The Poyson Garden Read Free Page A

knelt over him. The man's pale face clenched in pain. He was bloodied, but at least for now he was among the living.
     
    "I am bored to death with all this waiting," the tall, red-haired woman muttered to herself as she dismounted. "To death."
    The sudden cloudburst wet Elizabeth Tudor clear through to her skin, but she turned her face up, reveling in the strength and sweep of it. No dangerous lightning or thunder with this, but it still suited her mood. And it pleased her that she managed to be out here nearly alone when the Popes had gone back with her Barbary falcon, the servants, and the remnants of the food.
    She dismounted and leaned against the strength of the great oak for what cover it could give. Gazing into the distance toward her small rural realm, she sighed. The old palace of Hatfield House where she lived in exile--watched closely by the queen's man Sir Thomas Pope and his wife Beatrice--would have to do since she could not be at court. She could yet be rotting in the Tower of London if her royal brother-in-law, Spanish King Philip, hadn't taken a fancy to her and asked Queen Mary to be kind while he was away.
    "But that is as kind as it gets, Griffin," she told her favorite horse and stroked the black
    stallion's muzzle to quiet him. "Some of my people at least have been returned to me, and you, of course, my dear boy."
    The horse whinnied as if he understood and cherished every word. "'So blood," she whispered and patted him again. "Sweet talk to horses, that's what has become of the most marriageable virgin in the kingdom."
    "You say this place has you talking to horses now, Your Grace?" her faithful lady Blanche Parry teased as she pulled up under the tree and dismounted. Unlike her princess, Blanche huddled in her hooded wool cloak to avoid the wet.
    "At least," Elizabeth said with a smile, "I know they are to be trusted."
    They shared a little laugh that faded, drowned not by the downpour but by quick horse's hoofs. As with hearing someone running in a house, Elizabeth had learned to fear fast feet of any kind, for they had seldom boded well for her.
    But it was her groom, Stephen Jenks, whom she jestingly called her Master of the Horse in Exile. He usually stuck to her skirts like a burr, her unofficial bodyguard and one she relied on, but she thought she'd lost him in the storm somewhere.
    "Your Grace, beggin' your pardon, but you want to go back in now? You'll catch the ague out here," the young man blurted as he dismounted.
    Jenks's wit was for horses. Elizabeth was quite sure that when he talked to them they truly listened. As for people, he was good at taking orders but not usually at giving them. Still, strangely, he looked as if he'd like to command she go inside right now.
    "I'd only get wetter going back to the house," she told him and patted his slick shoulder. "And I'm in no hurry to return to the watchful eyes of Her Majesty's second-most favorite Pope."
    But she startled when Jenks pulled one side of his leather jerkin open to flash a folded letter at her, then patted it to his body again as if to preserve it from the rain and prying eyes.
    She studied his eager face. His blue eyes were alight with a message she, for once, could not read. His chestnut eyebrows lifted to touch his straight, sodden hair, cut low across his forehead. Though Blanche was one of her two trusted
    ladies, he had cleverly blocked even her from seeing what he had.
    A secret letter for her. Pray God this did not mean a new attempt to snare her in another plot like the one that had cost her her reputation and Tom Seymour his head, or the aborted Wyatt Rebellion, which had put her in the Tower.
    "You know, Blanche, I think Jenks has a point. The rain looks to be letting up. Let's ride back."
    With his linked hands under her foot, Jenks gave her a quick boost up, then helped Blanche remount. Because of slippery grass and the warren of rabbit holes in this meadow, they went slowly toward the russet-brick Tudor palace, now