“Surely” said Lady Lyst, “Lord Rhoone at least should be informed. Or Montfallcon, eh?”
“Perhaps. I must consider the implications.”
“You keep silent to protect the Queen?” Lady Lyst stood up. “Is that it, Una?”
“I suppose that is much of my motive.”
“A worthy one,” said Wheldrake.
“Aye,” said Lady Lyst a little doubtfully.
“You think silence leads to suspicion. That I could make matters worse?” the Countess of Scaith asked her friend.
“I am too drunk to think.”
“I respect your logic.”
“I have no logic. My logic leaves me daily. It never helped.” Lady Lyst moved away. “Wheldrake.”
“Coming.” A sympathetic nod to the Countess of Scaith and Wheldrake was skipping backwards, in his mistress’s wake.
When they had gone Una found that she was looking again at the grille. It seemed to her that blood still oozed from it and down the wall, as if a hundred corpses lay behind it. Until now she had never considered the possibility that Lady Mary’s murderer might be from within the palace depths-perhaps Tallow himself. Yet it was, of course, the most likely explanation. She determined to investigate-perhaps taking Lord Rhoone into her confidence and going with a detachment of sturdy guards. It could even be that war of some sort was being fought in the old tunnels and halls-rival nations squabbling for supremacy of those dark and dreadful subterranean corridors, those rotting rooms, those ruined apartments and abandoned grottoes. The notion began to seem reasonable.
She spent the rest of the night nursing the cat and staring frequently towards the grille, but no more sounds came from behind it. When it was light she cleaned as much of the blood from the carpet as she could and bundled up the sheets. There was a good deal of blood on the tapestry down which Tallow had slid. She used water to wipe the worst of this away. If Elizabeth Moffett noticed, then Una would have to swear her to silence and make up some story of gentlemen fighting here-the kind of tale Elizabeth would wish to believe.
And then, dressing herself, she once more left the apartment, going now to Lord Rhoone, whom she had decided to recruit.
The doors of the Rhoone apartments were open as she knocked. To her surprise she heard Doctor Dee’s flat tones and Lord Rhoone’s boom, full of tension.
A maid came. “My lady?” The maid was weeping.
“What is it? I need to see Lord Rhoone.”
“Lady Rhoone. And the children!”
The Countess became weak with horror. “What? Dead?”
The maid led her into the dining room. There, laid upon the floor, was stout, red-cheeked Lady Rhoone and the plump boy and girl of thirteen and fourteen years, their joy.
Doctor Dee knelt beside the girl, his ear to her heart, while a distracted, terrified Rhoone hovered. “The kidneys,” he said. “It must be the kidneys.”
“They are most certainly poisoned,” said Dee, nodding to Una as she entered. “And you had none of the kidneys?”
“Not quite. Almost.”
“Who?” said Una. She was helpless. Had there been a massacre in the night? Were Tallow and the three Rhoones only a portion of the victims?
“Bad meat,” said Doctor Dee. “The stomachs must be cleared.”
“They’ll live?” begged Rhoone.
“Have your servants bring them to my apartments. No,” Doctor Dee became almost shifty, “to Master Tolcharde’s. There is a physician I can recruit. Antidotes I can try. Stretchers, now!”
Una was unnoticed as Lord Rhoone and Doctor Dee supervised the servants bearing the woman and the two children from the room. She continued to follow, uncertain why she did so.
She became part of a procession behind the stretchers. They went through the old sections of the palace, through the Throne Room, up the broken staircases, along the galleries, to Master Tolcharde’s evil-smelling laboratories. Dee knocked loudly. It was some time before an apprentice answered. Dee turned. “No one in here,” he said. “No one but Rhoone. Secrets.”
Una paused. John Dee looked at her curiously, then pulled her into the musty chambers before shutting and bolting the door. “Countess? You heard of this? You came quickly.”
She shook her head. Rhoone and the stretchers were moving on into the mystery of Master Tolcharde’s chambers. Dee made a decision to continue with them, but held Una’s arm to keep her back. “You think foul play, do you?”
“What’s your analysis, Doctor?”
He sighed. He spoke reluctantly. “Foul play.”
THE TWENTY-FIRST CHAPTER
Lord Rhoone came, perspiring and in confusion, grinning to the Queen’s Withdrawing Room, to sink J-Jupon a footstool and with grateful lips kiss the comforting hand of Gloriana.
“Saved,” he said. “Some seer, some apothecary of Dee’s.”
“Not Dee himself, dear Bramandil?” She used his given name to assure him of the depths of her affection just then.
“He could not. As they died, he admitted it. Then Tolcharde brought in this other. After you had gone, Countess. You recall? To tell the Queen.”
He addressed Una’s weary back. She nodded.
“A sniffing of my dear ones’ breath and an antidote was created to revive them. They recover now, in our lodgings.”
“The seer?” asked Gloriana. “Who’s he?”
“Perhaps a traveller. Dee said he came from another world.”
“Ah. A captive of the Thane’s.” She restrained her scepticism.
“Possibly.”
Una moved from where she had been contemplating the Great Yard and the azure lake through the tall, half- opened window. She was very pale and breathing deeply, wearing dark blue with cornflowers stitched on petticoats, pearls and light blue lace. “They’ll live?” Her voice was small.
Lord Rhoone rose to take her hands. “Countess. You, too, are unwell, I fear. You must forgive me.” He squeezed. “Anxiety turned me blind to all other considerations.”
She smiled, but was close to madness at that moment. “I thought we had a plague of murders. When Doctor Dee was so certain…”
“We were all infected by the suddenness of it, and by suspicion based on past events.”
“We must forget Mary,” said Queen Gloriana importantly.
“We must forget so much nowadays.” Una glared about her as if suspecting attack, her hands still in Rhoone’s. “Should that be so?”
“Whether it should or should not, we’ve scarcely choice in the matter.” Gloriana rose, informally splendid in mellow gold and red gold coronet. “There’s no more murders. Bad kidneys were the cause of your family’s calamity, eh, my lord?”
“This heat, madam, turns all tripes foul, faster than any other meat. We should not have eaten them, save I thought them fresh-cut from a newly slaughtered beast.”
“We have already sent word to our Butchery. And to the Larder, also.”
“They were not deliberately poisoned, then?” The Countess removed her hands and returned to a pretended contemplation of the brightly painted panels overhead: Cupid and Psyche, Jupiter and Semele, Titania and the
