Karen Harper Read online

  “It was in mid-November, the day I took candles to St. Paul’s for the service celebrating Catherine’s safe arrival from Spain. I stopped by to visit my son’s grave on the way, and a man came in through the cemetery gate, close behind me. I did not recognize him or think much of that at first. He nodded to me, then went off a ways. I recall his hooded black cape flapped in the breeze and snagged on his sword.”

  “It’s not just the cape and sword that are similar, setting you off on this track?” Nick asked again. “Did he have a quiver of arrows on him, besides a sword?”

  “No, but while I was at Edmund’s grave, he approached me, saying I seemed familiar with the area and that he was looking for his cousin buried there, by the name of Stoker.”

  “Stoker?” Nick repeated as his arms tightened around me. “Go on.”

  “He introduced himself as Alan Bainton from near Colchester. And I’m thinking now that the princess said that the peddler told her and the prince he was from Colchester.”

  “What did he look like?” Nick demanded, his voice suddenly urgent.

  “His hood was pulled up against the wind, but I saw he had a gray-and-white speckled beard, a strong nose—almost hooked at the bridge of it. Silvery hair, I think, though he kept his hood pulled up. It was blustery that day, so I gave it not a thought. I could not guess his age, though the hue of his hair and beard says something. But his voice—unusual, a bit raspy, just like the man in the crypt. It was nearly a whisper, but it commanded attention. I saw no horse but he wore fine spurs, and his boots were shiny. He said he had an ill cousin he would need to bury soon. Nick, you’re hurting me, squeezing so hard. Nick!”

  “Did he say aught else?” he asked, loosing his hold on me slightly. I sat up straight on his lap as another terrifying thought assailed me.

  “No, but…if you’re thinking it could have been Lord Lovell, have you ever heard his voice? Is it raspy?”

  “I’ve never heard it, but I have been told such. That though he spoke that way, his orders were always obeyed, a sort of inbred leadership, even in the din of battle. A relentless man for his cause—and, of course, one who seems to come and go at will. Anything else you can recall?”

  “Yes, I—I think he said something like he thanked me for my…my future assistance,” I said, almost stammering.

  “Future?”

  “I had mentioned the chandlery to him, for candles and shrouds if his cousin died. Oh, I rue the day I told him where to find me, though he never visited, as far as I know.”

  “Of course we can’t be certain it was Lovell. He could be dead or in Europe yet, for all I know—if he ever went there in the first place. But if it was Lovell, I’ll wager he knew who you were before his pretended chance encounter, at least that you were going to the palace, working for the queen. Mayhap he was lurking around to try to harm Arthur and Catherine then, or maybe to get access to the queen, Prince Henry, the king himself—hell, I don’t know! Damn the dangerous demon, if it was him. He could not harm the Tudors in London, so he came to Wales.…I don’t know.”

  “But so few knew about my ties to the queen. Even if he followed me to Westminster, how would he know whom I went to serve or why? Could Jamie have told someone, such as maybe his brother, who serves the king at the Tower? But why would the stranger, Lord Lovell or whoever he is, try to harm me either in the crypt or the bog?”

  “I know not, but if your Alan Bainton from Colchester said he was looking for the grave of a Stoker, perhaps it was in reference to his pride in arranging, then escaping capture in the Battle of Stoke. These things may be circumstantial, but some of the pieces fit.”

  “I…Yes, it seems far-fetched, but so is believing in a ghost. How devious! As if he’s playing a game, enjoying all this.”

  “There’s more. Bainton was the name of one of Lovell’s favorite properties in Yorkshire, forfeited years ago, as all his possessions were once the king attainted him. After he fled the Battle of Bosworth Field, promising to fight the Tudors another day, it was rumored that Lovell fled first to St. John’s Abbey in Colchester. Later—rumors again—he left the abbey to lead another revolt against King Henry. All of that…I’m not sure, and was too young to do anything about it. When that rebellion failed, word was he found sanctuary in the Netherlands, but now I’d bet my life, which indeed I may be doing, that he’s back with a vengeance and intends violence against the Tudors.”

  “Or has committed it already against the prince. So perhaps he hates those, like us, who closely serve them.”

  “Or he needs to stop us, especially because he may have heard how I hate him in turn, or he fears we are onto his game. Yet I would wager all I have that he wouldn’t bother with the likes of us unless it could serve his ultimate purpose to harm or kill the king.”

  “But even if he somehow learned I have access to the queen, could he know for what? Could he know about my carving the effigies—that the queen was deeply disturbed by the loss of her brothers and her children? No, how could he? I think we’re reading too much in. Maybe my dream was full of foolish fears.”

  “I still say too much fits. But if he’s really back in England, the king must be warned.”

  ’Round and ’round we went, until our voices trailed off from exhaustion. Just where we sat, I clung to Nick and he to me that night, both with our own thoughts and terrors, dozing, then jolting awake again. It took not only a rapping on my door but also the crier in the corridor, calling, “Rise and make ready! Rise and make ready!” to rouse us fully.

  When the crier had passed, Nick slipped out to his own room, and I, still stiff and sore from my flight through the bog and sitting up most of last night, donned my cloak and lifted my saddle packs. I could hear the rain beating on the window, and I dreaded going out to face the long, mournful journey. Even more, I dreaded being out in the open, where our mystery murderer—be he Lord Lovell or, for all I knew, Glendower’s ghost—could shoot an arrow at me. At least we were leaving Wales and would surely be safer soon.

  PART III

  “How oft is the candle of the wicked put out?…How oft does their destruction come upon them?”

  —JOB 21:17

  “This love, that has me set in such a place

  That my desire it never will fulfill,

  For neither pity, mercy, neither grace,

  Can I find; and yet my sorrowful heart,

  I cannot erase.”

  —“A COMPLAINT TO HIS LADY,”

  GEOFFREY CHAUCER

  CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH

  It was easy to find my place in the waiting funeral procession, close behind the hearse, draped with black velvet and now covered with Westcott waxen cloth to protect it from the rain. How I wished that my departed husband as well as my hardworking sister and brother-in-law could share this moment of pride with me. I would tell my dearest boy, my own Arthur, that the chandlery he would inherit someday had made the covering and the candles for Prince Arthur, the boy who would have been king.

  As I adjusted the cloth to be sure it was tightly tied, I noted that Rhys Garnock was on a horse, back in the group of guards. His father must have agreed that he could go with us. Had Nick known and forgotten or forgone to tell me that too? And where was he?

  As if I’d shouted his name, he appeared at my elbow and pulled me back under an archway out of the rain. “Just before the last London courier arrived, I was given a letter for us from the king and queen,” he told me. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the hubbub. He patted his leather pouch, so I assumed he had the missive there. I could not have read it in this gray, rainy dawn anyway. “It seems that, under our names, a package was sent from here via the same messenger who goes back and forth. The package held a heart.”

  I gasped and clapped a hand over my mouth before lowering it to ask, “A human heart?”

  “They thought so at first. But the royal physician deemed it the heart of a beast. And another beast is back in England—Lovell. The king’s informants have it on go
od authority.”

  I grasped his hands hard, but he didn’t so much as flinch. He was looking at me but through me, perhaps seeing his enemy in his mind’s eye, though he’d said he was not certain what he looked like. But was I?

  “Then,” I whispered, “that could have been Lord Lovell or one of his lackeys who shot those arrows at me.”

  “Probably not a fellow conspirator, as Lovell seems to be working alone this time. Having failed more than once in open rebellion, perhaps he’s now a lone wolf, damn him! Killing the prince, trying to poison the princess. But yes, why try to capture or harm you—twice, or even three times?”

  “Yes. If the man in the cemetery and in the bog is the same one who chased me in the crypt, I vow he killed Signor Firenze too! But why should he be after him and me? Because we served the queen? And how could he know of our sacred, secret task of creating her wax effigies? Could he have killed Fey too?”

  “I don’t know, and we can’t tarry now.” Nick exhaled hard and stared out into the gray morning mist. “All I know is that with his tricks and treacheries, Lovell’s back, and I’m going to get him, whatever it takes.”

  “The heart of a beast,” I whispered, picturing the horrid package Their Majesties had received, and under our names. Nick had started away but turned back. “Do they think we would do such a thing?”

  “I sent a brief message back explaining we knew naught of that outrage. As for the messenger who delivered the package, he recalls nothing of its donor but that a tall man with a sun-browned face and silver hair—a deep cleft in his chin, more like a scar, also—caught up with him just outside the castle as he rode last time for London and gave him the package from us.”

  “Alan Bainton from the cemetery! Probably the poison peddler from the bog!”

  Nick nodded solemnly. “In my reply to Their Majesties, I said only that we would have news to report to them about what I called our personal preparations for the funeral. I signed from both of us but dared not say more in writing. I’m not sure whom we can trust anymore.”

  “Except each other,” I said. I felt Nick was distancing himself from me again, but I could hardly blame him for being caught up in the rush of duties for this departure. And surely Their Majesties must know we would do nothing like that. Had not the queen realized that I, who agonized over my lost son, would never be a party to such a horror?

  “It was the heart cut from that steer in the bog!” I insisted. “It must have been, and that peddler devil meant for them to think they’d been sent the prince’s heart.”

  “Or it was some sort of message to them—a clever threat. ‘You have had, or will have, the heart cut right out of you’—something like that. Varina, what if Lovell has them on his death list next? As bad as all this news is, I wanted you to know. We need to leave. I just pray that those six black-draped horses can pull the hearse on these roads. I’m taking a team of oxen along just in case. Keep an eye on that coffin—and be careful. I’ll be near.”

  Rhys appeared to help me mount, giving me such a strong boost up that I almost catapulted off the other side. “Sorry, milady,” he said. “Not so used to horses yet.”

  “Rhys,” I said, leaning down to him, “you must call me ‘Mistress Westcott’ and call Nick ‘Master Sutton,’ instead of ‘milady’ and ‘milord.’ You have a lot to learn, including that titles and rankings matter. Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth a bit more shut until you have been around for a while.”

  “I’m grateful, Mistress Westcott. Many thanks to you and Master Sutton for taking me on.”

  I was going to ask him what Nick had told him about whom he was to serve, but a sudden hush fell over the assembled entourage. Hearing muted gasps and whispers, I sat up straight and looked around. From the shadows where Nick and I had just stood emerged a woman I thought at first to be a nun. It was the princess Catherine in black formal mourning attire, including a nunlike barb headdress that covered all but her face. Had she come to bid Godspeed to her husband’s coffin?

  Men nearby who recognized her in the dim light snatched their caps off, then dismounted to help the women dismount and kneel. The princess was supported—propped up, more like—by two of her women with hooded capes. She whispered to them, and they stepped back as she gazed up at the coffin on the hearse, blinking into the rain, which soon streamed down her wan face. If she was crying, I could not tell.

  Not waiting for Nick or Rhys, I slid off my mount and went to the cart that held the extra wax cloth. I had two rolls of it separated from the rest, lest I needed to grab them fast to rewrap the coffin en route. Nick had appeared again as word of the royal arrival spread up and down the entourage, and many others dismounted and knelt on the wet cobbles. The Earl of Surrey appeared from his forward position in the procession, bowed, then took Her Grace’s hand.

  Nick rose from his bow, saw what I was doing, and hauled Rhys over to me. “Rhys,” I whispered, not waiting for Nick’s order, “hold high the back of this cloth behind the princess while Nick and I cover her with the front.”

  Having freed herself from Surrey, the young widow was now standing with both hands flat upon the side of the coffin, stroking it through the layers of waxen cloth and black velvet. She pressed her forehead, then her mouth there in a farewell kiss. Tears blurred my eyes as we three held the covering over her. “Adios, adios, mi esposo, mi amor,” I heard her whisper over the patter of the rain on the cloth above us. Then she added, “Que te vayas con Dios.”

  As she turned toward the castle, her gaze caught mine. I think she saw for the first time that we held the shelter over her. She seemed to simply nod her thanks, and I thought she would pass on, but she gripped my wrist with amazing strength and said, “I never forget your kindnesses. Like an angel, guide him to his rest.”

  Her two women were instantly at her side again. How much she seemed to have aged, but it was probably that close-fitting black barb that made her look so pinched and pale. My heart went out to her, one young widow to another. Like an angel, she had said to me. Like the carved angel candle I had given her…

  In that moment, despite my fears, I made a vow: Even at great risk to myself, I would help Nick find and stop Lord Lovell.

  Despite the initial inspiration we mourners took from the people of Ludlow village lining the road—I saw Rhys’s family wave him farewell—the journey was arduous. The roads that we had covered so quickly heading west had been churned to mud and mire as we plodded east. All along the way, my eyes scanned dripping foliage, the dark places of the forests. In the open fields I felt we were being watched too, though I could see no one riding abreast, even afar. Looking for a tall, caped man, I scanned the faces of the mourners from villages and farms along the way. When I saw one or two such in the dreary miles, I jerked alert, my eyes searching for Nick if he rode not beside me, until I saw the humble roadside mourner was not the very devil himself but another man.

  The skin on the back of my neck crawled as I remembered poor Sim flying backward off his horse when the arrow pierced him. My throat tightened at the memory of the sight of Fey’s scrawny, ravaged throat. Signor Firenze’s neck had been broken. Each one murdered at the neck, yet in different ways. Was it the mark of one killer who was skilled with strong hands and a bow?

  I sat erect in the saddle, though I wanted to duck, to cling to my horse for protection. Had the poisoner taken my other horse and Sim’s so that he could keep up with us on fresh mounts?

  Even the support we felt when we stopped at manor houses or inns along the way, and finally when we reached the town of Bewdley and stayed in the prince’s own manor house again, did not lift our spirits. By the third sodden day, when the horses could no longer pull the weight of the hearse, Nick ordered them replaced by four white oxen he had held in reserve at the rear of the procession. They were slower and not so fine-looking, but otherwise we would have all bogged down.

  Nick oft rode by my side but elsewhere in the long procession too, making certain all was well. Each ti
me he disappeared, though I rode amidst guards and with Rhys behind me, I began to tremble. At times it seemed Nick simply vanished into the crowd or the scenery, when I wanted to cling to him. I took to watching the prince’s riderless horse, carrying only his armor and poleax. It was as if the prince too, like the man on the castle roof, in the cemetery, in the crypt, and in the bog, had simply vanished into the mist.

  At each comfort stop, I scrutinized the wrappings over the black velvet coffin, retying or adding layers when the rain soaked through cracks in the cloth. I prayed that the deluge would stop before we reached Worcester so that the torches and my tall black mourning tapers could be lit and carried in the procession. For still the skies, like those who lined the roads, wept.

  One day out from the abbey where the prince’s body would be interred, Nick leaned over from his horse to squeeze my gloved hand. “I need to stay with the entourage, but since your charge from the queen includes preparing the funeral candles, would you be willing to ride ahead with a contingent of guards and your packhorses? I’ll send Rhys as your errand boy and see you at midday on the morrow.”

  “It would help me to have time there to see things are arranged, though I’d rather stay near you.”

  “A great compliment, since that means you’d be out in this cursed weather almost an additional day. Varina, I don’t want us to separate either, but I’ve given orders that the men guard you well, both in the abbey and at the inn where you will sleep this night. And Surrey, of necessity, must stay with the cortege, so you—I—won’t have to worry about him harassing you.”

  Nick’s face was so intent. Just as all of us, he looked like a half-drowned cat rescued from a well. “No,” he said suddenly, as if to himself. “I’ve changed my mind again. Rather than your spending an entire night there, I’ll send a contingent ahead with you when we are closer to Worcester on the morrow.”