A Perilous Alliance

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  He was speaking faster and faster, as the memories overcame him. ‘I went after him,’ he said, ‘and caught up with him and challenged him. It was against my honour not to. His companions told him to ignore me but he was one of those men who won’t refuse a challenge.

  ‘He was brave, I suppose,’ said Duncan unwillingly. ‘And he had a sense of honour too, I think. It wouldn’t let him refuse a challenge, even from someone as unimportant as me. Anyway, we fought, with swords. It was under those trees that overhang the track just a little way from our lodge gates. It was queer. There were birds in the trees and they flew away in fright when the swords began to clash. I’ll always remember that. He was a good swordsman but so am I and I’m younger and faster. I made a lucky swipe and took his head half off.’

  He paused and then said in a hushed voice: ‘There was so much blood. I never saw so much blood. The grass was scarlet, all round him. It was horrible! I never thought it would be like that. It smelt … awful.’

  He fell silent and in that silence, we heard movement just outside the door. We all tensed, looking at each other in alarm. Then the door quietly opened and for one horrible second, I wondered if the count had indeed risen from his bed of death and was walking in the moonlight. From the gasp that Dale gave, I knew that she had shared the same nasty fantasy. Then it dissolved, as Hamish Ferguson walked into the light.

  ‘I haven’t been sleeping,’ he said. ‘I’ve been prowling. I heard voices and tried to discover who was speaking. Then I recognized my son’s voice and took the liberty of listening to what it was saying. When I heard him mention clashing swords and blood, I knew it was time to intervene.’

  ‘I told you to hush, Duncan,’ I said. ‘My life just now seems to be haunted by eavesdroppers. Master … Mr Ferguson, this room happens to be a ladies’ bedchamber.’

  ‘If my son had been misbehaving in a more obvious fashion,’ said his father coldly, ‘I would be annoyed, but if you had no objection, well, I wouldn’t interfere. However, it was clear from what I heard, that matters were far otherwise. Just what are you doing here, Duncan?’

  ‘They know. I heard noises and I went to see and I found them in that room – where the count is,’ said Duncan miserably. ‘They know all about it.’

  ‘And you filled in the gaps, I suppose. With you it’s first one thing, then another! As if you haven’t caused trouble enough already!’

  In my mind I heard the echo of the words we had all heard when we first entered the house and listened to Mr Ferguson shouting at his son in another room.

  ‘He hasn’t told us all,’ said Brockley. ‘What happened to the count’s companions – his chaplain and his grooms and Mistress Wilde? Where are they?’

  ‘Well, answer him,’ said Ferguson, as Duncan hesitated.

  ‘Gone,’ said Duncan. ‘They just fled when I killed him, afraid they’d be blamed or arrested as spies if the authorities were called and the whole story was told. Both, I think. That chaplain – Father Ignatius – kept telling them that they’d all end in a dungeon if they didn’t get away. The grooms were terrified. The priest said to them that they had passages on a ship and had best use them; that the count had had messages to deliver …’

  ‘He certainly had,’ I said with feeling. ‘And a man, Christopher Spelton, who is a servant of the queen as well as our friend may be put in danger if those messages reach the court of France! The situation doesn’t just concern the death of the count!’

  ‘Indeed? Well, the priest said he must deliver the count’s messages for him and then they just went! They’d found a ship that would take their horses.’

  ‘They didn’t take Mistress Wilde’s pony,’ said Brockley. ‘It’s in the stable here.’

  ‘Yes, where is Mistress Wilde?’ demanded Sybil. ‘We came to find her, that most of all!’

  ‘She went with them,’ said Duncan, but he only said it after a brief hesitation. It was very brief but that was enough.

  ‘She did not go with them,’ I said. ‘Now then! Where is she?’

  There was another pause, a longer one. Then Master Ferguson said: ‘She was hysterical. She refused to go with the others, and they said they wouldn’t take her anyway. Duncan here caught the count only a short way from the gates and the lodge-keeper had heard and seen everything. He helped to get Mrs Wilde back here. She was shouting and frantic and swearing she’d report it all to the Constable in Dover Castle, and if she had, well, my romantic, impetuous nitwit of a son would probably be a prisoner in the castle now. Yes, Duncan, you are a nitwit, and don’t call it being chivalrous and honourable and all the rest of it. Sensible is a better virtue. Count Renard didn’t have it, either.’

  ‘That sounds right,’ I said thoughtfully, and Ferguson nodded. Addressing me directly, he said: ‘He was one of those men who just don’t know right from wrong. They don’t think things out. They muddle through life. He didn’t treat his horse well’ – Brockley at this point growled in agreement – ‘but he wasn’t really cruel; it just never occurred to him to try a different way of controlling it, or simply try another horse! Anyway, we did what we could for Mistress Wilde. We gave her a soothing draught that quietened her down a little. It’s made of poppy juice, I think. Not English poppies; this comes from the Mediterranean and we know a ship that imports it, the Lucille … ’ For a moment, he seemed to lose the thread of what he was saying. His face looked tired and worried.

  Duncan, taking up the story, said: ‘We got Mrs Wilde away, anyhow. There was a coastal trader in port, about to set sail for Scotland.’

  ‘We paid the skipper the earth to take Mrs Wilde along,’ Master Ferguson said, recovering himself. ‘My wife sent her own maid with her and the lodge-keeper’s elder son went too, as their escort. We didn’t want to harm her! But we couldn’t have her here, getting Duncan into trouble. She’ll be all right. She’s going to Edinburgh, where I have kinfolk, and one of them is looking for a wife. He’s in good circumstances and about her age and if she can be brought to agree, she’ll have a good match there. If she won’t agree, well, my kin will look after her. They’ll find her a place in their household. They won’t turn her out into the street but they’ll make sure she doesn’t communicate with England. I sent instructions with her – the maid Annie has them in her charge. They won’t want a member of the family arrested and tried for unlawful killing, any more than I do.’

  ‘You’ve sent my daughter to Scotland and told your kinfolk there to push her into a marriage with one of them? You’re trying to bundle her, a grown woman over whom you have no authority whatsoever, a woman with a right to dispose of her own person, into marriage with a complete stranger? Treating her as though she were your property?’ Sybil’s voice shook with rage.

  ‘She can refuse the match if she likes,’ said Ferguson. ‘I said, she won’t be turned out into the street. There are thousands of couples who married while they were still strangers, and thousands of people who are ready to push grown women into marriages for purposes of convenience. I gather that Mrs Wilde’s erstwhile in-laws have been trying to do that to her. It’s common enough.’

  ‘But Mistress Wilde is not a member of your family! You had no right—’ Sybil burst out, only to be interrupted at once.

  ‘I may have done her a favour,’ said Ferguson. ‘I believe her in-laws are trying to force her to marry their chosen suitor, by keeping her children from her. A decent husband – and my kinsfolk are decent – would be a protection from them and perhaps will help her to regain her sons, just as competently as any foreign count could do.’

  Sybil, unimpressed, said fiercely: ‘We’ll go after her, believe me, we will. We’ll fetch her back. Maybe Mistress Stannard here won’t report your son – you won’t, will you, Ursula?’ Her eyes pleaded with me. Don’t make trouble for us or Ambrosia. Don’t make things worse. ‘What good would it do and what use was the count to anyone anyway?’

  ‘What were you going to do with the count’s body?’ I broke in.

  ‘
Bury it, tonight. My butler Morley is an ordained Catholic priest and would have given the count true burial rites, somewhere in my grounds. Your presence here made that impossible for tonight.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  Sybil said persistently: ‘Never mind all that – burials and messages, they’re not the point! We have to find Ambrosia!’

  ‘How?’ I asked her. ‘Do we have to search the whole of Edinburgh for her? I doubt if Mr Ferguson here will tell us where to look.’

  ‘No, I shan’t,’ said Ferguson frankly. ‘I will help you get to France, but not to Scotland. I will see that you don’t go to Scotland, even if I have to have you put aboard a French-bound vessel in fetters.’

  ‘They might go to Scotland later, Father,’ said Duncan miserably.

  ‘By then, you will be safely away,’ said Ferguson. ‘I have friends who live in Italy; you can go to them for the time being. I am buying time. Even Mistress Wilde can’t be kept quiet for ever, but she can be kept quiet for long enough – and perhaps she will be more reasonable after a while.’

  ‘For the moment,’ I said, ‘there’s no question of going to Scotland. We have to go to France. The news the count was taking there, that Father Ignatius is now taking for him, will put Christopher Spelton in danger and …’

  ‘Surely not! They’ll just order him out of France!’ Sybil protested. ‘They’ve been trying to create an alliance with England; they won’t put him in prison; they’ll just send him home.’

  ‘They might do anything,’ said Dale ominously, reminding me once more of how she had once, in France, come near to being executed for heresy.

  But she had made a good point. ‘We can’t be sure what they’ll do,’ I said. ‘The French king and the queen mother are reportedly the sort that don’t let their right hand know what the left hand is about.’

  ‘But we can’t do anything about these secret messages now!’ Sybil shouted it. ‘They’re on their way to France and that’s that! That man Father Ignatius will deliver them and we couldn’t stop him, not in his own country, even if we did catch up with him. All we’d be going there for is to warn Spelton but we’d be too late anyway and I can’t believe he’s really in danger and what about Ambrosia?’

  ‘Mrs Jester, the decision doesn’t rest with Mrs Stannard, it rests with me,’ said Ferguson. ‘I want you on your way to France as fast as possible. After that, the future must take care of itself, but your lost Ambrosia will not come to harm, either, I assure you. I urge you to let her go.’

  ‘I will not let her go!’ Sybil wailed, bursting into tears.

  ‘I said, the choice is not yours,’ said Ferguson coldly. ‘The fact that the count was apparently a spy might be a strong defence for Duncan and so might the fact that he apparently tried to recruit my son into his own deplorable trade. I hope, Duncan, that I can clear your name or get you pardoned in due course but all that will take time. Meanwhile, the rest of you are bound for France as soon as possible, and that’s the end of it.’

  Duncan said: ‘The Lucille is in port. This afternoon, I escorted Kate into Dover because she wanted to shop, and we met Mrs Briars and her daughters. We’d gone into the Safe Harbour …’

  ‘I’ll wager you did,’ said his father exasperatedly. ‘And had a nice snuggly kiss from pretty Bessie, no doubt. What with you wanting to marry an unsuitable girl like Bessie and Kate refusing to marry anyone at all … children! Oh well, better you sow your wild oats with Bessie than with the Briars girls. I don’t like the Briars family,’ he added to me. ‘Mrs Briars is a shrew and rumour has it that her daughters are no better than they ought to be. But somehow, Kate and Duncan have made the family’s acquaintance and Kate seems to like the girls. It worries me but perhaps it can be useful now. All right, Duncan. Go on. I take it you found the Briars women in the Safe Harbour and they told you the Lucille was in port. Captain Garnett is Mrs Briars’ cousin, I believe.’

  ‘Yes. And Mrs Briars and her daughters were having ale and chicken pasties in the inn,’ said Duncan, ‘and Mrs Briars told us that the ship was in and her cousin was finding himself a cargo for her next trip. He goes anywhere; he doesn’t make regular runs,’ he explained, for our benefit.

  ‘He’d take us to France?’ I asked.

  ‘Scotland!’ protested Sybil.

  ‘He’d take you to Cathay or Ultima Thule as long as he was adequately paid,’ said Ferguson. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if he did a bit of piracy as a sideline, myself. I don’t like Captain Garnett any more than I like the rest of his family. But yes, he’d carry you across to France, though not your horses. He doesn’t carry livestock. You can leave your animals here and collect them on your way home, if you wish. We’ll look after them.’

  ‘Well, we can’t leave Joseph to look after them,’ I said. ‘We’ll need him in France, when we hire mounts. But I can leave you some money for their keep.’

  ‘I’m agreeable to that.’

  We had money with us, of course. We each carried a good sum in case we should get separated, and we each had plenty of it in high-value coinage, to reduce the weight. ‘I’ll pay you as soon as our passages are fixed,’ I said. ‘I’ll see this Captain Garnett tomorrow.’

  ‘No, I will,’ Ferguson told me. ‘I want to be quite sure where Garnett is asked to take you. You are not going to Scotland and I shall make that clear to him. You will travel on his ship to the destination that I arrange with him. I am sorry to make threats but if I have to lock you all up and have you taken to the Lucille under guard – I have plenty of menservants – then I will. One thing about Garnett, I fancy, is that if his passengers come on board under duress, he won’t blink an eyelid. You may take that as final. But you have little to complain about. You will at least have a chance to help this man, Spelton, about whom you are clearly worried and, meanwhile, I will get Duncan here to safety. Frankly, at least for the time being, I want you to be somewhere else, like Mistress Wilde.’

  ‘We know too much,’ I said. ‘Yes, I see.’

  SIXTEEN

  Tired of Trouble

  It was some time before we finally went to bed and when we did, I doubt if any of us slept much. I didn’t sleep at all. Hardly were Sybil and I alone before we were quarrelling, the worst – indeed as far as I could recall, the only – real quarrel we had ever had.

  ‘Ursula, we have to go after Ambrosia. We must. These people she’s been sent to; how do we know how they’ll treat her? She’s out in the world all alone and it’s not much better than if she’d married that … count!’ She made the word count sound as though it were a vicious epithet.

  She stopped to draw breath and I said patiently: ‘And how would we find her, in Edinburgh? We have no idea where in the city to look for her, or even the names of the people she’s gone to. It may not be Ferguson. And meanwhile, Christopher Spelton may have gone to his death, unless we can warn him in time.’

  ‘He won’t be in danger, I don’t believe it, I keep saying so! But Ambrosia! Ursula, we must make arrangements of our own, find a ship to take us north. In the morning …’

  ‘Master Ferguson won’t let us do anything of the kind. You heard him!’

  ‘We must escape! We could do it now, before dawn, the way the count left Hawkswood! Ursula …’

  ‘We’re going to France, Sybil. Ambrosia is not in danger of her life as far as we know, but Spelton may well be …’

  ‘He won’t! He’ll just be expelled from France!’

  ‘You say that because you want to believe it but there’s no certainty. There is no sense in trying to reach Scotland and every reason to chase Father Ignatius to France. Now let us get into bed and try to sleep. In the morning …’

  ‘In the morning, we’ve got to try to get away and find a ship going north, we’ve got to, I can’t believe you could be so heartless, Ursula. Never in all these years …’

  ‘Sybil, don’t you understand? This situation isn’t of my making! We don’t actually have any choice. We’re bound for France whether we
like it or not.’

  ‘I will not go to France! I’ll go to Scotland alone if I must and …’

  ‘Master Ferguson won’t let you and nor will I. Sybil, be reasonable. I’m so tired of trouble …’

  ‘I won’t be reasonable, I won’t, won’t, won’t! If you are cruel enough to see me go alone, then I pity the trouble you’ll have with your conscience, but I will go alone and …’

  ‘You will not.’

  ‘You are wicked and cruel!’ shouted Sybil, in a voice that I feared might wake the entire house, and then, to my horror and astonishment, she sprang at me and tried to claw my face. I seized her wrists, holding her with all the strength I had until she suddenly softened and began to cry, while I stood gasping and shaking. I had never seen Sybil, calm, sensible Sybil, behave in such a way. It was as though I had been harbouring a live volcano in my house all these years.

  ‘Sybil, please,’ I said feebly.

  But the storm was over. She had collapsed on to the bed, sobbing wildly and crying out that she was sorry, she was sorry, but Ambrosia, her daughter was out there all alone …

  ‘When we return from France we will go to Scotland,’ I promised. ‘Ferguson won’t be able to stop us then. I don’t know how we’ll find her but perhaps we will. We’ll try, and with luck, we’ll rescue her then. Now, for the love of heaven, let us go to bed.’

  In the morning we were all jaded and unrested and came late to breakfast, to find that Ferguson had had his early and gone out immediately afterwards. Sybil and I were silent and awkward with each other and from the uneasy glances that the Brockleys kept giving us, we knew they had heard the quarrel. As soon as we had all eaten, the four of us went out into the grounds – and were at once aware that we were being watched, not to say stalked, by a couple of strapping footmen, who were sauntering about outside the house. They never came close to us but they were never too far away, either. In addition, three burly gardeners were working between us and the gate.