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her.
    “Caught and questioned, Your Majesty, one Thomas Naseby, who is in possession of two missiles identical to the fatal one.” As if to prove his point, he held a feathered bolt high in the air.
    “He’s confessed?” she asked, as she walked forward and took it from the sheriff. Yes, in the shifting torchlight, it looked to be the same.
    “Not yet, but he will, for he was indeed at the perfect site on yonder hill to launch this weapon of death.”
    Naseby was disheveled and dirtied by rough treatment, unless a man who followed the trade of repairing hedges always looked like that. She guessed not. He was bleeding from his nose and mouth and looked dazed.
    Her first instinct was to instantly question the prisoner herself, but everyone was staring, and she didn’t need it noised about that the Queen of England subverted her duly appointed peacekeepers, nor that she personally solved crimes that came close to the crown. Besides, she wasn’t sure at this point that Naseby would know his own name.
    “I’ll keep him close in my cellar’til morn, Your Majesty,” Barnstable announced with a bow, as if he were some sort of
deus ex machina to end the play. “And then I’ll have it all from him!”
    Elizabeth indicated that her guards should escort the men and their prisoner off the stage. The unghostly sheriff had made a shambles of Ned’s entertainment, but if Barnstable had bumbled into solving Fenton’s murder, she would reward him well.

Chapter the Fourth
    T he pounding on some distant door dragged Elizabeth from sodden sleep the next morning. She was shocked to see that the sun was well up. Though she had postponed the late-night Privy Plot Council meeting until after the sheriff further questioned his prisoner, she had found no peace in rest. She felt as exhausted now as if she had been up all night.
    “Rosie, you let me oversleep,” she muttered to her lady-in-waiting, who was already up and dressed. “See who that is making such a racket at the door.”
    When Rosie went out, the queen arose and pulled on a robe over her night rail. She shoved her wild hair back, then splashed cold water on her face from the basin. She could hear Rosie’s high voice in the next room, then a man’s deeper tones.
    “Well, what is it?” she demanded, as her friend rushed back in. Elizabeth’s heart beat hard as she steeled herself to hear that the northern shires had exploded in rebellion or that Queen Mary had been sprung from the custody of Elizabeth’s man, Lord Shrewsbury. No, Cecil himself would have come to tell her that.
    “He’s dead,” Rosie blurted. “He hanged himself.”
    “Who? Not Sir William? You don’t mean Drake?”
    “I can’t recall his name. That hedger who shot the arrow at you. It’s Jenks outside in the hall, and—”
    The queen swore a string of oaths that would have made her
father proud, then threw the basin of water against the wall for good measure.
    B arely half an hour later, Elizabeth Tudor presided over the first full assembling of her Privy Plot Council in nearly three years. Cecil sat at her right; Jenks, directly across from her, because she intended to interrogate him. On one side of him sat Lady Rosie, and on his other, Ned, then Meg. Meg looked morose again, but at least she had risen to the occasion when her royal mistress needed her yesterday. Finally, looking curious but uncomfortable, Francis Drake sat on the queen’s left, wondering, no doubt, why he was suddenly included in this strange stew of servants and their betters.
    “It has been my mistake,” the queen began, “to be lulled into inactivity in this matter of murder by the sweet summer setting and by a worthless local sheriff who cannot be relied upon any more than can Robin Hood’s ghost.”
    No one so much as smiled; they all read her temperament well. “I intend to look into this murder myself,” she went on, “with the help of all of you—promptly and privily. Is there anyone here who cannot pledge