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

by Buckley, Fiona

  Cecil looked me in the face and I looked straight back at him. In that exchange of glances, there was accusation on my side and on his, the recognition of it. His brows rose inquiringly. Walsingham, standing beside the desk, watched us with his dark eyes narrowed, as if trying to interpret the unspoken messages between us.

  Then Cecil picked up the letters.

  There was a long silence, while he studied what I had given him. Walsingham looked over his shoulder, reading along with him. At length, they both raised their heads and gazed at me.

  I said: “I must now speak of what Brockley and I overheard. He is my witness to this, for he was with me. Last night, de Spes, the Spanish ambassador, made a clandestine visit to Ridolfi. We heard de Spes say that his master would not move unless he knew that the English Catholics were ready to rise. Ridolfi remarked that war was costly. They appear to be collecting money for that purpose. And we heard de Spes say the words ‘when Mary is on the throne of England.’ ”

  Neither Cecil nor Walsingham moved, but I sensed the shock that ran through them.

  Then Cecil said: “So that’s it.” His voice was quiet, shaken, as though he were suddenly short of breath for talking.

  “You half-guessed, sir,” Walsingham said. “You said only yesterday that you believed that Mary had her eye on more than just the Scottish throne.”

  “Since restoring her would make her Elizabeth’s natural heir, I was bound to think so.” Cecil’s tone was still hushed. “However, I still supposed that Mary and her adherents looked on her accession in England only as something that might one day happen in the way of nature. I’ve been so blind. They intend to make it happen! We’re seeing the first moves in an assassination plot. Dear God! I’ve behaved like an innocent. I’m old enough to know better!”

  There was a silence. Then he picked one of the letters up. “Let me clarify what these letters say. This, to Mary Stuart, assures her that efforts are continuing to persuade the Scots—especially her brother Moray, the regent—that she should be reinstated as queen in Scotland. It also assures her that the Duke of Norfolk continues interest in marrying her, and expresses the further hope that if Queen Elizabeth can be induced to approve the marriage and the restoration, this may drive a wedge between Elizabeth and myself, as Ridolfi is quite sure that nothing in the world will induce me to approve them. He mentions a number of council members, including Leicester and Norfolk, who know of the marriage negotiations, and are encouraging them. Most of these gentlemen are those who would like to see my influence destroyed. I have my enemies. As well I know!”

  He paused, and then resumed, his tone grim. “The letter also says that Norfolk is in touch with the northern earls. It doesn’t say what he is in touch with them for, but the final comment, that the Spanish administration in the Netherlands has been alerted, is a useful pointer. It tallies with the remarks you overheard last night!”

  “We also heard Ridolfi say that a man whose name we didn’t catch has already been in touch with someone—again we don’t know who—but it sounded as though de Spes thought this was happening too soon,” I said. “It could have meant Norfolk and the northern earls.”

  “Very likely,” said Cecil. He picked up a second letter. “This is the one to Moray in Scotland, expressing anxiety because he is so lukewarm regarding Mary’s restoration. It is a relief to know that someone in this sorry muddle still has a little sense in his head! Mary was a fool. When she first came to Scotland, Moray was ready to be a good brother to her, but when he warned her against Darnley, they fell out, and when he suspected her of being involved in Darnley’s murder, they fell out further than ever. They hate each other now.

  “Here, Ridolfi points out that if Mary is married to Norfolk, she will have a mature male partner to help and advise her. I wonder if Moray will find that a persuasive argument! He’s probably got a taste for power now. He may think that Mary with a mature male partner at her side is a more depressing prospect than Mary wild and willful.”

  He put the second letter down and Walsingham handed him the next. “This is the one to the Earl of Leicester, sir.”

  “Ah. Yes. The Gypsy. Well, he would be involved in any scheme to get rid of me,” Cecil said. “I could have expected that. This doesn’t say much. The prospects for the Norfolk marriage are encouraging but Regent Moray is being unhelpful. There’s nothing of great importance there. Leicester can’t possibly want Mary as queen of England. I greatly doubt that he has the remotest idea what his coconspirators are up to. But now . . . ” He took up the missive to the Bishop of Ross, handling it with great distaste, between finger and thumb. “. . . now we come to this.”

  Once again, his eyes met mine but this time impersonally. “It really is a muddle, isn’t it?”

  I was wounded and angry but I had been shaken, too, by the far-reaching extent of the plot that we had uncovered. “This whole business is so huge,” I said. “It seems to bring in so many people . . . so many different kinds of people. The queen’s councilors, the Bishop of Ross, Moray, Mary, Ridolfi, Spain . . . ”

  “And some of those involved,” said Cecil, “such as Leicester, assuredly don’t know that they’re joining hands with people whose intentions are quite other than their own. And who are sniggering at the simpletons they’ve trapped into helping them. I congratulate you on your work, Ursula.”

  I said, “Thank you,” in a stiff voice.

  Cecil nodded, but returned at once to his exposition of the letters. “According to this one to Ross, Ridolfi fears that Moray has begun to suspect the ultimate purpose and that this is one reason why he is dragging his feet. Ah. Yes. I missed this at my first glance through. He adds that it is vital that the Earl of Leicester shouldn’t suspect. He is very worried in case Leicester does sense something amiss. He remarks that one of the queen’s pet names for Leicester is her Eyes, which means that she relies on him to notice what is happening out of her sight.

  “The letter then goes on to repeat much of what is in the other letters but adds that the process of gathering funds is not yet complete and must be complete before the scheme can go ahead, for it will surely result in bloodshed. Money is needed to recruit and pay soldiers and arm them. Ridolfi himself is providing personal money and a bank loan, and a number of other individuals have been drawn in. These include merchants who realize that Mary’s restoration will please Spain, and may therefore induce the administration in the Netherlands to reopen Antwerp.”

  He paused. “It would seem,” he said after a moment, “that Mary’s marriage to Norfolk and her restoration in Scotland represent the first step in this ugly conspiracy. The second will be to foment a Catholic rising in England and put Mary on Elizabeth’s throne. Nothing is actually said of the plans for Elizabeth, though we can all guess what they are. And also . . . ”

  For the third time, our eyes locked.

  “I am sorry, Ursula. In the last paragraph of this letter, Ridolfi says that although Spain and France are traditional rivals, there are supporters of the scheme in France, who have been gathering money for it. The Seigneur Matthew de la Roche of Blanche-pierre has acted as the assembly point and in April he forwarded two thousand marks to Ridolfi. You have underlined the words Matthew de la Roche of Blanchepierre.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Unless it’s a relative of the same name. But as far as I know, none of his relatives were called Matthew.”

  “So you know,” said Cecil, and his voice was genuinely regretful. “You know that your second husband, De la Roche, did not die in an outbreak of plague as you believed, but is still alive in France.”

  “And my marriage to Hugh is void,” I said bitterly. “And I have been lied to and betrayed. By whom?”

  • • •

  At the end of another very long silence, Cecil said: “Your marriage to Hugh Stannard is lawful. You were married to De la Roche in a secret ceremony conducted by a Catholic priest who was not entitled, in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth, to perform such a ceremony in this country, and you
were also married under duress. The queen, as head of both church and state in England, has annuled your marriage to De la Roche. I can show you the document. That annulment was in force before you ever met Master Stannard. You need have no fears.”

  I said, “There were letters. From Matthew’s people in Blanchepierre, his home in France. They told me . . . ”

  “That he had died in the plague. Do you remember, Ursula, some years ago, unmasking a gifted forger who had created with his own hands some documents which he thought might injure her majesty?”

  “Yes. Very clearly.”

  “He really was—and is—gifted,” said Cecil. “Such men can be useful. It was part of the deal we did with him. His neck would be spared and he would not be imprisoned, but his gifts henceforth were to be used in the queen’s service.”

  “Were there letters for Matthew as well? Does he believe . . . what does he believe?”

  “That you are dead. That the plague broke out here, as well.”

  “You have known all along. You, and the queen. You planned all this? Arranged it?”

  “Yes, Ursula. You were too valuable to lose; nor was it in your best interests to return to a marriage which was all too likely, in the end, to place you in an intolerable position. You loved De la Roche, but he is an enemy of this realm. What, in the end, would that have done to you?”

  “It was my business,” I said. “I would have dealt with it in my own way. No one had the right to interfere.”

  “You are also,” said Cecil steadily, watching me, “the queen’s half sister. It’s all right.” He glanced sidelong at Walsingham. “Sir Francis here knows about it. You are not of dynastic significance, since you are not legitimate, but you are of emotional importance to Her Majesty. If the facts of your paternity had leaked out in France, you could have become a very useful hostage. I should perhaps tell you, by the way, that Matthew has remarried and has a son.”

  “Have you any idea,” I asked him bitterly, “any idea at all, what you have done? What it was like, seeing his name in that letter?”

  It had been a moment for which I can scarcely find words, even now, when I am old, my passions turned to cold ashes, and the men I once loved nothing but memories. Matthew’s name had emerged from the welter of the cipher by stages. 52 5 120 60 32 25 138 12 20 60 6 54 60 15 48 15. Those had been the numerals, and I began dividing them—the 52 was in the column for division by 4—quite unsuspecting, and very tired. The candles were burning low and my eyes felt hot and heavy. It was deep in the night, and I ached for sleep.

  I was almost in a trance as the name Matthew came off the end of my quill, and even then I only thought of it as a name. My second husband had been called Matthew but so were many men. It meant nothing, beyond a slight reminder of days gone by.

  Then de la also emerged but this too was a commonplace in France. It still meant nothing . . . until I began on the last five numerals, 54 60 15 48 15, and watched the word Roche, incredibly, come to light.

  Even then, I had thought: it is another man of the same name. Perhaps it is a relation of Matthew’s. But I had known the names of his family members. There hadn’t been that many of them: an uncle and some cousins. There was no one called Matthew among them. And then I went on transcribing and there was no more doubt. Of Blanchepierre. That was how the next few numerals came out.

  Even then, it made no sense. Matthew had been dead for nearly five years. I had laid his memory to rest. But the words were there, and there was only one man to whom they could refer.

  Dale and Brockley had been in the room. They saw me pause, and stare, and they came to my side to see what I had found. Brockley said: “Good God! It can’t be!” Dale said: “Ma’am! Does it really say . . . ?”

  “Yes,” I told them. “And when the news came to me in England, I wasn’t allowed to go to France, to Blanchepierre, to weep beside his grave. Cecil and the queen forbade it. I wonder how much they know.”

  If he was alive, I thought feverishly, then he was still, surely, my husband. And with that, things I thought I had forgotten came surging back. All that had been between us. Quarrels and tears and laughter and . . .

  Lovemaking. The fiercest and stormiest lovemaking I had ever known and the most exultant. Not the vigorous but steady and warm unions I had known with my first husband, Gerald; not the friendly unions I experienced with Hugh. And certainly not . . .

  There had been one other, which had had something in it of Matthew’s stormy quality, but which I had, for very good reasons, detested. I would never say that about Matthew’s lovemaking.

  His stood alone in my memory. I thought I had put it in the past. I didn’t expect that at the realization that he still lived, the old desire for him would overtake me again like a flood of molten gold.

  And then the flood passed, to be replaced by another, which was nothing at all like molten gold; more like a cascade of ice water. I had made a new life. If Matthew were to walk into my bedchamber now, this moment, there would be one moment of ecstasy in which I would run into his arms and after that . . .

  After that, a great deal of difficulty, anxiety, and inconvenience. As I sat there in the guttering candlelight, I found the tears running down my face. I had made a new life. I had been happy. I liked Hugh. I liked our quiet interests; our domestic occupations. I liked having a husband who didn’t plot against the queen I loved and served, seeking to destroy the peace of my homeland and lay it open to the Inquisition that terrorized Spain and which we had tasted, in a fashion, under Mary Tudor.

  My body, which was still young and could not forget, cried out for Matthew, but my mind said no, please, no, leave things as they are. I don’t want to go back. I can’t go back. I can’t leave Hugh, or my life here and I won’t, I won’t take Meg to France to be taught doctrines that I reject.

  Another memory slid into my mind. A hot, airless, fetid room and a state of pain and fear that were also unforgettable. The day I had given birth to Matthew’s stillborn son, and nearly lost my own life in the process. I didn’t want to risk another pregnancy. With Hugh, childless despite two previous wives and several mistresses, I felt safe from it.

  “I must finish this,” I had said wearily to the Brockleys. “And then I must sleep. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow I must report what I’ve found.”

  Now I had done so. I had reported it all. Cecil’s quiet blue eyes, so very different from Edmund Dean’s, regarded me steadily. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

  “You can’t know what you’ve done,” I said. “It is a dreadful thing, to lose—to think you have lost—someone, and to mourn and then to accept and to begin again, with someone else; to undo the past, knot by knot—and then find that it’s still there! That he’s still there . . . !”

  Words abandoned me. I could say nothing more. I tried to keep my head up, not to give way before Cecil and the unsmiling, brooding Walsingham. Cecil said something to Walsingham, sharply, in a low voice, and Sir Francis left the room.

  “He will fetch my wife,” Cecil said. “And your woman, Dale. Cry if you want to, Ursula. I won’t look.”

  He got to his feet and went to gaze out of the window. I put my head down on his desk and surrendered. Presently, Mildred and Dale came to me and took me away. “I’m all right,” I told them, still sobbing, but they led me to a bedchamber and I was made to lie down while a warm posset was made for me, and then they sat with me while I drank it.

  “You should rest,” Mildred said. “Sleep if you can.”

  “I can’t,” I said, as I drained the cup. “I mustn’t linger. I must go back to the Ridolfis. My daughter, Meg, is arriving today—at Madame Ridolfi’s invitation—and I must be there to take charge of her as soon as I can.”

  “But do you feel well enough to . . . ?”

  “I must! Meg will feel lost if I’m not there.” I put my empty cup aside and swung my feet off the bed. Exhaustion at once poured over me and my head and throat throbbed with my tears, but for Meg, I could and would ignore the
m all. “I would like to go at once!”

  “We are both sorry for what has happened,” said Mildred. “There were . . . reasons.”

  Yes, there were reasons, I thought bitterly. I knew what they were. I even understood them. Always the loyal servant of Elizabeth and Cecil, that was me, that was Ursula. No matter what they did to me, because they represented England, because they were the guardians of England, and England had no others.

  Somehow I got myself out of the Cecils’ house and went back to the Ridolfis with Dale and Brockley. The first thing I saw as I arrived were men in the livery of Norfolk, leading horses toward the stable yard. And the first person I met as I came into the entrance hall was Donna.

  “Oh, Ursula, there you are! Have you finished your so-secret errand? Your daughter is here. How charming she is! The Duke of Norfolk is here too, to visit my husband, and he has his young secretary Master Dean with him. I believe there has been talk of Dean as a suitor for your girl, has there not? He and Meg were very pleased to see each other. He has taken her into the garden. I’m afraid,” said Donna, sadly, but with regrettably sparkling eyes, “that he is showing her the topiary . . . ”

  21

  A Way of Escape

  In that moment, I forgot Matthew as completely as though he had never existed. I also forgot the perfidy of Cecil and the queen, and forgot to go on puzzling over the confused and alarming conspiracy that my host Robert Ridolfi seemed to be fomenting. I forgot the confusion of being an ex-widow and a semi-wife; I forgot to be a secret agent. I became on the instant a protective mother, whose innocent daughter’s heart was under siege by a man I instinctively disliked, in a garden full of erotic images.

  “Excuse me!” I said to Donna and swept past her, along the corridor, out across the terrace, and hotfoot into the midst of the topiary.