A Web of Silk

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘Yes. They have already arrived at Hawkswood. Joyce told me that they have cried bitterly for their father, and then said primly that they are willing to do whatever he thinks best for them. She also said that they understand that I have not done anything wrong. I think they haven’t been able to bring themselves to face the fact that he was prepared to see me and my good Roger Brockley ruined or even hanged – why, I don’t know and would very much like to know! When the girls arrived, we were very awkward with each other. Sybil is looking after them now and perhaps she will manage better. After all, Frost was proposing her as their stepmother. Well, he is to be set free before long and the bad feeling may pass. I hope so, they are likeable girls. I must say, I am astonished that Frost should choose me as their guardian. He can’t have very kindly feelings towards me. And I’m not very clear about what will happen after his release. I suppose he will want them back.’

  ‘I think not,’ said Walsingham. ‘Because of the fine he has to pay, Knoll House will have to be sold. He will have no home for them and at times he will, of course, be away on his voyages. I imagine he will stay with his brother in London and then find himself somewhere to rent, but it wouldn’t be much of a background for the girls. Hawkswood is a better one. However, he did save something from his ruin,’ Walsingham continued with a saturnine smile. ‘His brother visited him while he was awaiting trial, and went away with instructions. Frost owns – or owned, I should say – a parcel of land in the Midlands. It’s divided into three smallholdings, rented out separately. He apparently told his brother where to find the deeds and asked him to see that the smallholdings were made over, respectively, to his two daughters and a girl called Susie Hopkins, who was their maid. I believe she is carrying his child. Fine goings on in the household I sent you to! We found out all about it, naturally …’

  Naturally, I thought with wry amusement. Walsingham probably knew when Frost last had a cold in the head and how often he filed his toenails.

  ‘We have always kept an eye on activities at Knoll House,’ said Walsingham, unaware of my private commentary. ‘And after his arrest we questioned his lawyer in London about his affairs. We learned what he had done with his Midland property. Susie Hopkins has gone home to her parents, but I suppose she will now have an income, and a dowry if she marries. And the Frost girls will have dowries too. He moved so fast that the law had no chance to confiscate the smallholdings, and in the end contented itself with a fine.’

  ‘He’ll probably do well out of selling his silver collection,’ I said dryly. ‘Do you think I am now likely to become the permanent guardian of the twins?’

  ‘You will probably end up having to arrange their marriages. Meanwhile, I suppose you and Mistress Jester will continue to instruct them in embroidery.’

  ‘I shall do my best,’ I said. ‘But Sybil … has been much upset by this whole business. She has decided to travel to Scotland to make a long stay with her married daughter, Ambrosia, in Edinburgh. She will be welcome there, apparently, as she can help Ambrosia with her young family, and is looking forward to it.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Sybil had said, only a few days before I left Hawkswood in answer to the summons from Walsingham. ‘But I have made my mind up. As soon as you heard from Master Frost and learned that he will be home again in a few months, I knew what I must do. I have exchanged letters with Ambrosia and her husband. I hired the fastest courier I could afford and he brought back a most cordial invitation. I can’t … I can’t bear the thought of what has happened lately. Ursula, I spoke the truth when I told you that I was – still am – in love with Giles Frost.’

  She paused. I smiled at her. She gave me a small, tired nod.

  ‘Yes, Ursula. In love. Not just attracted. In love. I never thought I would ever – ever – feel like that again, and feel it for such a man. A traitor! A Catholic! Someone who has tried to trap you, ruin you, dear, dear Ursula! But it’s the truth. I … am hungry to be with him, not just to be in his arms, but to talk to him, share everyday life with him, become part of him. It’s disgraceful. I can’t believe such a thing has happened to me – that I could let it happen! I feel as though I too am a traitor and ought to be in the Tower …’

  ‘Sybil, please don’t! Please! Falling in love isn’t something one can help. It just happens. It happened to me!’

  ‘But when it came to the point of choosing between Matthew and Hugh, you chose Hugh. In the end, your head and your integrity chose the right path. I must let mine do the same. It would be better if I were in Scotland. I intend to spend Christmas with my daughter and her family, and I will probably stay on.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, and tried to smile again but failed. ‘It seems that no one can wreck a female friendship more thoroughly than a man!’

  We had been together for … I tried to work it out, and realized that it was seventeen years. And as friends and companions, we had been through so much. I would have cried myself to sleep that night, except that after I had gone to bed Gladys appeared, armed with a potion.

  ‘I knows all about it,’ she said. ‘Mistress Jester, she told me what she’d told you and said look after Ursula, it’ll likely bring on a migraine. She said she was sorry but she couldn’t help it. So you drink this and you’ll sleep quick and wake up calm. Nothing lasts for ever. I shan’t be here for ever, either. And seeing that I can’t walk right and I’ve that many aches and pains, I won’t be sorry when it’s time.’

  ‘Please don’t talk like that, Gladys.’

  ‘You might not believe it,’ said Gladys, ‘but I’m mighty sorry for what I did.’

  ‘What you did?’ I had never seen Gladys contrite before.

  ‘Offering that potion to put the Knoll servants to sleep. Whole thing was my fault. I might of bin your death!’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘And Master Brockley’s too!’ said Gladys miserably.

  ‘It’s all over now. And it was what I wanted,’ I said. ‘In a way I was a fool, and I am sorry too. If only I had stuck to what I planned to do at first and just told Stagg – Hunt – where the chest was and refused to do anything more, his plan would have collapsed.’

  I felt bitter, but mostly with myself. I was horrified now at the easy way I had been got to agree, against what I even then knew was my better judgement, to remove that chest. The disaster that had so nearly overtaken me was far more my fault than Gladys’s.

  She was right in saying that nothing lasts for ever. Sybil and I had been close friends for seventeen years, but they were over now.

  ‘Before you return to Hawkswood,’ Walsingham told me. ‘Frost wants to see you. Will you visit him in the Tower? His accommodation is quite dignified. He isn’t in a dungeon.’

  ‘If he wishes it,’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘I wish it,’ said Walsingham unexpectedly. ‘There are still things that are unclear. He admitted – and so did Anthony Hunt – that they colluded in that shocking scheme to discredit you, but what Frost has never explained is why he was willing to be involved. You have said yourself that you’d like to know the answer to that.’

  ‘Yes, I would,’ I agreed.

  ‘Frost is Catholic,’ said Walsingham, ‘and sells information to the Spanish – whereas Hunt’s brother, Simeon Wilmot, was so against the Catholics and Spain that he tried to get Mary Stuart assassinated. When Wilmot was executed, Hunt was enraged. I have learned that Hunt has never known about Frost’s faith. He thinks the services held in the Knoll House chapel are in accordance with the law. And yet Frost knew perfectly well why Hunt wanted to attack you. So why did Frost agree to help him? What was in it for him? He will not say, and I can only justify the rack as a means of making criminals confess what they have done. Not simply to ask why. But I would like to know, and so would you.’

  His dark eyes suddenly gleamed with the grim sense of humour that occasionally surfaced in him. ‘Well, we know all we need to know about Hunt. Your Gladys Morgan did wonders for our case when she showed us your caricature in that window. He really doe
s hate you so much that he couldn’t resist declaring it somehow. He couldn’t say it aloud, so he said it through his artistic fingers. I wish we had had your Gladys in court,’ he added wistfully. ‘You did well to have the offending pane of glass removed and brought to be inspected by the jury, but Gladys’s testimony would have been as salty as the ocean if she had had a chance to give it. I wish we could have heard it.’

  ‘Gladys behaves better these days than in the past,’ I said. ‘She quietened down after she was nearly executed for witchcraft. But I still always fear that if provoked, she will curse people. She was best kept away from the hearing – her curses are exceptionally lurid! I will see Master Frost, since you wish it and he has asked. Though why he should talk to me when he won’t talk to his questioners, I don’t know.’

  ‘Well, you were the intended victim. He may feel differently about you now. And since he has requested a visit from you, he must want to tell you something.’ There was a pause while an apple tart was brought in. Then Walsingham said: ‘Have you had a new pane of glass put into the church window at Hawkswood?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I felt such a distaste for that window that I have had the whole thing removed. The place is boarded up once again. There is another maker of stained glass in Guildford – an old established business run by a man called John Hines. He has taken over some of Stagg’s craftsmen, so they haven’t suffered too badly because their master is in the Tower. Hines is making a complete new window for me. It isn’t going to be too costly and, of course, I haven’t had to pay Stagg.’

  I didn’t mention that, although I had paid Hines for the new design, Sybil had decreed the details, fairly standing over him to make sure he was using her ideas. She said that this was her farewell gift to me, and she had given of her best. The resultant picture did include some demons with pitchforks, and once more they were driving not people but a flock of brown goats towards the mouth of a cavern. But this time the goats were simply goats and there was pity in the faces of some of the blessed. These were dressed in white, with golden haloes, and were climbing a golden stair towards heaven, led by an angel, as before, but some of them were looking back with obvious compassion at the unhappy goats.

  Sybil had said: ‘Why should the blessed not pity the damned? Their own friends, even members of their families, could be among them. If it’s heretical – well, I’m prepared to argue about it.’

  ‘It’s beautiful,’ I said, as I explained this to Walsingham. ‘It makes its point, but it isn’t ugly or crude. No small children will be disturbed by it. My latest adventure has at least had one good outcome!’

  Walsingham laughed out loud. ‘I have never approved of a woman doing the things that you have been doing for so many years, Ursula, but I must admit you do them with style.’

  ‘I’d much rather not do them at all,’ I said. ‘I would prefer a quiet life at home. But I will visit Frost today.’

  ‘I have prepared a pass for you,’ Walsingham replied.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Value of a Merchant Ship

  I had visited prisoners in the Tower before and it was never a pleasant business, even when they were not chained up in dungeons. Frost was in a tower room and he was better housed than some since he had a fire, though not much of one, and also a bed, a table, a wooden chair and a few books. The narrow window, set slantwise in the thick wall, gave a view, albeit a restricted one, of the river Thames. But the room was barely large enough to contain the meagre furniture and its walls closed us round: grey stone, grim and unpitying, silent witnesses to the terror and despair of those they had imprisoned before. There were names cut into them here and there. I averted my eyes from them, and tried to avert my thoughts from the sound of the turnkey locking me in. Brockley and I might well have found ourselves in a place like this, or perhaps a worse one. And here I was, alone with one of the men who had tried to put us there.

  Frost was reading, seated on the chair, but he closed the book and rose as the door was shut behind me. He tossed the book on to the bed. ‘So you came,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Sir Francis said you had asked to see me.’ I detested this man but I spoke pleasantly. When I thought of what had so nearly happened to Brockley and me, I shuddered with anger, but I did not want to be harsh towards a man in the Tower.

  He was thinner and very pale, probably because he hadn’t been out of doors for a long time. He looked more than ever as if he had been left out in a blizzard.

  He said: ‘I asked for you to come because my daughters are in your care and there are things I must explain to you. I hope they are behaving well. I wrote to them – the Hambles took the letter for me – and made it plain that I wished them to become your wards. I told them not to be angry with you, for you never intended harm to me – indeed it was I who intended harm to you.’

  ‘They are safely at Hawkswood,’ I said diplomatically and decided not to enlarge. They were good girls who had been taught that they must obey their parents, so were obeying their father. But the twins who arrived at Hawkswood were downcast and, although perfectly polite, looked at me askance, even though Frost had written to them telling the whole truth.

  ‘Everything came out at the trial,’ Joyce had said to me, soon after their arrival. Her voice was calm but cool and she did not look me in the eyes. ‘He knows that it would reach us sooner or later. He preferred that we should be told at once, accurately and not through gossip.’ Then she did look at me, and there was accusation in her eyes. ‘Why did you let yourself be led, like a calf to the butcher? Why didn’t you just tell Master … Hunt … and Eleanor Liversedge that you had found the chest and then left it to them to decide what to do about it? Why did a woman of your age and dignity play the fool, stealing the thing, creeping out of the house with it – causing all this?’

  ‘I am sorry,’ I said inadequately. I did not say: ‘I heard the call of the wild geese.’ Joyce would have thought I had lost my senses. Instead, I said: ‘Eleanor cried.’ I think Joyce decided I had lost my senses anyway.

  Now, in Frost’s room in the Tower, I said: ‘I am happy to look after your girls.’ He looked relieved and I found myself actually in sympathy with him. Naturally, he would be worried about his daughters. I smiled at him and tried to lighten the air by saying: ‘I am glad I don’t have to shelter Susie as well. My youngest maidservant, Margery, would like to train as a tirewoman. She will attend to the girls. I understand that Susie has gone home.’

  ‘I have provided for her. In time she will forget about loving me, though she doesn’t believe that now. She’ll marry, and I have made sure she has a dowry. You and Mistress Jester need not concern yourselves with her.’

  ‘Mistress Jester is going to Scotland,’ I said. I was finding it quite easy, after all, to talk to him in an amiable fashion. ‘She has family there and has decided to live with them in future.’

  ‘Because of me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t think I ever really expected her to marry me,’ said Frost. ‘But I greatly wished it, and dared to hope.’

  We were silent for a moment. Then I became businesslike. ‘Master Frost, you say you asked for me to visit you because you wished to tell me something concerning your daughters. On my side, I agreed to come here because there are questions that I want to ask and that Walsingham would like me to ask, too. Which shall we deal with first?’

  ‘Let me explain matters in my own way,’ said Frost. ‘But I would ask you to realize that there are things that I don’t want shared with Walsingham. Can I trust you to be discreet?’

  ‘Provided you aren’t about to confess to a crime – another crime!’ I said with emphasis.

  ‘No, I’m not. Very well. It may sound as though I am wandering round the houses, but if you bear with me all will become clear. First, I daresay Walsingham has told you that I have agreed to become one of his agents. To continue passing information to Spain, but to do so knowing that it’s inaccurate – all in the interests of defending Englan
d from the Spanish and from Mary Stuart.’

  ‘Yes, he has. And that Master Hunt must hold those same opinions. At least, his brother Simeon Wilmot did, and Hunt wished to avenge Wilmot’s death. They can hardly be your opinions, and yet you conspired with Hunt to harm me. One of the questions both Walsingham and I wish to ask is why?’

  Frost had been sitting on the bed, having waved me to the chair. He rose, walked across the room and then came back.

  ‘This is complicated. What you want to ask me and what I want to tell you are tangled together. Initially I had reasons for disliking you, or thought I had. Until you actually moved into Knoll House and began to teach my daughters – and did it so well – I knew little of you, except that you had habitually involved yourself in things that are not a woman’s business. When Hunt asked me to help him to …’

  ‘Entrap me?’

  ‘All right, to entrap you. When Hunt sought my help, I agreed because I believed that you were something that I disapproved of, the kind of woman I was willing enough to see set down—’

  ‘Set down! You nearly brought Brockley and me to … the gallows!’ My buried anger spurted out of me. ‘And you were willing enough to make use of my skills with a needle.’

  ‘I know. I am truly sorry,’ he said wryly. ‘At the time, I remember hoping you wouldn’t give my daughters any wrong ideas. After all, you weren’t to be in my house for long – you were only supposed to be there for a week or two, until the plot came to a head. But once you were under my roof, Mistress Stannard, I found I couldn’t dislike you.’ He shook his white head with an air of surprise. ‘I had expected you to be hard, mannish, dictatorial, and you are not. And your friend Mistress Jester was enchanting. I had a complete change of heart. You know,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘that was when things began to go awry. I realized that far from being a dubious person, you were just the kind of woman I would like as a guide for my girls. But by then it seemed too late to stop. I just hoped it would all be over quickly and told myself, well, although she knows how to create a good impression, she has dipped a finger into some pies that no woman should concern herself with.’