only dying, death, and danger. And yet she could and would not draw back like some craven coward.
"Do you still have the arrows that struck him?" she asked. "Mayhap there is something to identify the attackers or the maker, a particular fletching pattern or marking on the shaft or even the point. My father always used to make his fletchers set his feathers just so when he shot at the buttes or hunted."
"But for the one arrowhead I had to leave in him, I wrapped the bloody, sticky things and put them in a box with my own shorter arrows from boyhood visits here. My stepfather taught me to shoot," he said with a glance at the little church where, no doubt, the grave of Mary Boleyn's beloved lord lay out of the elements that battered these of lesser rank. "The box is in the gardener's shed we just passed," Harry added and escorted her back into the manor grounds. The gate scraped closed behind him; he relocked it and restowed the key.
But there were no wrapped arrows in the interior of the wooden box he peered in, then showed her. Not his boyhood ones or those that had been used to murder Will Benton. Cursing under his breath, Harry ransacked the shelves of the shed, knocking things off, then throwing them.
"Did anyone know you put them here?" she asked, raising her voice over the din he made.
"I told no one--didn't want to keep the dreadful things in my chamber, but I see I should have." He looked ready to tear the place apart. She realized and understood his devastated poise; no one had ever taught him to stand stiff and still no matter what befell. Besides, she'd seen the result of choleric humors all her life, especially in men. His face clenched in a frown, he hunched against the crooked doorway.
"We've two gardeners I'll question," he said, his voice tight. "And that herbalist Meg uses this place, as is evident enough with all this hanging
rubbish."
A sweep of his good hand bounced bunches of thyme, marjoram, and rosemary hanging over their heads by tiny nooses from the crossbeam. On their way out he shoved a spade into a wooden rake until a row of tools toppled as he slammed the door of the ramshackle place.
Elizabeth let the incident go at first. She wouldn't blame a gardener or herb girl for burning or burying some horrid, bloodstained murder weapons kept in the garden shed he or she used. For one moment she almost wondered if Harry himself hadn't destroyed them in a fit of rage. Or perhaps he had been annoyed he hadn't kept them and didn't want to admit his hasty, ill-reasoned mistake to her. She had seen that inbred arrogance from men before too.
Though she had a good nerve to question the servants herself, she spent the waning afternoon with her aunt, treasuring Mary's memories of her mother from their girlhood days. Mary described their home of Hever Castle in Kent, their days being educated at the French court, their heady return to England when first Mary caught the king's eye and then Anne. Elizabeth asked about her Uncle George, who had died on the block with her mother, and asked Mary to describe her Boleyn grandparents. But she did not pry into how Mary became the king's mistress before he turned to the lively, clever Anne--and Anne held out for marriage and the crown.
"I was ever the fond, gentle one," Mary whispered, as a tear tracked down her wan cheek, "and she so clever and strong. You, of a certain, are like her."
The hours slipped away and Elizabeth became more exhausted, more weak with the pounding in her head. But she told no one and even let them talk her into attending the entertainment tonight. "My dearest," her aunt had said before she slipped off into one of her instant slumbers, "don't fret anyone will guess it is you at the play. We're having only the manor staff in, and if they don't think you're really Lady Cornish--I overheard Glenda has her doubts--they will think you are merely my Meg ..."
That snagged Elizabeth's attention again. She wanted to see this girl who looked like her,