Roger Ascham and the Dead Queen's Command Read online

  About Roger Ascham and the Dead Queen's Command

  A special prequel to The Tournament

  from Australia's favourite novelist and the author of both the Scarecrow and Jack West Jr series.

  When her life is threatened by an anonymous assassin, the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth I knows there is only one man she can trust to find the killer before he strikes: her unorthodox childhood tutor and mentor, Roger Ascham.

  Contents

  Roger Ascham and the King’s Lost Girl

  Extract of The Tournament

  About Matthew Reilly

  Also by Matthew Reilly

  Copyright page

  LONDON, ENGLAND

  JANUARY 1559

  After the brutal reign of her mad half-sister, Mary,

  Elizabeth I ascends the throne of England.

  The country is on edge.

  During her time as queen, Mary,

  a staunch Catholic, executed thousands

  of Protestants

  Elizabeth is Protestant.

  She is 25 years old.

  And in a palace filled with many

  of Mary's old courtiers, it is difficult

  to know whom she can trust

  But there is one man...

  1.

  His longcoat and boots caked in mud, Roger Ascham strode quickly down the length of the throne room before he dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

  ‘Your Majesty, I came as quickly as I could.’

  He had indeed. He'd ridden through the night.

  And when he announced himself at the palace gates, they'd ushered him directly here.

  They even let him carry his bow and quiver— the queen had been very specific about allowing that. Being the new queen's childhood schoolteacher afforded Ascham a few minor privileges, but never that. No one but the queen's personal guards were allowed to be armed in the presence of the sovereign.

  Something must be very wrong, he thought.

  Before him sat the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth I, in all her regal glory.

  Twenty-five years old, beautiful and confident, she was clad almost entirely in gold: glittering dress, high collar and a sparkling golden headdress that set off her flame-red hair. The freckles of her youth had been covered with powder, but nothing could mask her penetrating stare.

  It was the 18th of January 1559.

  She had been Queen of England for exactly three days.

  ‘Mr Ascham,’ the queen said evenly. ‘I thank you for your haste. A difficult matter has arisen and I need your help.’

  Ascham looked at the collection of advisors and courtiers gathered around her and wondered what help he could possibly give her that they could not.

  ‘I am yours to command, Your Majesty,’ he said.

  The young queen’s lips curled into a wry smile.‘ I pray that my education was good enough to make my commands worth following, Mr Ascham.’

  ‘Believe me, so do I, Your Majesty,’ Ascham said.

  Some of the courtiers gasped. Elizabeth’s chief advisor, William Cecil, shook his head at the sheer cheek of the remark.

  The queen turned to her retinue. ‘Leave us. Everyone but Cecil, Sir William and Mr Ascham here.’

  The courtiers left and soon Ascham was alone in the great room with only the queen, Cecil and Sir William St Loe, the Captain of the Queen’s Body Guard.

  The queen cocked her head at Ascham. ‘I could have you beheaded for making tart comments like that, you know.’

  ‘I am keenly aware of that, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Oh, stop all this “Your Majesty” poppycock, Roger. Call me Bess, like you used to. We have been through too much together for such formalities. Besides, I can’t cut off your head. I need the mind that resides inside it.’

  Ascham saw the worry on her face and he got serious. ‘An urgent summons to the palace. My weapon allowed in your presence. And now a private audience with only these two gentlemen. What‘s wrong?’

  ‘Someone wants to kill me,’ the queen said simply. ‘And they plan to do it tomorrow.’

  2.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ Ascham said.

  Elizabeth turned to Cecil. ‘Bring out the dolls.’

  William Cecil produced a small sack and extracted from it three small rag dolls. He placed them on a table for Ascham to examine.

  They depicted a protestant minister, a member of the Queen’s Body Guard— indicated by his red surcoat with a gold crown on it— and a military commander with a Protestant coat-of-arms embroidered on his chest.

  Each doll had been stabbed in its chest with a full-sized arrow.

  Ascham immediately noticed the dolls’ quality: the stitching was tight and evenly spaced; the miniature clothing was incredibly reproduced, from the Guardsman’s red uniform to the armour of the commander; the painted faces were marvellously detailed.

  Ascham raised his eyebrows. ‘Dolls shot by arrows. So?’

  Cecil said, ‘Over the last fortnight, there have been three horrific murders here in London. A minister from a reformist parish in Lambeth, then a lieutenant from the Queen’s Body Guard, then Lord Radcliffe.’

  Ascham frowned. ‘Radcliffe? Wyatt’s co-conspirator?’

  ‘The very same,’ Cecil said. Radcliffe, like the more famous Thomas Wyatt, had been a well-known opponent of Elizabeth‘s predecessor, Queen Mary. ‘In each case, two days before each poor soul was killed, a rag doll in their likeness—with an arrow piercing its chest—was delivered to the palace for the attention of the queen.’

  Ascham frowned. ‘And in each subsequent murder, was the victim shot by an arrow?

  ‘Yes,’ the queen said.

  ‘Through the heart?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Ascham thought some more. ‘The bodies of these victims,’ he said. ‘How were they found? Were they put on some kind of public display?’

  The queen’s advisors swapped amazed glances.

  The queen did not. She had seen this sort of thing before.

  ‘This is correct,’ Cecil said. ‘Each washed up against the base of London Bridge the day after the matching doll was received. Each body— still with the arrow lodged in its chest— was tossed into the river somewhere upstream affixed to a wooden raft. In all three cases, the raft was too wide to pass through the arches of London Bridge, so it lodged against the piers and was found very publicly.’

  ‘And in every instance these dolls were received two days before the murder took place?’ Ascham asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Sir William St Loe said ‘It is like the murderer is taunting the queen by sending her a warning’.

  Ascham sighed. ‘All right, then, get on with it. Time is clearly of the essence. Show me the fourth doll. The one of the queen.’

  Cecil and Sir William St Loe once again exchanged shocked looks.

  The queen again seemed totally unsurprised.

  Ascham explained for them. ‘I was summoned at great haste, asked to be here within a day. You fear for the queen's life and you say she will be killed tomorrow. This means you received a doll in her image yesterday.’

  The fourth doll was the finest of the lot.

  It depicted Elizabeth in her coronation gown: with glorious gold stitching and edging and an exquisitely detailed crown. Even her red curls had been lovingly reproduced. It would have been a work of art, Ascham thought, were it not for the grim arrow jutting out of the doll’s chest.

  ‘One more query,’ Ascham said, holding the doll in his hand. ‘The killer does not ask for money, does he? He makes no attempt at extortion?’

  ‘No,’ Cecil said. ‘No message of any sort accompanied the delivery of any of the dolls.’ r />
  ‘Hmmm,’ Ascham said. ‘I assume your coronation festivities continue. What is planned?’

  In the three days since Elizabeth had been formally crowned Queen of England, a whirl of celebrations and fairs had been staged throughout London. They planned to last for four more days.

  Cecil said, ‘Only the biggest event of the entire week. At noon tomorrow, the queen is scheduled to partake in a flotilla on the Thames: a huge floating pageant that will pass through the whole of London. There will be forty boats surrounding the royal barge. Given the immense crowds we have seen at all the other celebratory events, it is expected that the shores of the river will be packed with citizens. It will be a gigantic affair and…I mean…well— ’

  ‘What he means, Roger,’ the queen said, ‘is that I will look a fool if I cancel it now.’

  ‘You will look far worse with an arrow in your heart,’ Ascham said.

  ‘An eventuality I am keen to avoid,’ the queen said. ‘Which is why I brought you here. I need you to find this killer and stop him before the flotilla commences at midday tomorrow.’

  Ascham looked at her hard. ‘You do realise what you are up against here? Nothing can stop the person who sent these dolls. He does not ask for money. He does not seek the release of a prisoner. He threatens to kill and then he kills. He wants to murder you. You can always cancel this flotilla.’

  ‘No I can’t.’ Elizabeth’s voice was firm, firmer than Ascham had ever heard it.

  It was not the voice of a girl anymore. It was the voice of a woman—a woman who had endured a harrowing time during the capricious rule of her mad half-sister, a time that had included a stint in the dreaded Tower of London.

  ‘These are dangerous times, Roger. After the schism in the church created by my father, Henry VIII, England has been a land divided. My father broke from the Catholic Church and my half-brother Edward follow his head as a Protestant ruler. But then came Mary, as staunch a Catholic as there ever was and ruthless in her evangelism. Half of England is stained with the blood of the many Protestants she executed during her reign. I hear that no sooner was she dead that the people on the streets started calling her “Bloody Mary”.

  ‘And now I, a Protestant woman, sit on the throne. And while every Catholic in England might wish me dead, it is my mission to make them love me. For I am not just the Queen of Protestant England, Roger. I am the Queen of all England and I would like that to be an England where Protestant and Catholic can live in harmony together.

  ‘To do that, I must make people of all faiths see that I am England. You taught me this. I cannot bow to anonymous issuers of threats, even if they have drawn blood before. This fellow wants to make England bend to his will and this I cannot allow. Little does he know that this Queen of England has more in her arsenal than just armies, ships and cannons. She has one more very potent weapon.’

  ‘And that is?’ Ascham asked.

  ‘You,’ the queen said. ‘One thing can stop this man, Roger: your brilliant mind. The flotilla will go ahead tomorrow. It must go ahead tomorrow. Which means you have twenty-four hours to find this assassin. My life depends on you, Roger.’

  3.

  Two hours later, Roger Ascham walked quickly down a dark, forbidding tunnel deep within the Tower of London, accompanied by a fresh-faced twenty-year-old ensign from the Queen’s Body Guard named Jonathan Hopgood.

  Ascham had asked the queen specifically for a young member of her Body Guard to accompany him on his investigations and so the youth had been assigned.

  Hopgood was most puzzled by the first address Ascham wished to visit.

  ‘Sir, if I might be so bold, why are we here?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s nice to know that some of my lessons left a mark on Her Majesty,’ Ascham said, maintaining his vigorous pace.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She kept the bodies of the victims,’ Ascham said. ‘When it was brought to her attention that the manner of the death of the second victim so closely resembled that of the first, she ordered the bodies be kept in the snow-filled cellar here in the Tower. She suspected something was amiss. Now that things have escalated, keeping them has proven to be very wise.’

  ‘You taught her to keep dead bodies?’

  Ascham cocked his head. ‘Let’s just say that on one memorable occasion, I showed her how the dead can reveal much to the living.’

  They came to a thick armoured door guarded by two troopers. One of the troopers opened it and Ascham felt a gust of chilly air waft out of the chamber within.

  He and Hopgood entered the space. It was actually a prison cell. Snow lined its floor.

  Three bodies lay in the snow, in a row. They lay face up and were still wearing the clothes they had been killed in—and each still had an arrow sticking out of its chest: the minister, the Body Guard and Lord Radcliffe.

  As Hopgood watched in fascination and horror, Ascham examined them closely for a full hour. At one stage, he removed the arrow from each corpse, pausing for a longer time as he examined the arrow that had killed the last victim, Lord Radcliffe.

  When he was done, he stood and frowned. ‘This is most alarming. We are dealing with a formidable and dangerous adversary.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Several reasons,’ Ascham said. ‘First, each victim was shot precisely through the heart. Second, the depth of each arrow-wound is about five inches; this suggests each victim was hit with substantial force. And third, all the arrows entered their victims’ chests at a downward angle.’

  Ascham nodded at Hopgood. ‘Every member of the Queen’s Body Guard is an accomplished archer—including yourself, I presume—so why don’t you tell me what this suggests?’

  Hopgood started, unprepared for a surprise examination. ‘Uh…er…the angle of the wound would suggest, I suppose, that the shot was fired from a considerable distance, because it arced downward through the air at the end of its flight.’

  ‘Well done,’ Ascham said. ‘A close-range arrow flies fast and horizontally. The arrow itself is also shorter. These are all longbow arrows, designed to be fired from range. They flew high and in an arc. But now consider the accuracy. Our assassin was able to shoot three people from long range directly in the heart. This means he is more than just an accomplished archer. He is an extremely skilled archer. A perfect assassin. A bowman who is more than capable of hitting the queen from almost any vantage point along the Thames during tomorrow‘s flotilla.’

  ‘By God…’ Hopgood gasped.

  Ascham strolled over to the dead bodies. ‘The arrows embedded in the first two bodies appear unremarkable, but the arrow that killed Lord Radcliffe’—Ascham held up the arrow in question—‘is very remarkable. It has a yellow-painted shaft, yellow feathers and a gold point.’

  As an archer, Hopgood knew what that meant immediately. ‘The killer is a champion.’ At archery tournaments, the champion of the day was commonly awarded a golden arrow as his trophy.

  Ascham said, ‘Usually, gilded arrows are inscribed with the name of the champion, plus the date and location of the tourney, but the markings on this arrow have been scratched off. The killer wanted to make a statement with this killing. Perhaps a statement as to how good he is. Have you ever partaken in an archery tournament, Hopgood?’

  ‘Of course, sir.’

  ‘And how did you fare?’

  ‘My best result was third at an event in Sussex.’

  Ascham gazed at the golden arrow. He was widely known to be an enthusiast of the bow.

  ‘I have participated in a few myself but, alas, I have never done any better than reaching the final eight. I have often said that archery contests should also have an element of speed to them. To be able to pull back one’s arrow with all the time in the world does not reflect a real battlefield scenario. In battle, it is not just accuracy that matters, but also speed: the speed with which one raises their bow, nocks an arrow to the string with shaking fingers, and then fires it accurately. But on this matt
er, the world doesn’t care for my opinion.‘

  Ascham nodded at the dead Body Guard, still dressed in his distinctive scarlet coat. ‘Who was he?’

  ‘He was sir Peter Cavendish, Lieutenant of the Royal Body Guard, second in command to Sir William St Loe.’

  ‘I would imagine that the role of Captain of the Guard is largely ceremonial one while that of Lieutenant is quite a task. The Captain stands beside the queen while the Lieutenant does all the work behind the scenes, no?’

  ‘That would be correct, sir,’ Hopgood said.

  ‘Tell me, while Elizabeth was only formally crowned a few days ago, she has been in charge for a few months, is that not so?’

  ‘That is right.’

  ‘Did she purge the court of Queen Mary’s advisors?’

  ‘Not all but many of them.’

  ‘What about Catholic members of her personal Body Guard?’

  ‘She didn’t have to remove them,’ Hopgood said. ‘They all resigned immediately after Queen Mary died.’

  ‘All of them?’

  ‘Yes, sir. All twenty of them. Although…’

  ‘Although what?’

  ‘Well, one Catholic member of the Guard, Silas Maynard, resigned a few months before that, about three weeks before Mary died. We were given no reason. One day he was there, the next he was gone.’

  Ascham said, ‘Hopgood, do me a favour, will you? Go back to Whitehall and check the records of the Royal Body Guard. Find out for me if any of the Catholic Body Guards ever won an archery contest and when they did.’

  Ascham made to leave the grim chamber.

  ‘Where are you going, sir?’ Hopgood asked.

  ‘I,’ Ascham said, ‘am going shopping for dolls.’

  4.

  For the rest of the afternoon, Ascham scoured the markets and alleyways of London, visiting the stores of toy and doll makers.