The Hooded Hawke by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online Page B

now, and we got ourself stung up by some bugs or bees we din’t see.”
    Ned and Meg gawked up at the lads and then glanced at each other. It had to be poor Tom Naseby’s sons, and they didn’t know their sire was dead.
    “You come on down here,” Meg said. “I’ll just bet you’ve rubbed against stinging nettle. I’ve got something that will help with that right here. Come on, then.”
    They came up, over, and down, burdened with a bundle of limbs and, clanking together, a billhook, a handsaw, and two stonebows, the kind used to kill small birds for pies.
    “Now put all that down and let Mistress Meg tend to you,” Ned told them. “Then we’ll go to meet the queen.”
    The taller boy looked like he’d argue, but the shorter one seemed in awe of Ned. “You mean the real queen come to visit or the fairy queen, Titania of the forest?” the smaller lad asked. “She flits about with Robin Goodfellow and Will-o’-the Wisp near hedgerows, you know.”
    The bigger boy frowned and elbowed the smaller to shut his mouth. Meg just shook her head. A dreamer of fancies like Ned, that little one was.
    She blinked back tears as she tended to the lads, rubbing fresh dock leaves on the red rashes on their hands and arms. These two had no notion they were orphans now, or that they were about to testify before the Queen of England to help clear their father’s name. Her heart went out to them so strong that,
for the first time in two months, she forgot for a moment that she’d lost her own little boy.
    I t was nearly noon when the queen, Jenks, and three guards, over Sir William’s protests, rode two miles into Guildford to Sheriff Barnstable’s house. The town was charming, she thought, with prettily thatched, half-timbered houses newly whitewashed and a village green bedecked, no doubt, in her honor. Jenks rode the back way to the sheriff’s cottage, its lawn abutting a pond with noisy ducks.
    The queen dismounted but waited with her guards while Jenks walked around in front, then came out to open the back door with the sheriff himself in tow.
    “Your—Your Majesty,” Barnstable stuttered. He’d obviously been eating; he had a large, dirty napkin tucked in his collar and grease on his fingers. He went into a bow that bumped him into the door frame. “Such an honor to have you here at my humble—”
    “Step aside, man,” she said, pushing past him as he stumbled back. “Why did you not come straightaway to tell me of your prisoner’s demise?”
    “I-I told your man Jenks here, but could hardly presume to come early to you with sad news, Your Majesty, though this does satisfy my suspicions of Naseby.”
    “But not mine!” she insisted, as she followed Jenks down the hall, with her three big guards trailing.
    “Why,” Barnstable called after her, “the man was obviously shamed by his guilt and took his life. I didn’t move the body but to cut him down, lest you needed to see the proof, and—are you wearing armor, Your Most Esteemed and Gracious Maj—”
    “Hold this man here, Clifford,” she threw back over her shoulder. She was getting angrier with every step as she gathered her skirts and followed Jenks down creaky wooden stairs into the dank-smelling cellar.
    “You’d best fetch a lantern,” she told him when she saw that the cellar was lit by a single rush light, which had almost burned down.

    “But to leave you with the dead man—” Jenks began to protest, then scurried up the stairs at the look she shot him.
    She stood over the poor man, a huddled bulk on the floor, then bent down and touched his shoulder. “Your queen rues your death,” she whispered, as if he could hear. “I shall find justice for you—and for my other servant who was caught in a snare perhaps meant for me or my captain. And I’ll see your boys are reared by some good citizen here.”
    The door banged open above; Elizabeth could hear the sheriff’s shrill protests before Jenks thudded back down the stairs. The