“No, not a—” he said, and placed his hands on her arms to calm her, “not that. But I would like to think I am not only a painter. I would like to think that I too am her friend.”
“You may need to prove that.” Bess wiped at her eyes. “Elsabet does not have easy days ahead. She will need us. All of us.” Morning was beginning to creep over the city, and her eyes widened at the sight of his nightclothes. “I shouldn’t have come. Forgive me.” She made to reach for the door, and he stopped her and instead drew her farther inside.
“Bess, wait. Please stay a moment and sit. Tell me what you meant about the queen. Why will she suffer? What’s the matter?” Bess nodded, and let herself be led to his table and two lonely chairs. “Your hands are like ice.”
“There was a chill in the air tonight, from the water. And I haven’t slept. I hope the queen is sleeping now. . . .”
Jonathan stoked his small fire back to life and swung a pot of water over it to heat for tea. “A warm cup will put you to rights.” He searched his cupboard. “I don’t know if I have untainted sugar. I have untainted honey; will that do?”
After the tea had steeped, he got it into her hands and waited as she sipped.
“You and I and Rosamund,” she whispered. “Catherine Howe. Gilbert Lermont. We may be the only loyalists the queen has left. I don’t want to believe that, but—”
“Why do you think so, Bess?”
She shook her head. “To tell you would be to place you in danger.”
“Then let me place myself there.” He took her by the hand. “I suspect that Francesca Arron has somehow been poisoning the queen’s tonic.”
Bess’s eyes widened. He knew by the expression on her face that Francesca Arron was also the one whom she suspected.
“I was near to the queen when she took her nightly dose,” he explained. “And I am a poisoner and curious about healing. I asked her if I could take a sip, and she consented. And instantly, I knew that something was amiss.”
“Are . . . are you sure?”
“The Dentons have little to recommend them, but we are excellent apothecaries. I am certain. I even took a sample to my family in Prynn.”
Bess stood and set down her teacup hurriedly, sloshing tea over the rim. “I must go and tell the queen of this. I must tell Gilbert.”
“I’ll come with you,” he said, and looked down at his nightclothes. “Just let me get dressed.”
Bess put her hand on his chest. “No. You must stay here. This will all move very quickly, Jonathan, and if what you say is true and what we believe is true, then it is better if no one see us together yet. Rosamund—Commander Antere—does not want to alert Francesca to our suspicions.”
Jonathan thought of his conversation with Francesca the night before. “She may already suspect me.”
“All the more reason for you to stay away. The queen will send for you soon, I am sure. She will send for you when it is over and Francesca has been arrested.”
“Bess,” he said when her hand was on the door. “Tell the queen . . . tell the queen I am thinking of her.”
“I will, Jonathan.” Bess glanced toward the windows in his bedroom. “It’s later than I thought. I should go.” She stepped out as he held the door for her; she took his hand and squeezed it. “It will be all right.”
He closed the door and wandered back into his room. Not knowing what else to do, he cleaned up the tea and dressed, readying himself for the day. But time had never moved so slowly. He could not stop thinking of what was happening at the Volroy. Of Elsabet and how he might be of help to her. “Blast,” he said, and stood. “I cannot just wait.”
He threw open his door and went down the steps, hurrying up the alley toward the square. Bess might frown when she saw him, but Elsabet would not be angry. And besides, if it was as Bess said, Elsabet needed all the friends around her that could be summoned.
When he turned the corner into the square, he stopped short. A crowd was gathering across the street. People, standing around and staring at something on the ground. His heart thumped as he walked closer and elbowed his way through. Then he saw the edge of her brown cloak.
Bess lay on the stone street, facedown, her arms at her sides. The arrow that had killed her stuck straight out of the back of her head, pinioning her cloak hood to her skull.
“Bess!” He fell to her side and turned her over. Her face was broken and bleeding from striking the stones when she fell. Her pretty eyes stared at the sky, and as he held her, blood soaked through her red-gold hair and into the hood. He drew the cloak hood back slightly and moaned. Whoever had done it had been a fine shot.
“Poor girl,” the woman muttered. “Such a lovely thing. Who would think to do it on such a morning?” She looked at Jonathan sadly as he wept. “Was she with you, young man?”
“Elsabet,” Jonathan croaked. Then he set Bess gently down. He got to his feet and ran for the Volroy, wiping her blood onto his tunic.
“Wonderful,” Sonia said sarcastically to Francesca as they watched the Denton boy fuss over the dead maid. “We’ve killed the wrong commoner.”
“You killed the wrong commoner,” Francesca corrected.
“What was she doing, leaving his apartment at this hour?” Sonia asked, and Francesca wanted to slap her. That did not matter. The girl was dead. The queen’s dear friend. And someone would have to pay. “What do we do now?”
“Now,” Francesca whispered angrily, “we use it.”
Stepping out of the morning shadows, she drew her hood down nearly completely over her face. She walked lightly and quickly, moving through the back of the crowd, slipping between people in that way that was natural to all poisoners, that way that made it easy for them to sink a poisoned dagger into a thigh or drop a poison-coated berry into a drink. But that morning, it was poison of a different sort that needed to be spread.
“Oh,” she murmured in a gentle voice. “That is one of the queen’s girls. One of the queen’s maids! And she was coming from the queen’s lover’s apartment!”
That was all it took. The people latched on to it and filled in the rest. “The queen is often jealous,” someone said. “How foolish of the boy,” said someone else. “But who could blame him? Look how lovely this girl was. Lovely as our queen is not. That’s why she’s so jealous in the first place. Poor queen. Poor girl.”
“Poor queen? This is murder! Murder over a lover’s tryst!”
Francesca smiled. When she returned to Sonia she nearly laughed as the two of them walked out of the square unnoticed.
“How did you know to do that?” Sonia asked.
“You know what they say. An Arron is ready for anything. Now let us go. Our plans have changed.”
THE VOLROY
Elsabet ordered Bess’s body brought to the Volroy. She ordered healers and priestesses to look upon it, to provide her with what answers they could. But there was only so much that could be told about an arrow to the back of the head.
“Get away from her, then,” Elsabet said, and draped herself over her friend. Her cheeks were red and wet with tears. She kissed Bess’s cold hands. “What good am I?” she asked, wiping her eyes. “What good is an oracle queen who cannot see enough to protect those she loves?”
Rosamund, Jonathan, and Gilbert stood by helplessly. They too were full of sorrow. Even Rosamund had wept when she heard the news. Wept and raged when she saw the arrow struck through Bess’s pretty head. Now they were alone in the throne room, the healers dismissed, the priestesses’ prayers said. No other members of the Black Council were brave enough to show their faces with Bess’s body stretched out across the council table.
“How could this happen?” Elsabet stalked back and forth, long legs shaking.
“Elsie,” Gilbert ventured softly. “Let me get you something.”
“What, Gilbert? What do I need?”
“I don’t know. I could summon your king-consort. He will want to know of this.”
In the corner of her eye, Elsabet saw Rosamund bare her teeth.