Queen's Bounty

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘Very likely,’ I said. ‘Anne Percy isn’t the only one who fled abroad after the northern rebellion was put down. There were quite a number, all resentful. There are few people left now in the north who could be of use if any of the exiles wanted to stir up trouble from a distance, but there are one or two people in the south, in London, that they might try to contact. For instance, Mary Stuart actually has an ambassador at court – the Bishop of Ross. Yes, I fancy Dover is being very carefully watched, but Norwich, perhaps, is less so. So she sent this letter via Norwich, as a precaution.’

  ‘So either she or her messengers, or both, are nervous,’ said Hugh. ‘And I see that the lady is reduced to writing on mere paper, without a wrapping.’

  He turned the letter over, showing the grimy smear on the back of it. ‘I doubt if King Philip of Spain is being overgenerous with his pension, and if he has agreed to reward someone for harming you and Brockley, I suspect he doesn’t think he’ll ever have to pay. He has a parsimonious reputation. Don’t be afraid, Ursula. You’re here with us. You’re an Englishwoman, my wife, preparing to give her daughter a joyous wedding. I’ll burn this.’

  I said: ‘No, don’t do that. Give it to me. I shall put it in my document box. Just in case I need it one day.’

  ‘How could you need it?’ Hugh handed it to me but looked surprised.

  ‘I don’t know. But . . .’ It was difficult to find words for something so nebulous. ‘If – somehow – trouble is made for me, it might prove that I’m the victim of malice.’

  ‘As you wish, Ursula. But I think Brockley is right. These threats have no teeth.’

  They were both wrong. The claw that Anne Percy had extended was very real indeed. Its sharp tip was already in my house. Her vengeance had begun.

  FOUR

  An Air of Disturbance

  At the time, I let myself be reassured. Besides, the wedding preparations were demanding. Rooms must be made ready for guests, Meg’s trousseau must be completed, the dishes for the feast finally chosen. The excitement had already stimulated John Hawthorn into culinary creativeness, but unfortunately it also stimulated him into fits of temperament, during which he positively needed someone to quarrel with, just as a swordsman needs a partner to practise on. Several times, I had to settle arguments involving him. With all this on my hands, it was not so very difficult to let Anne Percy’s horrible letter slip into the background of my mind.

  Brockley was bound to tell his wife Fran Dale about it, and I told Sybil Jester, from whom I had few secrets and who would probably have learned of it from Dale anyway. But I told them that it was to go no further. Above all, no one was to mention it to Meg.

  At least one item on the list of preparations was no trouble. We had plenty of room for the influx of guests’ horses. We had extensive stables, but Hugh had given up riding now, and since our near escape from having to sell Hawkswood to get ourselves out of debt, we had reduced the household. We had fewer men on the place and fewer horses, too. There were two heavy horses for the farm, my dappled mare Roundel, Brockley’s cob Brown Berry, Meg’s mare Bay Gentle, and two sturdy geldings which could be ridden if necessary but were mainly there to draw Hugh’s coach. There were plenty of stalls to spare as well as the paddock, which was big enough for several horses.

  Guests began to arrive, though to my relief they didn’t include Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert. We had duly invited them but received a polite answer to the effect that their health wasn’t good enough to withstand the journey from Sussex, even in a coach. We sent civil regrets and hopes that their health would improve, and left it there.

  Cecil had sent word that he and his family would not be able to come either, because of commitments at court, but he sent gifts: a ruby pendant for Meg and a matching brooch for George to wear in a hat. George Hillman, along with his cousins and friends, rode in three clear days before the wedding, in a noisy, merry cavalcade. Meg ran out to meet them, and the moment George got off his horse, she was in his arms and being enthusiastically hugged, amid hearty cheers from his companions.

  ‘Good God. Prise those two apart!’ said Hugh. ‘Tell them to wait just a few more days! When the ceremony’s over, they can embrace to their heart’s content, in private.’

  But he was laughing, and so was I. I was happy for Meg, and who was Anne Percy, after all? An exile far away in another country, a minuscule figure in a remote corner of my mind. Towards evening on the next day, which was a Sunday, Anthony and Jane Cobbold, with their daughter Christina, arrived on horseback, and Anne Percy’s corner became more remote than ever. For the Cobbold party was anything but merry. From the moment they rode into our courtyard, it was clear that something was very wrong.

  Some people, especially the more ardent Protestants, did not travel on Sundays. ‘But we attended at St Peter’s this morning and thought it no harm,’ Anthony Cobbold said.

  ‘We were all ready and didn’t want to delay. I said to Anthony, the sooner we set out and get to Hawkswood, the better,’ said Jane cryptically.

  Not one of the three was smiling, least of all Christina.

  Christina Cobbold was not precisely pretty. Her small square jaw and strongly marked eyebrows suggested an unfeminine determination somewhere in her character. But she did have attraction, mainly her animation and her shining hair and the brightness of the brown squirrel’s eyes. And since she was Meg’s principal bridesmaid, to be entrusted with carrying the bride’s train, she should have been very animated indeed, full of happy eagerness.

  Instead, the strong eyebrows were drawn together in a frown and her lips were compressed, and as she curtsied to me and Hugh and murmured greetings, I saw that her eyes were not bright but clouded and the lids a little reddened.

  Meg was beside me. ‘Show Christina to her room,’ I said to her, and as the two girls disappeared inside, I turned to Jane. ‘Is Christina well? She doesn’t seem . . . quite . . .’

  ‘At Alice’s wedding, I mentioned to you, did I not, that we’d been having difficulties with her?’ Jane said. ‘I told you she was fancying herself in love. That’s the difficulty.’

  ‘Greensick,’ said Anthony lugubriously.

  ‘Who’s she in love with?’ asked Hugh with interest.

  Anthony, tall, intimidating Anthony Cobbold, emitted something like a despairing groan. Jane said bitterly: ‘Of all people on earth, she’s gone and fallen head over heels with . . . Oh, how could she, knowing how her father feels! I don’t feel it so much for myself because I wasn’t born a Cobbold, but it’s upset Anthony badly and that’s enough for me. If only we’d been more watchful! We went to the midsummer fair at Woking – before Alice’s wedding; there were things we wanted to buy – and there was such a crowd, and tumblers giving a show and pedlars shouting their wares, you know what these fairs are like, and somehow we became separated from Christina, and by the time we found her again, she had met this young man and watched a bear-baiting with him and the harm was done.’

  ‘Harm?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes! It was young Thomas Ferris, Walter Ferris’s son!’

  ‘A Ferris!’ Anthony rolled his eyes heavenwards.

  ‘Christina had told him her name,’ said Jane, ‘but he hadn’t told her his, and she didn’t know Thomas Ferris by sight. She didn’t understand who he was until we informed her, and by then, would you believe it, it was too late! It seems that he took to her on sight and didn’t as much as blink when she said she was called Cobbold, and before we found them, she’d taken to him as well! Just like that! Then and there, at the bear-baiting. Even if he weren’t a Ferris, it wasn’t right, to go talking and . . . and taking to . . . a strange young man like that. It wasn’t proper. Or maidenly. We have always tried to impress on Christina that women should be modest; that a lady shouldn’t talk too freely to men or involve herself in men’s business.’

  Her eyes, meeting mine, told me that she considered me to be deficient in all these virtues and that she might even be wondering if I had contaminated Christ
ina.

  ‘By the time we got to them,’ she said, ‘they’d already made a plan to meet again, secretly, though we didn’t know that then, of course. We learned later that he’d got her to agree to the secrecy by saying that her parents might not want her meeting someone they didn’t know. We took her away from him and told her who he was, but she tossed her head and said she didn’t care. Didn’t care! We were appalled. But we had no idea then that they meant to see each other again. We didn’t find that out until after they had met clandestinely three times – three!’

  ‘We received a most unpleasant letter from Walter Ferris,’ said Anthony glumly.

  ‘Yes, one of his grooms, out exercising a horse, had seen Christina with Thomas, walking in a field.’ Jane tumbled the words out in her indignation. ‘And then it seems that Walter Ferris challenged Thomas about it and got out of him that he and Christina had been meeting. Three times!’ Jane repeated, in tones of horror.

  ‘It was a most offensive missive,’ said Anthony. ‘I will leave out the strong language. It ordered – yes, ordered – us to put a stop to this nonsense. It’s apparently intended that Thomas should marry a girl called Margaret Emory, whom he’s known since childhood. I think you met her parents at Alice’s wedding?’

  ‘Yes,’ Hugh said. ‘Though Margaret herself wasn’t there. The Emory family know both you and the Ferrises, it seems.’

  ‘Neither we nor the Ferrises expect our neighbours to take sides. That’s probably the one thing we agree about,’ Anthony said. ‘Sir Edward Heron is acquainted with both our families, and so are you, of course, and it’s the same with the Emorys. We know them, and Margaret too. She’s a nice enough young wench. Well, the letter went on to say that there could never be an alliance between a Ferris and a Cobbold. It also said that he – Walter – did not wish to harm Christina, as our feud had always been conducted between men, but if he were to find my daughter in the company of his son, I would myself pay for it. Just as my father had killed his, he would kill me. Even if he hanged for it. An explicit threat.’

  ‘But we don’t want our daughter mixed up with a Ferris any more than he wants it,’ Jane said. ‘So we spoke to Christina about it. And she tried to deny it. She tried to lie to us.’

  ‘We showed her Walter Ferris’s letter,’ Anthony said, ‘and I threatened to use my stick if she didn’t speak the truth, and in the end, she admitted that she’d been pretending to have errands of this sort or that, somewhere in our grounds, and then slipping off to keep her wretched trysts.’

  ‘So immodest!’ said Jane with energy. ‘Why, she had the impudence to say she had fallen in love with Thomas Ferris, and he with her, and she wouldn’t promise not to see him again, even if her father did beat her. As you should have done, Anthony; it would have been best for her in the end; it would have put a stop to all this before it went any further. But you are too good-natured to do such a thing or allow me to do it. I suppose that’s a virtue in you, but oh dear . . .’ For once, Jane Cobbold ran out of words.

  ‘I have never struck my daughter. I can’t do it,’ said Anthony. Unexpectedly, he added: ‘My mirror tells me that I look intimidating, but I am not quite so good at matching my actions to my looks.’

  ‘So,’ said Jane, ‘all we can do is watch her and see she doesn’t disobey us. And now she’s sulking, because here at Hawkswood she’ll have no chance of slipping away to see this wretched boy Thomas. Oh, what can one do with headstrong young people who won’t heed their elders?’

  As I had once been a headstrong young person who didn’t heed her elders, I thought it best to say no more than: ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘A Ferris. Of all people on earth. And they’re Catholic, too,’ said Anthony. ‘And pretentious. I always want to laugh when I ride past their house. It has a squat little tower sticking up at each end and some fancy crenellations, and they call it White Towers just as if it were a palace and they were princes! The Emorys say that it has a private chapel. I understand that it’s so small it almost counts as a cupboard, but the Ferris steward, Maine, holds Masses there. The Emorys are Catholic too, you know. They’re more circumspect about it than the Ferrises – or I wouldn’t be as friendly with them as I am – but Paul Emory once admitted to me that he and his family have once or twice heard Mass in the Ferris chapel. He described the place to me. I told him he should be careful.’

  Since my Uncle Herbert and Aunt Tabitha were Catholic as well, I now felt doubly relieved that they weren’t coming to the wedding. I had also learned, only the previous day, that Joan Flood, one of our two temporary cooks, came from a Papist family, though she herself was prepared to worship in accordance with the law.

  Indeed, the religious preferences of the Floods had caused one of the arguments John Hawthorn kept getting into. Fran Dale truly detested the old religion, though not without reason, as once, when we were travelling in France, she had come near to being tried for heresy. On hearing of Joan’s origins, she had told Hawthorn that we shouldn’t keep her on – which would of course mean not keeping her husband Ben on either. Whereupon, Hawthorn retorted that although when Ben first came he hadn’t known how to make spun sugar, he had learned faster than anyone Hawthorn had ever trained in the past, while Joan was better than he was himself at making marchpane shapes, and he, Hawthorn, did not personally care if either of them were Protestant, Catholic, followers of Mahomet or members of a coven.

  ‘Right in the middle of the hall, I was, when Fran Dale accosted me,’ he had said, ‘and there was old Gladys Morgan, who looks like a witch even if she isn’t one, mending linen and cackling like a hen laying an egg when I said the word coven. Dale just flounced off, muttering. Mistress Stannard, I’d take it kindly if you’d tell Dale to mind her own affairs and leave my kitchen staff alone. We want to do well by you and Mistress Meg, and this kind of wrangling over who believes what won’t do. Beliefs don’t make any difference to marchpane and spun sugar!’

  I had soothed him, assured him that he would keep the services of Ben and Joan until the celebrations were well over, and had a few quiet words with Fran Dale. I now found myself hoping that the Cobbolds wouldn’t enquire into the religious affiliations of my cooks. For the moment, I contented myself, once more, with an anodyne remark. ‘How worried you must be about Christina. I am sorry.’

  Supper was a strained meal. Christina took hardly any part in the conversation and ate very little. As she left the hall afterwards, with me a step or two behind her, Gladys Morgan came up to her, saying that she didn’t look well and asking if she would like a valerian and chamomile posset, mixed in wine, to help her sleep. Christina promptly backed away from her, visibly repelled, and said: ‘No!’ very rudely.

  I was close enough to hear, and I was annoyed. Gladys did have a cackling laugh, knowing eyes, teeth that resembled brown fangs, and a questionable local reputation. But these days she was reasonably clean and neat and polite. I expected visitors to Hawkswood to be reasonably polite to her in turn.

  Gladys not unnaturally went off in a huff, and I turned to Christina. ‘You know, my dear,’ I said, ‘you could just have said no thank you. It wasn’t kind to bark out a refusal and shy back as though you thought Gladys might bite. You’ve hurt her feelings.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Christina looked at me quite wildly, as though I had bitten her myself. ‘I’m sorry, but my mother wouldn’t like Gladys Morgan to make possets for me. Mother says she’s a witch and that witches are dangerous. The sheriff, Sir Edward Heron, says they’re dangerous, too. He and my father have made friends, and he often visits and talks about witches and how we should always take care to have nothing to do with them. He makes me frightened, and Mother says a special prayer every night, because Sir Edward says that it’s at night that witches work their evil. He says they are women who make pacts with the devil and slip out at night to ride the skies on broomsticks. Mother closes the bed curtains so that the moon can’t see in – the moonlight is a treacherous light, she says. She calls it the witches’ lanter
n and says it can bring madness if it shines on someone sleeping. Sometimes my father says he feels stifled at night.’

  Christina almost laughed but it turned into a sob. ‘She’d be so angry with me if she thought I had been given a potion by someone who’s been found guilty of witchcraft, and oh, why is everything I do wrong?’

  She picked up her skirts and ran away, rushing up the stairs, presumably to the sanctuary of her room. I turned and found Hugh beside me. He had been listening as well.

  ‘Are you really angry with Christina, or are you on her side, at heart?’ said Hugh.

  ‘I do have a fellow feeling for her,’ I said. ‘And her mother and Sir Edward have obviously been scaring her with their talk about witches. I really did not take to Edward Heron. But she need not have been quite so rude to Gladys.’

  ‘She’s upset her parents by falling in love with Thomas Ferris,’ Hugh said. ‘Maybe she doesn’t want to quarrel with them in two different ways at the same time. So she tries to do as she’s told when it comes to avoiding witches, and then you pounce on her!’

  I sighed. ‘Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything. I’ll apologize to Gladys quietly. I’m bound to be in sympathy about Christina’s love affair, you know. After all, I eloped with Gerald.’

  ‘This is different. The Cobbold–Ferris feud is long-standing and deeply entrenched, and Christina and Thomas are young fools if they think they can defy it,’ Hugh said. He glanced over his shoulder, but Christina’s parents were still in the hall, talking to Meg. ‘We mustn’t encourage her, Ursula. Anthony is my friend, and I have to respect his wishes in this, whatever my private opinions. So must you. I hope she won’t upset Meg, though. After all, she’s supposed to be a bridesmaid!’

  ‘I know. I won’t say anything unwise to Christina. But it’s a sad situation for her. Meg’s marrying a man she’s in love with, while Christina isn’t going to be allowed to.’

  ‘Yes. I really think,’ said Hugh with some feeling, ‘that I’ll be glad when this wedding’s safely over!’