The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's

by Buckley, Fiona

  Then we discovered that for the time being at least, we couldn’t. On the day after the double inquest, Norfolk went to Greenwich to attend a meeting of the royal council. He summoned us to sup with him that evening and told us that his news had been overshadowed by other and mightier storms at the said meeting.

  By living quietly in the country, it appeared, we had deprived ourselves of a great deal of interesting information. It seemed that earlier in the year, there had been a particularly stormy council session. Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, was a favorite of the queen’s but most certainly not a favorite of Cecil’s and indeed wasn’t popular either with his fellow lords or with the public in general. He had acquired the nickname of the Gypsy because of his dark complexion and it wasn’t a term of affection. At this earlier meeting, the Gypsy had loudly declared that the queen had seized the Spanish treasure on Cecil’s advice and, therefore, that it was essentially Cecil who had enraged the Spanish and closed Antwerp to our merchants, infuriating and in some cases impoverishing the merchants and, in short, endangering the security of the realm.

  The queen, who was present, had spoken up in support of Cecil, wounding her Sweet Robin and causing him to look at Cecil as though he would like to kill him. Others of the council then began to take sides. Old scores had been hauled noisily into the light of day. The trouble had been so serious that it was still reverberating and today’s meeting had seen renewed hostilities. The queen was said to be short of temper and sleeping badly. The murder of a courier and a serving lad, however deplorable, hardly warranted the attention of a council that was in a state of schism about far higher matters. People were not only taking sides, but also forming alliances, some of them surprising.

  “Some of the council don’t care for Cecil,” Norfolk told us at supper. “He’s a cautious, dried-up stick. He’s blocked the ambitions of many and will go on doing so while the queen trusts him and thinks he can do no wrong. She’ll even threaten her pet dog Leicester with the Tower if she thinks he’s scheming against Cecil—I’ve heard her do it!

  “And now,” he said, not altogether without enjoyment, “we’ve got fellows who normally can’t bear the sight of each other strolling side by side and drinking together and talking in corners because whatever they think of one another, they like Cecil even less. He’s going to be brought down soon.” He now sounded unmistakably pleased. “They’re going to discredit him. Even he’s afraid of it. He’s declared he’s seeing no one for the time being—he’ll be spending his days in his study, writing full accounts of everything he’s done or advised the queen to do, to justify it all. It’ll take him a long time,” Norfolk added, with his mouth full. He appeared at this point to think he had said enough and contented himself with winking at us and taking more wine.

  We hoped he was exaggerating but when, the next day, after breakfast, we left the inn and went to Cecil’s house, we were politely turned away. Cecil was engaged with weighty matters and no one was to be admitted. Nonplussed, we went back to Howard House.

  Norfolk was awaiting us. “I have an invitation for you. My banker, Roberto Ridolfi, has returned from his errand in Dover—of course, knowing nothing of all these disasters. I sent him a note, explaining what has happened to Gale, but assuring him that his letters are on their way. I gave my own courier an armed escort of three and since none of them have as yet been brought back on a bier, I assume that they’ve left the City unmolested. He sent me a reply at once, thanking me for all I have done and inviting me to dine at his house tomorrow. He is giving a dinner, with the Spanish ambassador as guest of honor, I understand. He states that I am welcome to bring with me any guests I may have with me. I still regard you as my guests. This dinner is to be quite a sumptuous affair, it seems. Will you come?”

  We hesitated and he added: “I understand that the parents of Master Edmund Dean will be present. Signor Ridolfi is acquainted with them. Would it do any harm to meet them?”

  I opened my mouth to decline, but Hugh forestalled me.

  “We should be delighted,” he said suavely.

  I had little to say after that. Later, as we were settling for the night, Hugh moved his bedside candle so that the light would shine on my face and said: “You don’t look happy. Is that because of this dinner invitation? Ursula, don’t you see? While we’re waiting to see Cecil, we may as well learn what we can. There may be good reason to look closely at Ridolfi. He’s obviously on amiable terms with the Spanish ambassador and that gentleman is no friend to England. Nor is his master, Philip of Spain.”

  “Am I to understand,” I said, “that you think of us as being on an assignment now?”

  Hugh considered. “Yes,” he said eventually. “I rather believe that I do. Even though no one has commissioned us. We just seem to have stumbled into this. We can’t just ignore it.”

  I sighed. “I wish I were clearer about what it is we can’t ignore.”

  “Two corpses?” suggested Hugh.

  “There’s no evidence that they’re anything to do with Ridolfi, or the Spanish ambassador either.”

  “Come, now, Ursula. There are connections. A letter in cipher, probably from Ridolfi, probably to Moray or Mary Stuart. The courier passes through Norfolk’s house, collecting more correspondence from Norfolk on the way, and then what happens? The courier is murdered. And so is a harmless lad, for no reason that anyone can imagine—except that perhaps he knew something about the murderer. Isn’t that enough?”

  “Yes. All right.” I was unhappy. “I accept that we should go to Ridolfi’s house, but . . . ”

  “What is it? You don’t want to meet the Deans—is that it?”

  “No. I don’t really want to meet them and I don’t like the way this business of the betrothal seems to be persisting, but that doesn’t matter so very much. It’s what was done to Walt!” I burst out. “Mistress Dalton was right; it was an act of contempt. It was wicked! It gives me gooseflesh all over. I . . . I can understand how those maidservants felt, the ones who kept on talking about witchcraft. I don’t mean Gladys; I’m sure it’s nothing to do with Gladys. But to do that to Walt’s body was so nasty; like ill-wishing someone even after they were dead. Whoever did it is . . . is vicious. Awash with spite . . . ! Hugh, there are inquiries going on into the murders. It’s being done! We have no responsibility there—or authority, either. I wish I’d never suggested that we ought to go to Cecil. I know I was the first to say that. But now I just want to run away from all of it!”

  Hugh blew out the candle. “Come here,” he said.

  His body, still firm even though he was far from young, wrapped itself around mine and transmitted warmth to me. He held me close against him. He had lately bestowed a pet name upon me, just as Matthew had once done. Matthew had called me Saltspoon because of my sharp tongue; Hugh, more gently, had observed that my name, Ursula, meant a bear, and had dubbed me Little Bear, like the star constellation which throughout the year swings around the Pole Star.

  “Little Bear,” he whispered in the darkness of the inn bedchamber. “Something to hug, but something that has teeth and claws as well. Hug me but don’t forget your claws. Keep them ready for the enemy. It’s a dangerous world and sometimes a wicked one. We have to fight the wickedness, my dear. But not here and now. Here and now, curled up together in this bed, we’re safe. My dear little bear . . . ”

  He never roused quickly; he was past the age for that. But I felt the heat in him, felt desire beginning, and encouraged it. Presently, we came together.

  With Hugh, it was not as it had been with those who had gone before him. Hugh did not provide explosions of passion, starbursts and sunbursts, and cries of amazement. With him, it was more like a flower opening to reveal a glow of color; or the warmth of sunshine emerging unexpectedly from cloud. With Hugh, lovemaking was always immensely comforting, leaving me with a sense of safety and peace.

  Presently, curled trustfully against him, I slept.

  Hugh had done so much for me. Not least, he h
ad freed me from my sorrow for the past, for Gerald and for Matthew.

  With Hugh, I could rest.

  9

  Dubious Topiary

  All the same, I woke on the following morning with a blinding headache.

  I knew why. I understood Hugh’s point of view and even agreed with it, but still I couldn’t make myself want to dine at Ridolfi’s, least of all in the character of a spy, on the lookout for conspiracies.

  There had been a time when I enjoyed such things. I had once told a friend that I loved the call of the wild geese as they flew across wide skies, bound on huge journeys, that their voices were full of sea winds and vast empty spaces, and he had linked that to my liking for adventure. Will you ever settle for domestic peace? I wonder, he had said. Or will the wild geese call to you for the rest of your life?

  But I was younger then. I was approaching my thirty-fifth birthday now and I had chosen domestic peace years ago. I wanted to go home, and my body was very loudly saying so.

  Gladys had invented an herbal drink that could relieve these migraine attacks, and she had left a supply of the dried herbs with me. Dale made the infusion and I drank it. The attack wasn’t one of the most violent, and the pain receded without nausea.

  “I’ve won my battle,” I said to Hugh, when he came to see how I was and found me getting unsteadily out of bed.

  “I’m sorry it was so much of a battle,” he said gently. Hugh knew, without being told, what had brought this on. “But we’re doing the right thing, Ursula.”

  • • •

  Roberto Ridolfi had leased a house in the Strand. From Howard House, we went on horseback, except for Hugh, who once more used our coach. It was but a short distance out of the City, through a fine spring morning. Norfolk had six attendants including Higford and Dean (“Barker has little taste for what he calls junketing,” said Norfolk) and we had the Brockleys and John Argent.

  At the house, Brockley and Argent and two of Norfolk’s men went to see the horses cared for, but the rest of us were greeted by a butler as stately as Conley but much larger, carrying a mighty midriff before him as though it were a badge of office. He showed us up a flight of steps into a light, airy vestibule with a mosaic floor in a pattern that had unmistakable echoes of Ancient Rome.

  Here we found a short, dark man in a deep green gown of velvet as rich as anything I had ever seen at court, and a shy young lady dressed in russet. She was no more than twenty, with brown eyes and a wave of rich brown hair rolling abundantly from under an elaborate hood.

  “Thank you, Greaves,” Norfolk said to the butler. “Ah. Roberto.” He greeted Ridolfi breezily, as an old friend would. “These are my guests, Master Hugh Stannard and Mistress Stannard. Mistress Stannard has court connections, as I think I told you. My secretaries you already know.”

  “I am overjoyed once more to meet you, Your Grace.” Ridolfi’s English was idiomatic, though his accent was marked. “But I was desolated to hear of the sad death of my good Julius Gale—and the other tragedy in your house. A serving boy only, I believe, but we are all equal in God’s eyes and if he was not among the faithful, who knows what takes place in the privacy of the mind at the last? Mistress Stannard, I see you are intrigued by the pattern on the floor.”

  I was looking at it mainly to distract myself from the memory of Walt’s insulted corpse. However, I raised my head and said politely that the design was interesting and that I liked the blue and green colors.

  Ridolfi smiled. “I had it laid when I arrived. It is a pattern taken from a house I know in Rome, which stands on the site of a Roman villa and still has part of an original floor. My lease here allows me to do such things. I have had more difficulty in other respects,” he added. “I didn’t examine the grounds carefully enough before signing the lease and I fear I am now the proprietor of a topiary garden which . . . well! I have forbidden it to the maidservants. I blame you, Your Grace. You recommended your topiary gardener—Johnson’s his name, is it not?—to my predecessor.”

  “Arthur Johnson works here too,” Norfolk said to us. “The previous tenant of this house encouraged him to give rein to—an unusual sense of humor. However, we are all men and women of the world. You should go and see it. It may amuse you.”

  Ridolfi at this point recalled that he wasn’t welcoming us on his own and turned to the young woman, who was standing quietly half a pace behind him. “Allow me to present my wife, who has just arrived in England. I was in Dover to meet her. Donna speaks little English, but she has the French.”

  We all exchanged greetings in French with Madame Ridolfi. “At home we call her signora but in England, for some reason, everyone addresses her as madame,” Ridolfi said.

  “It’s of no consequence,” Donna said. She had a soft, timid voice, as if she feared that unfriendly ears might be listening, and a very sweet face with a carefully tended olive complexion. Her mouth was small and shapely, her nose prettily turned up at the tip, and her brown eyes were wide and wondering.

  Norfolk inquired if Dean’s parents had yet arrived. “My friends here are hoping to make their acquaintance.”

  “Not as yet,” Ridolfi said. “But with the sun so warm—or what in England is called warm!—those guests who are already here have roamed into the grounds and my servants have had to follow them with their trays of refreshments. I am, as it were, on duty here until my guest of honor, His Excellency Don Guerau de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, arrives. But if you would care to stroll out as well and enjoy the sunshine, my page will show you the way. Boy!”

  At the mention of de Spes, Hugh and I exchanged very small nudges, undetectable by Ridolfi, but we could hardly insist on staying to observe His Excellency’s arrival and overhear his conversation. Norfolk could, and did, make it clear that he didn’t care to stroll but wished to talk to Ridolfi and His Excellency, whenever the latter should appear, but we had no option other than to follow the page. With the Brockleys behind us, we let ourselves be led through a passage and out of a rear door onto a terrace with a view of the grounds.

  These were extensive, stretching to the banks of the Thames. At the left-hand end of the terrace, steps led down to a knot garden. To the right, another flight descended to a gravel path between the terrace and a tall yew hedge. An archway in this gave a glimpse of the topiary which our host and Norfolk had mentioned in such surprising terms.

  For the moment, we chose the knot garden instead. More gravel paths threaded this way and that among geometric beds, enclosed by low hedges of lavender. A few flowers were showing: primrose and daffodil, bluebell and heartsease. Some of the beds, however, contained deft arrangements of vegetables and herbs, medicinal and culinary, which made decorative capital out of foliage of different shades and shapes.

  There were other guests about, as Ridolfi had said, sauntering in pairs and groups, and being offered refreshments from liveried servants carrying trays. We saw no one whom we recognized, but we accepted wine and sweet cakes for ourselves, and made our way on through the garden to a gate in the low wall beyond. With a squeak of slightly rusted hinges, it let us out onto a slope of scythed turf, going gently down to the river. We strolled to the water’s edge. The topiary garden to our right didn’t stretch so far but a path emerged from it through another arch of close-clipped yew, leading to a wooden landing stage, where a dinghy and a small barge were moored. Close by was a cluster of alders at the base of a small, flat promontory, not much more than a tongue of grassy land, that jutted into the stream, and at its tip was an untidy heap of vegetation, probably the nest belonging to a pair of swans, which were swimming close by. Soon, no doubt, it would contain this year’s eggs.

  There was shipping on the river, as usual, but none of it was near at hand. There was a pleasant air of peace and privacy all around.

  “He does himself well, this Ridolfi,” Hugh said. “These grounds are impressive.”

  We surveyed this peaceful scene in silence for a few moments, finishing our wine and cakes. We were interrupte
d, however, by Brockley, who suddenly emerged from the topiary garden and came striding purposefully toward us. I turned to him with a smile, but didn’t receive one in return. Brockley’s normally calm countenance was, for once, expressing a strong emotion—that of indignation. “Master Stannard! Madam! Fran!”

  “What is it, Brockley?” I asked.

  “When we’d finished in the stable,” said Brockley, “one of Ridolfi’s grooms, with a look on his face that I can only call a leer, said that visiting servants would find refreshments in the kitchen but it would be worth my while to peep into the topiary garden first. John Argent preferred the refreshments but I was curious about the topiary. I can only say . . . well, I hardly know what to say!”

  “Ah, yes,” said Hugh. “Norfolk said it might amuse us. Let’s take a look.”

  “Not you, Fran,” said Brockley. “I really would rather that you didn’t.”

  “Go off and join Argent, both of you,” said Hugh. “And here, take our cups and dishes with you. Come, Ursula. Let’s inspect the mysterious horrors among the yew trees.”

  Abandoning Brockley and Dale, we went through the yew arch, and then stopped short. Hugh started to laugh. “Oh, really!” he said.

  The topiary was outrageous and it became worse, the more one looked at it. At first sight, the yew trees immediately in front of us seemed to be clipped into nothing more than vaguely conical shapes. Then you looked again and, according to whether you were a very modest person or one with a broad sense of humor, you either recoiled in shock or began to chortle.

  “The proportions don’t seem quite right, though,” said Hugh, between chuckles. “I would say that most men, on average . . . ”

  “Hugh!” But I was laughing too. My amusement was echoed by a chuckle from somewhere nearby, and looking about me, I saw a ladder leaning against a yew tree, and then, as my gaze traveled upward, I beheld two ancient-looking legs with calf muscles as gnarled as tree roots, a pair of patched and baggy breeches, a bit of grubby shirt, a sleeveless leather jerkin, and finally, the gnomelike face of an elderly man whom I now recognized as the gardener Arthur Johnson, whom I had seen working on Norfolk’s topiary. Once more, he was busy with shears, improving, if that is quite the right term, one of the shapes. He had overheard us and grinned down, waving the shears.