I dispatched him to Buckinghamshire the next morning with my letter to Meg and panicky instructions to let me know if she and George were well.
He was back by the following evening with the reassuring news that they were in perfect health and that, like Meg, George had had cowpox in his youth and had said it was common knowledge that this was a protection against the more serious disease. Hugh and I were relieved, but it seemed that any pleasant thing – a ride in the fresh sunshine for Brockley, and good news of my daughter’s well-being for me – was instantly doomed to be buried under a further calamity. We woke next day to learn that our second groom, Simon, was feverish and so was one of our maidservants, seventeen-year-old Netta. And when I went to see them, yes, it was the pox.
Simon and Netta were the lucky ones, for they both recovered within three weeks, although they were noticeably marked. Netta cried dreadfully over her pocks. Simon, the first time he was fit enough to go to the well for water for the horse trough, found her fetching water for the kitchen and weeping into the bucket, where she had caught sight of her reflection.
He told her that her scars weren’t as bad as she thought and were so commonplace anyway that no one would think anything of them, but at first, all she said, or sobbed, was that it didn’t matter the same for a man. He soothed her, using, as he told me, the voice that he used for reassuring nervous horses. They became friends, and just before Christmas, they married. It was a happy union, and I like to think of that. At least one good thing came out of that catastrophic epidemic.
At the time, of course, all that lay in the future. At the time, we had three dangerously ill invalids on our hands. It was clear from the start, though, that Dorothy was far more ill than the other two. We put them all into the coach-house rooms, wrapped them in red flannel, kept them clean, and watched over them by day and by night. With Simon and Netta, the tide slowly began to turn. But with Dorothy, nothing checked the hideous progress of the illness. There came a moment when we knew that, as with Abel, Dorothy was not going to come through.
Looking back, I realize that for nearly a month, Hawkswood was ruled by smallpox. Dr Hibbert, the physician, came from Woking to see the patients, but he was little help. He agreed that we were already doing all that could or should be done, and that the outcome lay in the hands of God. He provided some medicine for reducing fever, but that was all, and we soon found that Gladys’s herbal remedies were better than his anyway.
I rarely remember feeling so tired. There seemed no end to the nightmare. Simon and Netta might be mending, but Dorothy, though horribly ill, her whole skin a mass of oozing pustules, was not, and yet she did not slip away quickly as Abel had done, but lingered and lingered, and cried out in her distress. Finally, we cleaned and tidied a disused attic room in the roof of the house and carried her there, where she would not disturb the others. It meant that extra people were needed to look after them all but that couldn’t be helped.
We formed a routine. Two maidservants who’d had the illness took charge of Netta and Simon, turn and turn about. Dorothy was cared for by Fran Dale, Sybil (who’d had cowpox) and myself, all snatching sleep as best we could.
Sybil and I usually shared the night watch. We would sit at a small table with a triple-branched candlestick on it, hour after hour, watching the light flicker on the sloping attic rafters. Every now and then, one of us would get up and give Dorothy some medicine, or a drink of milk or water; twice during the night we regularly moved her on to the floor and changed her sheets and nightgown, which were always stained with pus and excrement. We tried not to disturb her with talking, but we did exchange a few words now and then, in low voices, to keep each other awake, because exhaustion was our constant enemy. At dawn, before we could eat or rest, we would have to boil the dirtied linen and hang it out to dry. Hawkswood had good supplies of such things, but meeting Dorothy’s needs was still a struggle.
After nine days, an evening came when we knew we must send for Dr Fletcher, if he were willing to come. He came at once, telling us not to worry about him; he’d had the pox in childhood. He gave Dorothy the last rites, Anglican style. She would no doubt have preferred Catholic ones, but they were illegal and Dorothy was scarcely conscious anyway. When he was done, he went away, promising to pray for us all, and we settled down for what we guessed would be the last night vigil at her side.
The hot weather was over. Summer was ending, the hours of darkness growing longer. The attic room had no hearth, but a small brazier had been brought in for warmth and we were glad of it. At some time after midnight, during the dead hours, rain began to rattle against the single dormer window. It was because of the rain that we didn’t at first hear Dorothy trying to speak to us. Her mouth was full of sores, and she could only manage a weak and painful whisper. Then Sybil noticed that her eyes were open and fixed on us, and that her mouth was working. We sprang up and went to her.
‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘Milk?’ I was going to pick up the mug of milk from the table by the bed, when a small hand, as rough with pustules as a neglected ship’s keel is with barnacles, crept out from under the covers and clutched at my wrist. Dorothy shook her head – slowly, because for her every movement was pain, but definitely.
‘Not. Milk,’ she whispered. Every word was separate, an effort in its own right. ‘Confess.’
‘Sweetheart, the vicar has been to see you, and you are absolved of anything you have ever done amiss,’ Sybil told her.
Another slow shake of the head. ‘Not. Vicar. Mis . . . Mistress Stannard. You.’
‘You want to confess to me?’ I said blankly.
‘Yes. Master. Ferris. Sent me.’
‘Dorothy, what do you mean?’
‘Said. I must . . . tell him. Everything. That happens. Here. What. People. Say. Do.’ The halting murmur ended on a moan. I held some milk to her lips. We had found that milk was the drink that best soothed her painful mouth. She swallowed, with difficulty, and then the hoarse account went on. Listening to it was even anguish for us; God alone knew what it was like for her.
‘I asked to . . . visit. Aunt. No aunt.’ Weakly, Dorothy shook her head, repudiating the existence of an aunt. ‘Met. Someone. From Ferris place. Twice. Told about . . . Christina. Meeting Thomas. How Master. Ferris . . . knew. Sorry. So kind . . .’
I said in bewilderment: ‘But why? Why should Master Ferris . . .?’
Again that slow shake of the head. ‘Don’t. Know. Paid. Told me, get you, Mistress . . . give Christina . . . medicine . . . any medicine. Said . . . don’t ask why . . . but . . . all for the Faith. Paid more. In advance. Money . . . useful.’
‘All right. Don’t try to talk any more,’ I said. ‘Just rest. You may feel better tomorrow and . . .’
‘No. Dying. Or. I wouldn’t . . .’
But the faint, tortured voice was failing now. Her eyes closed. The hand that still lay on my wrist fell away. She was slipping back into unconsciousness. Just before dawn, she slipped further, into death.
‘But why?’ I said in bewilderment. ‘What is the matter with Walter Ferris? We’ve never done him any harm, yet he bursts into Meg’s wedding feast and hurls wild accusations at me – and now it seems that before that he planted a spy on us and paid her to tell him things and to get me, for some reason, to give potions to Christina! Not to poison her, just to give her any kind of potion! Where’s the sense in that? It’s so unreasonable. Perhaps Dorothy was just delirious.’
It was the afternoon of the next day. Dorothy still lay in the attic, covered with a sheet, and down in Hawkswood churchyard, the sexton was busy with his spade, preparing her last bed.
Sybil and I had laid her out and washed away the smell and the contamination and burned the old gowns we had used for our nursing duties. Some people said that such clothes could carry contagion. I had gathered Hugh, Brockley, Dale and Sybil together, and Hugh had led us all out into the rose garden, because, as Hugh frankly said, after the stench and the stifling air of sickrooms, we would probabl
y be thankful to take in the fresh air and the scent of the last late roses.
Brockley, as confused as I was, said: ‘Madam, you say that Dorothy seemed to be telling you that her aunt in Priors Ford doesn’t exist. That’s true. I rode over there this morning. I thought, well, better make sure. If Dorothy did have an aunt, someone should tell her what’s happened.’
‘Quite,’ said Hugh. ‘And you didn’t find any aunt? Priors Ford is a tiny place, so I suppose enquiries weren’t too difficult.’
‘No, they weren’t, sir,’ Brockley said. ‘The village is small, but it has an alehouse and a little church. I tried the alehouse first. Didn’t Dorothy say to you, madam, that her aunt wasn’t young and lived on her own?’
‘Yes, Brockley. That’s so.’
‘I asked if there were any such women in the village, and the innkeeper said yes, two of them, but he’d never heard tell that either had a niece and neither’s called Beale. Then I tried the vicar. He’s a big fat man,’ said Brockley disparagingly, ‘with not enough to do in that little parish. No long rides for him, to get to parishioners miles away, and just as well, for he’d make the poor horse sag in the middle. He said the same as the alehouse keeper, and he’d never heard the name Beale, either. Said he’d know if either of the two women that live on their own had relatives called that. In my opinion, madam, it’s true that Dorothy hadn’t got an aunt there.’
‘In which case,’ said Hugh, ‘the rest of her confession is probably true, and not the result of delirium. She used to work for the Ferrises, didn’t she? But why Walter should behave towards us in such a way – I have no idea, none at all. When he interrupted the feast, it seemed to be because he was in a rage about Thomas meeting Christina here. But he apparently sent Dorothy to us long before that. I can’t understand any of this.’
‘Dorothy seemed to be saying that it was she who told Ferris about that meeting,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘Though how she can have known about it . . . Oh!’
‘You’ve thought of something?’ Sybil asked.
‘Yes. When I came up with them, they were under that bay tree in the corner of the herb garden, only feet from the fence round the wood. We heard a rustling in the wood and a twig snapped. I thought it was an animal – something making a kill, maybe. I’d seen a fox that night. But it might have been Dorothy. Maybe she followed Christina too and was ahead of me. She could have slipped past them through the knot garden. They were so engrossed in each other, I doubt if they’d have noticed her despite the moonlight. She could have gone through the gate into the wood to spy on them from there.’
‘Very likely,’ said Hugh. ‘Well, we can’t ask her now.’
‘I think,’ I said, ‘that we have every reason to ask Walter Ferris for an explanation, except . . .’
‘I wouldn’t want to go near him,’ said Fran Dale. Fran’s pockmarks always seemed more obvious when she was upset, and just now they were very evident indeed, and her protuberant blue eyes were scared. ‘When he came here, shouting, he looked half-mad!’ she said.
‘But how else can we get to the bottom of this?’ I asked.
‘We’d better bury poor Dorothy first,’ Hugh said.
EIGHT
Connections
It was a quiet funeral, as Abel’s had been. Afterwards, Hugh and I were not sure what to do next. It was all very well to say that we ought to ask Walter Ferris to explain his behaviour, but when it came to putting the idea into practice we recoiled.
‘We need to ask him, but how can we?’ I said to Hugh, on the third day after the funeral. ‘Or rather, how can you? I wouldn’t dare to go near Ferris myself, and if you call on him, he might well refuse to see you.’
‘I could send a formal request to meet Ferris on neutral ground, I suppose,’ said Hugh unenthusiastically.
We fell silent. We were sharing a settle in the smaller of our two parlours. It was our favourite. It had a window seat and cushioned settles, light-coloured panelling and a view towards the courtyard and the gatehouse, so that we could keep an eye on the comings and goings of the household and its visitors. We were on our own, for there was an unspoken arrangement that when Hugh and I were in the little parlour we would not be disturbed unless we called someone in, or something unusual made an interruption necessary.
Our quiet moment was ended that morning as Hero and Hector suddenly shot across the courtyard, barking. We turned to look out just as, with a clatter and a rumble, half a dozen horsemen rode in, followed by four matched bay horses pulling a heavy coach. The horsemen wore livery that we knew.
The cavalcade halted in the courtyard. Arthur Watts and Joseph, our youngest groom, came running from the tack room to silence the dogs and take the horses’ heads. One of the outriders sprang from his saddle to open the coach door, and out came Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State, followed by his usual entourage of clerk and valet. Adam Wilder appeared from somewhere to greet him, and the little group made for the house – slowly, because Cecil was leaning heavily on his stick.
‘Now what on earth,’ said Hugh in astonishment, ‘brings him here? He sent no warning.’
‘And he doesn’t like travelling, because of his gout,’ I said, equally surprised. I knew that Cecil found it difficult enough following the queen from palace to palace along the Thames, with Windsor at one end of the line and Greenwich at the other, even though he could make those journeys the easy way, by barge. Accompanying the queen on her summer progresses, which meant lengthy journeys by coach, was an ordeal he dreaded. He made occasional social visits, like the one to us earlier in the year, but we hadn’t expected him to repeat that for a long time. Whatever had brought him here now, unheralded, must be important. We waited, full of conjecture, until Adam Wilder brought our unexpected caller in.
I had known Cecil well for many years. I had great respect for his honesty and intelligence, and because of the pain he suffered from his gout, I also felt sympathy for him, just as I did for Hugh with his rheumatic knees. In Cecil’s case, I also sympathized because his responsibilities as Secretary of State were so heavy. His long, bearded face was always serious, and between his eyes was a permanent line of worry that deepened every year.
But he had a ruthless side. He and the queen, once they had discovered my gift for intrigue, had not hesitated to use me. They had paid well for my services, but on occasion their treatment of me had been very ruthless indeed. As, for instance, when they deceived me and Matthew into believing each other to be dead.
They had their reasons, but I would never forget the shock when I learned the truth. Now I found myself quivering with anxiety, afraid of what this visit might portend. Before Cecil reached the parlour, I was bracing myself to say that whatever mission he wanted to send me on this time, the answer must be no. I wanted to stay here, in safety, with Hugh. I would stay here. I wouldn’t give in. Not ever again.
Hugh and I rose, of course, as Wilder brought Cecil in. Joan Flood followed with a tray of refreshments. Her work was supposed to be in the kitchen, but with Simon and Netta still abed, in need of care, and taking up the time of two maidservants, the usual household arrangements were in disarray.
Joan, who was good-natured, quite often did extra jobs to help. Wilder cast a professional eye over the goblets, the wine, the little meat pies and the dish of sweetmeats, expressed approval, thanked her for lending a hand, and withdrew, taking her with him.
‘And so,’ said Hugh, resuming his seat while I filled the three goblets with wine, ‘where have you travelled from today, Sir William? You will dine with us, of course. Will you be staying the night?’
‘I started out early from Hampton Court,’ said Cecil. ‘I’ll return this evening. I doubt if you want overnight guests just at present. I am aware that you are having an outbreak of the pox.’
‘We hope the worst is over,’ I said. ‘There have been two deaths in the household, but two other victims are recovering well. How did you know about it?’
Cecil sipped wine and considered me g
ravely over the rim of his goblet.
‘Ursula,’ he said, ‘although you seem lately to have retired from public life, you have quite a history behind you, and then there is your relationship to the queen, which is more widely known than either she or I would really wish. We keep watch over you, more than you realize.’
‘Indeed?’ I said warily. I seated myself again.
‘I don’t mean that I have a paid informer in your house,’ Cecil told me. ‘I haven’t.’
I was glad to hear it. Dorothy had been that, and one paid spy under my roof, I felt, was one too many.
‘But there are those who, at my request – and unpaid – let me know of events here,’ Cecil said. ‘I know all about the outbreak of sickness, and all about the shocking scene at your daughter’s wedding. Dr Fletcher, your vicar, sent me a full account of that, the very next day.’
‘He is one of your informants, then?’ I asked.
‘With your well-being in mind,’ said Cecil. ‘He is not a spy. He simply keeps me aware of Hawkswood news, as far as he can. I must ask you not to tell him that you know, and not to think the worse of him. He is a safeguard for you, not an enemy. Please don’t take offence. You are valued, and both I and the queen wish to protect you.’
Hugh and I were both very still.
‘Threats,’ said Cecil, helping himself to a pie, ‘were made against you on that day, Ursula, by one Walter Ferris, who burst into the midst of Meg’s wedding feast in order to utter them. I have no idea why. But I am sorry to say that his threats look like coming true. I came to warn you.’
‘But . . .’ I began, and then stopped, bewildered.
‘That’s absurd,’ said Hugh. ‘All Walter Ferris could come up with was some nonsense about a soothing draught that my wife brewed for Christina Cobbold. She was one of the bridesmaids . . .’
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