Harper Karen - [Elizabeth I 02] Read online

  Published by

  Delacorte Press

  Random House, Inc.

  1540 Broadway New York, New York10036

  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.

  Copyright © 2000 by Karen Harper

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any

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  Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random

  House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of

  Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Harper, Karen (Karen S.)

  The tidal poole : an Elizabeth I mystery I by Karen Harper, p. cm.

  ISBN 0-385-33284-X

  1. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1533-1603

  Fiction. 2. Great Britain-History-Elizabeth,

  1558-1603. Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3558.A624792T54 2000

  813'.54-dc21 99-43315

  CIP

  Manufactured in the United States of America Published simultaneously in Canada

  January 2000

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 BVG

  I want to give special thanks for research or resources to

  Dorothy Auchter, the Ohio State University Library

  Dr. Geoffrey Smith, Rare Books and Manuscripts, the Ohio State University Library

  Kathy Lynn Emerson, author and researcher extraordinaire.

  Thanks to Tracy Define

  for the wonderful support, fresh ideas to enrich the era and for loving Elizabeth too.

  Much gratitude to Sara Narins for her hard work and enthusiasm to help launch this series.

  As always, love to Don for the jaunts to and walks through England.

  The Prologue

  January 13, 1559

  I SWEAR I CAN STILL HEAR CANNON BOOMING IN MY ears from our entry to London," the queen said when her presence chamber finally cleared of courtiers and Kat closed the door behind them. "And from tonight's chatter," she added, shaking her head with a smile. "Oh, Kat, send the guard on the door for Jenks. I am going out."

  "Out?" the older woman repeated, surprise plain on her round face. "Out where? The Thames breeze bites cold this late, and Lord Cecil said it's spitting snow."

  "Out for a breath, to clear my head. And simply because I can go where I will with no more wardens-even in this place."

  Twenty-five-year-old Elizabeth Tudor had been queen scarcely two months and in that time had come to London in triumph from her life in rural exile. Queen Mary had been buried with pomp befitting her station, though most people hated her for burning Protestants and bankrupting the treasury with her Spanish husband's foreign wars. But Elizabeth was all English, a vibrant new beginning, and the whole country rang with her praise.

  Kat bustled to fasten an ermine-edged cloak about the queen's slender shoulders and fetch her fur-lined gloves. Katherine Ashley, called affectionately Kat, was Elizabeth's longtime companion, for she had been governess, lady-in-waiting, and the only mother the former princess could remember. Now First Lady of the Bedchamber, Kat was proud but even more protective.

  "I shall accompany you," she declared with a decisive nod of her gray head.

  "Not now. But for Jenks I go alone. He is the only one I know who will not talk, dearest Kat. I need some silence. Do not fret as I am but going to church in peace."

  She kissed Kat's wrinkled cheek, then went to the door to send for Jenks herself. The excitement and so many new people had befuddled Kat of late, for she had worn herself out fearing her mistress would not live long enough to claim her kingdom.

  "Send Stephen Jenks to me from Lord Robert Dudley's men," Elizabeth commanded the guard but did not shut the door. She preferred doors and windows open here, for this was the place she still dreaded most on earth.

  The Tower. The Tower of London. Tradition decreed a new monarch spend a week here in the state apartments to be followed by triumphal procession to Westminster Palace on the morrow and the coronation in the Abbey the next day. So, she thought, she was yet a prisoner of privilege and power. Jenks came running so fast he skidded into the room. Her young man, who had served her well in exile, had a sword at

  his side and a pistol stuck in his belt, for Elizabeth's Master of the Horse, Robert Dudley, was much enamored of firepower. And, she thought, with a stiff-lipped smile, Robert-her dear Robin-seemed much enamored of the firepower that crackled between them with nary a weapon in sight.

  "To me, Jenks," she said, and swept out past her red-and-gold-liveried sentinels.

  "Outside?" Jenks asked, wheeling around to follow her. His blue eyes widened under his thick brown hair, low-cut across his broad forehead. Though he was tall and strong, he had to stretch his strides to match hers in the long hall. Jenks's wit was for horses, but his strong arm and devotion were entirely hers. "This late at night?" He demanded the obvious.

  "And I told Kat you would obey without a word." She sighed and shook her head to rattle her pearls under her hood.

  The queen set a fast pace with guards scrambling to unbolt and unlock doors before her. What a heady joy to go where one would after years of rural manor cages, she exulted. And yet the dear soul she was going to see was imprisoned within these gray stone walls eternally.

  As she headed toward the small church across the inner ward, a crisp river breeze bucked against her and curled into her clothes. The Thames lay still unfrozen, murmuring in its reach into the moat and water landing called Traitor's Gate. Elizabeth felt chilled clear through.

  Though torches and lanterns guttered and glimmered along the thick stone walls, she shuddered and wrapped her cloak closer, not against the air but her own thoughts. In

  flickering shadow loomed the Bell Tower, where her sister had shut her up during the Protestant Wyatt Rebellion. Along the walls stretched the parapet she'd walked for exercise and from which she had seen Robin wave forlornly from his prison window. Here on this brittle, frost-etched grass had stood the scaffold where royal prisoners, including her own mother, had been beheaded.

  When Jenks saw where she was going, he ran to open the church door. St. Peter in Chains was a small, squat edifice of arched windows under a tower with a bell that tolled for deaths inside these walls.

  It was warmer here, the dimness lit by thick altar candles and four large lanterns. "Wait outside. Let no one enter," she told Jenks, dropping her hood from her coiffed and jeweled head. "I will not be long."

  She went straight down the center aisle toward the high altar. Her mother, Anne Boleyn, the former queen of England, had no tomb, for King Henry had ordered her severed head and body quickly interred but a few paces from the scaffold where she died. At the last minute-Elizabeth had later learned, for then she was but three-her mother's murderers had borrowed an elm box that had held arrows and put her in that and under these paving stones in the chancel. The site was yet unmarked but for the scars on her daughter's heart.

  One hand on the altar, Elizabeth knelt, then sat back on her heels, smashing her thick skirts. She would not bow nor curtsy to anyone again, but all this must be put away: the bitterness, the deep-buried anger at her father and her sister and those who had once declared her Anne Bol
eyn's bastard.

  "Mother, 'tis I, Bess," she whispered in a wavering voice. "Your Bess grown and now queen in my own right with no husband to obey or please. I am taking your badge of white falcon on the tree stump for my own to let them know my pride in Boleyn heritage a* well as Tudor."

  Her words hardly echoed to the dark-beamed ceiling overhead. She heard some scraping sound. Had Jenks come inside ?

  She stared hard at the marble effigies of a knight and his lady wife in the nave, their carved faces staring straight up toward heaven. The sounds must have been her imagination. Shadows shifted and darted from the closest torch. She leaned forward to lay her palm on the dusty, cold paving stone.

  "I am King Henry's daughter-they all say that when they see my red hair--but I am yours too with my dark eyes and oval face and long fingers . . . and your bravery. You died not to brand me bastard, so I swear I-"

  Her head jerked around at another sound. A whisper?

  "Who goes there?" she demanded, and stood. "Show yourself."

  Two men rose like apparitions from behind an effigy of an armored knight. "Forgive us, Your Majesty," the shorter and slighter of the two said, clearing his throat. "We came in to see the place afore you to visit my father's burial site and didn't want to disturb you, but-"

  "I'll not be spied upon. Come here, both of you. Your names?"

  She recognized the one who had spoken as he stepped out. Both men appeared slightly younger than she. They came closer and swept her deep bows, the thin speaker gracefully, the taller, sturdier man as if he were a stranger to court ways. Edward Seymour was the one she knew, nephew of Queen Jane, who had followed fast upon Anne Boleyn's death. Edward evidently spoke the truth about why they were here. His father, once Lord Protector of Elizabeth's half brother, the boy king Edward, had been executed in that short reign and lay buried between Queen Anne and Queen Catherine Howard.

  Yet who was the other young man? She was certain she should know him, for his rugged face and bold eye glinting in torchlight seemed strangely familiar.

  "Your Majesty," Edward was saying with another sweeping bow, "may I present to Your Most Gracious Majesty my cousin Jack St. Maur."

  "Ah," she said loudly, as if someone had punched her in the belly. St. Maur was the Norman family from whom the Seymours had descended. "My dear friends John and Isabella Harington's foster lad," she said. "At least I thought you were a lad."

  "I am near on twenty-one, Your Grace," Jack said, turning his plumed velvet cap in his big hands. "My own father lies not here with your mother and my uncle, Edward's sire, in the chancel, but back in the jumble of commoners under the floor of the nave."

  She turned away to look where he pointed, into deep shadows. Tom Seymour, Lord Admiral of England, also Queen Jane's brother, had once been Elizabeth's protector-and nearly her doom.

  She kept her face averted so these strong, young Seymour heirs would not see a queen blink back tears. And she cried because Jack made Tom seem alive again when she had come here to bury the past for good.

  Not trusting her voice, she nodded to each, then walked past them. Edward stepped back properly so her cloak and skirts would not touch him. Jack, his muscular legs spread, stood his ground, and her hems brushed heavily against his big, booted feet.

  Near the door she called out to them in a firm voice, "And where will you be on the morrow for my royal progress through the city, lads?"

  "On the Strand, Your Grace," Edward answered. "Lord Arundel has invited quite a party to view it from his gatehouse windows."

  "They call it Arundel House." Jack's deep voice rang out. "But it used to be Seymour House, my father's, my real father's."

  Elizabeth turned to the double doors and rapped once for Jenks to open them. "Much used to be your father's," she muttered to herself.

  She clasped her gloved hands hard together and pressed them to her breasts as she plunged back out into the cold.

  Chapter The First

  THE MAIN THOROUGHFARE OF LONDON WAS AWASH with banners, pennants, and brocade bunting on the new queen's recognition day. Despite the cold, in a canopied, open litter borne by white mules, Elizabeth Tudor rode the adulation of her people through the swirls of their hurrahs. Down Fleet Street to where crowds poured into the Strand, she glittered in her gown and mantle of cloth of gold.

  Like a great tide came her red-coated gentlemen pensioners with ceremonial battle-axes, then squires, footmen, and men mounted on a thousand prancing horses. Behind her rode Robert Dudley, her handsome Master of the Horse, mounted on a charger and leading her unmounted horse, which was covered with golden cloth. The members of her Privy Council, her governors, and her lieutenants seemed swept along in her broad wake.

  The royal progress took all day, for the queen bade her cavalcade halt when someone in the crowd tendered an herbal nosegay or held up a baby. At certain sites proud citizens enacted play scenes, presented pageants and recitations, or sang madrigals. Despite the constant pealing of church bells, the Queen's Majesty stood to make impromptu speeches. The crowd would hush to hear, then blast the wintry air with roars louder than the river churning under London Bridge.

  "WHY DID YOU BRING me here, Meg?"

  With all the noise Ned Topside had to put his mouth to Margaret Milligrew's ear so she could hear him. His warm breath made her shiver.

  Looking for a good place to see their queen pass by for a third time, they had spent an hour elbowing their way ahead through crowds along the back entrances to the grand houses along the Strand. Part of Elizabeth's household, Meg and Ned had already seen her as she departed the Tower and again as she went by on Fleet Street.

  "Don't exactly know why here," Meg shouted back. "But it seems a fine spot with that triumphal arch they built. She'll have to halt, we'll catch her eye, and she'll know we're with her all the way."

  She saw Ned's green eyes narrow when he caught her darting glances overhead at a hanging apothecary sign of a painted Turk's head with a gilded pill on his extended tongue. She wasn't sure why that sign intrigued her so, but it did. She liked this area. Several people had smiled and greeted her, though most kept their eyes on the street.

  "That apothecary's not going to be open today," Ned chided, shoving her along with a hand on her back, "so just forget dragging me in to see what herbs they sell." He took her elbow and pulled her along. "Since you've got me this far, we need to find a tree or windowsill to see in this stew of people. Ah, but what a fine crowd this would make for an audience if our queen would but let me make a speech and recite a scene along the way today."

  Meg could barely hear his words when huzzahs swelled again. As ever, she felt Ned's mere touch, even an angry one, clear down in the pit of her belly. Of course, it could be caused by her melancholy since they all had to live in London now. Meg both mistrusted the place and felt its pull-just like with Ned Topside.

  "Can't see someone called Queen's Fool putting on such airs," she scolded.

  "That's the pot calling the kettle black. Your face lit like a yuletide candle when Her Grace said you are to have a stipend for being Strewing Herb Mistress of the Privy Chamber. Gads, you'd think she'd given you Cecil's lofty title."

  "At least," she shouted back, "just like in the country, we're all still her Privy Plot Council. Her Grace promised."

  Ned rolled his eyes. "You think a queen will have the time or cause to unravel plots or murder schemes like the one that almost got us poisoned? Besides, doesn't all this show she'll have smooth sailing?" he asked with a gesture so broad he knocked a blue-coated apprentice on the back of the head.

  The burly lad turned, a grin on his broad face but fists up, evidently spoiling for a good fight. "Oh it's you, mistress," he blurted when he saw Meg.

  "Oh, aye, it's her all right," Ned said, playing along. "Come on, then," he ordered, yanking her after him, this time by the wrist, through the press of people. "I guess I've got to save you from that stale come-hither line 'Haven't we met before, my fine lady?' "

  Suddenly
Meg decided, as Her Grace always put it, to show her mettle. She jerked free from Ned's grasp and stood erect with her chin thrust out when he rounded on her again.

  "Just stick with me, my man, and I'll get us a good place up front to see. Follow me, if you please.

  "Stand aside, clear the way for the Lord Banbury," she called out in her best imitation of Elizabeth's crisp, clear, ringing voice, with tone and enunciation Ned had taught her. "You there, churl, Lord Banbury's coming through." Gaping, people parted for them as if they had the plague.

  "Who in the deuce is Lord Banbury?" Ned asked out of the side of his mouth when they were finally settled on the inner edge of the crowd. They had a prime place just down from Lord Arundel's three-storied gatehouse, which overlooked the street, facing the Ring and Crown Tavern across from it.

  "Lord Banbury? Don't have a notion," Meg admitted. "Like you in a pinch, I made him up."

  "Look, there's the first of her parade coming!" Ned cried, and threw an arm around Meg's shoulders.

  She leaned lightly against him, not daring more, because she still could not remember who she really was. But if she could, she'd probably still want Edward Thompson, alias the queen's new fool and principal player, Ned Topside.

  THE GREAT LORDS' HOUSES of the Tudor years stretched between the two main thoroughfares of the city: the Strand, the street that connected the city to Whitehall Palace out their workaday backs, and the busy river out their fine painted and facaded fronts. Barge landings and water stairs lined the river, for the nobles of the lands usually disdained street travel.