The Thorne Maze Read Free Page A

him to her highly visible post of Master of Horse and later Warden of Windsor Castle. She had secretly desired Robin from the days they were prisoners in the Tower, but when his wife Amy had died in mysterious circumstances, the queen had sent him away from court and tried to shield her heart from his power over her. She had long ago summoned him back, but tried desperately to keep him at arm’s length. She loved him yet, and damn the man, he knew it.
    “Our Robin?” the queen queried. “I hope you mean you and your kin, for he is not my Robin. But did he not return with you to court then?”
    “Yes, and bid me beg you for a time and privy place to get—well, caught up on things a bit with you.”
    “Playing Cupid, Mary?” Kat put in, though Elizabeth thought the older woman looked as if she hadn’t been listening, at least to them. She’d cocked her head and had been glaring at the door as if she heard something strange in the hall.
    “I am merely relaying a message between two good friends,” Mary declared as she passed Elizabeth a small silver plate with candied figs and suckets.
    “Why did he not directly ask me to meet him?” Elizabeth demanded, frowning at her selection.
    “He is going to be busy in the royal stables for several hours because your Araby mare is about to foal. But tonight after the masque …”
    “Ah, good, for I’ve missed riding her,” Elizabeth said, but her mind raced for a privy yet nearby place to meet him. She thought of the maze, for she was soon to meet her guests Templar Sutton and his wife there. She could get away after the masque, just for a few moments, of course. “Tell him the entrance to the maze then,” the queen clipped out, “and if he stands me up for a horse, even my Araby, I’ll have his head.”
    “Then he can haunt the maze,” Kat said, her mouth full of a candied fig. “As for now, I warrant someone’s listening at this keyhole.”
    “Stuff and nonsense,” Elizabeth said. “My guard or Mary’s maid is out there, that is all.”
    But to calm Kat’s nerves, the queen got up and went to the door herself. She pulled it open and, seeing no one, stuck her head out. No guard, no tiring woman, no one in the whole corridor.
    “Hell’s teeth, I’ll sack the lout for this!” the queen muttered and stepped out to look up and down the hall for her guard. Inside, she could hear Mary talking soothingly to Kat. Undecided whether to shout for the man or just step inside and bolt the door until he returned, Elizabeth hesitated when she heard someone.
    Light, quick steps, probably a woman, Mary’s servant, or someone coming to explain that the guard had suddenly taken ill. A rustling skirt nearby, a panting breath, but no one in sight.
    The air moved across the queen’s flushed face as if someone had rushed past. Footfalls faded in the other direction, and the slightest aroma of gillyflowers wafted on the air, when the queen never wore that scent.
    The hair on the back of Elizabeth’s neck prickled; she broke out in an immediate sweat. Nothing—still nothing in the hall at all. Surely not Catherine Howard’s ghost? And in broad daylight? Elizabeth pressed her back against door and stared in the direction the sounds and scent had gone. She jumped as the door behind her swept open.
    “Lovey,” Kat said, “are you quite all right? Who was it then?”
    “Nothing to cause a stir.” She shook her head to clear it. Obviously, the corridor was so strangely wrought with those deep-set windows that sounds echoed here from the kitchens and courtyard below. And scents no doubt blew in too, gillyflowers from Meg Milligrew’s herb gardens. That was the logical explanation, and, she thought, like any lawyer worth his salt, she prided herself in her logic.
    “It’s nothing,” she repeated, hoping to calm her pounding pulse.
     
     
    Although her new baby had quieted at last, the crying seemed to echo in Mildred Cecil’s very soul. Grateful when the wet nurse