The Poyson Garden by Karen Harper Read Free Book Online

the realm--including this sharp fellow with the well-turned leg--would bow and say their pretty speeches for her.
    "And now," Ned was declaiming as the others took their temporary leave to reenter with some new piece of costume or prop, "we shall present a few speeches and scenes from the new and fashionable Italian comedy The Potion of Pleasure.
    Drink up and dream you are in sunny Florence and have found such a magic liquor there as to make anyone who drinks it fall in love with you. ..."
    He was, this so-called Ned
    Topside, rather a good-looking rogue with his black curly hair and green eyes. Elizabeth noted that a hundred expressions plied his face. His eyes could sparkle with a range of passions from mischief to malevolence. He could speak volumes with the mere lift of a sleek eyebrow or tilt of lip. She noted well he could ape a lordling's pompous demeanor or a cowherd's lumbering walk. And most fascinating, he had the ear and tongue for all types of speech, court or country, familiar or foreign.
    Though her heart was heavy with her aunt's imminent demise and the murder of Harry's man, she found herself smiling more than once. How grateful she and Harry both felt when Mary Boleyn smiled too.
     
    Elizabeth helped her cousin tuck her aunt back into bed and said her final farewell. Though she and Jenks must leave before midnight, she was swaying with exhaustion. At last she gave in to Harry's pressing her to take a brief rest in an extra bedchamber.
    But she didn't think she slept. ... She must not be asleep because there it was, clearing through the fog, the stone Tower of London with the gray Thames rippling by it when the queen's guards rowed her in through the iron jaws of Traitor's Gate.
    She walked the Tower's dank, dark corridors, looking for her mother. Anne Boleyn had been imprisoned and beheaded here. She was buried under the cold floor stones in the small chapel of St. Peter in Chains, so the place horrified and haunted Elizabeth. Yet she went on, step by step, looking, calling for her.
    "Mother! Queen Anne Boleyn! Mother!" she shouted bravely.
    She saw her form, all in flowing white, standing on a parapet within the Tower confines. Her mother held to the banister and leaned over it and called down to her, "Elizabeth, my dear Elizabeth." Her voice echoed off the walls, off her tomb. "He poisoned my love. ... Your royal father poisoned my love long before he took my hand, my heart, my head. ..."
    Over Elizabeth's head Queen Anne held a heart with an arrow stuck right through it.
    Blackest blood made a huge spot where it pierced the heart. "Dig me up, and you'll see," she called as her form and voice drifted away in the fog. "Poison ..."
    Elizabeth jerked straight up in bed, her heart pounding, her body drenched with sweat. At first she didn't know where she was, but then it all came tumbling back. Wivenhoe ... her aunt ailing ... Will's death ... those stolen arrows.
    She got up, seized her cloak, and swung it around the boy's garb she had already donned. Wishing Kat were here to help, she shoved her feet in her riding boots. Still shaking, seeing the dark corridors of the Tower before her, she went down the dim hall to Harry's chamber door and knocked quietly on it.
    She heard his feet hit the floor, heard him coming. He opened the door, fully dressed, prepared to see her off. "Already time?" he asked. His hair was mussed from his pillow, with a cowlick standing straight up. When he stared closer into her face, he whispered, "It isn't Mother?"
    "Not yours."
    "What?"
    "Never mind. We must find out if those arrows that killed Will were poisoned. I've got to see those black spots on him. We can retrieve the arrowhead you said you left in him. Send for my man Jenks, and we'll dig him up ourselves posthaste, then put him back."
    He gaped at her as if she were speaking some barbaric tongue.
    "If they used poison, mayhap we can trace it," she explained. "I don't want to do it, but we must have answers. Now."
    He