‘He has no children,’ Dudley said. ‘Not living, anyway. I believe there were two that died in infancy. You won’t have to be a stepmother.’
‘And it is for the queen,’ said Walsingham. ‘Mistress Stannard, England is not just an island of rock, surrounded by sea; it is also a religious island encircled by Papist countries. The Spanish have the Netherlands as well as Spain; France is only just on the other side of the Channel. It is sheer good fortune that they happen to detest each other. That gives us our chance. For the safety of this realm, England should create a strong alliance with one of those powers, to create a bulwark against the other. The obvious way to bring all this about is through a marriage. One attempt to arrange a match between our queen and a French prince has already fallen through and time is going on. Her majesty is now forty-two years of age. It is not a good age to embark on marriage for the first time. Childbearing has risks.’
I knew that. And I would myself be forty-two in May.
‘As much as anything,’ said Dudley, ‘we are here to ask you to help us to protect the queen. She means so much to us all, to the country at large and to us, here present, personally.’
‘I know,’ I said. I was well aware that the queen’s safety meant a great deal to them, for heaven only knew what their position would be if she were to die and a Catholic invasion followed. In Dudley’s case, she meant even more than that. He and the queen were not lovers in the physical sense, for all the rumours that had been spread about them. I knew her well enough to know that. But they loved each other, just the same. I knew that too. If anything happened to her, it would break his heart.
‘But you are the queen’s sister,’ said Walsingham. ‘You are not much younger than she is but you have already borne children successfully.’
I was silent. To my surprise, Harry’s birth had been easy. But Meg’s had not, and there had been two other pregnancies that came to nothing. One of them had nearly killed me. I remembered, all too well, the pain and the fear and the exhaustion, the oppressiveness of the overheated chamber, the useless intoning of a priest, the smell of my own blood. Death in childbirth is no easy way to go.
Walsingham had more to say and though he was not very good at sounding beguiling, he made the attempt. ‘You are not legitimate but you are recognized in a quiet way as her majesty’s kinswoman. The same applies to Count Renard’ – he used the English form of the word compte – ‘and his relationship to the French royal family. A union between the two of you would not be the same as one between our queen and a French prince but it would be near enough. It would be a marriage between two people who are both half-siblings to reigning monarchs. It would be a physical bond, undertaken to seal the treaty that would be signed on the day of the wedding. And it would save the queen from sacrificing herself.’
He stopped for a moment, looking at me gravely, letting his meaning sink in. Then he said: ‘If she were to marry now, she would be taking a serious risk, far more serious than you would. Such a marriage might produce an heir, yes. There are those on the Council who keep on repeating that – my lord of Sussex for one. But it might also leave England defenceless with no queen and no heir either. You could protect her majesty and England alike from those dangers.’
‘This has all been discussed in Council,’ Cecil said, and it was then that he repeated to me what had been said at that recent meeting, of which I had known nothing. At the end, Cecil said: ‘The reply from King Henri, giving his consent to such a marriage and assuring me that Count Renard has indeed been reinstated to his original position in France, arrived the day after that meeting. I was relieved. I have long considered that the queen ought to marry, but I have begun to realize that perhaps, yes, the time has gone by when it would be really wise.’
Dudley had been watching me, I think with more understanding than either of the others. He said: ‘You are not a slave, Mistress Stannard. We have no slaves in England, in which we are unlike the Ottomans of Turkey and Algiers, whose corsairs last year relieved us of two valuable ships and all their crews. You cannot be forced to wed. The queen once ordered me to marry Mary Stuart but I refused and nothing happened to me except that I was coldly treated by her majesty for a while. You are being asked, not compelled. But we beg you to consider. The queen and the realm of England have need of you.’
‘And if I refuse and her majesty herself risks marriage and dies,’ I said, ‘I could be blamed. And would blame myself. Yes, I see.’
‘Ursula should have time to think these matters over,’ said Cecil to the others. ‘All this has been sprung on her very suddenly. I suggest that we adjourn this meeting and gather again tomorrow morning to discuss it further. Ursula may well have questions she wishes to ask.’
‘If I marry a French count and go with him to France, I might be regarded as a bigamist,’ I said. ‘In the eyes of French Catholics, I am still married to Matthew de la Roche. They do not recognize the fact that my sister annulled our union.’
‘I think not,’ Cecil said. ‘The French royal family are prepared to accept you as a bride for the count. King Henri certainly made no allusion to de la Roche. They seem to have forgotten all about him. And no one has ever, I understand, challenged the right of de la Roche’s elder son – the one born to him when he believed you to be dead, and he entered into another marriage – to be his heir. I have no anxiety on that score.’
I thought I had seen a chance of escape, but it had slammed shut in my face. I now felt not only tired; I seemed to be drowning in exhaustion. Again and again I had tried to escape from the world of politics and diplomacy; again and again I had been dragged back. But this time it was worse. It might endanger my life or it might not (one of the happy things about my marriage to Hugh, one reason why I felt so safe with him, was the fact that he could not sire children). But if it didn’t threaten my life then it would be for life, instead.
Yet I had been given reasons for agreeing, reasons that were real and strong. I heard myself say: ‘Very well. I’ll meet the wretched man. I’ll go that far. But I make no promises.’
THREE
Uninvited Guests
‘You don’t want to marry this man, madam. I know you don’t,’ said Brockley. He had a slight but down to earth country accent and just now it was very down to earth indeed. ‘Why have you agreed to meet him?’
‘I felt I had no choice. The matter is too important,’ I said.
I had left my guests and withdrawn to a small parlour at the rear of the house. It had a pleasant southward outlook over fields towards the distant downs and immediately in front of it was the smallest of the four paddocks. Just now, Tessie was watching and laughing while Simon gave little Harry a ride on Bronze, one of our quiet all-purpose horses, steadying him with one hand and leading the horse with the other.
Now that Harry was almost four, I thought, he ought to begin riding lessons in earnest. I had been planning to buy a small pony for him. I intended Brockley to be his instructor. If my life were about to be turned upside down as my uninvited guests wanted, what would happen now to all these pleasant plans?
I had told Adam Wilder to make my visitors at home in the bigger, more formal parlour and provide wine and snacks for them. Then I sent Sybil to fetch the rest of those whom I regarded as my close household. She returned very quickly, bringing – not to say being dragged by – Brockley, Dale and Gladys, all anxious to know what had transpired downstairs. When I told them, their faces all expressed various degrees of alarm and disapproval.
Sybil said diffidently: ‘What the mistress says is true. It was difficult for her to refuse even to see the man.’
‘Simply to agree to meet him has committed me to nothing,’ I said. ‘He will make a visit to Hawkswood, that’s all. We’re going back to Hawkswood at once, by the way. Sir Francis feels that it is a more suitable place for such a … a high-level encounter.’
‘Sounds as if this Frenchie count might have doubts himself,’ remarked Gladys. ‘Might think we’re not good enough f
or him, eh? If it comes to anything, what happens to us?’
‘You come with me wherever I go,’ I said. ‘All four of you. That’s final.’
Gladys grinned, always a depressing sight, since the few teeth she still had were no more than brown fangs and made her look as feral as a strayed hound. ‘That’s how you got rid of the Yarrows, indeed,’ she remarked.
Dale said miserably: ‘I don’t want to go to France. I hate France.’ She had good reason for saying that. On one of my assignments, I had taken her there and being an ardent Protestant and quite incapable of hiding her opinions, she had been arrested for heresy. She hadn’t forgotten.
‘We’ll worry about all that later,’ I said. ‘Perhaps Count Renard won’t like me at all and that will be the end of it.’ I used the English form of his title, as my visitors had mostly done. ‘Or perhaps,’ I added, trying to infuse something like enthusiasm into my voice, ‘he and I will look at each other when we meet and know that we were made to be man and wife.’
‘Let us hope so,’ said Brockley. But as he spoke, he looked at me in a penetrating way that told a different tale. You know that nothing of the kind is going to happen, his eyes said, and so do I.
Once, a long time ago now, Brockley and I had come near to being more than lady and manservant. We had very nearly become lovers. Only nearly. Nothing actually occurred and never would, but a rapport had nevertheless sprung up between us. We were, so often, in touch with each other’s minds.
Briskly, I said: ‘We had better prepare for the move back to Hawkswood. Delay would be pointless.’
We did delay a little. We said farewell to our visitors the following day, and the day after that was Harry’s birthday, which we celebrated by playing games with him and serving a special dinner. But the following day, a Friday, we left before dawn and were back at Hawkswood by late afternoon. None of us were cheerful about it, especially Brockley. Roundel, the pretty dapple grey mare I had had before Jewel, would have her new foal in the late spring and since I had mentioned to him that we might well be still at Withysham then, Brockley, who had once been a groom and still thought like one, had been looking forward to superintending the happy occasion.
‘We don’t know how all this will turn out, madam,’ he said hopefully to me. ‘Perhaps we shall find we can go back to Withysham in the spring, after all. I have taken the liberty of mentioning the possibility to Master Hanley – just as a possibility, no more. But we may as well keep our original plans open, until we’re sure they have to be changed.’
I had the feeling that he was trying to build up those plans like a seawall in the hope that they would hold back what he saw as an advancing tide of trouble. I saw it the same way, and made no protest.
We were expected at Hawkswood, as Simon had once more been sent galloping ahead to announce our coming. We found, however, that new events had taken place in our absence. There was a strange pony tethered outside the stable so that its dirt-stained legs could be washed in the open air. It was an odd-looking animal since it was dapple grey from head to loins while its rear end and tail were the smooth dark grey of iron. But I had no time to wonder about it for the moment we appeared, Ben and Joan Flood, the two under-cooks we had left there to feed the household, came running out to meet us. They were excited and both talking at once, so that it was a few moments before any of us could make out what they were saying.
‘Gently, gently, one at a time,’ I said, or rather, shouted, over their confused voices.
Eventually, the word Ambrosia emerged from the babble and they were not referring to any kind of comestible.
‘My daughter!’ said Sybil, who had been listening with her head out of the coach window. She opened the door with an agitated thrust. Sybil was calm by nature, always helpful yet never obtrusive, but now, she was all wide-eyed alarm and distracted exclamations, and shut her skirts in the coach door as she scrambled out. I had to release her. ‘She is here?’ Sybil demanded of the world at large. ‘And in trouble? Dear God, what’s wrong?’
‘Oh. Mother!’ cried a frantic voice, and out of the door behind the Floods erupted a young woman who rushed towards Sybil and flung herself into her arms.
I had not seen Mistress Ambrosia Wilde for years but I would have known her at once because of her resemblance to her mother. Both had slightly splayed features, as though, in early youth, their heads had been slightly compressed between chin and scalp. The effect was rather attractive than otherwise, but the long eyebrows, the broad nostrils, the wide mouths, were distinctive. Ambrosia, though, had two other exceptional beauties. Her colouring was like her mother’s, but Sybil had had hardships in her life which had dimmed the shine of her brown eyes and put grey into her dark brown hair. Ambrosia’s hair, which at the moment was unconfined by any cap, was glossy and abundant, and her eyes were as bright as diamonds.
Though just now, as she ran to her mother, I saw that they were also tired. The two of them clung together, with Sybil patting her daughter’s back and murmuring words of comfort, while Ben and Brockley started to unload luggage and the rest of us dismounted or climbed out of the coach. Eventually, everyone moved indoors and into the great hall, where we learned that Sybil’s message concerning our move to Withysham had missed her. She had already set out to find her mother, and told no one where she was going.
‘I was with my in-laws and oh, the trouble they are making for me!’ Ambrosia told us, tearfully. She had fled from them in secret and in due course had arrived at Hawkswood, riding a pony – the one I had noticed having its legs washed – and alone, with neither maid nor groom, to find her mother not there.
‘And she was that upset, not finding Mistress Jester here, ma’am; we hardly knew what to do with her,’ Joan Flood told us. ‘She’d been staying at inns on her own all the way from Cambridge and you know what some inns are like when it’s a woman alone; she’d had to argue to get accommodation at all, and fend off – well, you know – and pay extra! She’s got hardly any money left. Well, we did know where you were and would have sent her on to you, except that just then, Simon got here.’
‘Well, we’re all here now,’ I said, taking charge, while Sybil steered Ambrosia to a settle and sat down with an arm round her. ‘So, what is all this about?’
‘Yes. Where is your husband?’ Sybil asked anxiously, and then looked with concern at her daughter’s creased grey gown. ‘My darling, you look quite distracted!’
‘I am distracted! John is dead – he complained of a bad headache one night and went to bed and never woke up! He was dead at my side when I woke next morning! And now his family want me to marry a cousin of his; they say it will be convenient and will keep his money in the family. John didn’t just have a schoolmaster’s pay; he had property too, that was left to him, and he willed it all to me and the family don’t like that, and they’ve taken my sons! My twin boys!’
She was crying bitterly now. ‘They’ve been sent to York, so far away, and put in the care of my sister-in-law Eliza and her husband and my parents-in-law say I can’t have them back until I agree to marry this cousin and I don’t like him and I won’t marry him, I won’t, but I want my boys back! I had three other babies and none of them thrived but these have; they’re four years old and lovely and healthy and they ought to be with me and I need help! My parents-in-law made me stay in their house after John died, so that they could go on at me and stop me from going to York after my boys. I had to get away at night, creep to their stable and saddle Irons all alone …’
‘Irons?’ said Sybil irrelevantly.
‘My grey pony. He’s iron coloured,’ said Ambrosia. ‘And he’s strong and can go all day. I got away on him before dawn and rode through most of the next day. I couldn’t go to York – I know where Eliza lives in York, but I would never find the way there alone, only they’d expect me to make for it and give chase. I thought of coming here instead; I knew how to get here because I’ve visited so many times. And I wanted to find you, Mother. Oh, Mother, please, please he
lp me!’
I had told the Floods to provide some food and drink for us all and at this moment, Brockley and my steward Adam Wilder brought the trays in, a welcome sight.
They had provided wine as well as ale, and food in the form of chicken legs and small apple pies and a dish of nuts. The Floods were always anxious to please. They were of the Catholic persuasion and once had been caught up in a Catholic scheme which could have done me harm. Hugh was alive then. We had forgiven them and kept them, for they were excellent at their work, and since then, they had striven to be perfect employees in every possible way. The wine was a good one and the chicken legs were hot, having gone on to the spit the moment Simon arrived with the news of our approach. I felt that hot food and strong wine were what Ambrosia needed and needed badly.
Unobtrusively, I sighed. I had gone to Withysham for a quiet life, but Life seemed determined to turn into a ghastly series of just one thing after another. Here was someone else with matrimonial problems, and something would have to be done about them, I supposed.
As Brockley and Wilder handed things round, I said: ‘Well, Lord Burghley owes me one or two favours just now and he is a lawyer. He will know whether what your in-laws have done is legal or not, Ambrosia. If not, we can take action.’
Ambrosia, sipping from her glass and already calmer, said: ‘I would be grateful, oh, so grateful. But … Mistress Stannard, how is it that Lord Burghley should owe you favours? Though I know you know him; I have heard much from my mother, over the years, of your many exploits.’
A Perilous Alliance Page 3
