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  THE POYSON GARDEN

  An Elizabethan Mystery

  by KAREN HARPER

  Published by: Delacorte Press, New York, New York.

  Copyright 1999 by Karen Harper

  BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

  Fans of bestselling authors Anne Perry and Ellis Peters are sure to love Karen Harper's new historical mystery series, rich with period detail and featuring Elizabeth Tudor, the future queen of England, as its heroine.

  Living in exile in the English countryside, the twenty-five-year-old Princess Elizabeth awaits her fate during the waning years of her ill and childless half sister's reign. Despite an occasional truce, there has always been bad blood between Queen Mary and the princess since Elizabeth's mother, Anne Boleyn, replaced Mary's mother, Catherine of Aragon, in the heart of King Henry VIII. Elizabeth has already survived imprisonment in the Tower of London after a rebellion is raised in her name, and now the half sisters live in an uneasy détente that is threatened by the arrival of a murderer who moves too easily through the secret society of Queen Mary's court.

  Little does Elizabeth know that in the autumn of 1558, she will be called upon to explore not only England's rural heartland, but also her own heart. At great risk to her person and her nation's future, she plunges herself into an investigation of a multiple murder, where she might very well become a master poisoner's next victim.

  Karen Harper is the author of several suspense, romance, and historical novels. A former English teacher, she divides her time between Columbus, Ohio, and Naples, Florida.

  EARLY PRAISE FOR

  The Poyson Garden:

  "A walk side by side with one of history's most dynamic characters."

  --Anne Perry, author of Breach of Promise

  "Like the very best historical mysteries, it is driven by the events and attitudes of its time period. The Poyson Garden serves up a sumptuous Elizabethan feast, from first course to last, with satisfying side dishes of intrigue, treachery, and treason. ... A deafening round of applause is due chef Harper."

  --Miriam Grace Monfredo, author of the Seneca Falls Historical Mysteries

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For those who helped to make the Elizabethan Festivals

  at Whetstone High School

  so real and so rewarding:

  Don Harper

  Linda Thompson

  Anne Barry

  and our Brit Lit students

  THE POYSON GARDEN

  The Prologue

  "The Queen wishes to see you alone in her privy chamber, my lady."

  So kindly, simply spoken, the twenty-year-old Princess Elizabeth thought, but not so kind or simple in fact. They always called her lady, not princess or even Your Grace, these swarming courtiers of the new queen, her half sister Mary Tudor.

  Yet Elizabeth kept a set smile on her face as she sat across a small inlaid table for an afternoon repast with Her Majesty. The sweetmeats and tarts looked delicious, but under her stiff stomacher, Elizabeth's belly cramped with foreboding. She had always danced on sword points at court, but only in her sister's newborn reign did she fear she could stumble and impale herself.

  "A beautiful day," the pale thirty-seven-year-old monarch said with a sigh and a sideways glance out the window. Set slightly ajar, the casement caught crisp October air blowing up from the Thames across the gardens and greens to Whitehall Palace. "And here I've done naught but read and sign bills, grants, and warrants today--when I was not hearing holy Mass, of course."

  "Your Grace works far too hard," Elizabeth assured her, gripping her hands together in the pale blue silk folds of her gown. "Would you not have time for a walk in the knot garden or a ride in St. James's Park?"

  "Dios sabe, duty calls," Mary intoned in her masculine voice that always surprised people when they first met her. She reached for her goblet of claret and cradled it in her beringed hands a moment before putting it back down with a thump. "I'll not have them say behind my back that a woman cannot rule."

  "Remember our father king said once, Your Majesty, that like lunatics, we women are so governed by the phases of the moon we could never command his realm?"

  "We?" Mary challenged with an audible gulp. "You, sister, will never bear these royal burdens, for I shall have a son and heir--as our father also said!"

  "God grant it, Your Grace, and I am ever grateful for your continued kindnesses to me."

  Despite the queen's slow nod, Elizabeth's heart began to thud like horses' hooves. She fought down panic at her latest faux pas. Even an imagined affront could set the queen off. At least she was used to Mary's nearsighted squint always making one think she was frowning. Now those pewter eyes skewered her to her chair as the queen waited for her younger sister's next move.

  But Elizabeth's one true--if necessarily covert--adviser at court, the young secretary Master William Cecil, had always said, When in doubt, do or say nothing. So with a pleasant countenance she sat stock still. In the aching silence Mary leaned forward to select a berry tart. With her other small, blunt hand, so different from Elizabeth's tapered, elegant ones, the queen clutched the heavy gold crucifix that swayed from an ornate neck chain. To stall further, Elizabeth took a tart that appeared to match Mary's. It oozed rich, red juice.

  "So," Mary murmured with a heavy sigh, "these weeks since I was crowned you publicly declare you support me but will not even hear the Mass with me in private."

  Elizabeth stayed the tart halfway to her lips. There they loomed again, those upturned sword points to tread upon as if she were some spike-walker from distant Araby.

  "Your Majesty, you yourself said one must hearken to one's own conscience, so I only follow your lead to--"

  "But my conscience is obedient to the true faith." She dropped her uneaten tart back on the table and seized her goblet again. "Eat, eat, sister," she ordered with a dismissive gesture. "Do not look as if I would devour you. We shall be more than family; we shall be allies forever in the holy church and in our daily--"

  The tart tasted bitter in Elizabeth's mouth. And she bit on a cherry pit. She tried to chew and swallow but gagged and spit out the mouthful into her lavender-scented handkerchief. The smell of that made her explode in a messy sneeze.

  "Bitter," she muttered, sniffling. "And within, a hard stone I cannot--"

  She jumped as Mary's arm swept across the table to clatter goblets and dishes together. Tarts rolled and broke; the ewer tipped, spewing crimson wine, splattering Elizabeth's gown.

  "Diversion and disobedience masked with pretty smiles, that has always been your game," the queen thundered, "for it is in your blood!"

  "I--forgive me, Your Majesty, but the tart just tasted--"

  "Poison? Is that what you would dare to say?" she shrilled, rising. Elizabeth leapt to her feet too. "Despite my good graces to you," the queen went on, "is that what you will accuse me of next?" She paced to the window so the afternoon light slanted in to gild her stocky form but obscure her features.

  "No, of course, not, and--"

  "In her own privy chamber the Catholic queen tries to poison her Protestant half sister, Elizabeth of England, beloved of the people. Is that what you and your tricky supporters will say next?"

  "I have no supporters of my own, but all yours in loyalty."

  "I'll hear no more lies. It would be justice indeed if someone did poison you, but not I--never I." As she paced, her skirts swished and her crucifix scraped her jewel-encrusted bodice. "I want only the best for you and your eternal soul, sister."

  "But I spoke not of poison," Elizabeth whispered, yet her mind raced. She had swallowed nothing, but she still felt she choked down the sour taste of the tart. Surely it was more than that some pastry cook had simply left out the sweetening. With the back of her hand, she wiped her lips. "I never intended--"

  "You do know that woman poisoned my sainted mother," the queen said. She came closer. With both hands Elizabeth held hard to the tall back of a carved oak chair. "At Kimbolton Castle, where she died. It's true: poison."

  Elizabeth knew that woman always referred to her own mother, Anne Boleyn, who had supplanted Mary's in the king's affections years ago. "No," Elizabeth protested quietly, "that cannot be true, since your mother was ill then, so she simply--"

  "I tell you it is God's truth, and you'll not gainsay me on it. Queen Catherine wrote of it to me, and years later I had it straight from her loyal Lady de Salinas, who was with her to the end. That woman bewitched our father to send his Catherine into exile, and your mother--the whore Boleyn--had her poisoned there. The queen wrote me she was sore afraid. Her few ladies were reduced to cooking their meat over the fire in her bedchamber to guard against poison, but still that witch--"

  "That is a lie!" Elizabeth screamed, then, wide-eyed, clapped her hands over her mouth. Despite knowing she should hold her tongue or just withdraw, her fists shot to her waist. She shook her red head so hard her headdress rattled its pearls. "No, Your Grace, it cannot be," she said in more measured tones. "I cannot warrant that--"

  "Get out--out! I cannot bear to have you here. I thought we could be sisters, allies, friends. But there is too much bad blood between us, and not of my making." She had come so close, Elizabeth could now see her own reflection in the haunted eyes.

  E
lizabeth's survival instincts rose to the fore. She bridled her temper, dipped a curtsy, and bent her head. "Whatever passed between our long-departed mothers, my queen, I love and honor Your Gracious Majesty. I am your loyal subject, and this talk of poison is painful to me, for God knows, I am innocent of any--"

  "No one, especially you, is innocent," Mary said, hissing the last word. "Like your dam, you are poisoned by bitterness and bound by iniquity. Go back to your country house and keep clear of plottings against your God-given queen!"

  When Elizabeth left the chamber, she was so distraught she ignored the veiled woman who stepped swiftly back into the shadows.

  Chapter The First

  Five years later--

  The two riders urged their mounts faster through the deepening gold and scarlet forest on the road to rural Wivenhoe. In the brisk autumn wind their black capes flapped about them like raven's wings.

  "So long gone, but I see you've not forgotten the way, milord," Will Benton, Henry Carey's man, called to him over the steady tattoo of their horses' hooves. In the chill afternoon air both men's breaths made small clouds that darted quickly behind them.

  "These five years Bloody Mary's held the throne seemed eternity, Will, and we're not well out of it yet. But I'd never forget the way home to my lady mother. I just pray we are not too late, since she's sore ailing. It takes letters damnably long to find me and Catherine hidden away like scared rabbits in Switzerland."

  "Not scared, not you, milord. Just careful and waiting for a better turn of the times. If'n your cousin the Princess Elizabeth mounts the throne, then we'll see English sunlight again, all of us, eh?"

  Henry did not answer. It was no doubt unhealthy to shout her name even out here where no one could hear. He tried to summon up her form and face, but his younger cousin seemed a red-gold-haired, haloed vision to him. He recalled her toddling about in leading strings--three years old she was when her mother, Anne, his aunt, was beheaded--but he had seldom seen the woman grown. As children they had spent fleeting moments together when their common cousin Catherine Howard was queen. Later, Boleyn kin as they were, he was forced to stand afar off while Elizabeth passed in the London coronation procession of her half brother, the boy king, Edward.

  Henry shook his head and shifted farther forward in his saddle. Now Bloody Mary had declared herself pregnant. Finally, thank God, the royal physicians had declared her full only of a festering belly tumor.

  "And vile venom," Henry muttered. "What's 'at, milord?"

  "Let's just ride, my man. Food and a fire await us just beyond this last stretch of forest."

  The four men hunkered down behind massive oaks and sycamores that lined the road to Wivenhoe. Thickets as well as tree trunks would hide them until their prey rode into the snare. The bend in the way here should slow even fast-ridden horses.

  The leader pointed to move one of them farther back and put his finger to his lips. That kept the two across the road from stomping their feet to keep warm in the ankle-deep pile of dry leaves at their feet. Saints be praised, he thought, for at least the woods still held most of its bounty to shield them from the man she had promised would come ahorse this afternoon.

  When he heard distant hoofbeats--not more than one or two men were in the party--he gave the first signal. His men fitted their arrows into their strung bows and, aligning their sights, lifted and steadied them. The arrows were perfectly fletched, the tips sharp and well-anointed with the thick paste she had made from hellebore and something else she said could kill wolves and foxes. Be careful if you have a cut, she had warned, not to so much as touch the paste to your skin.

  To kill wolves and foxes: Her other words echoed in his mind as only two riders came into view, slowing their mounts for the turn, just as he had hoped. Wolves and foxes.

  "Now!" he yelled.

  Four bows spewed arrows. One rider shouted, then screeched. As the other noisily drew his sword, his horse panicked, reared, and whinnied, throwing him. Both were dressed alike and on first glance, looked alive. But it didn't matter: They had to kill them both.

  When he strung his next arrow and ran out slightly into the road, one horse had fled. One man lay writhing on the ground, three arrows in him. Hellebore worked quick all right, and that was certain. Still, he stood astride this one and, slinging his bow briefly over his shoulder, seized the arrow protruding from his stomach. The man squinted up at him, perhaps hopeful of help. With both hands he thrust the arrow deeper with all his weight. Pinned to the road, the wretch grunted, groaned, then lay stone still.

  "Is that one Lord Carey then?" his man at his elbow asked.

  "Hell and be damned if I know," he said with a shrug, stepping back to look around.

  His other two men came out of the woods. He saw the second horse standing not far down the road. "The other one," he cried. "Where is he?"

  "Don't see 'im," someone behind him said. "Thought we 'x 'im too."

  "Beat the bushes. A knife or sword blade will do, but these poison arrows be better."

  Shaking with shock and agony, Henry Carey huddled behind a fallen tree in a bramble thicket just off the road. He was certain he had broken his sword arm when his horse threw him. And there was blood on his hand when he touched his chest. Had one of the brigands' arrows nicked him, or had he gotten cut by his own blade when he fell and rolled?

  "A pox on you. Canna you jackanapes find him?"

  That voice didn't have the local burr, or had he been away too long? It was the first thing they had said that he could discern. He heard them come closer, thrashing through the brush and dry leaves. But with his arm useless and this cut, with his pistols in his saddlebag, he would die. His mother was dying too, but he'd never see her now this side of heaven.

  "Someone's coming on the road."

  That voice came so close he knew they'd find him. He squinted his eyes shut tight in pain, in childish hope they would not see him. He tried to picture his wife, still in Switzerland with his sister, Catherine. And in his last moment he cursed himself that, once again, he dared not--could not--just stand up and fight for what was good and right.

  "We canna be leaving this half done." But Henry heard his chance at deliverance now: more than one man's voice in some rollicking song. Or had he died and was being welcomed at the sacred gates to leave behind this regret, this fear and pain?

  "Let's fly then, and we'll be settling later with them all."

  The next cry clanged in Henry's ears like doomsday bells.

  "Down wi' the bloody Boleyns--e'en the royal one!"

  Edward Thompson, alias Ned Topside, stopped singing when he thought he heard some sort of shout just up ahead on the road. He couldn't discern the words, but it was definitely not someone joining in his romping chorus of "Between your thighs your beauty lies."

  "You hear that, Uncle Wat?" he asked, turning his head to survey the new leader of their troupe. Wat Thompson had taken over when Ned's father had died of the sweat this summer. Wat rode their only horse at a plodding pace that kept up with the cart the mule pulled. When they emerged from this dense woods, Wat would ride ahead to a tavern or manor house to inquire if they wished a revel, masque, or play from The Queen's Country Players.

  Meanwhile, Randall Greene, a pompous popinjay Ned secretly called Grand Rand, rode the cart because he felt peckish today, the sot. The two boys, Rob and Lucas, who did the women's parts, walked as Ned did, their high voices echoing his deep tones.

  "Don't think that man's shout was a hurrah we're coming, sounding clear out from Colchester, not out here," his uncle said, seeming to rouse himself a bit. "Best fetch our pikes and stage swords in case we meet up with some rural louts ahead, eh, lads?"

  But Ned had already reached for one of the ax-headed pikes that protruded from the bundles of costumes and makeshift bits of scenery. He was not a tall man, but wiry and strong. Despite his shock of curly black hair and boyish-if-rugged face, he'd long yearned for the meaty roles--the Italian dukes, English kings, even villains--the ones Wat usually took himself or gave to Grand Rand. Ned wearied of his uncle making him play the fond lover or young captain just because the ladies liked the turn of his leg and the mere hint of his smile.