English Tea Murder by Leslie Meier Read Free Book Online Page B

in.”
    Lucy was reading the names embedded in a circle around the plaque: “Margaret Pole—Lady Salisbury; Catherine Howard; Anne Boleyn; Lady Jane Grey—”
    “That poor girl was only seventeen . . . ,” said Rachel, who devoured historical novels.
    “Whatever did she do?” asked Jennifer.
    “Nothing really,” said Rachel. “She was the victim of an ambitious family. They managed to get her on the throne, but in the end they lost a battle and somebody else got the job—Mary Tudor, fondly known as Bloody Mary.”
    “They didn’t have to kill her!” exclaimed Jennifer, looking pale.
    Autumn had spotted one of the ravens, perched on a nearby fencepost, and waved her sweater at it, causing it to flap its wings and rise a few feet into the air, only to brush Jennifer’s shoulder with its wing. Startled and frightened, Jennifer shrieked as the bird made a clumsy landing on the memorial plaque, where it stood like a grim reminder of the gruesome beheadings that had taken place there.
    “Get it away!” she begged as tears rolled down her cheeks. “Make it go away.”
    “I don’t think you’re supposed to interfere with the ravens,” said Lucy, reproving Autumn. “Let’s check out the Medieval Palace and see what life was like back then.”
    “Yeah,” said Autumn cynically. “If you managed to keep your head.”

Chapter Five
    “N ow this is better,” declared Sue as they wandered through the sparsely furnished but brightly decorated rooms of the Medieval Palace. A scratchy recording of lute music provided atmosphere.
    Sue’s interest was caught by a display case containing jewels and perfume bottles. “These things are pretty, but we can’t really know what life was like back then, can we?”
    “Not very pleasant, even at the best of times,” speculated Rachel as they passed through the room where Sir Walter Raleigh wrote History of the World during his long imprisonment. “Imagine what this place was like in winter, with only a small fireplace to heat it.”
    Indeed, even though it was sunny and warm outside, it was chilly inside, where the stone walls held the cold and where sun couldn’t penetrate the small windows. And these accommodations were deemed comfortable, a great improvement over those provided for less illustrious prisoners.
    “I once read somewhere that life was so painful in the Middle Ages that tortures had to be really drastic to make an impression. Remember, this was before antibiotics and modern dentistry. There were no painkillers or anesthetics like we have now,” said Dr. Cope. “Childbirth and infancy were perilous for women and children, and the men were fighting and riding horses and generally living dangerously. There was plague, I don’t imagine the food was terribly wholesome, and the water wasn’t fit to drink. People didn’t bathe much. Their lives were short and painful. It’s no wonder they put so much faith in religion and hoped for a better afterlife.”
    “It still seems terrible, the way those kings treated people. Poor Sir Walter was kept here for ten years.” Jennifer had paused to read the explanatory placards.
    “He committed treason,” said Autumn. “It seems like everybody was committing treason.”
    Pam nodded. “They didn’t have government like we do now, with an orderly transfer of power. Whoever was strongest and had the best army got to be king. There were plenty of people with a drop or two of royal blood, and they didn’t have any trouble finding ambitious backers to support their claims.”
    “And if you backed the wrong guy, you lost your head,” said Autumn as they paused inside a chilly tower with whitewashed walls whose signs pointed out inscriptions carved by prisoners.
    They all fell silent as their eyes wandered over the carvings. It was too easy to imagine the prisoners’ despair as they waited day after day to learn their fates, and their desire to leave some little scrawl proclaiming that they once lived and suffered