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

by Buckley, Fiona

  “Who on earth,” said Hugh, leaning over to speak into my ear, “is Master Wright? Do you know, Ursula?”

  “No. I’ve never heard of him.”

  Cecil had caught our exchange, whispered though it was. He gave us something very like a conspiratorial grin. “Wait and see,” he said, and Walsingham also offered us a grin, a saturnine affair, since his stern, dark face wasn’t designed to express humor.

  Master Wright turned out to be a small, thin man with a pointed white beard and short, neatly combed gray hair. He wore a dark brown suit of good but not showy cut. A couple of moderately valuable rings, one of plain gold and one of gold and turquoise, adorned clean, sinewy fingers.

  He seemed interested in his surroundings, but not overawed by them, and had evidently had speech with Cecil and Walsingham already, since he greeted them by name. He didn’t seem overawed by them, either. His manner combined a willingness to oblige with just a trace of impatience.

  He was a type familiar to Hugh and to me. He was a craftsman of some kind, probably with a small but well-established business of his own. Such men are usually respected members of their guild and consider themselves the equal of any man alive, regardless of lands, wealth, titles, or fame. Dean, who was of a different kidney, to whom such things were of great importance, regarded him with mild contempt, which disturbed Master Wright not one whit.

  “I am sorry to have called you here from your work,” Cecil said to him. “However, it seemed necessary. First, let everyone in this room hear you confirm your name and your occupation. You are Master Jonas Wright, jeweler, of Hampton, beside the Thames?”

  “I am, Sir William.”

  “And you have been in Hampton, working at your craft, since what year?”

  “I’ve been a jeweler in that village these twenty-two years, sir. I opened my shop there in 1547.”

  “You make jewelry to order?”

  “I do, sir.”

  “And most of your pieces are individual? Made for one customer only?”

  “In the general way, sir. I have certain patterns that I repeat if asked. I charge less for those since there’s no design work to do.” Master Wright already knew what kind of questions he would be asked, I thought, and was ready for them. His answers were all prompt and clear.

  “Do you mark your work in any way?” Cecil asked.

  “Always, sir, whether the piece is unique or not. But unique items are marked a little differently from a repeated design.”

  “So you could identify an item you had made and you could tell for sure whether it was unique or not?”

  “Yes, certainly I could.”

  Cecil held out the pendant. “Can you identify this?”

  Master Wright took it across to the window and Meg slid off the seat to let him examine it close to the daylight. He did so with interest. There was a silence. Master Wright fished in a pocket and brought out a small eyeglass, with which he studied the pendant even more closely.

  “Yes,” he said at length. “My mark is here. I make it unobtrusive but the eyeglass shows it clearly.” Returning to the desk, he handed both glass and pendant to Cecil again. “You may see for yourself. The mark consists of my initials, J and W, intertwined. It’s engraved on the back of the little heart, and the fact that the letters are intertwined proves that there is no other piece like this. For repeated designs, I simply put the letters side by side. I even believe I remember this little pendant, though it was a number of years ago. It was for a little girl, I think.”

  Cecil, having inspected the mark, passed pendant and glass on to Walsingham, who also inspected it, before handing the eyeglass back to Master Wright, who pocketed it.

  “Now I’ve had time to think,” he remarked, “I can put a name to the people who ordered this. They’ve bought other things from me through the years. Master and Mistress Henderson, of Thamesbank House.”

  “That’s right!” Meg broke in. “I was only six, then. I was living at Thamesbank as their ward. They had that pendant made for my sixth birthday. And I knew it by your mark as well!”

  “I have been to Thamesbank and spoken to them,” Cecil said. “They remembered ordering the gift although they could not be sure that after so many years, they would recognize it for certain. However, Master Wright’s identification seems definite. This pendant is unique, and it formerly belonged to Mistress Meg here. Thank you, Master Wright. If you wish, you may leave now.”

  “What is all this about?” said Edmund Dean exasperatedly.

  Master Wright, displaying little curiosity, and no reluctance at all to leave the scene without further explanation, made his farewell bows and took himself off, with the air of a man who has many calls on his time and can’t waste any more of it hobnobbing with a mere Secretary of State.

  Cecil said to Meg: “It seems clear that this silver heart and chain were given to you when you were small. How did they leave your possession and then return to you? Come and stand by my desk. No, don’t look at Master Dean, or worry about him. Everything is all right. Just tell everyone in this room all about it and don’t be nervous.”

  “Go on, Meg,” I said. “Do as Sir William asks.”

  “I loved it,” Meg said. “It was my first piece of jewelry. But when I came to London, this year, with Mother and Stepfather, and we stayed at Howard House, it didn’t seem quite the right thing to wear, not for the guest of a duke. Mother loaned me some better jewelry, and although I’d brought the pendant with me . . . ”

  Her voice trailed off, and Walsingham, with a new gentleness that showed a different side of him, a man who however hard in his professional life might well be the kindest of souls at home, said: “We understand. So what happened next?”

  “I gave it away. On the spur of the moment. There was a young lad at Howard House, employed about the kitchen and cellar. His name was Walt and he was betrothed, but he couldn’t yet marry because he needed to put some money together first.”

  I was watching Dean. I saw his jaw muscles tighten. It wouldn’t have been noticeable if I hadn’t had my eye on him. Apart from that, he was motionless.

  “Anyway,” Meg said, “I thought of giving the pendant to him to give to her, as a sort of wedding gift, when the time came. I thought that she would probably wear it, whereas I had stopped using it . . . ”

  “Go on,” said Walsingham.

  “That’s all. I did give it to Walt. Mother agreed. She came with me and we gave it to him together. Mother!”

  “Yes. I confirm it,” I said. “I also confirm that Walt had it in his possession on the morning of the day he died. He showed it to me then. He said he had had some luck and would be able to marry his Bessie sooner than he thought.”

  “And when did you see this pendant again?” Cecil asked Meg.

  “The last time I spoke with Master Dean, only a few days ago. He gave it to me as a present. He said he’d bought it. But if so, then Walt must have sold it and I don’t believe he would have done. He was so pleased with it and he said Bessie would like it so much, and besides, Mother says he hadn’t time.”

  Very calmly, Dean said: “I don’t understand what all this means. Am I being accused of something?”

  “Possibly,” said Cecil. “Would you like to explain once more how you came by that pendant?”

  “I have explained. I told Margaret. I bought it. Young Walt must have slipped out and sold it after all. Perhaps he had some unexpected need for money. Who knows what these boys get up to? Serving boys, apprentices, they have a world of their own. That’s the only explanation.”

  Cecil addressed me directly. “What time was it when you spoke to Walt and saw that he had the pendant still?”

  “In the morning, an hour or so before dinner,” I said.

  “I called at Howard House this morning,” said Walsingham. “I spoke to Conley, the butler. He remembers that day very well. Finding one of the servants hung up on a hook among the veal and venison carcasses tends to fix the surrounding events in the memory, h
e said to me. Walt did go out that day, but quite early in the morning. When he came back, he said he had been to see the father of the girl he hoped to marry—a tavern-keeper, I understand. After that, he didn’t leave the house again. The place was busy. People were coming and going because of the death of Julius Gale. The justice and the aldermen dined with the duke. Extra casks had to be brought out of the cellar and extra flagons drawn; some special dishes had to be prepared. According to Conley, after returning from seeing his Bessie’s father, Walt only went out of doors once, to the kitchen garden to pull some onions.”

  “He was carrying onions when I spoke to him,” I said.

  “Now,” said Cecil. “Once again, Master Dean. How did you come by this pretty little silver chain and heart?”

  “I keep telling you!”

  “You are not,” said Sir Francis, who had now moved behind the desk and was standing beside Cecil’s chair, leaning down to take notes, “telling the truth.”

  “Are you suggesting that I stole it?”

  Hugh cleared his throat. “Or looted it,” he said mildly.

  “Just a minute.” We all turned. Hillman’s expression was bewildered. “I don’t understand this. All this can’t be to do with a stolen pendant! Sir William! Sir Francis! Are you suggesting that this man here, Edmund Dean, murdered Walt?”

  “It has to be a possibility,” said Cecil.

  “But—Walt was a serving lad. Sir William—you’re the Secretary of State, and all these people have been called here . . . I know we are all equal in the sight of God but all the same . . . ”

  “It’s madness. I think the Secretary of State has been sleeping out in a full moon!” Dean was white, I thought, with both fear and anger. “Why would I kill a servant boy and steal a pendant from him? What do you take me for? A footpad—except that I committed my crime in a house instead of in the street!”

  “The boy Walt had apparently come into some money, rather unexpectedly,” said Walsingham. “We have also sent officers to interview his prospective father-in-law. He says that Walt offered him quite a respectable sum as a contribution to the tavern business. He had the coins in a bag and he said that there might be more coming soon. He said he had received a legacy, though Conley insists that Walt never mentioned such a thing to any of his fellow servants.”

  “I believe,” said Cecil to Dean, “that you told Mistress Meg that Julius Gale was an enemy to your faith and deserved what he got. We are in fact suggesting that he got it from you. That you knew that he was carrying letters of a treasonous nature, and that he meant to show them to us, and that you did indeed go out like a footpad, waylay and kill him, and that Walt, somehow, knew of your guilt and demanded money for his silence. You paid him to keep him quiet, but later that day, you found, or made, an opportunity to . . . ”

  “Please!” Hillman spoke again and now his sunburnt face had suffused with angry blood. “Am I to understand that this man, in all probability, killed my cousin?”

  I saw Cecil open his mouth, presumably to answer, but Hillman didn’t wait for him. He sprang at Dean, and in an instant, the dignified if impromptu inquiry in Cecil’s office turned into a scrimmage. Hugh got up quickly, seized Meg’s arm, pushed me behind him, and backed the three of us into a corner, as far out of harm’s way as possible. Sybil, alarmed, drew her feet up onto the window seat as Dean and Hillman, locked together and swearing, swayed back and forth across the room.

  Walsingham rushed around the desk and tried to intervene but was sent staggering by a blow from Dean’s fist. He reeled back against the desk, which rocked, sending the document boxes in a cascade to the floor, where the struggling pair fell over them. Hillman, flat on his back, was trying to get his hands around Dean’s throat. Then Dean, twisting eel-like, freed one hand and went for his dagger. The blade flashed in the air. Hillman abandoned his attack on his adversary’s throat and seized his wrist instead, holding the steel away. I remember seeing the sequence quite clearly, as though it were happening in slow motion, although in fact it took only a few seconds. At the end of those few seconds, Cecil still seated unmoving at his desk, raised his voice. “Guard!”

  The armed men he had said were at hand were in the room before the word was well out. They seized the combatants, dragging them apart and holding them firmly. One of them wrenched Dean’s dagger from his hand and threw it clattering onto the desk. Hillman’s nose was bleeding. “I’b sorry,” he said nasally to Cecil. “I’b very sorry. But if he killed Julius . . . ”

  “You may release him,” Cecil said to the men holding Hillman. “His behavior was natural if deplorable. Sit him down and do something about his nose; I don’t want blood all over my study. Behave yourself from now on, Master Hillman. As for you . . . ”

  He turned to Dean. Dean stared back at him. His dark hair was tangled and his doublet half off, and if I didn’t know that the eyes of human beings can’t actually shoot sparks, I would say that his were doing so. Blue sparks, lightning color. Hot and cold both at once. Sparks of hatred.

  “You stand accused of the murders both of Julius Gale and the boy Walt,” said Cecil. “Of Gale because he was working for us and making us privy to the correspondence that Norfolk and Ridolfi were having—with a view to reestablishing Mary Stuart on the Scottish throne and one day, perhaps, installing her on the English throne and destroying our reformed religion. Of Walt because he discovered your guilt and tried to make you pay. Have you anything to say in your defense?”

  “Nothing whatsoever,” said Dean, astoundingly. His chin came up. “I killed them both. I’m proud of it. I’d do it again.”

  28

  The Cold Curse

  There was a stunned silence. At my side, I felt Meg trembling. I took her hand.

  “Be careful what you say,” said Walsingham. “Witnesses are present, who are likely to repeat what they hear when you come to trial.”

  “It’s when, is it? Not if? I am to be arrested, that’s clear. Well, so be it. What I did, I did for the one true faith. I’d do it again! If I must lose my life, I give it gladly. Gale was an enemy. He was trying to betray a noble cause and it was right that he should die!”

  “How did you know he was bringing letters for us to see?” Walsingham asked with interest.

  “He’d picked up letters from Howard House before. Once when he had to wait a day for a letter to be ready, I came upon him reading an English Bible. It belonged to Norfolk, more shame to him. But if Gale were reading it—and he was doing so with attention, not with disapproval—then I knew that he was not to be relied on. And then, as it chanced, I was returning from an errand just as he finally set out and I saw him take the wrong road. I thought about that English Bible and I wondered what he was doing, so I followed him. I followed him here. Then I knew. So, the next time he passed through Howard House, with letters from Ridolfi and from Norfolk, I followed him again, only that time he knew that someone was on his heels and he turned back. The duke saw to it that he got away safely, though at least he never managed to reach this house, Master Cecil. The time after that, he tried to come here again but on that occasion, I was cleverer. I went out ahead of him, waylaid him, killed him, and took the letters back to his room. That’s why they weren’t found on him but in his clothespress!”

  His voice was ringing out, his pride in what he had done so great that it had overwhelmed his fear of the doom he was bringing on himself.

  “Why did you take the letters back?” Walsingham asked him.

  “To keep them safe, of course! Oh, people would wonder why he wasn’t carrying them but he had been ill. He could have left them behind by accident. But that damned boy was about the house and he saw me go into Gale’s room, and the cheeky, inquisitive wretch peeped in at the door and saw me put the letters in the press. Later on, when Gale’s body was brought back and people were saying his letters were missing, the boy understood what he had seen. Then he came to me and demanded money! Well, he’s burning in hell now, and I am glad of it!”


  “And you left him among the hanging carcasses,” I said.

  “It was there that I killed him.”

  “And stole the pendant from him?” asked Walsingham sourly.

  “No,” said Dean disdainfully. “He fought back. I was a trifle clumsy.” He sounded as though he were apologizing for a minor inefficiency. “I had one hand round his mouth, trying to make sure he didn’t cry out, while I used my knife with the other, but he twisted like a snake and that sleeveless jerkin he always wore was flapping about and getting tangled round my knife-arm. I did see a glint as something slid out of the pocket, but I thought nothing of it until afterward, when I went to change my doublet. It was a black doublet and it didn’t show bloodstains much but it was wise to change it—and there was the pendant, with its chain caught up in a bit of pulled embroidery on the right sleeve.”

  “So you kept it,” I said.

  “Was I likely to go back and return it to him?” retorted Dean.

  “But to hang Walt like that,” I said. “On a meathook . . . ”

  “It was a measure of the scorn I felt for him.” The contempt in Dean’s voice brought the gooseflesh out on my skin. Meg was now clinging to me with both hands.

  “Was Gale’s illness real?” I asked suddenly. “Or did you cause it, regardless of the other victims, in an attempt to kill him before he left Howard House?”

  Dean looked at me, with nearly as much disdain as he apparently felt for Walt. “Do women question men upon such matters? Are you Secretary of State, mistress? Or one of his minions?”

  “Mistress Stannard is one of my minions, as you put it,” said Cecil. “And one of the queen’s minions. She is welcome to question you.”

  “Was that illness,” I said, “really bad chicken or something else?”

  “Answer her,” said Cecil.

  “Oh, it was bad chicken at first. Norfolk’s kitchen is sometimes as chaotic as his thinking and you must have noticed what a muddled mind he has. I fetched you to help Gale—remember? I hoped he’d die but I had to pretend to do my best for him! It was an opportunity, though—oh yes, you’re right there. I slipped something in one of the possets that were made for him and prayed it would make an end of him, but he was too strong. So it had to be my thin-bladed knife and an attack along the road.”