Free The Poyson Garden by Karen Harper Page B

higgledy-piggledy, as one always did near a great house. But as Hatfield had faded from proper royal use, the village had too. Its half-timbered homes and shops were tattered or tumbled, and many--
    She screamed. The first arrow winged its way close past her head. She could feel its breath. Another followed farther on. She yanked Griffin's reins, and he reared. She held on, tried to turn him, shouting to Jenks.
    "Arrows! An attack!"
    Jenks charged his mount the way she pointed. "No!" she cried. "I can't lose you. Not like Lord Harry lost Will!"
    But he dismounted and ran headlong, darting, ducking low. He disappeared behind a tall stone wall. As she kept low and sidestepped Griffin away, Thomas Pope and two others thundered up with Bea coming along behind. Blanche Parry rode over, her face white with fear.
    "What is it, Your Grace?" Blanche asked. "Why did you scream?"
    "Help Jenks," she cried to Sir Thomas, pointing. "Someone was shooting arrows at us."
    They would know too much if she told them more. But at that moment Jenks came dragging two ragged-looking boys by their collars out from behind the wall. Both held children's bows made of bent willow sticks and vines. Thomas Pope shouted a laugh and dismounted to retrieve an arrow in the grass, a stick crudely fletched with chicken feathers and no sharpened point at all.
    "They didn't mean to be shooting at you," Jenks said, out of breath. "They say they didn't even see you, Your Grace." She noted that Thomas Pope had begun his usual slow burn he suffered each time her people so much as alluded to her royalty, when her sister's staff pointedly called her only my lady. Elizabeth nodded, flushed with embarrassment--and anger.
    "Shall we put them in the stocks," Sir Thomas inquired, his voice mocking, "or send them to the Tower, or use the iron-maiden torment, my lady?" His jowls bounced when he laughed; she detested the man. "Yet I cannot help but
    think," he went on, playing it to the hilt, "that your bridling your own runaway temperament to go riding about hither and yon would solve this ... uh, childish problem."
    Elizabeth glared down at him from her saddle. "Let the lads go with no penalty," she said. "It took me by surprise, that is all."
    "But it could have been something, aye, it could," Sir Thomas pursued. "As I said, you'll not go dashing off ahorse without me again." No doubt to show he ignored her pardoning the lads, he broke their bows over his knee and soundly cuffed both before shoving them back toward the village. Elizabeth wanted to protest, yet she sat silent in shock. Though arrows had not struck her, sharp, instant terror had pierced her heart. She was sick to death of living in fear and would have no more of it.
    "Jenks," she said out of the side of her mouth as she turned back toward the village and he, as ever, cantered first at her side, "you must go see your father tomorrow, as you have done afore."
    "But you heard the Pope," he said, thankfully not turning his head her way as the others came to ride behind them. "We can't go off somewhere else when--"
    "Listen," she hissed. "Not us, you. Under pretense of seeing your father again, you will ride back to Wivenhoe and tell Meg Milligrew I need an herbalist and would have her just appear at my door selling some such. And she must not let on where she's been before, never that she knew Mary Boleyn. And then you must find those Queen's Country Players somewhere near Colchester and tell Ned Topside I have need of a clown and will pay him well. And if you must to convince him, tell him who I really am and that I admire his cleverness. And on your way go by the village back there, for I shall give you a coin for each of those boys and tell them someday I shall want fine archers in my armies and nav--"
    She left off midword as Thomas Pope cantered up to her side and Bea appeared on her other to edge Jenks out. "As I said, my Lady Elizabeth," Sir Thomas intoned, out of breath and frowning at her like a