked and bent in here.” He gestured broadly at the barrels, where she could see raw-cut bows soaking.
“Can’t take yew wood inside the cot, you know,” he went on. “Yew brought into the home can lead to a death in the family. E’ en damaging the tree is bad luck,’less it’s treated with all due honor and worked with outside. But it’s that strange quality’bout yew wood makes it so good for an instrument of sudden death.”
The queen shuddered. That same haunting feeling returned with sudden impact: Her breastbone and the spot between her shoulder blades seemed to grow fiery hot, then instantly icy.
“But you’ll not shoot it yourself,” he went on. “Takes a man’s pull, and one wi’ broad shoulders at that. Stooped as I am, I used to be the best.”
“Don’t you want to sell one, man?” Ned put in, evidently impatient.
Elizabeth gestured him to silence. At least Clifford and Keenan knew to let her do the talking. Without being asked, Keenan stood far back, holding the horses, though they obviously weren’t going to wander off in this thick forest.
“I want one for old time’s sake,” she told the hoary-headed man. “You are Hern, then, called Hern the Hunter?”
“At your service, milady. You come from London wi’ the queen, then?”
“Yes, from London.”
“This queen’s sire was a fine bowman in his youth. I went to France in his army once nigh on a quarter century ago, saw him close up, too, heard him address his troops. There used to be a song,” he said, then chanted in a scratchy voice, “
Great Harry could outshoot all archers and e’en hit a ring/ No man drew the longbow with more strength than the king/ Nor could shoot further and with truer aim at anything.
” Suddenly shy, he bowed his head and shuffled his feet.
She blinked back tears. Her father had been dead for twenty-two years, and of all the myriad songs she knew, she’d never come across that one. It was like finding a bright coin on a dark
floor—yes, she was obsessed with shiny coins right now. The one Drake had showed her had perfectly matched the one found on the cellar floor where Tom Naseby had been hanged. Treachery and perhaps treason were afoot, and she must stick to the task at hand and not let emotions rule her.
“I have heard King Henry tried hard to maintain the use of the longbow, but it has certainly been replaced by crossbows and shortbows,” she said. “I warrant that the advent of powder and shot as well as better armor will make those obsolete, too, but does anyone you know still shoot a longbow?”
He gave a little snort. “Nary a one, not enough to speak of. It takes big shoulders, lots of pull. Just for show now, sad to say.”
“None of these are to be given for gifts?”
“Forgive me, milady, but no one’s worthy of that no more—not that I know.”
“So no one else has come to buy a longbow from you of late, even if it is just for show?”
“Not sold’em for years, though some blackguard stole two o’ them in the dark’bout a fortnight ago. I called out, ‘Who’s there,’ but only heard him walking’way, quick strides, with the bows snapping the bushes back. The thief coulda had a lantern and I wouldn’ta knowed it. Otherwise he could see in the dark—like a ghost or phantom.”
Ned and Jenks exchanged quick glances. Elizabeth felt the too familiar chill race down her spine. “Surely you don’t believe in such, Master Hern.”
“Lived too long not to, milady. The folk here’bouts tell you the Hooded Hawk is back?”
“I’ve heard it mentioned. What do you know of him?”
“Used to use blackthorn arrows, he did. Could shoot with any sort of bow, shortbow, longbow, even crossbow best of anyone ever.”
“He sounds like a fantasy indeed. But have you ever heard of arrows wrapped with leather?”
“Not in this land, nor from the Frenchies. The Hooded Hawk wore a hood, they say, to cover his grotesque face been gored by a stag. Him and his hounds ride the forest at night—it’s not
just the wind in the trees. Sometimes it’s real still when he passes.”
“You’ve heard him in this forest or ones nearby?”
“All forests in Hampshire, they say. Aye, I’ve heard him, and the trees whisper, ‘Here, here, here,’ though some say’tis really ‘Hawk, hawk, hawk,’ real breathy like a strange sigh.”
“Then maybe he’s the one stole your bows,” Ned said, but the old man only shook his head. His blind stare, which had been turned her way, now darted past her toward the depths of the dark woods, as if he heard the Hooded Hawk even now. She shuddered, then silently scolded herself for falling into this old man’s morbid mood. Yet, despite his talk of ghostly events, his brain seemed sharp and his senses even sharper.
“So you truly believe in the Hooded Hawk?” she asked, gripping her hands so tightly together her fingers went numb.
“Someone’s out to make the whole shire believe in him. Speak of the old times, used to be he was an avenger for good, could shoot a yew bow full three hundred fifty yards, while the best I ever did was three hundred. Now he’s turned to harm and hurt, what they call Woden’s way’round these parts, maiming and killing animals, setting hayricks and thatched roofs afire. Just pray he don’t come here,’cause my shake roof goes tinder dry.”
Elizabeth noted Hern’s nostrils flare as he spoke. From fear, or was he trying to scent her perfume? However keen his sense of hearing and smell, he had a heightened sense of the dramatic. Ned hung on his every word, and Clifford and Jenks, big and brawny as they were, reminded her of little, lost boys. Only Keenan, at a distance, stood calmly watchful.
As if she’d requested it, the old man shuffled around his small yard to explain the process of hewing the slightly S-shaped bows from sapwood next to the heartwood in the yew. “Cut the sapwood, then it’s three months in clear, running water in a brook, then to a damp place for o’ er a year, then bit by bit to drier surroundings. Their last year’s in open air and wind—from my line o’ those seasoning in back, the two bows were stolen,” he said, and repeated that story almost word for word again.
He took her around to the back of his cottage, where nearly twenty beautifully crafted longbows, which would never be wanted or used again, she thought sadly, weighed down wooden poles. To pay him well for the bow she would take, she dug in the purse she’d brought. He obviously heard the clink of the coins.
“No recompense,” he said, raising both knotted hands. “Don’t want money laying’bout someone might come for. Your visit, your wanting a bow’s worth a fortune to me, milady. But,” he said, whispering now, his blank stare boring into her face as if he saw her, “compensate me this way. You are more than a lady, eh?”
“Why do you say so?” she whispered back.
“Your voice, your sweet scent, the squeak of new boots. Your lesson to me of England’s war weapons, and from a woman. The way your man quieted when you musta but frowned or looked at him. But mostly, your coming a purpose here to have a fine longbow’cause your royal sire loved and honored them.”
Tears blurred her view of the old man, and she bit her lower lip. He had miscalculated the reason she had come, but, however blind and old, he had the wits to know who she was. Yet she herself, young and healthy, could not be certain who her enemy was, even perhaps someone close by daily.
“Yes, Hern the Hunter,” she told him, “I am the daughter and heir of the one who could outshoot all archers and even hit a ring. No, don’t kneel,” she said, and caught at his hands as he started to go down. “I’m in plain garb with plain purpose, and glad I have come to see a great bowyer and one who fought well and proudly for our England.”
Tears puddled in his eyes and tracked down his pale, wizened cheeks. She let him cling to her hand before he leaned back on his longbow again. He turned away to choose by touch a finely grained and elegantly carved, huge bow for her from off the line of them on the drying pole.
She hefted it and noted how long it was—three-fourths of her height, and so heavy that it pulled at her shoulder muscles simply to lift it as she handed it to Jenks to carry.
Of all she had learned on this visit today, what sobered her
the most was that whoever had shot a longbow at her or Drake from the forest was not only wily but more skilled and strong than she had imagined. But surely, whoever had dropped a finger tab and shot a very real Spanish arrow could not be the phantom of the forests.
F
ear for nothing, for I will be back just after sunset,” Elizabeth told Meg, as the sun rose over the treetops of the distant hunt park to light the queen’s bedchamber. “Cecil has put out word that I will see only Lady Rosie and himself today. Things worked out well when you were queen for a few hours yesterday, and I know you can do this.”
“Queen for a day but queen away from everyone—that’s me,” Meg said with a pert nod. “Today’s the longest I’ve ever ruled, but I’m still in exile. Just hope someone doesn’t wing another arrow my way.”
“You are to keep clear not only from people but from these windows,” Elizabeth ordered, though she was relieved that Meg sounded so lighthearted today. “And no waving down to those strolling in the gardens, for the queen is supposed to be resting. Can you do this, my Meg?”
“Of course, though I’ll miss Piers something awful, especially since you’re taking Ned and Jenks. He feels comfortable with them.”
“But he’ll be with his brother and under the care of Jenks’s wife and quite well.”
Elizabeth endeavored to sound calm, but she was as excited as a young girl. She had changed her mind and garbed herself as a man in Ned’s clothing instead of riding out disguised as an herb woman to visit Drake’s ship, though that meant not wearing
the armor today. She’d decided to leave Rosie here and take only three guards. She was planning to sneak out the servants’ entrance, for the entire Southampton household was here today, and someone might recognize that she was not the herb mistress, even if she were dressed as Meg. The way crowds had cheered for her in the streets, if she wore any sort of women’s garb or took as pretty a lady as Rosie with her, folk might notice and create a fuss again.
She shoved wayward tendrils of hair up under her cap, where she had the bulk of it pinned close to her head. Her heart thudded as she went down the narrow back staircase to meet Ned, Clifford, and Jenks, who had the horses waiting below. She held her breath when she heard footsteps coming up the stairs toward her, but the young woman who passed by—either a Southampton servant or one from her own courtiers’ households—had her arms full of ale jugs and gave her neither word nor glance. That alone was a heady experience. She felt drunk with the idea that anonymity and freedom were hers.
She was relieved Jenks had changed her sidesaddle for a man’s and brought her a more common-looking horse; he gave her a quick boost up. How strange but good it felt to ride astride, as if one were really part of the horse and not just sitting on it.
So many adventures on this day,
she thought, as her pulse pounded harder.
Then, as the sun crested the treetops, she saw in the distance a flash of shimmering light—surely not a forest phantasm. All this talk of the Hooded Hawk was starting to affect her. No, it was a woman in pale silk or satin running beyond the edge of the gardens, evidently heading for the Anglo-Saxon burial mound.
Elizabeth squinted in the pearly morning light: A second figure, a dark-cloaked man, met the woman, and arm in arm they darted into the depths of the wilderness garden. Not the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Southampton skulking off today, she thought, for even from so far away she recognized the graceful woman and could guess at the man.
“Ned,” she said, “I’ve changed my mind about your going with me.”
“But I—”
“Listen for once. Southampton’s wife, Lady Mary, just met a man I’d wager is the one who played Actaeon when we arrived, and they’ve darted off into the wilderness gardens. I already have some things I can use to question her about her husband’s doings, but if you could be certain she is meeting another man, it could be invaluable. Try to follow them and do not be seen.”
“As invisible as Woden or the Hooded Hawk?”
“No jests. And walk your horse and go in on foot.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, dismounting.
She could tell he was disappointed not to be heading out to sea with her, so she said, “It will buck up both Piers and Meg to have you here today. Go now,” she urged, and turned her horse away.
D
rake had hardly dared to believe she would come. And dressed as a lad! The boldness and bravado of Elizabeth Tudor never ceased to amaze him. He strode down the gangway to welcome her.
“I do have a gown in my saddle packs,” she greeted him, as he helped her to dismount on the wharf, “but I believe this garb might be better with the wind strong today on deck. The wind will be up beyond the coastline, will it not, and the ship will go fast?”
She seemed as excited as a child as he greeted her and assured her they would unfurl every sail. A woman after his own heart, indeed. He gave her three horses over into the care of his man Giles again, for he’d taken to keeping Giles and Hugh not only watched but separated after they’d gone into the forest without his permission.
Both men were silently fuming over that and because he’d relegated them to subordinate positions, for he’d ordered Hugh to be put on scullery duty to keep him belowdecks today. Drake could not fathom that they had actually shot at him or the queen—not with a longbow, anyway—but they could well be spies for John Hawkins, whom he was coming to trust less and less. Besides, Hawkins probably now considered Drake himself
insubordinate for not racing this ship back to Plymouth as he’d been ordered.
Drake gave the queen’s tall guards, Jenks and Clifford, over to his first mate for a ship’s tour and made a joke about showing them the ropes at sea. He began to give his own orders while the queen stood at his elbow on the halfdeck.
“Square course mains’l only! Short sail, others fast to the yards’til we’re out of the river!” he shouted, as men scurried along ratlines above their heads.
The anchor cable creaked up; the ropes tethering the ship to the wharf were loosed and drawn aboard. The mainsail canvas flapped like cannon shots as it caught the wind and bellied out. Mostly for show, since they didn’t need the foremast or mizzen sails yet, sailors hung from the yards and the masts. Drake saw the queen clasp her hands together, looking up, then out as the
Judith
began to move.
“It will be slow and steady at first,” he told her, as they looked over the starboard rail to watch the ship clear the wharf. “Not a lot of rain lately means the river’s not as deep as when we came in. The Meon’s not much of a tidal river, but she’s always fast-moving. Her depth and flow depend on all these marshes that drain into her, so she has her own moods.”
“I remember you said that before.” She smiled at him before squinting up at the sails and waving to the sailors again. He and Haverhill had passed the word that they had a very special guest who was here
incognito.
They were not to speak of it off the ship, but, however much bad luck it supposedly was to have a woman at sea, the men were excited to have her aboard.
It touched him that she recalled what he had said before, and when she turned and smiled at him, he knew exactly why Elizabeth Tudor was not only queen but a great queen, his queen. Wily and wary, but willing to throw caution to the winds when she must. Her surface moods might vary like this river—high or low, calm or tempestuous. Yet she was deep like the sea and always, ultimately, in control, the leader of men he longed to be. And the impact of her personality and power, however slender she was with her thin but sturdy legs encased in man’s breeks and hose today, even with that feminine, almost flirty demeanor …
“It’s nice not to see a forest for a while,” she was saying. “I must tell you later what Hern the Hunter told me yesterday, but right now, I just want to feel safe at sea.”
“Safe at sea. But there’s always an element of danger at sea, Your Grace, from storms or hostile ships—or the unknown. As for forests here, there are hardly any trees along the Meon’s banks except right before the coastline at Hill Head where the river broadens to the Solent and the Channel. Then the
Judith
will roll a bit, and if there’s wind enough here to fill these sails, in open sea you’ll really feel her.”
“How wonderful,” she said, grasping the newly sanded railing again and leaning, stiff-armed, back away from it. “It’s one thing to be rowed in the royal barge up and down the length of the Thames, but I want to feel I’ve really been to sea. You must love it passionately.”
“I do,” he said, facing her again as they left Fareham behind, and their gazes met and held. “It is unlike anything else and to be treasured and remembered always.”
S
oon, but not soon enough, Elizabeth thought, the river flowed into the Solent, the body of water between the mainland and the Isle of Wight, and they set sail eastward through a narrow strait called Spithead toward the broad English Channel. “That’s Portsmouth off the port side,” Drake said, pointing.
“That makes sense to me,” she said, and they both laughed. She’d been drinking his good wine again, though she noted well he stuck to plain ale while he captained his ship. “But where did you leave your wife? Surely you miss your new wife, if not the jealous and commanding Captain Hawkins.”
“Mary Drake,
née
Newman, is in Plymouth,” he said, squinting up at the trim of the sails again. “We wed earlier this summer, but she’s a good sailor’s wife and knows her duty when duty calls her husband.”
“I regret that my summons to join my summer progress took you away from her.”
“Your Majesty,” he said, his face and voice solemn now as
he looked into her eyes, “whether you regret it or not, you will always take England’s men away from their wives, and rightly so. An island nation needs defending from such as the Spanish devils, but she also needs explorers and traders going out to bring the knowledge and riches of the world back to her shores—and to her queen.”
“It’s a good thing you are not of a political bent, other than for building the navy and your own career, Drake, or such speeches would outdo those of my parliamentarians who make endless and ofttimes pointless speeches. But the other thing is, if married sailors are at sea, does that mean their children are fewer? You do hope for children?”
“Truly, one of the reasons I wed,” he admitted. “I’d like above all a son.” He looked taken aback that he’d blurted that out.
“Always,” she said, putting her hand on his wrist where he gripped the rail, “when I ask a question, tell me the truth straight out like that, even if you think it will hurt me. I have asked the same of Cecil, for I need men like that. God knows, I’m surrounded with the other kind too much.”
“It seems to me Norfolk always speaks his mind, Your Grace, and he’s not to be trusted any more than a leaky ship.”
“Norfolk speaks his mind only on the surface, but he hides things. Southampton, too, although he doesn’t have Norfolk’s backbone or wit. You may have wondered why my Privy Plot Council includes several of my servants. It has taken them years, but they know to tell me the truth at any cost now. I need people I can trust, Drake!”
“Then I shall be so when I am near. And if I am at sea for queen and country, I shall be true to you yet.”
As the ship rocked, she almost toppled into him. She wanted to, and to tell him how much his friendship and this day meant to her, but that was both delicious and dangerous.
She took her hand back from his wrist. “Yes,” she said, looking away, “I’d elect you to Parliament. But in all seriousness, I rue the fact that perhaps I have endangered you by summoning you to me and keeping you close for a while.”
“Because you have given my cousin a second reason to hate me besides that I let him down at San Juan d’Ulua?”
“That, too, but what if that Spanish longbowman who headed south with a translator is loose in these parts? And he’s seen I value your presence and counsel and has decided to take shots at you as well as at me? Oh, Drake, I don’t know. Privy Plot Council meetings or not, I keep trying to—to sail along, but I think I’m getting nowhere in solving these attacks and murders.”
They were silent a moment, staring out over the gray-green waves. She could tell he wanted to say something. He cleared his throat. “Your Grace, may I ask one question about your privy council of servants and courtiers, then?”
“Of course.”
“I assume you have never used the Earl of Leicester on it, and yet you seem to be close to each other.”
“Close enough to argue too often. You don’t in any way suspect him, do you?”
“Not really. We all have our boiling points, but he seems to continually seethe—at me, at you. But forgive me for suggesting that—”
“No, it’s a good question, for he has been—and is yet—dear to me, but he’s mercurial, and our tempers too often tangle. Besides, he is hardly shuffled off to the side. Since my ascension, when I named him master of the queen’s horse, he has sat on my public council of advisors. The thing is, Drake, I care deeply for him, but I cannot trust him fully—as I am coming to trust you.”
He nodded and bit his lip. Was he so moved he could not speak after all those fine, heartfelt words earlier? She saw him blink back tears and look out toward the horizon, where sky met only sea.
“Well,” she said, turning away and starting down off the halfdeck to the main deck, “enough philosophizing, I warrant. I want to stand on the very beakhead of the prow and see how this realm looks from far away instead of plop in the middle of it wherever I travel. Lovely to be in a place where arrows can’t come flying past one’s head.”