Being useless, I let my attention wander over the scene, and I saw the hilt of the dagger lying on the floor near the door. I bent to retrieve it. It was what is called a sword-hilt dagger, as the hilt resembles the cross-hilt of a sword, with a disk-shaped pommel. The blade had snapped off about an inch below the hilt, leaving the smith’s hallmark visible where it was stamped on the blade, a triangular shield holding an imperial crown. The pommel was made of red jasper, and was carved in a strange design: an arm with a wing where the shoulder should be, and carrying a mace with a tip that resembled a crown. I tried to read it as a rebus: wing-arm-mace-crown. Mace-crown-arm-feathers. Flying-arm-club. Clearly, I was misreading the message, whatever it was.
I was still puzzling over this when a compact yellow-haired man arrived wearing that very design embroidered into his doublet: Viscount Broughton of Hart Ness, the husband of the victim, and the Queen’s favorite. As soon as he came into the room, all conversation ceased. He approached his wife, hesitated a moment, and then took her hand. If there were affection or concern in his heart, it did not show on his face. Instead, he was very pale, and was no doubt considering what this would mean regarding his relationship with the Queen.
His wife’s life had been spared because she was wearing her corset, as did all well-bred ladies of fashion. The busk, usually a piece of wood or bone, was a wedge-shaped stiffener worn at the front of the corset, and intended to flatten the bosom to conform to the dictates of current fashion. I do not know why fashion insisted that women alter their natural shapes in order to display chests as flat as those of young boys, but fashion saved Lady Broughton’s life that morning, as did the fact that she could afford a high-quality steel busk, which being more flexible than wood was more comfortable.
We were all pretending not to watch Lord and Lady Broughton when a sergeant of the Yeoman Archers arrived, carrying a half-pike so as to skewer any available traitors. He demanded information, which was given by all the ladies at once. No sooner had he sorted all this out than his lieutenant appeared, his hand on the hilt of his sword, and he had to sort through the clamor all over again. The lieutenant was just beginning to make sense of this when his captain arrived, and it all had to be gone through once more.
“Her majesty is safe.” The captain wanted to reassure everyone on that point. “The house is being searched, and the ruffian will be found.”
“He came in from out-of-doors,” I said. “His hat and coat were wet from the rain.” I pointed. “He ran that way, probably to flee the lodge.”
The captain looked at the lieutenant, who looked at the sergeant. “That next room leads outside, ay,” he said. “We make sure the door is locked on our nightly patrols.”
I handed the captain the hilt of the broken dagger. “This is the knife that broke,” I said. “I know not where the blade has gone—someone took it.”
The captain examined the dagger, saw the device on the red jasper pommel, and looked up at Broughton in cold surmise. He seemed about to say something, then decided against it. He turned and left the room, followed by the other Yeoman Archers, and he followed the assassin into the room with skittle tables. I followed the gang of Archers along with some of the remaining gentlemen. It seemed the excitement in Lady Broughton’s room was over.
From the skittle room, we passed through a sturdy oaken door to the outside. The rain had died down to a soft mist that touched my face with cool fingers. The air smelled of broken, beaten vegetation.
A wide gravel drive circled around the house, and on the far side was a garden. A stooped gardener, in big boots, cloak, and hat, was attempting to repair storm damage to the garden.
“You, there!” called the captain. “Did you see anyone leave by this door?”
Raindrops slid from the sagging brim of his hat as the gardener straightened. He was an old man with a long beard that stretched out over his chest in wet serpentine fingers.
“Ay, sir!” he said. “He asked me to hold his horse.”
The captain quickly ascertained that the man had ridden up, paid the gardener a crown to hold his horse, and then gone into the lodge. A few minutes later he’d come out, mounted his horse, and trotted away, in the direction of the gate.
“We must pursue him, sir!” said the lieutenant, stoutly.
“Hue and cry!” said one of the gentlemen.
“Not just yet.” The captain turned to the gardener. “What kind of horse did the fellow ride?”
“A chestnut, sir.”
The captain turned to his lieutenant. “Choose a party to ride in pursuit. Good riders, good horses. We should only need a half dozen or so. I will report to her majesty.”
“Hue and cry!” shouted the gentleman again, and they all rushed off. I looked down the gravel drive in the direction the cavalier had fled. The pursuers would ride two leagues through the forest to the main gate, and then have to decide whether the cavalier had turned right, to Selford, or to the left, for Blacksykes and the north.
That was assuming the cavalier took the road at all, instead of riding off through the woods to some hidden destination of his own.
I approached the gardener. “Father,” said I. “You say the horse was a chestnut?”
“Yes, sir.” He leaned on his rake. “What they call a liver chestnut, very dark, more brown than red.”
“Did you get a good look at him?”
“Nay, sir. His collar was up, and he wore his hat pulled low over his face. I think he may have had a beard, sir.”
A beard he shared with most of the men in the kingdom. “Did you mark his voice, father? Where he might have come from?”
“He talked somewhat like they of Bonille,” said the gardener. “Like most of them at the big house.”
Indeed, most of those at court tended to soften their consonants in the style of Bonille, whether they were born there or not.
“And the tack?”
“Finely made, sir. A saddle such as they use here for the chase, brown leather. There were steel roundels on the breast collar. Medallions like, for decoration.”
“Of any particular pattern?”
“They had like rays on them, sir.”
“Any other ornaments on the saddle?”
“Nay, I can think of none.”
“The leather was not tooled or ornamented?”
“Nay. It was plain, but well made, and nearly new. Brown leather, as I said.”
“The bridle likewise?”
“Ay.”
I supposed I could continue to ask about the girth and the stirrups and the bit, but I was already feeling this line of inquiry was hopeless. And then I remembered the crown-and-shield hallmark on the broken dagger, and I felt a flush of icy water flood my veins and shock me into sudden alertness.
“Was there a mark on the saddle? A hallmark, stamped on the saddle by a maker?”
The old man’s eyes brightened. “Ay, sir! There was the figure of a bird stamped on the flap, near the rider’s left knee. I noticed it when I helped his foot into the stirrup.”
“A hawk? Eagle?”
“Nay, sir. A small bird. A sparrow, may be, or warbler or some such.”
I gave the gardener a silver crown. “Thank you, father. That is very useful.”
He touched the brim of his hat. “I’m very grateful, sir. It’s a proper gentleman you are.”
I grinned at him. “I’m no gentleman at all!” I returned to the lodge.
A pair of Yeoman Archers stood guard outside the withdrawing room where Lady Broughton was undergoing an examination by the royal physician. Broughton leaned on the wall of the next room, pensive eyes fixed on the floorboards, his heel kicking idly at the wainscoting.
I returned to the parlor, where cards were scattered on the tables, and chessmen stood abandoned in their ranks and files. Events had overleaped the boundaries of the game, and only a piece that had already left the board could possibly be of use. Small groups of people clustered together and spoke in low voices. I saw the Roundsilvers with some of their friends by the fireplace, and I walked to join them, standing politely and waiting my turn to speak.