The Poyson Garden (20 page)

Elizabeth took the quill Cecil offered her and used his ink. 'So blood! She watched while the air dried each word she wrote to make it quickly fade to nothing.

Invisible ink. She bit back a smile. If she ever needed advice on spies, she'd go to William Cecil too.

But how does one read it later? she wrote.

Heated against hot metal plate or shovel, he wrote back. But just write fast.

"Now, Your Grace," he said so all could hear, "let me take you step by step through the process of my men collecting the rent from your tenants, first at Woodstock and then Hatfield."

Frowning, Kat looked up at them, then quickly back to their game. She had taught Elizabeth to do her first sums, and no one knew better that the princess already kept a sharp eye and tight hand on her financial affairs. This chitchat was a bald ruse, but at least Sir Thomas didn't know it and Kat was getting clever enough not to show it.

"I'd like a look at the Hatfield figures when you get to them," Pope put in, making a big show of peering over Lord Cornish's shoulder at his throws of the dice on the painted board. "Just to be sure no one's cheating the Lady Elizabeth while she's in my charge."

"Fine. I'll let you know," Cecil said, but he was watching as Elizabeth swiftly sketched a clover and a heart with an arrow and two drops of blood. Then she wrote, On She's veil. Could tie to poison arrow through Harry's man near Wiv. and poison clover at Hat.

Clover could be shamrocks--Irish good luck, he wrote back.

"Are you following my percentages so far, Your Grace?" Cecil asked. "You do see if you are not careful, your Woodstock profits could take a tumble?"

"I see that. Let me copy some of these figures out for myself instead of having you keep the only set of records."

But, she wrote, there was no one on your sui bono list to me who was Irish. And no Ir. tied to Queen C. of A.

He responded, Did I not have her old chamberlain, Sir Edward Ormonde, on that first C. of A. list? But he's long dead and left no direct heirs.

Had to skim and burn letter, she wrote. No doubt some Ir. hated Boleyns or fear a Prot. queen.

"You've got the figures right," Cecil said, "but now we must plan to protect your future interests. Why don't you copy these rent rates down?"

Remember the Ir. Butler family? Elizabeth wrote. Twice, Bols. offended them. My father took a Butler's title away from him, then after Anne Bol. was promised to a Butler, she caught the king's eye and betrothal broken.

In both cases, James Butler, he wrote, 9th Earl of Ormonde. He inherited title of C of A.'s Ormonde, but was only distantly related. Can't be the Butlers. J. dead and his daughter--bastard daughter--went back to Ire.

Another dead end, Elizabeth thought, masking the stab of disappointment that came all the sharper following a moment of exhilaration. Then she recalled what else she must ask Cecil.

Did you find out what Sarah Scottwood --Scutea--looked like? she scribbled. Span. ties--the herbs--her father's desire for vengeance for C. of A.--all fit.

"Are you on the Hatfield reckoning yet, Cecil?" Thomas Pope asked.

As intense as they had become, neither of them had seen him coming. Elizabeth slowly slid her ruffled wrist over her last words to blot whatever might remain. She was not certain if Cecil had time to read them or not. She reached for the sheet with the columns of numbers Cecil had first sat down with.

"Nearly so, Sir Thomas," Cecil muttered, smoothly switching pens and ink while he shuffled papers.

"The Lady Elizabeth has gone white as a bleached sheet," Pope observed. "I warrant your steep lawyer's fee has unsettled her, Cecil." Pope grinned to show his yellow teeth.

"Nonsense," Elizabeth countered, gripping the edge of the table with both hands in her frustration at Pope's eternal butting in. With him hovering this

close, any further talk with Cecil was hopeless, so she'd have to make another plan.

"I do have a slight headache," she said, "from staring at all these numbers in the bright sun. My Lord Cecil, why don't you go over the Hatfield figures with Lord Thomas and I shall get them from him later? I will take a brief respite upstairs, then join you before you must ride out later."

Cecil rose to his feet with her. Her ladies and Lord Cornish stood. Bea's embroidery tumbled to the floor, and she stooped to retrieve it. As if they yet spoke invisible words between them, Elizabeth's eyes met Cecil's. He nodded--or was that the hint of a forbidden bow?--as if to promise a final conversation before they parted. But with everyone swarming them again, Elizabeth feared it was up to her to be certain it was a privy conversation.

"This takes sheer gall," Kat muttered as she helped Elizabeth and Meg switch garments with each other.

"It takes sheer gall to hope for the throne--and to survive to get it," Elizabeth replied, but Kat wasn't to be dissuaded.

"It's one thing to have Meg attired like you--behind the curtains under the covers at night," Kat continued, "but you becoming her?" Kat shot Meg a swift, sideways glance. Though she had the more intricate task of donning elaborate garments, they were puddled at her feet while, in just her shift, she, too, helped Elizabeth.

"Don't fret," the princess insisted. "I have played many a part, and this will have to work if I'm to see Cecil alone. Just be certain he gets the note and that the Popes don't see it. And don't you be whispering to him, Kat, or you'll give us all away. I'll just go down the back stairs and out as if I'm gathering the last of the herbs. There," she concluded, flouncing wrinkled skirts, "that will have to do."

Over Meg's best smock they had laced and pinned her other garments: a russet kirtle, a sleeveless, front-laced blue bodice that still gaped a bit, a pair of sleeves, and a brown doublet that buttoned up the front. The petticoats seemed thin and light, as if she went half naked, but she'd get used to them. All that was covered by a grass-stained work apron.

As she bent to regarter drooping stockings and shove her feet into the girl's blunt-toed, scuffed shoes, Elizabeth noted that her legs and feet must be longer than Meg's. She silently vowed that one of the first things she would do if she ever went to London as queen was to buy her household decent garments--not to mention herself after having to wear last season's mended pieces all these years in exile.

"All right," she said with a nod, "fetch Ned from the hall."

Meg scrambled to cover her shift with a big shawl, but he did not so much as look her way when Kat let him in. He seemed speechless at the princess's transformation, but he soon found his tongue.

"Kat," he began, walking around Elizabeth in a tight circle, "it will take more than that broad-brimmed hat to pull this off. Her red hair's got more gold in it than Meg's. We'd best cover it with a kerchief."

"I don't do that," Meg protested.

Ned still ignored her as he took the kerchief Kat extended to him from one of Elizabeth's coffers, balled it up in his hands, then rubbed it on the floor in the corner of the room. He displayed it with a flourish, wrinkled and dirtied.

Elizabeth saw Meg's face become a thundercloud; the girl's fists shot to her hips. "You just listen here, Master Topside--"

"Do not start anew, any of you," Elizabeth interrupted. "Kat has to go down to tell Cecil my headache is not better and slip him the note. And I--that is, Meg--must be clear out to the edge of the forest when he tries to find me. Ned, is Jenks ready?"

"Aye," he assured her, as he dared to knock Kat's and Meg's hands away from Elizabeth's hair to handle the kerchief himself. Now both of the women were hot at him, but he went on blithely. "I used to make the lads in the company look like lasses, so this is easy as pie." He flapped the kerchief open, halved it neatly to a triangle, and tied it around Elizabeth's long hair, which the fuming Kat lifted off her neck and shoulders for him.

Elizabeth glanced in the looking glass Kat held and nodded at what she saw. A strange, even shocking, sight, but necessary. Clapping Meg's broad-brimmed, floppy hat on her head over

the kerchief, she grabbed the herb basket and made for the door.

Downstairs, she dare not go through the kitchen but ducked out the side entrance and went out back through the gardens she had walked with Cecil yesterday. Bending here and there to pull up a dried flower in case anyone was watching, she made her way through the postern gate, still inside the moat. At least most of the household would be assembling in the courtyard to see Cecil ride out and should not pay a bit of heed to Meg Milligrew.

Jenks, good man that he was, had positioned the rowboat for her and was waiting directly across the moat with his horse. She tossed her basket in the boat and, awkward at having do this for herself, rowed across to him, cursing under her breath when the oars went askew and she got a splinter in her ungloved hands.

She almost ordered Jenks to help her, but she had told him not to emerge from the fringe of trees unless someone tried to stop her. As she tugged the bow of the boat up on the edge of the grass, her appreciation of Meg's independence grew. Indeed, what would it be like to be one of her people, a commoner, just plain Bess Tudor, the herbalist? As Ned had hastily suggested, she stared at the ground as she walked, slightly swinging her basket, and shuffled through dried leaves.

"Pretty good," Jenks observed, "but Meg can row that boat like a seaman."

Elizabeth narrowed her eyes at him but said only, "Do you think I have time to walk to the fork of the road? I can hardly be seen riding with you or taking your horse."

"I took Meg on a ride afore," he admitted, standing stiff as if he expected her to scold him for that. "If we go through the forest--"

"Mistress Meg!" a voice behind her called.

'So blood, caught already? Keeping her hat brim pulled low, she turned to see Sam, Lord Cornish's chief groom, beckoning to her from across the moat. Since Jenks stood in the shadows, perhaps Sam didn't see him.

"Saw you go out," Sam shouted, "and I'm free for a bit, since the guests are riding off without an escort. Just give that boat a bit of a shove back, eh?"

Elizabeth held her ground, though her instinct was to move farther into the forest. When she did not

answer straightaway, he went on.

"I told you next time you went out in the forest for mushrooms, I'd go along. The princess's man there's not going with you, is he?"

Elizabeth cursed under her breath again. He could see Jenks. And Meg had been out in the woods? Gathering mushrooms? And with all her duties had the time to lead this man on, a man she could not have known before last week? She must be on her way before Cecil rode out. Worse, she had not intended to have to talk like the girl.

"Aye, Sam, walnut gathering, we are," she called across the moat and waved the way she had seen Meg do, all limp wrist and quick motion. "The princess sent us both, and quick, she said."

She knew she sounded wrong, but she wasn't sure just how. Before she ever tried this again, she'd pay more heed to Meg, get Ned to tutor her too. She turned in a flurry of skirts and darted into the forest with Jenks pulling his horse behind her.

Cecil rolled the note Kat Ashley had given him into a tiny ball between his thumb and first finger. He had managed to skim it, then surreptitiously dropped it in the moat as he rode out, grateful he could trust his own people--if he could. And he had wanted to see Her Grace privily to ask if she could trust hers. At least now, as foolhardy as this scheme seemed, he would have the chance.

A few minutes later, when he spotted the dead chestnut tree at the fork in the road just beyond the first big bend, he told his three men, "I need a few moments alone here." He drew his horse up hard and dismounted.

"Your nervous stomach again, my lord?" his man Givens called to him. They were all obviously surprised and trying not to seem so.

"Just hold the horses--and off the road should anyone else come through. I shall be back directly."

He walked west, as the princess's note had said. If she was not at the clearing by the brook, he was prepared to wait till doomsday. But he was not prepared for the common lass who emerged from the deeper forest, until he saw the tilt of the pointed chin and the flash of those dark Boleyn eyes. So, he thought, relieved, perhaps this scheme was not so foolhardy after all, if she could pull off this

ruse.

"My princess," he said, trying to control his lawyer's face not to show either astonishment or amusement at her appearance or the rude basket on her arm. With a sweep of his hat, head bowed, he went down on one knee in the sodden moss. He had seen her man, holding a horse, but he kept his watchful distance. At least she had not come out here alone. She might be daring and desperate, he thought, but never broken.

She came closer and touched his shoulder lightly with her free hand to indicate he should rise. "In these times--in this attire--my Cecil," she said, as he stood, "between us, let there be no ceremony. I have so yearned to speak freely with you."

"I am ever at your command, Your Grace. But should we be interrupted again somehow, let me first warn you of something that both your cousin Harry and I have been concerned about, and I did not find an opportunity to write before or tell."

"We were interrupted when I was asking you to describe Sarah Scottwood's countenance."

"It all, mayhap, ties in. I glimpsed your Meg Milligrew only from afar when Ned Topside pointed her out to me, but--"

"But what does Meg have to do with it? And you sought out Ned? He said naught of that."

"He spoke with me rather. Your Grace, as best I can discover from contacts in London who have described Sarah Scottwood's countenance and form, as you instructed," he began carefully, then just let it all tumble out, "Meg Milligrew could actually .be Sarah Scottwood, n@ee Scutea, an herbalist tied to the old, loyal Spanish party that vowed vengeance on your mother and you, no doubt all the Boleyns."