She ran out of breath. At the same moment, Lestrange raised his sword and leapt forward, aiming the blade straight for Brockley’s heart though not I think with really lethal intentions, but as a ploy to sweep Brockley out of his way for he gave Brockley time to sidestep, which Brockley duly did, very neatly, towards the table with the lamp and the open sewing basket. Inside the basket were colourful silks wound on bobbins, a needle case and a small pair of shears. Brockley had had no chance to draw his own blade but he grabbed the shears and struck like an adder at Lestrange’s sword hand. Lestrange let out a yell and dropped the sword, whereupon I stooped and caught it up. It was astoundingly heavy and I only just managed not to drop it again as I backed quickly to the door and out into the passage.
Deborah, Sybil and Dale were standing there, mouths open in either horror or excitement or conceivably both, for in the parlour, mayhem had now broken loose. Lestrange, scattering blood from his injured hand, had closed with Brockley, while Mistress Sterling, screaming imprecations, seemed to be trying to pummel both of them. The tables had been overturned and the rushes underfoot were littered and tangled with crushed snowdrops and the shards of what had been an earthenware lamp and the flower vase and also the sewing basket and its contents. The basket had been kicked in the melee and now lay upside down in a corner.
I stood there staring and then, to my alarm, saw that Brockley was getting the worst of it, because although he had been a soldier and knew something about fighting, he was years older than Lestrange, who was also the more powerfully built of the two. In his manservant’s black doublet and hose, moving about in his unobtrusive fashion, his muscular development hadn’t been noticeable but it was all too obvious now. Despite his injury, Lestrange had got hold of Brockley round the chest and was crushing the breath out of him, undeterred by Mistress Sterling’s fists pounding on his back.
I rushed forward again, clutching the sword with both hands and started to whack whatever bits of Lestrange I could reach with the flat of it. It was useless. ‘Stop it!’ I shrieked. ‘Stop it, stop it, let Brockley go … !’
I sounded like a petulant child and for all the effect I was having, I might as well have been one. But in the passage, Sybil, Dale and Deborah were all shouting for help and help was coming. A man’s voice suddenly bellowed: ‘What in the name of heaven is going on here?’ and I heard Dale cry out something in reply and then two men burst into the room.
I and my sword were brushed aside as though we were dust motes. I stumbled backwards over one of the fallen tables and fell. Dale and Sybil ran in to help me and by the time they had got me to my feet, bruised and gasping but otherwise unharmed, the adversaries had been dragged apart and were being held respectively by a big middle-aged man and a wiry young one, both in the dun-coloured shirt and hose, the sleeveless jerkin and leather leggings and mud-stained boots of farmers. Mistress Sterling, in tears, had collapsed on to a settle and between sobs was wailing thanks to heaven that Stephen had come.
Stephen had to be her husband; she had mentioned him before. The younger man was presumably their eldest son; indeed, they looked like father and son since they had the same light-coloured hair falling over their foreheads in the same way, and identical grey eyes.
‘Are you all wood wild?’ Stephen was shouting. ‘We could hear you from the other end of the cabbage field! What’s going on in here and who are these people – these women and this man? And why is that woman’ – he jabbed a thumb towards me – ‘holding that great big sword? It’s as tall as she is!’
‘If you will let me speak …’ gasped Brockley.
‘It’s all right, Brockley.’ I had got my breath back by now. ‘I will explain. We are sorry for the disturbance, sir. I am Mistress Stannard, Brockley there is my manservant and these two ladies are his wife Frances, who is my tirewoman, and Mistress Sybil Jester who is my companion. Until last night that man, whose name is Pierre Lestrange, was staying at my house in Surrey, with his master, a French count named Gilbert Renard, and a priest called Father Ignatius, and two grooms …’
‘What is all this rigmarole?’ Stephen Sterling had a rustic accent but an educated vocabulary. He also had considerable presence. He had brought an air of authority into the room and with it the hope of restoring order.
‘They sound quite crazed to me, Father,’ his son said angrily, but was waved to silence and into the gap, I said: ‘Please let me finish. You can’t understand unless you do that. There had been talk of a marriage between the count and myself but mysterious things began to happen including the death of one of my servants, Joan Flood. It looked like an accident but I now have reason to believe that she was murdered and possibly by Lestrange or his master. I don’t wish to discuss the reason for our suspicions but believe me, it is real. Last night, the count and all his companions left my home secretly, taking with them another guest of mine, the daughter of Mistress Jester there, a Mistress Ambrosia Wilde. They left letters saying that she, not I, is going to marry the count and …’
‘I can’t let my daughter go off and marry a man who might have done murder, or ordered it!’ Sybil broke in.
Lestrange tried to interrupt as well but the son had a hand over his mouth. He flailed unavailingly and sent blood spatters from his damaged hand flying into the young man’s face, causing him to swear in disgust. I overrode them both. ‘I won’t let people who may well have caused the death of my servant Joan Flood get away with it!’ I declared, as forcefully as I could. ‘We believe that the party are bound for France and will seek passage from a Thames port and may have stopped here on their way.’
Lestrange succeeded in freeing his mouth. ‘It’s all rubbish! This Joan Flood, she just slipped and fell down a flight of stairs! I am on a lawful errand for my master, as I told you this morning, an errand likely to do good to Catholics everywhere. My master and the rest, as far as I know, are still at this woman’s house, Hawkswood.’
‘They are most certainly not!’ I retorted. ‘They left in the night, as you did and presumably with you – which means they’re somewhere here!’
‘They’re not here, they’re not! There’s only this man Lestrange!’ bawled Mistress Sterling from her settle.
‘No, they’re not!’ said Stephen Sterling, glaring at me. ‘They may have left your house, madam, but they didn’t come here. You can search this house, but you won’t find your missing count or any of the folk you say are with him. Search where you will! They travelled on horseback, I suppose? Well, you’re free to search my stable – search every outhouse on my land if you like, and look in my piece of pasture. You won’t find them or their horses.’
His wife wailed in protest but he snapped: ‘Hold your noise, Margaret!’ over his shoulder and she fell silent. He turned back to me. ‘I’ve heard of you, Mistress Stannard, at least I think I have, so I’ll pay you the courtesy of supposing that you really think you are tracking down someone who has harmed one of your people. But you won’t find anyone here other than this man Lestrange. You’ve been the victim of misdirection, I think.’
ELEVEN
Asking the Way
Stephen Sterling, very much the master of the house and the man in charge, now gave orders. He called Deborah in, told her to find another maid to help her and get the parlour cleared up and then announced that we would withdraw elsewhere to continue with what he described as unravelling this muddled tale. ‘And Tom,’ he added, addressing his son, ‘get a napkin out of that cupboard there and wrap it round this fellow Lestrange’s hand; he’s smearing blood all over everything.’
When this was done, he led the way out, maintaining his grip on Brockley, while Tom kept hold of Lestrange.
Deborah, pop-eyed with excitement, was shooed away but, with Sybil and Dale, I followed the men along the passage and in at another door, where we found ourselves in a dining room. It was well proportioned and well lit, since it had several leaded casement windows with views over the smallholding and a glimpse of woodland beyond, but it had a dusty,
disused look. The family probably ate in the kitchen as a rule. The central table had benches along each side and we all sat down, looking oddly formal, as though we were an official meeting.
The Sterling menfolk each sat beside his captive. Both Lestrange and Brockley were seething but Lestrange now seemed intimidated. Brockley did not, but I didn’t want him to disrupt the gathering. It would do no good. I managed to catch his eye and he kept quiet.
‘And now,’ said Master Sterling grimly, ‘I would like to hear this extraordinary story all over again. Mistress Stannard, maybe you’d kindly explain how all this started. How came you to be courted by a French aristocrat? And why would you think he’s murdered a servant of yours?’
I obliged, though with a degree of caution. That I was the queen’s sister was not actually a state secret but nor was it freely bruited about. I merely said that I had once been a lady of the queen’s household and that friends at court had had the idea that I should remarry, and had arranged for Gilbert Renard to visit me so that we might get to know each other.
‘Only, as it happened, Mistress Jester’s widowed daughter Ambrosia Wilde was staying at my house just then, and she and Renard took a fancy to each other. And then …’
This was difficult. I did not want to talk about Christopher Spelton’s secret mission, not under this Catholic roof. Indeed, I had no business to speak of it anywhere. There was something about Sterling that made me inclined to trust him but not with that kind of secret. I hesitated for a long moment, which made Master Sterling scowl alarmingly, and then admitted Spelton’s existence but said that he had a private purpose, a duty he had to carry out for her majesty Queen Elizabeth and that although I knew that this was so, because he had told me (‘I am trusted in court circles,’ I said), I did not know what it was.
But, I explained, I had reason to think that he had been overheard when he was telling me the little he did, and soon after that, I caught my servant Joan Flood attempting to overhear a conversation between Renard and Lestrange.
‘There was a great to-do. I was angry with Joan and shouted at her, but she told me that she had seen Lestrange coming out of my room, as if he had been snooping there.’
‘I was looking for you, madam! I told you that!’ Lestrange burst out. ‘My master wanted to speak with you and I couldn’t find you downstairs, so I tapped on your door and when there was no answer I just ventured to look inside!’
‘Did you, indeed?’ I said disbelievingly. ‘Well, I also know that Joan’s husband, who is also in my household, told her of a conversation he had had with you, about places to stay near London for someone bound for France on a mission so private that he didn’t want to use an inn. Ben Flood recommended Stag-Leys, which is why we’re here now. Then, between one thing and another, Joan took to spying on you and your master and she heard the name of Christopher Spelton spoken. And then she fell downstairs and died.’
‘There was an inquest! The verdict was accidental death!’ shouted Lestrange.
‘Some of us didn’t trust that verdict,’ snapped Brockley. He and Lestrange glowered at each other.
‘Last night,’ I said, ‘the count and his people and Mistress Wilde disappeared in the night. We’re afraid that Mistress Wilde has fallen in love, and run off with, a killer and perhaps a spy, interested in whatever Master Spelton was about. We set out in pursuit.’
‘I see,’ said Sterling, still grimly. ‘Nothing certain, all suspicion, but the sort of suspicion we don’t want anywhere near us. Who knows what’ll come of us when the law starts poking its nose into all this? Catholic we are and proud of it but we keep the law of the land and we don’t want trouble.’
‘There would be no trouble,’ I said. ‘We just want to take Lestrange away, and persuade him to tell us the right road for finding the count and his party. He must surely know. Once we’ve got him away, you can forget him, and us.’
‘Of course he knows!’ Brockley exploded. ‘If they’re not here and didn’t come with him last night, then I’d wager anything he knows where they did go. Isn’t that so?’ He twisted in his seat and glared at Lestrange. ‘Isn’t that so?’
‘No!’ said Lestrange. ‘As far as I know, they were all asleep in bed when I left. I had no notion they were going to leave as well.’
The sheer improbability of this took my breath away for a moment. And everyone else’s too, I think, for there was a silence all round. Then I recovered myself.
‘But why did you leave in the middle of the night, then, if you were going alone?’ I asked. ‘You could have left on an errand for your master at any time. Who would question it?’
‘I did as I was bid. I left at night because he told me to.’
‘Why?’ demanded Brockley, and received a wordless shrug in answer.
‘This is getting nowhere,’ said Sterling.
Margaret Sterling had been fidgeting. Throughout all this, she had apparently retained a grip on reality, and on the duties of a hostess, even a reluctant one. Suddenly she broke in: ‘Didn’t these people arrive on horses? Where are their horses? Did you leave a groom with them, mistress?’
‘Yes, I did.’ I dragged my mind back to Joseph, waiting patiently in the road while our horses nibbled the verge. They must all be tired, hungry and thirsty. ‘The horses are tethered to your fence and a young groom is with them. Our belongings are there too, in saddlebags. Could they all be looked after? I don’t know how long we’ll be here.’ I shot Lestrange an unfriendly look and then gave Sterling an enquiring one.
‘Quite,’ he said. ‘Tom, Jimmy should be in the stables at this hour. Go and tell him to bring in Mistress Stannard’s animals and her man; he’ll find them in the road. Tell him to look after them, and to unload the saddlebags and bring them into the passage. I fancy our visitors will be staying the night.’ His tone was not precisely hospitable. ‘I feel,’ he said, ‘that we have much to talk about and it’s getting near to suppertime already. Tom, when you’ve seen Jimmy, come back here and be quick about it. We may need you.’
I started to demur about staying and to say something about the George Inn but Sterling waved this away. Tom rose obediently to his feet, but said: ‘What d’you need me for?’ as he did so.
‘I said before – I’ve heard of Mistress Stannard there. I reckon her tale can be believed. So we may need to get a little more sense out of Master Lestrange.’
Whereupon Master Lestrange swung his feet over the bench he had been sitting on, kicking Tom’s thigh on the way, sprang up and lunged for the door. Mistress Sterling and Dale both shrieked, Sybil half-rose, clutching at the table, while Tom and Brockley simultaneously got up and hurled themselves after Lestrange. They wrestled him to the floor just as he was jerking at the door handle.
‘Oh no, you don’t!’ Brockley gasped. ‘You know where your master and the rest are now and before God, you’ll tell us!’
‘I don’t know anything – let me go! – you’re going to knock me about to make me tell you things I can’t tell you because I don’t know …’
‘Oh yes, you do!’ Sterling dragged him up. ‘Tom, you and Master Brockley bring him back to the bench where he was and hold him a moment. I’ll put him under guard.’
Leaving the two of them to drag a swearing and resisting Lestrange back to the table, Sterling made for the largest casement window, flung it open, leant out and whistled, a penetrating sound that carried. It was answered by a distant barking, the deep bark of a big dog. Then, apparently, from nowhere, a tawny hound appeared at a gallop. Sterling drew back and the hound leapt through the window and straight into the room, to stand, tongue lolling, in front of his owner.
Sterling pointed to Lestrange, who had now been forced to sit on the bench, though this time with his back to the table. ‘Guard him, Wolf!!’ The dog at once lay down on his front, facing Lestrange, and it was clear that he was well named, for he did look remarkably like a wolf. He fixed Lestrange with a predatory gaze and growled softly.
‘All right,’ said M
aster Sterling with an air of relief. ‘Tom, find Jimmy as I said, give him my orders and then come back.’
Tom, rubbing his thigh, gave Lestrange a menacing glance and departed. I stared at Lestrange’s back with dislike and said: ‘Master Sterling, I am sorry to have made you treat a guest in such a way, but I am also grateful to you for believing me. It is vital that we find these people. Only …’
‘I tell you I don’t know where they are!’ Lestrange shouted, causing Wolf to half-rise, bristling.
‘Better sit down. Good teeth, Wolf has,’ said Sterling.
‘I too regret the position we’ve placed you in,’ said Sybil miserably, seating herself again. ‘But my daughter … to think she may have run off with a murderer … I can’t bear it!’
‘You won’t have to,’ Brockley assured her. ‘Once I get to work on our friend here, he’ll spill everything he knows and be glad to.’ He and Master Sterling exchanged glances and I realized that the situation had altered. Sterling and Brockley were now allies, of each other and of myself.
I had been about to say that I didn’t want the truth beaten out of Lestrange; I just wanted him questioned. Now, however, I thought better of saying so in his hearing. Let him feel threatened. However, I once more caught Brockley’s eye, stared at him hard and gave him a tiny headshake and a tiny wink. In response, he half-closed one eye. He had understood. I relaxed, and observed with relief that Dale hadn’t noticed anything. Brockley and I still had our rapport and it could be very useful but it must be hidden from Dale.
I noticed, though, that the unspoken exchange hadn’t escaped Sterling. He in turn looked at me and he too let one eyelid droop. I gave him a smile and a little nod, which Lestrange saw but unlike Brockley did not interpret correctly. He had already gone very pale. Now he began to mumble something. Prayers, by the sound of it.
A Perilous Alliance Page 11
