Free The Fyre Mirror by Karen Harper

for some reason he would never grasp, Elizabeth of England cared deeply for his well-being. It was his amazing, grand good fortune of all time, even more precious to him than his gift to draw and paint people.
    “I do admit at least, Your Grace, I reviled him all the way back to my tent with every foul, cesspool Italian curse word I ever knew.”
    She smiled stiffly. “Then, if that was your only retribution, I may need your services, not only to paint a portrait or sketch a tent, but to help Cecil and me with the investigation into Kendale’s and the boy’s deaths. But best you go now. Find Jenks before you go up on the roof, for I must attend the memorial service I have ordered in the chapel. As he bowed and headed for the door, she called after him, “Gil, one thing more.”
    He turned back to face her. His heart began to pound again.
    “Why did you return from Italy two years earlier than expected? I suggested five years of study, and you agreed to that.”
    He almost blurted out the truth—all of it, painful and terrible. But instead what came out was, “Because I yearned for England and to serve you.”
    The corners of her mouth tilted into a hint of a smile. “And I am glad you are back.” She stared at him strangely, with misty eyes. “In a few days,” she said, “I shall pose for you and the two others, and then we shall see what you have learned.”
    He bowed again, turned, and went out, but his hair prickled along the nape of his neck as if he’d been out in a field when lightning struck. She had stared at him so eerily, as if she’d seen a ghost. In his mind’s eye, he could almost see one himself, which haunted him. It was Kendale, screaming and burning as if he were trapped in hell itself, and Gil regretted that.
    After the memorial in the chapel, in which the queen had the minister give a little speech for calm among her courtiers, she was escorted out by both the Earl of Arundel and the Earl of Leicester. During the short service she’d been agonizing about who the arsonist-murderer could be. But it was only when Arundel began to comment about the large size of Kendale’s coffin that she recalled something else: Arundel had once called Master Kendale a “flap-mouthed magpie full of bombast” and urged her not to include him among her official painters at court. And so their host himself, who surely knew each stride of the Nonsuch park and grounds, must have held some sort of grudge against Kendale.
    “My lord Arundel,” she said as they walked across the half-shadowed courtyard toward her apartments, “though none of us like to speak ill of the dead, pray tell why you advised against my employing Master Kendale for my official portrait.”
    “The man turned out to be trouble, did he not? Rumors are flying about his relationship to the dead boy, he argued with your other artists, was full of braggadocio, I hear, and then did something to get himself killed.”
    Frowning at that cruel assessment, she merely inclined her head, biting back the urge to rebuke him. Had he just revealed more about himself than about Kendale?
    “The reason I advised against Kendale, Your Grace,” Arundel went on, “was that, quite simply, the man was a baseborn braggart, just trading on his talent.”
    Elizabeth bit her lower lip and let him talk, however much she wanted to tell him that she fully intended to encourage such men who traded on their talent to serve queen and kingdom, no matter what their social rank. But if what Arundel was saying of Kendale’s birth was true, it flew in the face of Kendale’s rejection of Gil for being baseborn and trading on his talent. Evidently, Kendale not only had hidden his own humble beginnings but dared to lord it over those who reminded him of his past.
    “You see,” Arundel continued with a sharp sniff, “Kendale did a portrait of me about ten years ago that was passable but not inspired. He made me look dour, actually, stuffy and old-fashioned.”
    “Imagine