Queen's Bounty

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘So will I!’ Together, we started up the stairs. ‘I was enjoying it at first,’ I said, ‘but now – if it isn’t one thing, it’s another. Hawthorn keeps quarrelling with people, and that extra delivery of rushes hasn’t arrived. I’ll have to send Brockley to Woking tomorrow to find out why. And now there’s all this trouble with Christina. There’s an air of disturbance in the house, somehow.’

  ‘Then let’s forget it all for a while and go to sleep,’ said Hugh. ‘And be thankful that we’re not young and silly any more!’

  Matters improved somewhat the next day. Other guests joined us. Meg’s Uncle Ambrose came first, with his family. Ambrose was tall and arrogant as ever, though he looked older than when I had last seen him, his dark hair and beard turning grey. He was always one for dressing well, but I wondered how he could bear to wear such a heavy doublet in this warm August. His wife and daughters, however, were all pretty and very alike, with soft browny-gold hair and blue eyes. The girls would make charming bridesmaids.

  Rob and Mattie Henderson came next, the couple who had fostered Meg when I was in France, years ago. I hadn’t seen them for a long time, either. Mattie was still her good-natured self and had hardly changed, but Rob, like Ambrose, was greying, and he complained as he dismounted that these days more than an hour in the saddle made his back ache. Then, in the afternoon, Mrs Jennet Ward and Mrs Margery Seldon arrived on hired horses, with their pert little servant Bessie perched behind Jennet. I was pleased to welcome them, for somehow they brought an air of bright normality with them.

  Bessie was like an excited small dog, running here and there to find her way round the house, flirting with our rather good-looking second groom, Simon, and giggling with the other maids. Jennet and Margery were cheerful and serene, full of harmless small-talk about other weddings they had attended, and what a pretty bride Meg was going to be, and the latest gossip from Woking. Jennet had brought her lute, and I let Margery try out my spinet, and that evening they entertained us with music. I was glad we had invited them.

  Also, our new sempstress, Dorothy Beale, was proving to be a really excellent aide. That morning, by chance, she had walked into Meg’s room with some completed work to find Christina there, in tears, being soothed by Meg. Dorothy then came in search of me, found me in the linen room, and offered a helpful suggestion.

  ‘I think the young lady, Mistress Christina Cobbold, is what my mam used to call overwrought, madam, and it’s worrying Mistress Meg, and that’s not right, just before the wedding. She’s been upset because of something to do with not being allowed even to see some young man she wants to marry. Gladys says Mistress Christina said no to a calming medicine, and it’s a pity because she knows a good recipe for one. Madam, if it’s not wrong of me to say so, I think Mistress Christina might drink one if she knew it wasn’t Gladys that made it for her.’

  ‘I dare say,’ I said. But I took the point. I made a valerian and chamomile posset, in accordance with Gladys’s favourite recipe for the purpose, but I assembled all of it myself, even picking the herbs personally, and took it to Christina. I found her in her room, alone, and still crying. She turned sullenly away from me at first, but after a little persuasion she drank my offering. By dinner time, there seemed to be a result. She sat with Meg, and the two girls appeared to be talking and smiling in a natural way.

  Also, the missing cartload of rushes arrived in time to save Brockley from going to Woking, and before midday, the last of the embroidery on Meg’s gowns was finished. There were still some final touches to be put to the bridesmaids’ dresses, but that could be left until the morrow, and when Dorothy asked for a little time off to visit an aunt in a village called Priors Ford, three miles away, I was agreeable.

  ‘She’s the only family I’ve got, madam,’ Dorothy explained. ‘She give me a home when my mam died, and me only ten! My dad, he’d walked out when I was a baby; I don’t even remember him. Auntie was that good to me.’

  ‘You’ve more than earned it,’ I told her. ‘Go as soon as dinner’s over. Get some fresh air. We’ll be busy again tomorrow, but we can spare you this afternoon.’

  When we were abed that night, Hugh, who had looked very tired at supper, fell asleep at once, but I was restless. The air was sticky, and we had left the bed curtains open, but I was still too hot, and details of our preparations kept churning in my mind. Had I remembered to tell Fran Dale about . . .? Had I reminded Brockley that . . .? Would Hawthorn’s subtlety turn out well? Had we ordered enough wine? Had I . . .?

  Moving carefully so as not to disturb Hugh, I slipped from the bed and walked softly to the window. I pushed it open and leant out to breathe the cooler open air. It was a bright night, with a full moon. I leant my elbows on the sill, thinking about Meg, with love and with some sadness. Soon now, she would ride away with George to begin her new life at Riverside House in Buckinghamshire. We had been parted before, for a considerable time when I was in France with Matthew, but I had always minded. Now the parting would be for ever.

  No, that was wrong. Buckinghamshire wasn’t Ultima Thule. I would visit Meg, and she would visit me. When she had her children, I would go to her. Dear God, take care of her at those times. Don’t let it be for her as it was for me . . .

  My train of thought broke sharply. I had glimpsed movement below me. Someone had slipped out of the house and was hurrying swiftly along the terrace. As I watched, a dark figure, wrapped in a hooded cloak, ran lightly down the steps from the terrace to the rose garden. The cloak caught on a thorny rose bush, and the figure stopped to release it, turning round to do so. Its hood slipped back, and for a moment, in the moonlight, I saw its face quite clearly. I think I had already half-recognized the walk and the shape of the shoulders. It was Christina Cobbold.

  Slipping through the garden after dark, alone? Christina Cobbold, Meg’s principal bridesmaid. Christina Cobbold, who was in love with Thomas Ferris and had already had three clandestine meetings with him.

  Hugh was deeply asleep. I had no wish to disturb him. Quickly but silently, I pushed my feet into a pair of shoes and unhooked my cloak from where it always hung on our bedroom door. It was the custom of the house to keep a number of cloaks of various sizes in a small alcove in our entrance vestibule, so that anyone going out, perhaps in a hurry, could simply take one, but Hugh and I preferred to keep our own in our room. I swung mine round me and hurried noiselessly out.

  The gallery outside our door was dark, but the stairs down to the hall were only a few steps away and the hall below was moonlit. I could see my way quite well. I went down, treading lightly, hastened through the hall to a door that opened on to the terrace, and let myself out.

  How far could Christina have got by now? Still making as little noise as possible, I ran down the steps to the rose garden and stopped to listen. No sound. The silvered hush around me was undisturbed.

  I had never in my life been prey to the fears that haunted so many people, such as Jane Cobbold and Sir Edward Heron. In this respect, I have to speak well of Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert. They had no superstitious beliefs in fairies or witches, and spoke of such things with mockery. I had never been taught to fear the dark; in fact I had never done so once I was past the age of five.

  But now, suddenly, that very fear, not of any real danger, but of things unseen, came upon me. Heron’s unpleasant description of orgies conducted in the presence of altars draped in black and crucifixes blasphemously turned upside down came back to me, and so did the vicious ill will of Anne Percy’s menacing letter, rising up in my mind like a poisonous toadstool. Whether or not rites with black-draped altars had power, and whether or not ill-wishing could bring real harm to anyone, those who indulged in such things intended evil. Evil was real, even if demons were not.

  And evil was stronger by night. The whole world knew that. I stood looking uneasily round me and for the first time ever experienced the fear of wicked things that steal about their business after sunset. I looked up at the moon, with the smudges that m
ake it look so much like a witless face. Jane Cobbold believed its light was treacherous and shut it out from her bed.

  It was ridiculous. I had often been abroad at night, often alone, and at times in very real danger. But in my mind I could hear the words that Christina had repeated to me, about women who make pacts with the devil and slip out at night to ride the skies on broomsticks. Around me, the rose bushes were dark anonymous shapes in the moon-shadows, strange entities, lacking the colour and detail that made them friendly by day.

  Even the queen, my sister, believed in the world of spirits. She regularly consulted a magician and astrologer called Doctor Dee. Who was I to say they were both wrong?

  Something rustled and then ran across the garden in front of me. I jumped and only just managed not to squeal, and then the moonlight picked up a sharp nose and a pair of gleaming green eyes as the creature halted and turned to look at me. It turned away and fled, and my last glimpse of it was a whisk of a bushy tail. It was nothing more unearthly than a fox.

  I pulled myself together. What was wrong with me? Too much emotion because of Meg, perhaps. Loving her, fearing to let her pass into someone else’s power, to face the dangers of childbirth – which I knew all too much about – had softened my brain. Anne Percy’s letter had frightened me too, more than I wanted to admit.

  But none of that should make me afraid of rose bushes and a scuttling fox. The biggest danger I faced now was bumping into a bush I hadn’t seen and getting myself pricked by its thorns. Even Christina was daring the hazards of the night, whatever her mother might have told her.

  I was myself again. I moved on. The paths were gravel, but they had grassy edges which were a great nuisance to Hugh’s gardeners, who had to scythe them regularly. They were useful now, however, since I could walk on them and keep my footsteps noiseless. I paused again. Which way?

  I hadn’t found Christina in the rose garden, and as it had no side gates, she must have gone through it and on into the herb and kitchen garden. This did have side gates, leading into the wood on the left and on the right to the fowl-yard and paddock. I hurried forward.

  The division between the roses and the herb and vegetable garden was a row of lavender bushes, but there was a pretty wooden archway over the entrance, with climbing roses on it. From beyond it, the aromatic scents of herbs on a summer night came to meet me. In the arch, I paused again to listen and this time heard voices, very low, somewhere to the left. I stepped through and turned that way, towards a corner where a bay tree grew. And there I found them. A single shaft of moonlight had filtered through the branches and revealed them, standing in each other’s arms. ‘Christina?’ I said.

  They sprang apart. ‘What? Who . . .?’ Thomas Ferris stepped forward, out of the shadow. I had not seen him since he was in his teens, and all I remembered of him was a skinny youth, very subservient to his father and with nothing to say for himself. But now, though I recognized his features, I was amazed by the way he had filled out. He had grown tall and broad, even though, as I knew, he was still only twenty-two. He was much bigger than Walter.

  Christina moved after him and took her stand beside him, looking petite by contrast, sturdy though she was. ‘Mistress Stannard?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. I followed you from the house, Christina.’

  ‘What business was it of yours?’ demanded Thomas angrily.

  He was trying to sound intimidating, but despite his inches, young Master Ferris was no phantom of the night. After my foolish fright in the garden, he was positively reassuring. ‘You’re trespassing in the Stannard garden, and that is certainly my business,’ I said. ‘And as for you, Christina, I’m ashamed of you. Is this the way to repay our hospitality? To respect Meg’s friendship?’

  ‘We wanted to be together,’ said Christina, shaky but obstinate. ‘Thomas managed to get a note to me yesterday, to arrange this meeting.’ That, presumably, was what had brought her out of her sulks, and not the valerian and chamomile potion at all. ‘There’s no harm in it,’ Christina said. ‘We weren’t doing anything we shouldn’t. We—’

  She stopped short, and both she and Thomas turned sharply. From somewhere in the wood, just beyond the fence, there had been a rustling and the crack of a twig.

  ‘I’ve just seen a fox,’ I said. ‘That’s him, I dare say, making a pounce. You both have the jumps, haven’t you? A sign of guilty consciences, no doubt.’

  ‘I don’t have a guilty conscience!’ said Christina angrily. The woods were silent now. ‘Neither of us do. Thomas needed me! His note explained. So I’m here for him, and no, I don’t feel ashamed.’

  ‘Needed you?’

  ‘My family has experienced a tragedy,’ said Thomas. ‘I have a married sister, Lucy, living just over the Hampshire border. Or rather, I had. My parents were sent for, the day before yesterday. Lucy had fallen ill with smallpox. My mother came home this morning, in a dreadful state. Father’s still there, helping Lucy’s husband to arrange the funeral. She died at dawn today.’

  ‘Thomas was fond of her,’ said Christina. ‘And he wasn’t allowed to go and see her, though he’s had the disease himself, and even his own mother hasn’t comforted him or let him try to comfort her, all because his parents are so angry about him and me! What have I ever done that makes me into a monster? Well, if his own family won’t give him a few kind words, I will!’

  ‘You already have, love.’ Thomas’s voice changed when he spoke to her, went from aggressive to gentle all on the instant. Christina drew closer to him, pressing herself against his side, and his arm went round her.

  I groaned inwardly, but my duty was plain. ‘Christina,’ I said, ‘your parents are our friends and are here as our guests. Master Stannard and I cannot connive at this sort of thing in opposition to their wishes. You must come back to the house with me at once. As for you, Master Ferris, I am sorry for your loss and I mean that sincerely, but you should still not be tempting a young girl like Christina to creep from her room and meet you like this in the dead of night. And you, Christina, should not have agreed to it. Both of you should have more sense of responsibility.’

  ‘Did you?’ asked Christina. ‘When you climbed out of a window to run off with Meg’s father?’

  ‘Who told you that?’ I demanded, unwisely. I should have said don’t be impertinent and left it there, but she had caught me wrong-footed. I felt as though my unconventional past was catching up with me.

  ‘Meg did. She said you fled with her father one night and got married against the wishes of your guardians.’

  ‘The circumstances were different from yours,’ I said repressively. ‘I have no intention, however, of explaining them to you.’

  It would have been a complicated explanation, anyway, though a true one. I had been escaping from an unhappy home and the bleak prospect of life as an unwed dogsbody. Christina had two loving parents who, I was sure, intended to plan a happy future for her. But this was not the time to go into all that.

  ‘Christina, my love,’ said Thomas, turning to her as though I were not there, ‘I think I should go. We will meet again soon, I promise.’

  He kissed her, adjusted his cap, gave me an ironical bow, and then stepped away. A moment later, I glimpsed his figure at the gate into the wood and heard a horse whicker in greeting. Then, briefly, I heard the sound of hoof beats, which faded swiftly out of hearing.

  ‘We are not going to be pushed apart by a silly, ancient quarrel!’ said Christina, defiant too, standing rigid.

  ‘At the moment,’ I said, ‘you are bound for bed and sleep, and the day after tomorrow you will be your friend Meg’s principal bridesmaid. I shall not tell your parents about this escapade, not this time, but if you do such a thing again, don’t count on my silence, or that of my husband. I shall have to tell him about tonight, naturally. We shall be watching you. Now, come with me.’

  FIVE

  Spectre at the Feast

  Next day, Christina was pale from lack of sleep, and though she was clearly trying
to appear normal, I could see that she was miserable. I could only hope that she would be more like herself on the morrow, for the wedding. I had other concerns, too. Everyone had tried hard to make sure that all preparations were complete, but there were last-minute hitches and alarms.

  Dorothy, although we needed her to help with the bridesmaids’ dresses, disappeared during the morning without permission. On returning, just in time for the midday dinner, she said that on the previous day she had found her aunt unwell. ‘I just ran over to see how the poor soul is. I found her better; it was naught but a cold, but she ain’t young and she’s on her own and I was worried.’

  ‘You should have asked!’ I said angrily. ‘We didn’t know where you were or when you’d be back, and Mistress Jester and Dale and I have seen to the bridesmaids’ dresses without you. Well, don’t do such a thing again, that’s all I can say.’

  Meanwhile, Brockley had to rush to Woking after all because John Hawthorn suddenly decided that he needed more sugar and more almonds for the special subtlety and I had need of some silk thread and an extra roll of linen. Brockley brought everything back with him, but he arrived home in what was so obviously a put-about state that I asked him what was wrong.

  ‘It was nothing, madam. Nothing that need worry you, anyway.’

  ‘What was it, Brockley?’

  Brockley sighed, realizing that I didn’t mean to let go. ‘I was nearly arrested, madam.’

  ‘Nearly . . . Whatever for? What happened?

  ‘Before I started home, I took a meal at the Lion Inn, madam, and left Brown Berry in the stable there. I unsaddled him and took off the saddlebags with my purchases in them, and hung them up. There are hooks for that. It’s a respectable place; no one goes into the stable that shouldn’t. Everyone who’s got saddlebags just leaves them there. I made sure the bags were strapped shut. If anyone knocked against them, I wasn’t going to have the things I’d bought falling out the way that letter did, which the Norwich courier brought. But when I’d eaten and came back to saddle up, someone had been interfering with my things.’