Queen's Bounty

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘And Jane was upset enough over the damage to Christina’s face to swallow it and lay the complaint? I wonder if Anthony Cobbold went along with it? That puzzles me. From what I’ve seen of him, I wouldn’t think it likely. I’m surprised he let her.’

  ‘Maybe she didn’t talk to him about it – but just went and did it,’ said Sybil. ‘According to Maine, Ferris told Emory that if Jane Cobbold wouldn’t take the hint, he was to go to Heron direct, but that Jane would be the best person because she could claim that you’d injured her family. He said that if Emory would do as he asked, then Thomas could marry Margaret.’

  ‘But Thomas and Margaret don’t want to marry,’ I said.

  ‘No, quite. But Margaret’s parents are very anxious that they should. When she came to whisper to me through the attic door, she told me that her father did some favours for Ferris, in exchange for getting Ferris’s final consent to the match. Making a tool of Jane Cobbold was one of the favours, presumably. It was quite clever of Ferris, in a way,’ said Sybil angrily. ‘Jane Cobbold is the silliest woman I have ever met. You only have to put an idea into her head, and it takes root like a dandelion in a vegetable patch.’

  ‘Do you really dislike Jane so much? I’ve never heard you sound so salty before about other people!’

  ‘You can be salty, too,’ said Sybil. ‘You’ve set me an example. I’ve detested Mistress Cobbold from the day I first met her, but it wasn’t my place to say so. Then.’

  ‘Maine must be a fool,’ I said. ‘You could repeat what he told you in court, if it came to that. It would be evidence against Ferris.’

  ‘I said as much to Maine, and he just laughed. “Who’d listen to you?” he said. “You’d be there as a prisoner accused of attempted theft and consorting with witches. They’d expect you to make up stories, and who’s going to believe such a taradiddle? Who else is here to listen to what I’ve told you? It would be your word against mine and Master Ferris’s, and Emory wants to marry his daughter to Thomas so much, he won’t spill any beans, believe me.” Maine was almost swaggering.’

  ‘Oh, Sybil!’

  ‘I’m trying to be brave, but I don’t feel it.’ Sybil’s voice was breaking, on the edge of tears once more. ‘Oh, Ursula, what are we going to do? I wasn’t asleep when you were brought down here – I can’t sleep. I’m too frightened. But I heard what was said just outside this door. They took my picklocks away when Maine caught me, and now they’ve taken yours. We’ve no hope of getting out.’

  ‘Oh, haven’t we?’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember? My husband had two extra sets of picklocks made before you came here. I brought them both with me. I had one set in my jacket pocket, and I handed that to Walter Ferris. But the other . . .’ I fished under Brockley’s loose-fitting shirt, found the cord that lay beneath it, and pulled. ‘Here’s the third set. I’ve had it slung round my neck. I think, if we let a little time go past so that Ferris and his minions have a chance to get to sleep, we might escape after all. Though you’d better be prepared. When it comes to getting over the boundary fence, you may have to climb a tree.’

  We waited for quite a long time. There were no more sounds from above. ‘Time to go,’ I said at last.

  I had no difficulty in letting us out of the cellar. The lock was one of the easiest I had ever had to force. The difficult part came next. Would there be anyone on guard in the kitchen, with or without the dogs? We could only hope for the best. As noiselessly as possible, we crept up the stone steps. I led the way and pushed open the door to the kitchen.

  The dogs were not there. Nor were any human guards. All was dark and quiet. The flambeau hadn’t been replaced. We groped our way to the outer door, and I discovered by feel that it had bolts on the inside. They had been shot. ‘I hope everyone is indoors by now,’ I whispered. ‘Except for Brockley. I hope he isn’t. Come along.’

  In the darkness I fumbled with the bolts but got them open in the end. We crept warily out and stood for a moment, listening, but no dogs gave tongue, no voices shouted. With luck, the hunt was over – may it have failed; Brockley, please be safe! – and the mastiffs had been chained up again, I hoped, in their usual place at the lodge. ‘This is the west side of the house,’ I muttered. ‘We have to get to the north side. Follow me.’

  We kept close to the wall, in shadow, and edged along the wall and round the corner. We would have to leave it to cross the grounds to the fence, but at first, I led us on by the wall for some way, because there was something I wanted to know. I stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Sybil breathed shakily in my ear.

  ‘I want to see if the ladder is still there.’

  ‘Ladder?’

  ‘We thought you were still in the attic. We had a long ladder so as to reach high enough, and for getting over the fence. No, it’s gone. Well, Ferris’s men were bound to find it, and then he’d know that someone was with me. He’ll know I couldn’t handle such a big ladder alone.’

  ‘Was it taken away or just left on the ground? If it’s there, can’t we use it? There are two of us, after all.’

  I considered that. The ladder would slow us down, but I was not at all sure how good we would be at climbing trees. I was fairly active and might be able to do it, but Sybil was older than me, had led a more sedentary life, and was encumbered with skirts. ‘Let’s see,’ I murmured.

  We found it, laid on the ground against the wall. Someone had closed it up again, which would make it easier to handle.

  ‘We can carry it between us,’ I whispered. ‘But we shan’t be able to go fast. Well, all right. This way. We have to go through the knot garden and the topiary and then the kitchen garden.’

  The moon had set. In the starlight, the knot garden lay as still as though it were under an enchantment, though I had no superstitious frisson now. If a witch or a ghost had suddenly appeared, I would have followed Brockley’s recommendation and said, ‘Boo!’ When one is listening for mastiffs, the supernatural seems toothless. I almost regretted that. A phantom or two might frighten the mastiffs.

  We reached the topiary without mishap and paused to listen, but were reassured by the silence. Cautiously, we moved on, into the kitchen garden and through it, and at last into the wood. Here beneath the trees, the darkness was intense. It was hard to manoeuvre our burden between the trunks, and twigs kept snatching at our hair and clothes. The fifty yards of woodland between the garden and the outer fence seemed to take forever to cross. There was a very bad moment when we knocked the end of the ladder against a tree. The thud sounded to us like a clap of thunder.

  As far as I could make out by peering intently at the trees, none of them had low boughs. I couldn’t imagine how either Sybil or I could ever have climbed any of them.

  We were halfway through when we heard it.

  ‘Oh no!’ Sybil gasped.

  It was in the distance, but there was no mistaking it. The mastiffs were baying. And the sound was coming nearer. There was little doubt that they were on our scent.

  Hound voices are exciting when you are following the pack but not when you’re the quarry. Then, your guts churn and your heart pounds as though it wants to burst out of your chest. I had experienced it before and had hoped never to do so again. ‘Run!’ I said.

  We ran, not worrying now if we bumped the ladder against trees in our haste, only concerned not to collide with them ourselves or to trip over roots or the snares of trailing ivy. We never reached the fence. The mastiffs were on us just as it came in sight, and this time they were not on leashes.

  They had been well trained. They didn’t attack, but sprang in front of us and stood there barring our way and snarling. I shouted at them, as masterfully as possible, but they went on snarling, and I knew that they wouldn’t let us pass. Sybil was whimpering with fright.

  And then Walter Ferris and Peter Maine, both wearing cloaks over their nightshirts, came through the trees behind us, carrying lanterns.

  ‘Did you think we were fools?’ Ferris sounded odiously pleased w
ith himself. ‘You’d never have handled that great double ladder by yourself. Whoever came with you, Mistress Stannard, got away, but in case he came back with reinforcements I had the dogs left loose. They must have been on the wrong side of the house when you got out, but they got your scent in the end and we heard them, so here we are.’

  I said nothing. I could hardly bear it. We had so nearly escaped; so very nearly. The fence was only a few feet away. If only we could have had a little bit of luck, a few more minutes. If only. If only!

  ‘I can’t think how you got through that locked cellar door,’ Ferris was saying thoughtfully. ‘That really does look like supernatural powers. More evidence of witchcraft, wouldn’t you say, Mistress Stannard?’

  I then made a foolish mistake. I was tired, frightened, bitterly disappointed at this last-minute failure and exasperated with this reiterated accusation of witchcraft. I wanted to refute it. I wanted to be done with it. I wanted to prove it was a lie and throw the lie in this man’s stupid face.

  I pulled out my spare set of picklocks and brandished them at him.

  ‘There’s your witchcraft!’ I shouted.

  Just as he had snatched my dagger, he now snatched my spare picklocks. Of course.

  SIXTEEN

  Inverting the Truth

  Back in the wine cellar, we were left to get what rest we could during the little that remained of the night. ‘But Brockley must have got away,’ I said to Sybil as soon as our captors’ footsteps had retreated. ‘And in any case, unless we both get home safely, Hugh will come. He’ll know what to do. And there is that letter that you saw. It’s good evidence against Ferris; in fact, it ought to exonerate us. Take heart, Sybil.’

  Sybil said fearfully: ‘If only Ferris doesn’t go and destroy it! Where would we be then? What Maine told me won’t be any use – he was right, it would just be my word against his. Ursula, I’ve never met or even seen this man Edward Heron, but I have heard things about him. When it comes to cases of witchcraft, he’s always hot against the prisoner. And he has more than one judge in his pocket.’

  We tried to rest, and I think I did doze, towards daybreak. The body looks after itself in the end. But in the morning we were still both exhausted and very grubby. I have never longed so much for warm water and a comb.

  Eventually, Peter Maine, dressed formally in full-length black velvet and accompanied by two men, presumably as bodyguards, came with breakfast – of a sort. It consisted of a jug of small ale, two glass tumblers, some yesterday’s bread, and a lump of cheese.

  We ate and drank and of necessity made use of a bucket which had been left for us in a corner. Maine’s two henchmen came again after a while to take away our tray and the bucket, replacing the latter with an empty one. I won’t say a clean one, because it wasn’t. It looked as though it had been used for mixing paint. They didn’t speak to us. After that we were left to ourselves. The morning wore on.

  Cool air came through the grating, and from what we could see, the day was bright: good October weather. I reckoned that it was about ten of the clock when we heard a timid tapping at the door and a little voice whispered: ‘Mistress Jackman! Mistress Stannard!’

  Sybil sprang up and went to the door. ‘Margaret! What are you doing here? Won’t you get into trouble?’

  ‘No. I asked Mistress Ferris if I could bring you a comb. She said yes, it would be a Christian gesture and I could probably push it under the door. She couldn’t give me the key, because Master Ferris has it, she said, and we’d better not ask him in case he was angry and forbade me to bring the comb. Here it is.’

  Something scraped at the bottom of the door and a comb slid under it. ‘They’re all in the great hall waiting for the sheriff to arrive,’ Margaret said. ‘No one knows I went to Hawkswood. They thought I’d run home! When I came back, I said I’d just been walking because I was upset. Thomas didn’t tell. But something dreadful happened yesterday. Master Ferris looks so ordinary, but now that I’m living here, he’s begun to scare me. His wife, and Thomas, both seem nervous of him. When he’s there, they seem to be careful of what they say. And yesterday . . .’

  To our distress, Margaret began to sob. ‘Yesterday evening, Thomas tried to tell his father that he couldn’t marry me, that he still meant to marry Christina, and Master Ferris beat him! He made Maine and another man hold him down! I wasn’t there, of course, but . . . I heard things . . . noises. Mistress Bridget did too, and she went and shut herself away. This morning, Thomas looked wretched – awful – and I had to ask him why. I told him what I’d overheard. Because we quarrelled yesterday, I was afraid he would say it was none of my business, but after all, we’d been friends for so long, it was natural for him to talk to me, so he did. Poor Thomas!’

  ‘Don’t cry!’ whispered Sybil. ‘Don’t, dear. It’s over now.’

  ‘The quarrel’s forgotten,’ Margaret said. ‘And I’ve promised him that I’ll beg my father to break the betrothal and take me away. Thomas loves Christina Cobbold. I’ve seen them together.’

  ‘Take care, my dear,’ said Sybil. ‘Don’t let Master Ferris know about that promise.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’ Margaret checked her tears. ‘I wish I could bring you washing water and fresh clothes, but I can’t. You must need them.’

  She was right about that, but the comb at least was a help. We thanked her earnestly. When she had gone, we set about tidying ourselves. We both had our hair bundled into woollen nets, but restless nights and the twigs in the wood had turned our heads to birds’ nests. ‘Except,’ said Sybil, trying hard to be brave, ‘that any self-respecting birds would be ashamed to make such messy nests!’

  With the comb, we smoothed out the tangles and repacked each other’s hair in a more orderly fashion. We could do little about our clothes, however. Everything we had on was horribly creased, and Sybil’s little ruff, which should have been sparkling white, looked as though it had been roughly created from a used dishcloth. We were still a sadly dishevelled pair when Peter Maine, once more accompanied by two other men (‘How dangerous they must think we are!’ Sybil whispered to me), fetched us to confront the sheriff in the great hall.

  It had been rearranged. The table and benches had been pushed to one side, and Edward Heron, dressed like Maine in a formal black gown, was seated in one of the throne-like chairs, which had been placed in a commanding position. Walter Ferris was occupying the other, not quite beside Heron, but a couple of paces back, giving Heron the advantage. Also set a little back was a small table and chair, and on the table was paper and writing materials. Standing next to Heron, on the other side from Ferris, stood another dark-gowned man, holding a parchment scroll. I wondered if this was Heron’s chaplain, the one who so earnestly agreed with his master on the subject of witchcraft and had been known to preach on the unwisdom of allowing witches to survive. He had a face full of vertical lines and eyebrows rounded like Norman arches. I disliked him on sight.

  Bridget, Thomas, and Margaret were present but were seated in the inglenook, observers but not participants. Bridget was as cool and dignified as ever, her hair immaculately coiled under an embroidered hood, the skirts of her brown velvet gown carefully disposed, her ruff fashionably large, and a heavy pearl and silver pendant round her neck. Her hands were quiet in her lap, and her little dog was sitting at her feet. Thomas was white-faced and very still, and for all his size and strength he looked curiously young. He was sitting upright, not letting his shoulders touch the seat-back behind him. At his side, Margaret, unobtrusively dressed in dove-colour, sat as quietly as Bridget, and she too had clasped her hands in her lap, but her light eyes seemed enormous and were watching us anxiously.

  The men with Peter Maine had withdrawn, but Maine, it seemed, was to stay. He, Heron and the chaplain together were a trio to make one shudder. They looked like three black crows, waiting to peck us to death.

  ‘Here are the prisoners, Sir Edward, Master Ferris.’ Maine was presenting us, smoothly obsequious. ‘Mistress Ursula Stann
ard—’

  He pushed me forward, and I attempted a correct curtsy but knew very well that my breeches made it look ridiculous.

  ‘—and Mistress Sybil Jackman.’

  Sybil, when thrust forward, made a more successful obeisance.

  ‘What a pair,’ said Sir Edward disapprovingly. Chilly grey eyes scanned us both from head to foot. ‘One seems to be wearing clothes made out of unwashed remnants, and the other, shamefully, is dressed as a man. Let them hear of what they are accused.’

  Gladys had been through this, I thought, and under worse circumstances, since she had been in a court, not in a private house, and was alone. At least Sybil and I had each other. I also knew that this hearing, this confrontation, this interrogation – whatever one might call it – was taking place here in the Ferris hall and not in a cell or a courtroom because I was who I was: sister to the queen and wife of Hugh Stannard, who was a respected figure in Surrey.

  But the fear was the same. Heron would not have agreed to conduct this enquiry unless he had decided to take it seriously. If he were once convinced that I had indulged in sorcery with lethal intent, then my connections would not help either me or Sybil. We must refute whatever evidence there was against us or we might end where Gladys had so nearly ended, in the death cart, pinioned, ropes round our necks. Gladys had been saved barely one minute before the cart was drawn away from beneath her. We might not be so fortunate.

  ‘This is not a court of law,’ Heron said, echoing my thoughts. ‘It is at this stage a preliminary investigation into the accusations against these women. The Reverend Giles Parkes will read them out.’ I had identified the chaplain correctly.

  Parkes unrolled his scroll. ‘I will deal first with the woman Sybil Jackman,’ he announced. He had a creaky voice, like a door hinge in need of oiling.