Read To Shield the Queen Online
Authors: Fiona Buckley
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective
To Shield the Queen (19 page)
The outer bailey was presided over by Mistress Ann Mason, who lived in a harassed whirl of household duties, disobedient dogs, too many children and not nearly enough staff, and tried to protect the castle keep, represented by Master Leonard Mason. Leonard Mason cared for books and languages and abstruse scientific concepts to the exclusion of all else. From what his wife let fall and from what I observed myself that day, it seemed clear that he preferred to keep as detached as possible from all matters of the house, the land and his own children, and spent most of his time virtually barricaded into his study where he worked with his books and drawings. If he wanted
exercise, he walked or rode alone and often ate by himself in the study.
It was no wonder, I thought, that Mistress Mason seemed so overburdened and the estate so neglected. More was left to her than she could possibly do, and the best fertiliser for any field is its owner’s eye. Crops fail easily when the farmer pays no heed to them.
Although I learned so much about Lockhill and the Masons, I discovered nothing else. I trailed my lures, but the hawk would not fly. Not one word would Ann Mason speak concerning any previous guests. I asked after Will Johnson by name, saying that he had been a friend of my husband, and that I believed he had recently passed through this district, with a companion who had a fine piebald horse, but she showed no sign of recognition; I asked if unexpected visitors were frequent and she said no. I ran out of ideas.
I also became very uneasy. The smith had been quite specific. A party of three men, of whom one had ginger hair and another riding a piebald, had been coming to this house. He could have been wrong, perhaps. Maybe they had taken another track and bypassed the manor house. In that case, they probably weren’t going in the Windsor direction after all. I wished I could consult a map.
At supper, blessedly quiet because the children had taken theirs earlier (I had heard them taking it, in their own room, and shuddered at the sound of their table behaviour), Leonard Mason joined us. This was evidently unusual and he was only doing it to be polite to me. I asked him about “my husband’s friends,” expressing surprise that they had not called here. I received the same null answer. They had not been seen.
Mason, however, did show an interest in my family in another way. He asked my maiden name and on
learning that I was a Faldene, said he had met my Uncle Herbert in London. “Even a recluse like myself must occasionally bestir himself to do such things as sell wool,” he said. “I was haggling over my fleeces and your uncle was doing the same thing. I found that he and I also have shares in the same merchant vessel. Indeed, we have a number of things in common.” He gazed at me, speculatively.
It was Ann Mason who said, in a voice both warm and timid, “The Faldene family have a loyalty still to the old religion. Perhaps Mistress Blanchard feels the same.” Her husband frowned at her and she turned pink, but added bravely, “There is no harm. There is no secret about our own worship, after all. If Mistress Blanchard belongs to our flock, surely we should make her welcome. Were you not wondering the same thing yourself?” she asked her husband. Ann Mason was clearly one of those gentle ladies who nevertheless turn into steel when it is a matter of their deepest beliefs.
“I confess I was,” Leonard Mason said, “though I would have approached the matter with more caution. Well, Mistress Blanchard. Please speak for yourself!”
“I follow the Anglican religion,” I said, “but I mind my own business.” I hesitated. I badly wanted the Masons to feel they could trust me. If they did, they might talk more freely. “The law’s the law,” I said, “but I must admit I sometimes miss the old mass. I was brought up with it, after all.” It went against the grain to say it, but I forced the words out. “I believe my uncle and aunt still hear it,” I said casually. “I can understand why.”
“Really? You feel like that?” Mason too appeared to hesitate. Then he said, “If you would really care to hear a mass—well, I may say that I pay a regular fine
in order to avoid attending Anglican services. So far no one has enquired into my private religious observances at home. Dr. Crichton is a priest, and celebrates mass for us each Sunday. Tomorrow is Sunday. Would you like to join us? It will be before breakfast, in the room that opens off our parlour.”
This was going further than I meant. I didn’t want to accept the invitation, but on the other hand, it might be worth it. I also thought, with amusement, that this probably explained why they kept their disaster of a tutor on.
Dale, sitting at the lower end of the table, was regarding me in horror. I smiled at her reassuringly. “Dale will not attend,” I said, “but I will. At what o’clock?”
“I’m doing it to gain their confidence, that’s all,” I said to Dale as soon as we were alone in our room. “Don’t worry. And don’t talk about it, either.”
Dale didn’t like it, though. Next morning, she dressed me in what I can only call a speaking silence. I gave her shoulder an understanding pat, and went downstairs alone.
The mass was a very simple affair, held in a small bare room. The altar was an ordinary table with a white cloth over it. There were some candles in plain candlesticks and a modest crucifix, and nothing more. Dr. Crichton recited the service from memory, without a prayerbook. The whole family and most of the servants were there and the children, for once, behaved themselves—except that the baby cried.
It was all very gentle and devout and seemed innocuous, ten thousand miles away from the horror in Chichester, which Uncle Herbert had described to me. It was absurd to think that the Masons were paying a fine for simply not attending the official parish church, and even more absurd to realise that if
I chose to report them, they could be fined a hundred marks for hearing a mass and maybe four hundred marks for any further offence. Why could not people worship in whatever way they wanted and let others do the same?
Why could Queen Mary not have left her subjects alone? If she had, the law now might be easier on those who clung to the rituals of their forefathers.
Harmless . . . but I was ill at ease and only hoped that I might gain something from it. In this, however, I was disappointed. At breakfast, I took some cold beef and game pie and remarked that my husband’s friend William Johnson had been very partial to venison. Mason said, “Really? I prefer pheasant myself,” and that was all.
We took our leave. We paused in Lockhill village to attend the Anglican service there and then once more took to the road. As we went, I asked Brockley if the Lockhill grooms were as chatty as the ones at Springwood.
“No,” he said sourly. “If our friends were here, then for all I could find out from the grooms, they made themselves invisible.”
“The smith thought they were coming here,” I said. “I’ve even wondered . . . when John was lying in that inn, trying to tell us things, and we found it so hard to understand him, I thought at one point that he said his own name—John. But suppose he was saying ‘Johnson?’ I believe we’re following the right men, but where on earth have they gone?”
“It’s a funny thing, ma’am,” said Dale. “We do know they went to that other place, Springwood, and that was Catholic, like Lockhill.”
Brockley turned to her in surprise. “Yes, Lockhill’s Catholic,” I said. “I heard mass with them this morning.”
“You
what?”
I eyed him coldly and he recovered himself. “Madam,” he added belatedly.
“I was trying to get them to trust me a little more, though it didn’t work. I expect your discretion, Brockley.”
“That you will have, madam, and I accept what you were trying to do, but I have to say I can’t approve.”
“No. A Popish mass!” Dale broke in. “I don’t know how you could abide to do such a thing, ma’am, but that’s not what I set out to say. I meant, it’s odd: that house and Springwood both being Catholic.”
“What makes you think Springwood was Catholic?” I asked.
“Because I smelt incense there. I didn’t at Lockhill—I don’t think they used any, did they?—but it was quite strong at Springwood.”
Of course. That was it. That was the fugitive, exotic fragrance in the Westley manor house. Not a rare strewing herb, but incense, only so overwhelmed by the freshness of beeswax polish, that I hadn’t recognised it, although I had smelt it often enough at Faldene. Probably mass had been celebrated at Springwood shortly before we arrived.
I became aware, at this point, of a very unpleasant physical sensation, as though I had swallowed a lump of ice which now lay in the pit of my stomach and refused to melt.
What might a party of gentlemen be doing, if they were riding from one Catholic household to another through Elizabeth’s England, on business so secret that none of their hosts would mention it, or even mention that the gentlemen in question had passed that way? And what kind of business might induce these secretive travellers to murder a harmless fellow wayfarer?
Well, one could hazard guesses. They weren’t, for
instance, just itinerant priests holding masses in private for the devout. There had to be more to it than that.
I had been frightened at Cumnor but this was worse. Much, much worse.
I had begun, dimly, to perceive the nature of the enemy.
I think I was more thankful than otherwise, when shortly after that, we lost the spoor.
Lost and Found
I
t was when we reached Windsor. We had traced our quarry that far with some success. We crossed the Thames at Henley and there we heard of them when we asked the wherrymen and lightermen who ferried people and goods across and up and down the river. We found a lighter crew who had taken a party of horsemen over, they said, roughly a couple of weeks ago. Yes, one of the horses had been piebald. They remembered it and weren’t likely to forget it, either, the vicious brute. It had kicked one of them. The lighterman pushed his scruffy, water-stained breeches up to his knee to show the remains of what must have been a spectacular bruise.
We also picked up traces at the next town, Maidenhead, where we found an innkeeper who thought they had stopped there for a meal, but after Windsor, the trail petered out. Up to then, we had had a kind of direction, but now our quarry could have gone towards Southampton on one main road, or towards Dover on another, or taken a secondary track into Sussex and we would have to guess which. We spent
two more days asking questions along the first few miles of each route, but learned nothing. We returned to Windsor, where we were staying in an inn, and considered the matter.
The court was still at Windsor but I did not feel inclined to call there, in case I were somehow kept from leaving again. The queen could be capricious. Now that the trail was lost, Sussex was calling with an insistent voice. I must see Meg; I must see John Wilton’s sister; and it had also occurred to me that if I could find Matthew, I might, just might, ask his advice. I would have to be careful; after all he was Catholic, too. If my frightening guesses were right, however, then I had found the spoor of treason. Matthew would understand that. It was high time for me to go to Sussex and nothing must hinder me.
Brockley, when I told him this, said, “Should you not report what you know to somebody in authority first?”
I had hired a parlour and a meal for three. Constant association had made us draw close and we now ate together habitually. Brockley considered me gravely across the table.
“I don’t think we know enough,” I said. “There are things which I
think
are so—but that’s guesswork.”
“You’ve maybe guessed more than you have told us,” Brockley said, “but even guesses might be worth passing on.”
“I wonder,” I said.
“We’ve found out a few things, ma’am,” Dale said. “Those two houses, being Catholic; I’m sure that means something.” So, privately, was I.
A maidservant came in with a hot mutton pie and served us, which stopped the discussion for the time being. While portions of pie were cut and put before us, I studied Brockley. He had a good deal of sense,
and although he was not yet old, he was mature enough to have a considerable experience of life. He hadn’t had a formal education in the Latin and Greek sense, but he had worked as groom and manservant in more than one big house and had had at times to receive written instructions and act on them. I now knew that he could read very well and write a fair hand, albeit slowly. His advice was worth heeding.
Well, sometimes. If Brockley had worn bonnets, he would have had a few bees in them. As the maidservant went away, he said, “Simply report to someone of standing where we’ve been and why, and what we observed. That’s my advice to you, madam. Then it’s out of your hands and you can finally forget about chasing after these men yourself, which is not becoming to a lady.”
“I knew you’d say that before long,” I told him.
“I fancy,” said Brockley, “that you climbed trees when you were a child.”
I was familiar now with the way he made sallies with a straight face so that only the glint in his blue-grey eyes betrayed him. I smiled. “I swarmed down a wall covered with ivy even when I was grown up,” I said. “I had a runaway marriage.”
“Indeed, madam?”
“Yes. Our families lived near each other, in Sussex. Gerald was about to leave for London where he was taking up his post in the household of Sir Thomas Gresham,” I said. “We had already planned to slip off together and marry secretly, but we used to meet out on the downland, and someone saw us and told my aunt and uncle that there was something between me and Master Gerald Blanchard. I went home that day and found them waiting for me, furious. Gerald was meant to marry my cousin Mary, you see. I was shut up in my room, up in the attic. The busybody who told them had told Gerald’s family too. He quarrelled
with his father and brother, and left his home that same day and came for me. He knew which my window was. He threw pebbles at it and when I looked out and saw him there in the moonlight, I climbed down the ivy to join him. He took me to where John Wilton was waiting with horses, and we went off together then and there. We married in Guildford.”
“How you dared!” said Dale admiringly.
“I was more afraid to stay than go, I think,” I said, “and Gerald never failed me. Never, until the smallpox took him.”
I didn’t want to remember that, the ravaging fever which burned away his senses so that he no longer knew me; the pustules which ran into each other and turned his handsome face into a horror on which I could hardly bear to look.
“You’ve lost your husband and your protector,” said Brockley earnestly, “but a lady needs to be protected, madam. There must surely be someone at court to whom you could pass on this quest of yours.”
I thought this over, knowing that it was good sense. “I could ask to see Cecil,” I said doubtfully. “I could go to the queen! But . . . ”
“Why do you hesitate, madam?” Brockley asked. “It is only a matter of stating facts. We visited such and such places; we noticed this and that. You guess at such and such. Do you guess at something serious? Of much import?”
“Yes, very much so, and because of that . . . ” I was working it out, trying to understand my own uncertainty. Then I saw. “It’s because what I guess is of great import that I’m unhappy about speaking before I’m sure.” I had never even told Brockley or Dale of the letter John was taking to Cecil for me, or of my old suspicions of Dudley. My companions thought John had just been taking a letter to Bridget. I couldn’t
possibly talk to them about treason while it was still only a theory.
“It’s still all so vague,” I said. “If I speak, and I am wrong, I shall do no good and cause trouble for people like the Westleys and the Masons. I don’t want to do that. At least, I want to think it over before I go any further. We will go to Sussex. Perhaps when we come back, I’ll have a clearer mind.”
Perhaps, by then, I would have talked to Matthew.
Two days later, we were in Sussex.
• • •
“That’s the place,” I said, jogging impatiently ahead.
I had done my duty by John and visited his relatives, his sister, Mistress Alice Juniper and her husband Tom, on their smallholding, which was a few miles south-east of Faldene.
The Junipers were kind people. When I visited Sussex before joining the court, I had stayed in their little farmstead with its beaten earth floors and the one main room downstairs, which adjoined the cow-byre and was divided from it only by a half-wall of split logs. The place was always full of the warm cattle smell, and if we sat by the fire for a while in the evening, we could hear the cows chewing cud, and the firelight sometimes caught the tip of a horn or the gleam of a liquid eye beyond the partition. I was more at ease there than I ever would have been at Faldene, with its polished floorboards, its family pride and its cold heart.
Telling his people of John’s death was harrowing. I did not tell them of my suspicions or of our chase, but simply said he had been attacked by robbers, and that I had taken so long to reach them because I had to stay at Cumnor for the inquest and the funeral and couldn’t get away at once.
They had heard of Lady Dudley’s death; it seemed
that the whole of England was ringing with the news that the queen’s sweet Robin had now become a widower by way of a most convenient accident. They accepted what I said without question.
It was done now. Alice had cried and I had tried to comfort her, and Tom had called down curses on the murderers of his brother-in-law. We had spent a night and stayed on to midday dinner, and let them talk John’s death over and ask all the questions they wished. Now, at last,
at last,
I could ride back to Westwater, the hamlet not far from Faldene, where I had settled Bridget and Meg in their cottage.
While there, I might enquire of the Westwater vicar whether he had heard of a Master de la Roche anywhere in Sussex. I had asked the Junipers, who had not, but said, “We live very quietly. We hear bits of news at markets—we heard of Lady Dudley dying, that way—but there’s plenty gets by us, or takes a while to reach us. They’d know at Faldene, I expect, but if you don’t want to go there . . . ”
“No, I don’t!” I said.
“Then try at the church in Westwater. Vicars all know each other and they talk about their new parishioners, like as not.”
It was a cool, bright, early autumn day. The downs above the chalky track were turning to brown and gold as the grass and bracken changed colour. The cottage was at one end of the hamlet and was the first to come into view. It stood a little apart from the rest. It had been recently built and the thatch still had the gold tint of newness. It was not the kind of great house in which Meg ought rightly to be growing up, but it had been the best I could do for her as yet. At least, with Bridget, she would have safety and affection and it couldn’t harm her to learn how to cook meals and tend a garden. I might repair the other deficiencies later. For the moment, I wanted only to
see her running to meet me and to leap down from the saddle and sweep her up into my arms.
As we came near, I saw that the garden had been planted with herbs and vegetables and glimpsed a henhouse at the back. Bridget had been doing what I told her. At the gate I shouted, “Hallo!” but there was no reply.
“Visiting neighbours?” Brockley hazarded. “Or is there a market anywhere near?”
“At Faldene village, every week,” I said. “It’s on Wednesday. This is Friday.”
Then the door opened and out came Bridget at a run, although she was a plump woman past her youth. Skirts held clear of her feet, she pelted towards us and arrived gasping. “Oh, Mistress Blanchard! You’ve come! You had my letter then, oh dear, oh dear, I’ve been at my wits’ end . . . ”
“What is it? What’s the matter, Bridget?” I swung down from Bay Star, looping her reins over my arm. Bridget’s round face was normally not expressive but anxiety was now written clearly all over it. My nostrils informed me, to my regret, that she had slipped back into her old ways as regards personal washing, and I noticed that the strands of hair escaping from her linen headdress were greasy and that her skirts and headdress were none too clean either. Just now, however, this was not the point. “Bridget?” I said, as the nursemaid showed signs of bursting into tears instead of answering. “What
is
it? What letter? Where’s Meg?”
I was looking round for her as I spoke, but nothing stirred within the open door of the cottage and no little girl came running from the garden.
Bridget recoiled. “You’ve
not
had word, then? But you’re here, ma’am, you’ve come . . . ”
“I’ve been on the road for a long time. Where did you write to?”
“To Cumnor, a week ago now. I paid a boy to go, from the village here. Oh, Mistress Blanchard!”
“Bridget!
In God’s name tell me what’s wrong! Is Meg ill? Or . . . ?”
Oh no, please God, no. Children are always vulnerable to sickness. Suddenly I was terrified, imagining my daughter mortally sick, or dead, perhaps of the smallpox, like her father.
“No, ma’am, she’s not ill that I know of, but she’s not here. They took her away!”
“Who did? Bridget, you’re not making sense. Where is she?”
“She’s at Faldene, ma’am. Your uncle and aunt came over a week ago and took her away with them. They said her place was at Faldene. They said this cottage wasn’t good enough for her and they talked a lot about her immortal soul. I couldn’t stop them, ma’am. I tried but they wouldn’t listen and poor little Meg, she cried so!”
“Faldene!”
I said, furious.
• • •
“You will stay here,” I commanded Bridget. “Wait to hear from me. Oh, you’d better have this.”
In my saddlebag was a package containing some fabrics which I had bought in Windsor, so that Meg could have more new clothes. She was a dark-haired child, and I had found some woollen cloth and some satin, both in shades of crimson, which would suit her to perfection. The sight of it, when Meg herself wasn’t there to be delighted and to have the rich coloured fabrics held against her, nearly made me cry but I held the tears back and gave the materials to Bridget to look after. Then I found my purse and handed her in addition seven pounds in half-angels and shillings, at which her eyes widened.
“We’re going on to Faldene,” I told her. “We’ll
bring Meg back if we can. Be ready for her, and while you’re at it, Bridget, for God’s sake heat some water over the fire and
wash.”
I fished in my saddlebag again. “Here’s some soap, so you’ve no excuse.”
“Oh, ma’am, I’m that sorry, but these days it’s getting chilly and my mother always said that if you once get a cold on your chest . . . ”
“Do as you’re told, Bridget! We’ll be back as soon as we can.”
Westwater was at one end of the long, forested valley known as Faldene Vale. Faldene House was three miles away, at the other end. There was a track through the woods and along this we sped as fast as the packhorse and White Snail with their respective bouncing loads could go. Dale, gasping and holding on to her saddle, expressed outrage as we went.
“They’ve stolen your daughter, ma’am? Well, I never heard of such a thing! Oops! I’ve lost my stirrup!”
We paused while Brockley reunited Dale’s foot with its support. “Why would they do that?” Dale demanded, while he made sure that the Snail’s girth was secure as well.
“I can think of several reasons, but spite is highly likely,” I said. “Now come
on!”
“We’ll get her back, madam, never fear!” said Brockley.
“I hope so!” I said.