Queen's Bounty

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘You have a reason for asking this?’

  ‘Yes, Sir Edward. A very good reason.’

  ‘Fetch them, Maine.’

  Ferris bristled on hearing his steward ordered about by Heron, but he said nothing. Maine went out and came back in a very short time, with the two men in question. Brockley then asked the name of the brawny groom.

  ‘John Hunter,’ said the groom.

  ‘I’ve seen you before,’ said Brockley. ‘And I know your voice. You were bellowing loud enough when you came marching into the Lion Inn in Woking, shouting that something valuable had been stolen from your saddlebag! If I hadn’t just that moment handed the landlord a precious necklace that turned up in my saddlebag when it shouldn’t have, where would I have been?’

  ‘In trouble,’ said Hunter frankly. ‘But it was all just a mistake. There were several saddlebags hanging up in that stable. I fancy I put the pouch with the necklace in the wrong one. My apologies.’

  ‘Or had you been ordered to put it in the wrong one?’ Brockley wanted to know. ‘Just a bit of a coincidence, wasn’t it? You making a mistake like that just after your master had had orders to ruin me and Mistress Stannard?’

  Hunter was silent, looking disconcerted.

  Heron enquired: ‘Will you, Roger Brockley, also repeat what you have just said when you are on oath?’

  ‘I most certainly will.’

  ‘And I will repeat my own testimony on oath,’ I said. ‘Because every word of it, every single word, is the truth.’

  Ferris audibly ground his teeth.

  ‘Sir Edward,’ I said, ‘who was it suggested to you that evidence of witchcraft might be found in the home of Mrs Ward and Mrs Seldon?’ It was hard to say their names calmly. Just thinking about them made me want to cry. But the question needed to be asked.

  ‘It was Mr Ferris,’ said Sir Edward. ‘But that time, he was proved to be right.’

  ‘A piece of jewellery planted in Brockley’s saddlebag,’ I said. ‘Incriminating literature planted in the house where Mrs Ward and Mrs Seldon lived. Two similar tricks. Two dirty tricks!’ I stared at him in anguish, pleading with my eyes. And then said it. ‘They were innocent. Innocent! And Ferris here as good as murdered them!’

  ‘That is merely a theory.’ Parkes’s chin had risen, and so had the round arches of his eyebrows. ‘It is your opinion only and not proven fact. Indeed, the idea is absurd. How could Mr Ferris obtain the incriminating literature which has been mentioned? Such books are not easy to find, the Lord be praised.’

  Heron, however, was frowning. ‘As I think many people know, I confiscate such books when they are discovered and destroy most of them, but some I keep for purposes of training my staff – so that they know what to look for when they raid a property. I keep the books at home, on a shelf in a cupboard which is normally locked, but now and then I let friends see them – just briefly. In August, Mr Ferris, you and your wife visited me at home, and I showed them to you then. And the next time I opened that cupboard, which was some time in September, I noticed that the books were not packed as closely on that shelf as they should have been. When I looked more carefully, I found that four were missing. The only keys never leave my key ring. But it is true that when I was showing them to you, I left you alone with them for a short time, because my wife called me for something or other.’

  He stared fixedly at Ferris and then at Bridget, who paled.

  Heron tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, thinking aloud. ‘The book found in the house where Mrs Ward and Mrs Seldon lived was the same as one of the books stolen from me. But other copies of that book exist and have turned up on occasion, during various house searches. The women swore they had never seen it before – but they would say that anyway, whether they were guilty or not.’

  ‘Quite!’ Parkes declared, apparently unimpressed by the news of stolen books. ‘It is necessary to take a stringent view of such things. Witchcraft is an abomination. It may even be worthwhile taking a few innocent lives, as long as the guilty are not allowed to escape. It is like the casualties in a just war.’

  ‘Yes. And there could have been other occasions when the books could have been stolen. I have many visitors, some of whom know of that cupboard, and I have been known to leave my key ring lying about.’ He shook his head. ‘I have no certainty. The women Seldon and Ward may well have been guilty. Mr Ferris may have been in the right.’

  I hated him. Three harmless women and an unborn child had come to a dreadful death because Ferris had tricked him, but he wasn’t going to admit it, and Parkes would support him. Parkes’s conscience (even if he had one) wouldn’t be disturbed. Heron did seem to possess a conscience, but he clearly didn’t mean to let it be aroused this time. He was unstable, two men in one skin, sheriff and witch-hunter locked in everlasting conflict. To hurl furious accusations at him might jeopardize my own safety and Sybil’s, and it wouldn’t give back life to his victims.

  And then, at my side, Margaret Emory suddenly cried: ‘Thomas! Take off your doublet and shirt! Show them what your father did to you last night! You said to me that he did it because you told him you couldn’t marry me – that you wouldn’t give Christina up. Was it? Or was it to make you say what he wanted you to say about that silly potion? I don’t believe a word of that love philtre story! You wouldn’t need a love potion for Christina! I’ve seen you together! So why would you tell such a tale if you hadn’t been made to? If I’m right, then show them!’

  Everyone, including Thomas, gaped at her. Ferris spluttered: ‘Christina? He knows he can’t marry a Cobbold! He’d never have dared come to me and—’ He stopped, looking huntedly around him, realizing his mistake.

  Margaret stamped her foot. ‘If I’m right, Thomas, do it!’

  Thomas’s hands went to his doublet buttons and then stopped. With an exasperated cry, Margaret broke away from me, ran to him and began to pluck at the buttons herself.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘All right!’ He started to help her. The doublet came off and then his shirt, and we saw what was beneath: the purple welts that criss-crossed his back, and here and there the dark-red blots of dried blood. All the time that he was sitting in the inglenook, he must have been in considerable pain.

  ‘To make you say that you had bought a love potion from Mrs Stannard?’ Heron asked.

  ‘Yes,’ said Thomas. He looked at Margaret. ‘I couldn’t tell you. I was ashamed of what I was being made to do. So I pretended to you that I’d told him I wanted to marry Christina.’

  ‘So that was why . . .!’ Bridget’s voice was outraged. She backed away from Ferris, staring at him as though he were a repulsive stranger.

  ‘I see,’ said Heron.

  The proofs against Ferris were piling up, item by item, and Heron was listening and coming at last, even against his will, to an unavoidable conclusion. Ferris knew it. Now, with all eyes on the proof of how he had enforced his son’s obedience, I saw the knowledge dawn in his.

  He crumbled. It happened all in a moment, taking every one of us by surprise. It was physical; his knees gave way, and his face folded like that of a child about to burst into tears.

  ‘All right. All right! I was afraid from the start that I couldn’t do it! It was a compliment to be asked; I wanted to serve the lady of Northumberland; I tried! But nothing went right. It was too difficult!’

  Incredibly, it sounded like an appeal for understanding. I thought of what he had done to Jennet and Margery and Bessie, and I shuddered away from him. He looked such a commonplace little man, crouching there on the floor. Had he perhaps resented being commonplace? So much that he had tried to overcome it and in the end let the struggle turn to evil?

  He had bullied his son and probably his wife; he had been flattered to be chosen by Anne Percy as her instrument. Had she picked him because, during their one meeting, she had sensed in him the useful, usable presence of wickedness? But the task had been too big for him. He’d made his schemes up as he went along, but they were
too unwieldy and he hadn’t been cunning or far-seeing enough to carry them through.

  No one responded to his air of pathos. He went on talking, wildly. ‘I did my best. I had to use what was there.’ He could never have met Carew Trelawny, but those were Trelawny’s words, just the same. There was a flash of indignation in Brockley’s eyes. Ferris gabbled on. ‘If only I’d had clear instructions. I tried this, and then that . . . I tried to do my duty . . .’

  Bridget was standing with her hands pressed to her mouth and her eyes stretched wide. Ferris gazed at an unmoving and unmoved Heron. ‘I tried so hard, so very hard, to do right by my God and my queen, the noble Queen Mary, and by my kinswoman of Northumberland, but it wouldn’t go the way I meant it to, it wouldn’t.’

  He might have been complaining that a felled tree had fallen in the wrong direction or a flock of wayward sheep had dodged the pen. ‘I wanted to get that man Brockley first,’ he said, ‘before I trapped Ursula Stannard, because the Countess said she cared for him and my orders said: make her suffer. But he escaped every snare I laid!’

  ‘You sound,’ said Brockley, ‘as though, as an honest citizen, it was my moral duty to cooperate with you!’

  ‘That Stannard woman,’ said Ferris, unheeding, ‘outwitted and made a fool of my kinswoman, and now she’s made a fool of me. My orders said try to make her look like a witch. So I got a girl into her house with orders to tell me things, and I told her: “Get Mistress Stannard to give that Christina Cobbold a potion of some sort – any sort.” I reckoned I could make Thomas say whatever I wanted him to say . . .’ He darted a venomous glance at his son. ‘When I was packing up my poor daughter’s things, I saw those cloaks, and then I saw what I could do with them. It was all clear in my head. Make it look as though the Stannard woman was selling magic potions. Make it look as if she’d raised the sickness and spread it around her. I knew clothes could carry contagion. It ought to have worked . . .’

  ‘Did you steal those books from me?’ Heron interrupted. ‘I seem to recall that you said you had heard of them and would like to see them. I showed them to you at your request.’

  ‘I . . .’ It seemed as though Ferris, having crumbled and begun to blurt out the truth, was now realizing his peril and wanting to retreat. ‘I . . . I . . .’ He was stammering. Then he stopped.

  ‘Sir Edward, he can’t have walked away from your cupboard with stolen books under his arm.’ Parkes chimed in on the wrong side, as might have been expected. ‘Someone would have noticed!’

  ‘One moment,’ said Heron. ‘Mrs Ferris, you look distressed. Is there something you wish to tell us?’

  Bridget’s hands dropped from her mouth. ‘Yes, there is!’

  ‘Hold your tongue, Bridget!’ Ferris screeched. ‘Don’t interfere! A wife can’t bear witness against her husband!’

  ‘But whatever your lady seems about to tell us, you were, I trust, going to reveal anyway,’ said Heron. ‘Weren’t you confessing? And this is not a court of law. Mrs Ferris may say what she wishes.’

  ‘I want to speak!’ said Bridget, making up her mind. She straightened her back and raised her chin, visibly gathering that cool dignity of hers round her like a mantle. ‘It’s time I spoke! I’ve been silent too long. I’ve endured his contempt too long!’ The words were tumbling out of her as though they had been pent up and were now breaking free of their own accord. The little dog at her feet whimpered and cowered, frightened. ‘I want to tell the truth!’ said Bridget fiercely. ‘I want to tell it for the sheer pleasure of hammering a few nails into his coffin!’

  ‘Bridget!’ Ferris shouted.

  Everyone else gasped. This was something that none of us had expected.

  ‘If, after all this, Sir Edward is still not convinced,’ Bridget declared, ‘then I dare say my husband will kill me, even if he did intend to confess everything himself. He does not like me to utter a word without his permission, even to think a thought for myself. I hate him for that, and for what he has done to Thomas, not just yesterday, but many times before, though yesterday his reasons were so shameful I can hardly bear to think of them! And I hate him for doing the same to me, on occasion, and to my dear daughter Lucy, though a more tractable girl never lived. She was terrified of him, all through her girlhood. And now I hate him for what he has tried to do to Mrs Stannard. I read that letter from Anne Percy, though I never thought he would try to carry out such monstrous plans! Well, if I do die at his hands in the end, my life is not so happy that I am much troubled to defend it and—’

  ‘Bitch! Be silent! Wives don’t speak against their husbands! What I say or don’t say is my business. It’s not for you to intrude! You’ll pay for this, you’ll pay . . .!’ Ferris’s voice rose to a shriek.

  ‘Certainly, he stole those books,’ said Bridget. ‘He ordered me to help him. He gave me a bag to hang under my skirts. He took four books, but not large ones, and I had such a wide farthingale, such big skirts! He put them in the bag. They were well hidden. I’m sorry for what I did, Sir Edward. But he is my husband and I was in his power. I couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Wilder with interest, ‘that four books were bumping under your skirts all the rest of the day? How uncomfortable!’

  ‘Yes, it was,’ said Bridget. There was poison in the way Ferris was glowering at her, but she was speaking to Heron now and would not look at her husband. ‘As soon as I could, I went upstairs. I said I wanted a shawl. We were staying overnight so we had clothes and such things with us, and my husband had brought his saddlebags to our chamber. My maid was there, pressing something that had got crumpled on the journey, but I managed to unfasten the bag of books and put it in one of the saddlebags without her seeing.’ Bridget was still dignified but as white as a ghost.

  ‘Ferris?’ said Heron. ‘What did you do with the books you purloined? Tell us!’

  ‘Very well! Very well!’ Beleaguered, Ferris was crumbling again. ‘Yes, I hid two of them in that house, where those women lived. Didn’t you find the other one? And yes, I tried my best to get her –’ he stopped glowering at Bridget and pointed at me instead – ‘tangled up with them . . .’

  ‘We found the second one when we dined with Margery and Jennet,’ I said. ‘And burnt it. But if you stole four, what did you do with the other two? Were they planted at Hawkswood, by any chance?’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Ferris. It was a sneer.

  ‘So that when Sir Edward was eventually persuaded to raid Hawkswood, they’d be found,’ I said with fury. ‘But you feared that he wouldn’t be easily persuaded, so you created evidence against two defenceless ladies and their maidservant. I was to be steered into friendship with them, to smear my reputation. How despicable.’

  Theory had unquestionably been turned to proof. The odious Parkes was shrugging his shoulders, defeated but unconcerned. Heron, however, had turned the colour of whey.

  Thank you, Ferris. You have made him see it. Sir Edward Heron, may Jennet and Margery and Bessie and the ghost of the child that was never born haunt your dreams for the rest of your life.

  ‘I did it all for the Countess!’ Ferris shouted. ‘It was a nightmare, trying to work through other people, never feeling I was in control!’ He clenched his fists as though this maddened him above all things. ‘Emory, Mistress Cobbold – it was so bloody difficult! I even used my son’s hand in marriage as a bribe! What do you think that felt like?’

  ‘My girl not good enough for you otherwise, then?’ Emory shouted.

  ‘I was only trying to do my duty! No one can condemn me for that!’

  Now, although he kept glaring at me, Thomas and Bridget in turn, he had also started to snivel. I felt ill with loathing. And Brockley was furious.

  ‘So you admit it!’ Brockley shouted at him. ‘You get three poor women hanged, you try to get my mistress hanged as well, and you tried to kill me with a crossbow. Was that you? You lay in wait for me yourself?’

  ‘Yes. I’m a good shot.’ There was hurt pride there. ‘But you got aw
ay,’ said Ferris, whining now, resentful. ‘You didn’t come to any harm! Everything I tried, you escaped from . . .’

  ‘Didn’t come to any harm?’ Brockley bellowed. ‘You missed me by inches, and you killed the best horse I’ve ever ridden! I loved Brown Berry!’

  He was unbuttoning his jacket. He tore it off, threw it aside, and sprang. His onslaught roused Ferris from his abject crouch. A second later, they were fighting.

  It didn’t last long, but it was spectacular enough. Brockley was furious, raging, punching with both fists, calling Ferris all manner of names at the same time. Ferris was saving his breath for the fight, but he was returning punch for punch, his vigour renewed. The two of them swayed this way and that. A chair went flying, the dining table shook as they crashed into it, and the deerskin rug skidded under their feet, all but bringing Brockley down. All the women, me included, huddled into the inglenook out of harm’s way. Maine tried to intervene and was swept aside as though he were a cobweb. Most of the men were shouting, some encouraging one or other of the opponents, some wanting them to stop. Brockley and Ferris behaved as though they couldn’t hear.

  Then Ferris, throwing himself backwards to get momentarily out of Brockley’s reach, thrust a hand under his doublet and pulled out a dagger.

  It is not usual for a gentleman in his own house to wear a dagger, least of all when he is entertaining (if that is the right word) the sheriff of the county. Ferris must, I think, secretly have feared the outcome of this enquiry and come armed in case he had to fight his way out. The blade flashed as he drew it, and there were angry shouts from the watching men. It is disgraceful to draw a weapon on an unarmed opponent, and Brockley had left his own dagger at home. Brockley, too, was outraged. He emitted a shocking, animal snarl, lunged forward to grab Ferris’s right wrist and tried to wrestle the dagger out of Ferris’s grasp.

  They lurched back and forth and trod on another rug, the leopardskin this time. Like the deerskin, it slid, as the floor of the hall was so thoroughly polished. Once more, Brockley was caught off balance. He jumped sideways, trying to save himself, and came down on his weak ankle. I saw it give way. He crashed to the floor, taking Ferris with him. They rolled, with the dagger between them, and then Brockley had torn himself loose, and the front of his shirt was splashed with blood but it wasn’t his. The blade had gone into Ferris’s chest, and he was sprawled on his back, uttering horrible noises, halfway between coughs and screams, clawing at the hilt, and blood was coming up past the blade and oozing from his mouth.