In Time of the Poisoned Queen

by Paul Doherty

Genres: Historical Fiction; Historical Mysteries; Traditional Mysteries

Synopsis

With so many enemies, how will Nicholas Segalla unravel the web of mysteries? Nicholas Segalla visits Tudor England once again in Paul Doherty's gripping mystery, In the Time of the Poisoned Queen. Perfect for fans of Susanna Gregory and C. J. Sansom. 1558 was a year of sinister and bloody conspiracy in England. Deserted by her husband, Philip of Spain, Queen Mary faces an ever-tightening circle of conspiracy and deceit. Rumours and whispers abound that she, like her first minister Reginald Cardinal Pole, is being slowly murdered by a subtle poison. There are many who would benefit from Mary's death: Catherine de' Medici, Queen of France and 'Mistress of the Poisons'; beautiful Mary, Queen of Scots, heiress presumptive to the throne in the eyes of English Catholics; Pope Paul IV surveys the silken threads of treachery from his perch in Rome; and the Queen's own half-sister, Elizabeth, who takes council from her 'little wizard' William Cecil. Who is behind the letters signed by the 'Four Evangelists'? What is the secret concealed in the phrase 'Mark 15.34'? What does a verse from the Gospels predict about the future succession of England? Nicholas Segalla, a mysterious scholar and diplomat, must thread his way through this web of Byzantine intrigue. What readers are saying about Paul Doherty: 'A cracker, full of twists and turns, with an overarching mystery of who exactly is Segalla' 'Paul Doherty's books are a joy to read ' ' The sounds and smells of the period seem to waft from the pages of [Paul Doherty's] books'

Release date: June 11, 2013

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 180

Sample

Nicholas Segalla mysteries
(as Ann Dukthas)
A Time for the Death of a King
The Prince Lost to Time
The Time of Murder at Mayerling
In the Time of the Poisoned Queen

Hugh Corbett mysteries
Satan in St Mary’s
The Crown in Darkness
Spy in Chancery
The Angel of Death
The Prince of Darkness
Murder Wears a Cowl
Assassin in the Greenwood
Song of a Dark Angel
Satan’s Fire
The Devil’s Hunt
The Demon Archer
The Treason of the Ghosts
Corpse Candle
The Magician’s Death
The Waxman Murders
Nightshade
The Mysterium

Canterbury Tales by Night
An Ancient Evil
A Tapestry of Murders
A Tournament of Murders
Ghostly Murders
The Hangman’s Hymn
A Haunt of Murder

Egyptian mysteries
The Mask of Ra
The Horus Killings
The Anubis Slayings
The Slayers of Seth
The Assassins of Isis
The Poisoner of Ptah
The Spies of Sobeck

Sir Roger Shallot mysteries
The White Rose Murders
The Poisoned Chalice
The Grail Murders
A Brood of Vipers
The Gallows Murders
The Relic Murders

Mathilde of Westminster mysteries
The Cup of Ghosts
The Poison Maiden
The Darkening Glass

Templar
The Templar
The Templar Magician

Mahu (The Akhenaten trilogy)
An Evil Spirit of the West
The Season of the Hyaena
The Year of the Cobra

Constantine the Great
Domina
Murder Imperial
The Song of the Gladiator
The Queen of the Night
Murder’s Immortal Mask

Kathryn Swinbrooke mysteries
(as C L Grace)
Shrine of Murders
Eye of God
Merchant of Death
Book of Shadows
Saintly Murders
Maze of Murders
Feast of Poisons

As Vanessa Alexander
The Love Knot
Of Love and War
The Loving Cup

Mysteries of Alexander the Great
(as Anna Apostolou)
A Murder in Macedon
A Murder in Thebes

Alexander the Great
The House of Death
The Godless Man
The Gates of Hell

Matthew Jankyn mysteries
(as P C Doherty)
The Whyte Harte
The Serpent Amongst the Lilies

Standalone Titles
The Rose Demon
The Haunting
The Soul Slayer
The Plague Lord
The Death of a King
Prince Drakulya
Lord Count Drakulya
The Fate of Princes
Dove Amongst the Hawks
The Masked Man
The Last of Days

Non-fiction
The Mysterious Death of Tutankhamun
The Strange Death of Edward II
Alexander the Great: The Death of A God
The Great Crown Jewels Robbery of 1303
The Secret Life of Elizabeth I
The Death of the Red King



Ann Dukthas entered the lounge of the Roebuck Hotel. She ordered a dry white wine and sat on a comfortable chair in front of the roaring fire. The lounge was empty except for a family who had apparently travelled down for a midweek stay whilst visiting the sights in London and southern Essex. They were bemoaning the swift seasonal change, and Ann could see why. The weather had turned abruptly nasty. Winds lashed the latticed windows with rain. Ann was glad to be indoors. The journey from Central London by car had been hectic, the roads congested; there had been some hold-up virtually every five miles. The Roebuck came as a welcome relief: as usual, her stay was paid for by her enigmatic friend Nicholas Segalla. Ann did not know where he lived or what he did. Segalla was undoubtedly wealthy, able to pay for the best. Always dressed in the finest suits, shirts, and shoes, Segalla was discreet, not ostentatious. He stayed out of the limelight, always alone and aloof. For some strange reason he had chosen her to share his great secret. At first, Ann had found his claims difficult to accept, but Segalla had produced the evidence. He was a man who could never die. An individual who had moved amongst, and worked for, the great ones of history. Time and again Ann had seen the evidence: scattered references from the chanceries of Europe, eloquent testimony on how Segalla had worked for princes, dukes, kings, prime ministers, and popes. As Segalla had once explained to Ann:

“If you hold power you must exercise it to protect yourself. Governments do it today with their CIA, MI5, or KGB. Ann, times may change, fashions come and go, but human nature stays the same. Be they princes or popes, they always need their agents, their secret men on whom they can utterly rely. I am, I was, one of these.”

On one occasion Ann had asked him why. Segalla, enigmatic as ever, had replied that he had been condemned by an ancient curse to wander the face of the earth. He could never grow old, he would never die. Apart from that, Segalla refused to elaborate. Nevertheless, he produced convincing evidence for his claim, whilst Ann, a professional historian, had done her own research without exciting the suspicions of colleagues. Slowly but surely she had come across references, be they in the Public Record Office in Chancery Lane, the Vatican archives in Rome, the Archives Nationales in Paris, or the manuscripts of the Escorial palace in Spain. All alluded to Nicholas Segalla, sometimes a monk, other times a priest, a Jesuit, a soldier. A man cloaked in secrecy. The manuscripts described him as “well beloved,” “much trusted,” “our most loyal clerk.” Sometimes he was mentioned as carrying dispatches or being sent on a journey “pro negotiis secretis,” on secret affairs. A successful man who won the trust of those he served, he was rewarded not with land but with gold, silver, and precious jewels.

Ann had learnt never to question Segalla. He was generous to a fault, charming yet sad. Ann wondered if she could ever be attracted to a man she knew so little about. It was like studying a fascinating oil painting in the National Gallery: there were impressions, colour, texture, but, in the end, these only intrigued her rather than resolved anything. Segalla came and went as he pleased; only once had he ever hinted why he had chosen her:

“Something is about to happen,” he confessed. “History is going to change, and in a way you can never imagine.” He smiled shyly. “But, there again, I’ve thought that before. Perhaps the reason I speak to you is prosaic. I’ve become lonely. I want to confess: purge myself of the secrets I hold. I wander into a bookshop and buy some historical study resolving a great mystery from history. I feel the urge to respond and explain what is wrong, or right, in its conclusions.” He stared at her, as if convincing himself that she could be trusted. “And, of course, like everyone, I dream of the people I’ve met, those I’ve served. My relationships with them were intense: Mary of Scotland, Elizabeth of England, Catherine de’ Medici of France, Marie Antoinette, Victoria. They were people, flesh and blood, with dreams and hopes. They trusted me. Sometimes they spoke to me as if I were their confessor. The years may pass, but memory doesn’t dull. Death and the passing of the years do not draw a line in the dust. Relationships can survive the grave.” He tapped the side of his head. “Sometimes I feel, yes, I feel like a haunted house.”

“And I have to exorcise you?” Ann asked.

Segalla smiled, running slender fingers through his thick black hair. Ann had known him for three years. The passage of time always made its presence felt but not to Segalla. He could suffer cold or flu like anyone else, but he never changed.

“Why?” Ann had asked. “You are a man, vulnerable to poison, stiletto, the sword, the dagger in the dark. Surely many a crossbow bolt or bullet has been fired at you?”

Segalla had laughed. He’d taken off his jacket, loosened the gold cufflinks and pulled back the sleeve of his silk shirt. His arm was brown with a mass of scars from shoulder to wrist.

“Death is not the only agony, Ann.” He ran his finger along the pink marks and scars. “There are worse fates. Oh, I’ve been shot and stabbed. I’ve had garrotte strings round my neck. I’ve been lured into marsh and quagmire, thrown overboard from a pitching ship, cast into an icy river outside Moscow. I’ve known the agony of fire and sword, of rat-infested dungeons, and the terrifying darkness of oubliettes, yet I never die. I go to the limit. I have been in that twilight zone between death and life. I have hung ’twixt heaven and hell, between sky and earth, looking for the great darkness, yet I never travel into it.”

“And do you want to?” Ann asked.

“Sometimes, yes: especially when you see those you love, those you’ve grown accustomed to, leave. I was reading that doctors are producing drugs to make man live longer.” Segalla laughed softly. “But does longer life mean happiness?”

“Are you happy?” Ann asked.

“I am happy to be working out my salvation,” Segalla replied evasively. “But, like any man or woman, I have my fears. I do not have supernatural powers. I have nightmares, of being locked up in a dungeon, forgotten as the years pass.”

“But surely some of those you have met in history suspected your secret?”

“Oh yes,” Segalla replied. “There are those, the lords of the black arts, princes, men of power who would have loved to have seized me and force out my secret.”

Ann picked up her glass of white wine and stared into the fire. She remembered that conversation with Segalla from when they had flown back from Vienna, one of the few occasions when he had spoken about his past and his great secret. Segalla had placed such trust in her that Ann, a Catholic, had sworn a great oath never to reveal or allude to it. She also suspected that Segalla kept a close eye on her and, in his own cryptic manner, ensured she kept the secrets he revealed.

Segalla always acted the same way. Ann would be invited to this city or that town and given a manuscript, written in the form of a novel, which always probed and revealed some great secret of history. In London it had been the murder of Lord Darnley, Mary Stuart’s husband. In Paris the fate of the lost Dauphin, Louis XVII. In Vienna the truth about Prince Rudolph’s supposed suicide at the hunting lodge of Mayerling. Ann sipped at her wine. So why Essex? What had happened here? What was so special? She was a historian, but, for the life of her, she could not recall any great mystery. True, there was the city or, further north, the great Tudor palace of Hatfield.

“Do you like that wine?”

Ann started and looked round. Segalla was seated at a table just to her right. He rose, came across, and shook her hand.

“How long have you been here?”

Ann saw the raindrops on his black woollen overcoat, and an umbrella in the stand near the door still dripped with water.

“Just a few minutes,” he apologized.

“Don’t you trust me, Nicholas?”

Segalla unbuttoned his coat, threw it across an empty chair, and sat down beside her.

“Old habits die hard, Ann. Every place I go into, I always stand or sit just within the door. Is it safe? I ask. If I want to leave, how can I? Is there an enemy here? It’s like a game.” He lifted his hand and called the waiter over.

“You’ve eaten lunch?”

Ann nodded.

“Then I’ll just join you in a glass of wine.”

Segalla opened his small leather briefcase, took out a manilla envelope, and pushed it across the table. He pulled back his cuffs and studied the face of his Rolex watch.

“It’s two o’clock. We’ll dine at eight. Yes?”

Ann agreed. Segalla tapped the package.

“There’ll be time enough to read that.”

“What is it about?” Ann picked the envelope up.

Segalla paused whilst the waiters served the white wine.

“It’s about a murder.”

“Of whom?”

“Mary Tudor.”

Ann looked up in amazement. “But she was riddled with disease, anxiety, and phobias. Her brain and body just gave out!”

“Mary Tudor was a remarkable lady,” Segalla replied. “A great queen married to the wrong king. A woman of outstanding courage and tenacity. She was barely forty when she was murdered. And” – he picked his wineglass up – “she was murdered in the most subtle and cunning way.”

“But why have you brought me here?”

Segalla lifted the wineglass in a silent toast, then plucked a folded copy of the Times from his pocket and pushed it across the table. The article he’d ringed at the foot of the front page merely announced how archaeologists at Sinistrel Manor in Essex had discovered a secret room with a skeleton inside. The evidence indicated the person had been murdered some four hundred years earlier and its corpse hidden there.

“Tomorrow morning,” Segalla said, “pathologists are going to study the remains. I want to be there.”

“You knew the victim?” Ann asked.

“Aye, but, unlike Hamlet’s Yorick, I have no sweet memories. The remains belong to the assassin responsible for Mary Tudor’s murder.”



The year 1558, according to all the chroniclers, letter-writers, and gossip collectors, was an ominous one. At night, flame-tailed comets and fiery stars seared the heavens; they were seen as the precursors of war, famine, and pestilence. The year had been ushered in by a freezing winter which lasted so long people muttered that God had forgotten spring. It was a time of change: the English had been driven out of Calais, and the Spanish fought to maintain their footholds in the Low Countries. Kings and princes came and went. Popular discontent seethed from the borders of Scotland to the wild rushing rivers of Germany. Religion was a cause of war, not peace. Every man believed that God spoke to him. Across western Europe, death by burning was now a common sight, the stench of charred flesh mingling with the odours of the cities. In England, Catholics burnt Protestants. In Germany, Protestants burnt those more radical than themselves. In Spain, Catholics burnt Catholics who could not agree with them. All of Europe was a maelstrom. Men waited to see what further horrors would emerge.

In her secret chamber at the palace of Fontainebleu, Catherine de’ Medici lay face down on the floor, pulling back a secret shutter so she could watch her husband make love to the voluptuous Diane de Poitiers. Catherine, fair-haired and sallow-faced, watched intently as her royal husband and the father of her children squandered his seed on a woman Catherine dismissed as nothing better than a whore. She lay, breath held, and watched the twisting, writhing figures until the lovemaking was complete. Henry lay on his back staring up at the ceiling, not even suspecting that his wife, the Italian woman, was watching his every move. Henry turned on the bed and grasped Diane’s long, silky hair. Catherine pulled the shutter closed. The Queen could not decide which was the more hurtful, the lovemaking or the subsequent pleasantries. After all, Henry was a beast of a man who had drunk deep of the pleasures of life. Catherine had come to accept this. The more Henry immersed himself in silken fripperies, the more power seeped into her own hands. Catherine sighed and clambered to her feet, brushing the dust from her dress. She smiled at the six ladies-in-waiting, her companions in conspiracy, chosen for both their beauty and their total loyalty to her.

“If I am going to spy on my husband,” she announced drily, “I should at least expect a clean floor!”

She walked over, sat down in the heavily carved, high-backed chair, and glanced at the hour candle.

“He’ll be here soon,” she murmured. “See, the flame has nearly reached the fourteenth ring.”

Catherine watched the flame dance. Her face had been described as saintly, with large, lustrous eyes, smooth skin, and voluptuous lips, but these didn’t betray her emotions. A closed book was Catherine de’ Medici, Queen of France: her woman’s mind teemed with plot and counterplot. Yet she hid her anxiety well. Catherine was Italian: she could control today, but what about tomorrow? She had ideas, ambitions, and dreams for herself, her sons, her church, and France. Yet she required guarantees. She needed the curtain to the future pushed back to afford a glimpse of what tomorrow might bring. Catherine stiffened at a footfall outside followed by a gentle rap on the door. One of the ladies-in-waiting rose and went towards the door: she curtsied as a black-garbed, deep-hooded figure walked quickly into the room.

Michel de Notredame, or Michael Nostradamus as de’ Medici called him, was neither a prince of Church nor a prince of State. Nevertheless, the ladies knew their mistress revered this man as a prophet.

“Madame.” Nostradamus bowed.

“You may all go,” Catherine declared. Her ladies-in-waiting rose, curtsied, and swept from the room. Once the door closed behind them, Catherine waved her prophet to one of the vacated seats. He sat down, pulling back his hood. Nostradamus had a pleasing face, one which intrigued Catherine. He had close-cropped hair, a large broad nose, high cheekbones, and a neatly clipped moustache and beard, but it was his eyes which always fascinated Catherine: large and dark, sometimes hard as flint, at other times full of life. He was fifty-four years of age but looked not yet forty. A doctor, the son of a Jewish convert, Nostradamus had come to Catherine’s attention not only because of his ability to survive the plague in the towns where he had worked, but because of his uncanny ability to divine the future.

“You seek my advice, madame?”

“I rely on your advice, Michael.” The Queen leaned forward. “You have used the mirror?”

Nostradamus nodded. “Last night, madame. I lit the candle and watched the flame grow.”

“And what did you see?”

“Great changes, madame. In France and in England.”

“For me?” Catherine asked greedily.

“For you, madame, a time of great power.”

“Tell me again,” Catherine urged.

“The young lion will overcome the older one in a field of combat and single fight. He will pierce his eyes in their golden cage. Two wounds in one, then he dies a cruel death.”

“And that will usher in my time of power?”

“Yes, madame, but you must be careful.”

Catherine’s fingers flew to her lips. She kissed the magical stone in the ring on her finger. Nostradamus would tell her his prophecies but never explain them. He was diplomatic and cunning enough to leave that to her. Nevertheless, when she had heard that prophecy, Catherine had thrilled with excitement. She was certain, deep in her heart, that the old lion was her husband; for wasn’t Henry’s personal sign a golden lion rampant? And the young lion who killed him? Would that be one of his sons? If she had been alone, Catherine would have closed her eyes and moaned in pleasure. Her sons she controlled. She was their king, their father, their mother, their tutor and confessor.

“And it will happen soon?” she insisted.

“Within months,” Nostradamus replied. “But, madame, how many I cannot tell you.”

“And what else have you seen?” Catherine asked.

“As I have said, madame, a time of great change. Within two years all the rulers of Europe will fall.”

Catherine’s hands clasped tighter.

“Every one?” she whispered.

“Every one, madame, except you!”

Catherine closed her eyes and breathed out a long, lingering sigh. If Nostradamus was correct, and there was no reason to disbelieve him, what would it mean? That old fanatic in Rome, Pope Paul IV? If he died, who would succeed him? A Frenchman? Someone she could control? And the emperor Charles V? That king-monk who lurked in his shadowy chambers in some monastery listening to his clocks instead of controlling his far-flung empire. And in France? Henry II: If he died he would be succeeded by her eldest son, Francis, married to Mary the the Scottish princess, the only woman in Europe with a claim to thrones of three countries: France, England, and Scotland.

“And England’s r. . .