“Who would marry the wretch?”
“He is wretched—like that vicious stinging nettle, clinging and prickly that leaves a dreadful rash,” she said with a shudder. “I hate to leave him simply deposed from his little sheriff’s kingdom, but I can’t imprison him on the evidence we have.”
“I’ve a suggestion, then. My best courier, Keenan—”
“Oh, yes, I know the man. Rugged and handsome, sits a horse as if he were born to it.”
“Ah, yes, that Keenan. At any rate, he rides back and forth, hither and yon to London and beyond for me on a frequent basis, so, as we move on farther south, I could have him stop in Guildford en route to inquire whether Barnstable seems to come into sudden money. Or if those henchmen return, he could question them. But I’m not sure whom to trust to be Keenan’s informant when he comes through, because I could not spare him, nor do I want the important papers he brings me delayed.”
“What about that thatcher who was bold enough—and loyal enough—to approach me on the road with his two little girls?”
“Ah, the ones I hear you gave the gloves to?”
“For which I was sternly lectured by Norfolk. Can you have someone locate that man and have him be the one to keep an eye on Barnstable and his louts?”
“I’ll see to it. Keenan’s been sent to London, but he’ll be back soon, so I’ll have one of my other men set everything up with that thatcher, once we track down where he lives.”
The queen nodded and fanned herself furiously. “Someone is sure to slip up and give us the clue we need to track Fenton’s—and perhaps Tom Naseby’s—murderer. We simply must be patient and keep an eye out for the little things as well as the big.”
“As for small details—you said in the Privy Plot Council meeting you’d like to check everyone for that rash. But that would mean rolling up the sleeves of hundreds of people—those with us—or even more if it’s someone local. Besides, the man who erected that makeshift stile or shot the bolt—”
“Could be miles away by now or could have worn gloves and wouldn’t show the nettle rash, or—’S bones, I had thought
about letting Meg offer treatment to anyone who was suffering from such, but that would be—too obvious—laughable.”
As if to punctuate her words, laughter boomed outside her door, led, obviously, by her dear Robin’s deep voice.
“I’m glad someone’s having a fine time on this progress,” she groused, smacking her folded fan on the back of the other chair.
“One more thing, Your Grace, if you promise not to hit me with that fan,” Cecil said, his voice coaxing rather than contrary now.
“Say on, and then we’d best go out and put on a happy, brave face.”
“Drake didn’t break Barnstable as I had thought he would.”
“Which argues against your argument, my lord, that he is a hothead,” she cut him off before he could say more. “He didn’t lose his temper, didn’t beat him to a pulp, though he admitted he would have liked to.”
“Just a word to the wise, and that is you, Your Majesty. After all, Francis Drake arrived here with dress armor as if he planned some parade for himself, some grand show, when he had been summoned to simply explain about that disastrous battle. Now if running off in the heat of battle isn’t a hot—”
“You’ll not call him that again! He ran to fight another day and has learned his lesson well. I believe he will not desert me, my lord! Besides,” she said, lowering her voice, “we’re all hotheads with this sticky, warm weather tonight.” She made for the door so fast he had to hustle to keep up with her and open it. “Besides, dear Cecil, perhaps it will be cooler tomorrow, for we will soon be staying in a solid castle with a host I can trust.”
“But deeper into Hampshire, a wilder land,” he said, as he opened the door nearly in Robin’s face.
He must have been going to knock, she thought. Or was he trying to make her jealous by all this laughter without her? Was he endeavoring to punish her again—to make her fearful and to admit she needed his protection? After all, when that bolt hit Fenton, it was Robin who was there to take over, to protect her and give orders to the courtiers just the way she’d always feared
he would if she should wed him. She desperately wanted to trust Robin of all people, but she had seen too often and too well that even those dearest and closest could be corrupted by the passion for power. No, surely her Robin hadn’t known beforehand of that bolt so that he could rescue and comfort her.
The queen flipped her fan open and waved it in his face with a little laugh as if she had not one care in all of England or the vast, wide world.
A
fter the sabbath church service and a midmorn meal at Loseley House, the queen and her entourage processed farther southwest toward Farnham. She was much relieved to put Sir William More behind her, though her burden for the deaths of two stalwart men seemed to ride apace with her coach. Each time she glimpsed the Naseby boys during the day, guilt shook her as hard as the rutted road, for she had failed to solve what must surely have been their father’s murder. She wondered if that killer—or the one who had well paid such a demon—was along on this journey, too.
Even the sporadic cheers of her subjects did not lift her heart today. Yet Elizabeth of England smiled and waved gaily at the drovers of wagons loaded with wheat as they pulled off to the sides of the roads to permit her entourage to pass.
“Wheat from Hampshire for flour and bread in London,” Robin leaned down from his horse to tell her. Not only did she have him and Norfolk riding abreast of her coach for protection, but she had again donned Drake’s armor under her cloak. Cecil had wanted her to close her leather curtains, too, but she must show them all she feared naught—though she feared greatly.
“I can recognize wheat, my lord. Shall I give you a lesson on the geography of my realm, then? Farnham is the crossroads of this area, and,” she added, turning to him and lowering her
voice so that Norfolk would not mark her next words in the din of the cheers, “I know well enough that Farnham Castle was the place my sister Mary stayed en route to wed King Philip of Spain at Winchester, so never mind a lesson on that. At least this district is now firmly in my loyal Protestant bishop’s hands. I dare say, it will be refreshing to have a host who does not have his love and loyalty fixed elsewhere.”
“Your sister should never have wed a foreigner or a king, my love,” he whispered back, leaning so low he could have toppled off his horse into her coach. His eyes lit and a saucy smile crimped his lips. “How I wish my glorious and beautiful queen would wed a true Englishman, one whose passionate love and fervent loyalty is ever hers and will be my entire …”
His low words were drowned by rapid hoofbeats that stopped a short way behind them. As they were once again passing open meadow with no people lining the road, Elizabeth turned and craned her neck to look back, despite how the armored breastplate made her feel like a turtle in a tight shell.
It was the courier Keenan pulling an extra horse and coming from somewhere to hand Cecil, who rode just a ways back, a packet of letters. They spoke in hurried bursts, both frowning.
“Robin, tell Cecil and his man to attend me now. And, my lord Norfolk,” she said, turning to him and raising her voice, “I shall have you ride ahead to gauge our distance yet to Farnham.”
“And to get me out of earshot,” she heard him mutter as he put his spurs to his horse’s flanks, while Robin rode away in the other direction. As her guards closed ranks close to the coach again, the queen noted well that, unlike many in this warm weather, Norfolk wore fine leather gloves. She had been offering her gloved hand to her courtiers overmuch today, then scanning their wrist and finger skin for a nettle rash like those the Naseby boys still sported and scratched at, despite Meg’s skinsoothing concoctions.
She turned to face Cecil as he rode up on her left with Keenan on his outer flank. Robin returned and kept his horse on the other side of her coach where Norfolk had been.
“What news, my lord?” she asked Cecil. “Not just more tedious correspondence from London, I warrant.”
“Sometimes I am certain you have eyes in the back of your head, Your Grace. Yes, Keenan has brought news from one of my sources in London, who, in answer to my query, informs me that the new Spanish ambassador, de Spes, has a man in his employ who is a fine archer and crossbowman.”
“Ah. And can said archer and crossbowman be located in my capital at this time, or could he have strayed to the countryside for a summer respite?”
“We are working on that, Your Grace. Thus far, we cannot locate him.”
“Keenan, what do you know of Spanish shooters?” she asked. “You are back and forth to London and about the countryside a great deal. Have you heard aught of how such a one might compare with my best English-born bowmen in skill and distance?”
“I know little of that, but I must admit, Your Gracious Majesty, I have heard Spanish crossbow bolts and arrows are the best.”
“Yes, I have heard that, too,” she said, thinking of what young Sim Naseby had blurted out yesterday. “So, would such bolts or arrows be simple to purchase here in England, or are they far too dear in price?”
“Available but dear, I would wager,” Keenan said, as Cecil nodded.
“Only affordable by someone with means, someone with coins?” she mused aloud. “So, though poor dead Thomas Naseby made fine bolts, the best and truest—as you say, Keenan—could be Spanish made.”
“But the same with leather goods of all sorts, Your Majesty,” he added. “Most Spanish imports are fine quality.”
“Robin,” she said, turning his way, “do you, for example, own Spanish arrows or bolts?”
“I, Your Grace? I would wager most of your nobles do. As Cecil’s man says, it’s just like owning Spanish leather gloves or a fine Cordoba leather jerkin.”
“My lord, gloves and jerkins are not shot from bows to maim or kill people! And you have prettily danced around the question.”
“But the bolt which killed your falconer was made by that dead thatcher,” Robin protested.
“And if that man were innocent and had his bolts stolen as he and his sons say, someone was clever enough not to use his own bolts but try to blame someone else—someone local. Can you not answer a direct question?”
“Yes, I suppose I, like most others of some means, have Spanish-made bolts or arrows,” Robin admitted, looking most annoyed.
“Your Grace,” Cecil cut in, “granted the Spanish are a danger, but we have no evidence to tie them to—”
“Just find where that imported Spanish bowman is and see that he is somehow detained, with or without de Spes’s knowledge, Cecil.”
“Yes, Your Grace. It is being seen to.”
“I’d say,” Robin cut in, his voice almost petulant, “you’d best look to someone closer, one not usually part of your entourage. Your fine Captain Drake didn’t come alone to attend Your Majesty, you know. He brought two ship’s crewmen with him, one, I hear, a fine marksman with the bow, good at hanging about in swaying rigging and yet striking true.”
Trying to cover her surprise, Elizabeth swung around to gape up at him. She almost accused Robin of jealousy. More than once she had suspected that he might stoop to something low to get her trust and affection, so how dare he implicate Francis Drake! Still, she did not know Drake that well, and here she’d included him in her Privy Plot Council—she’d let him interrogate Sheriff Barnstable, for all the good that had done. And, though she’d instinctively trusted Drake from the first, Cecil evidently thought he was a climber and rather rash.
No,’s blood, she told herself, she
was
a good judge of character. Even if Drake had let down his cousin and master, John Hawkins, even if he needed her goodwill to build his influence with her, she trusted Drake, at least as much as she did Robin.
But then, hell’s gates, hadn’t her father long ago taught her to trust no man?
D
espite her worries, the queen’s bright and boisterous welcome to the market town of Farnham raised her spirits. Robert Horne, the Protestant bishop of Winchester, tall, solemn, and thin as a rail, met her at the town boundary and made a lovely speech of welcome before they all set out again. Yet Drake’s armor, chafing and heating her, was a constant reminder of what had happened and possible future danger.
The castle where they would stay two nights had been built in 1138 by the grandson of William the Conqueror, and she felt today like one indeed. Despite the unsettling events of late, the Queen of England smiled and waved and nodded at her subjects. All along the way, carpets and tablecloths hung from windows; flowers pelted into her path from upper stories of tall buildings that shaded the streets. Cheers and huzzahs oft roared as loud as the sea.
The twisting River Wey glinted in the sun as the royal progress turned from East Street onto Castle Street. From here they could see the gray-stone castle and its ramparts on the northwest hill overlooking the black-and-white-timbered and thatch-roofed town. Emerging from the tight streets, they were thrust into sunlight again and then into the massive shadow of the walls and castle towering over all.
The horses strained as they pulled the coach and wagons up toward the massive gatehouse set in thick, stalwart stone walls. Within the main building and its towers lay a grassy inner bailey. It would do well, Elizabeth thought, to tether tents there for the fringe folk and to be a place of refreshment and sporting—including an archery match she meant to stage.
As the entourage halted and the queen was assisted down from her coach, servants immediately proffered cool goblets of wine to her and her main party. Elizabeth couldn’t wait to get out of her armor and dusty garb; she had a good notion to dump the cool liquid between her breasts, but she sipped it as she scanned the lofty castle battlements. She breathed a sigh of relief. No one could hide behind trees or build a stile on hedges here to shoot a bolt or arrow. Nor would danger lurk in the upper parapets or crenellations where bowmen once stood, for she would order those well guarded and explain to her host why.
Waiting at the inner bailey door of the castle was Horne’s family, his wife, Joan, and three daughters. As each of the little girls curtsied and then rose, Elizabeth touched their heads as if in blessing, just as she had the thatcher’s girls on the road last week. She turned to the bishop’s smiling wife again, a pretty but plump woman, plainly yet richly garbed.
“Is it difficult to go back and forth like a shuttlecock between your home at Winchester and this castle, Mistress Joan?” the queen inquired.
“We do well enough, Your Majesty, when my dear husband’s enemies let us dwell in peace,” Joan replied, as they walked into the castle. Elizabeth noted how the bishop frowned and shook his head at the woman’s quick comment.
“Forgive my wife, Your Majesty, for I asked her to mention none of our problems to you, not on this holiday where all is bright and gay.”
“I appreciate a woman with a strong backbone, Robert.” She nodded to Joan and walked farther inside with him. Bishop Robert Horne was a handsome man, if a bit austere even for a dedicated scholar. “Tell me plain,” the queen said, “what problem pains you sore enough that your Joan would mention it at once? Has there been some sort of danger or threat here?”
“She refers to an ongoing dispute with an influential family, the Paulets, from the next shire of Hampshire, Your Grace, Catholics, who cannot abide the changing times and are hostile to a Protestant bishop—and are fast friends with your next host, the Earl of Southampton at Titchfield.”
“Ah. Then the Paulets and Southampton are hostile to my bishop’s queen, too—as I full well know. Say on.”
“The Paulets and Southampton yet resent that upon your accession you immediately removed your sister’s Catholic Bishop John White and his Catholic justices and put in your own Protestant men.” Once mentioned, his woes spilled from his lips. “I have followed your suit in promoting and advancing local men of the new faith, you see, not popish leaders in this region.”
“I do see,” she said, as Robert, with his wife now close again, escorted her to the bottom of the large, curved stone
staircase. “It is much the same in some other places,” she added, more to herself than to her hosts, “so why not in Hampshire, eh?”
“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Robert said, speaking quicker and quieter as others of her entourage came near, “but Hampshire is—well, is different, and I believe you have not been there before.”
“That is true, but I have heard it is beautiful.”
“Yes, in its wild and primitive way. The forests are deeper, the people more isolated and, therefore, more independent and wayward. I swear, some of them are so peculiar and backward—so otherworldly—that you would think we had a struggle on our hands between the ghosts of the old Saxons and the pagan Roman conquerors, not the current Catholics and Protestants.”
Strangely, what came to her mind was Ned Topside’s little fantasy with its dark depths of Sherwood Forest full of both the evil and the good. She shook her head to banish the thought.
“Then, too,” he went on, “Fareham’s being a seaport with exports and imports means that foreign thoughts and foreign people influence the area quite as much as London does.”
She drained the rest of her wine and put the goblet on a servant’s tray. “I will hear more of this later, Robert, in private, but for now, this cool, old castle feels good on this warm day. I pray it will serve as a most welcome haven from all that lies outside these walls—including that strange, heathen shire of Hampshire I am determined to see for myself.”
T
he next day the queen requested a tournament of sporting events. It pleased her people well to have diversion from their travels. Elizabeth herself had shot the first arrow of the match but now watched from the upper parapet walkway that encircled the castle. Besides the breezes being cool up here, her view of the events was good—and, unless some villain flew overhead like Icarus with waxen wings and with a bow like Cupid, she felt safe.