Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  In effect, I had put him in that cell, had thrown him to the executioner. I had saved him as best I could. But brewing the poison and passing it to him, looking into eyes that were staring at death because of me—all this had warped something in me. Sometimes, when I visited my daughter at her foster parents’ home, and held her in my arms, I feared she might sense something amiss with me and recoil; I even feared that I might in some way corrupt her innocence.

  I believed that I had failed in my last task because something in me had simply turned away from my work. I would—I must—get over it. But I needed time to heal myself. Now, escape seemed impossible.

  “If you will undertake this,” Elizabeth said, “you will be doing me a great service.”

  I said what I was expected to say. With Elizabeth, one had little choice. “Of course I will serve you in any way I can, ma’am.”Though I couldn’t forbear to add dryly: “Although I am not always successful.”

  I was referring to my failure. As well as watching Dudley, I had been told to keep an eye on Lady Catherine Grey (another of Elizabeth’s cousins but nothing at all like the wise and kindly Katherine Knollys). Catherine Grey had been acting oddly—turning up in places where she shouldn’t have been, and failing to arrive at places where she was expected. I had prowled after her for months, in vain, until she solved the mystery herself by confessing to a secret marriage and a pregnancy. She was the foolish girl at whom Dudley had been laughing, in the Tower. But foolish or not, she had managed to deceive me.

  “If you mean my silly alley cat of a cousin,” said Elizabeth, who didn’t mince her words when annoyed and had been very annoyed indeed by Catherine,“I regard that matter as insignificant. This is very different. I don’t wish you to find anything out, but only to deliver a message. I hardly need to describe the situation in France to you, Ursula. I did hope, you know, that after the Catholic government ceased its persecution of heretics, peace would prevail. Now I fear that it will not. Both factions have leaders from the great houses of France. The Huguenot leader is the prince of Condé, who is distantly related to the royal family. But I hear from Ambassador Throckmorton that the regent and queen mother, Catherine, is doing all she can to bring about a settlement. I wish to tell her that I am willing to help in any mediation between the two sides, but I want to tell her privately, as it were. Some maneuvers have more chance of success if they remain in the shadows. For one thing, other people have less chance of interfering.”

  A square wooden box lay by her right hand. Opening it, she took out a sealed cylinder of parchment and held it out to me. “This is a letter to Queen Catherine. When you and Master Blanchard have taken charge of his ward, I wish you to go on to Paris and place it—personally, Ursula—in the hands of the queen mother.”

  I took the cylinder doubtfully. It bore the superscription Catherine of France, written in Elizabeth’s own fine Tudor hand. She had beautiful handwriting, and it was said to be a characteristic of all the Tudors. “Will I be able to get an audience with her?”

  “I’ve made sure of that, naturally.” From the box, she took out a further cylinder of parchment. “This is a letter of introduction to smooth your way. Take it!” I accepted it with resignation. It bore a similar superscription to the first, but with the word Introduction in smaller letters below the name of Catherine. “Now, listen,” said Elizabeth. “There are those who might not like this errand of yours. Let us hope they never learn of it! My private letter to Queen Catherine, you must therefore keep secret. But this letter of introduction, bearing my seal, will give you, effectively, the status of a royal messenger and together with the extra armed men, should give you good protection.”

  “Does Master Blanchard know about all this?” I asked.

  For the first time, Elizabeth smiled. “Of course. He will have to go with you to Paris. Cecil has told him. But Cecil has also assured him that your party now has complete diplomatic immunity and has pointed out that a visit to Paris, to the court, would be instructive for his young ward. Any inquisitive outsider can be led to believe that you are going to Paris purely to present my compliments at the French court. Cecil’s escort have already been told that, though they understand that importance is attached to it. Master Blanchard accepted all this quite willingly. He raised no objections.”

  I was sure he hadn’t. People did not raise objections to the queen’s orders, at least, not unless they were Robin Dudley or Cecil, or some equally privileged associate, and even they knew when to stop arguing.

  Nor could I raise objections now. Yet I could not quite hide my reluctance. As Elizabeth gave me the second letter, she saw it. She overcame it by opening my fingers and folding them over the parchment. For a frightful moment, I felt as though her fingers were a set of highly expensive, gem-studded manacles.

  “I know, Ursula. You want to escape from intrigue for a while, do you not?” I had never said so but Elizabeth had a disconcerting way sometimes of reading one’s mind. “England needs Protestant friends,” she said. “There are too many Catholic powers in Europe. I need the French Huguenots to survive and if a war breaks out over there, I fear for them. I said that both sides can field armies, but the Catholic army could well prove the stronger. I have something else for you.”

  For the third time, she dipped into the box, and brought out a small object, which she held out on her palm. “This is one more safeguard. Take it; wear it if it will fit. If you show it at the French court, you will have the right, at once, to a private audience with any member of the royal house. It is a quiet little reciprocal arrangement that I have with them. Agents, ambassadors, messengers from both countries, have sometimes found it useful.”

  It was a gold signet ring, heavy. The flat signet face was engraved with a lion regardant, surrounded by tiny fleur-de-lis. I tried it on and found that it fitted the long finger of my right hand very well.

  “I have done all I can for your safety and that of your companions,” Elizabeth said. “I may say that although the idea of sending the letter with you was originally Cecil’s, I am asking you to do this as a personal favor to me.”

  But she had left me no choice, of course. However subtle the coercion, it was there.

  “Sleep well,” said Elizabeth kindly, as I curtsied, and kissed those slender, jeweled, perfectly manicured fingers or gyves. “You need your rest, with a journey in the morning.”

  I went slowly back to my quarters. I had a small room of my own, a consideration that had caused some jealousy among the other ladies, especially those senior to me, for in many royal residences they had to share rooms or even beds. But my privilege was maintained in all the residences so that I would have no difficulty in talking to my servants in private. I needed to talk to them now. Brockley and Dale were still there, waiting for me, wondering what my summons to the queen had portended, and there was no thought in my mind of concealing my new task from them. I trusted them and had often needed their help.

  Briefly, I explained what the queen had asked me to do and why, and described the safeguards she had given me. “Although,” I said soothingly, “there is no war as yet, and the persecution of heretics has ceased.”

  It was Brockley who put his finger, instantly, on the flaw in all this. “If the danger is so slight, madam,” he said, “do you really need extra armed men and the right of instant access to an audience with one of the French government?”

  I sat down on the edge of my bed. “I don’t know, Brockley. I hope that the queen is just—making doubly certain of our safety. It’s true that there are those—I fancy on both sides—who might not like my errand, should they ever come to hear of it. We ought to be discreet.”

  “That goes without saying,” Brockley remarked. “But I don’t care for this, just the same.” Brockley had blue-gray eyes, very steady, and a high, polished forehead with a dusting of light gold freckles. Normally, his dignified countenance was inexpressive. Now, however, worried lines had appeared on them. “France is on the edge of war between Papis
ts and Protestants,” he said. “And to a Papist we’d be heretics. They’re not being hounded now, so you tell us, but if war starts, anything could happen. That could change.”

  He was obviously uneasy and so was Dale. Dale was quite a handsome woman, except for a few pockmarks from a childhood attack of smallpox but usually they were not very noticeable. I knew that when her face looked as it did now, with the pockmarks standing out so clearly, she was nervous.

  I knew what they feared. I had never witnessed a burning but the aunt and uncle who brought me up had once forced me to listen to an account of one. I do mean forced. I had been prevented from either running out of the room or blocking my ears while the details of what they had seen and heard and smelled were relentlessly described. It had left on my mind a scar so terrible that years later, it was the reason why I had parted from Matthew. He wished to bring back the Catholic religion to England. But if that ever happened, then the burning of heretics would return with it. It was my horror of that which, in the end, had come between us.

  “As an official messenger,” I said,“I should be safe enough and so should you. I agree that we must be discreet about what we believe as well as about my errand. Dale, I know how you dislike Papists, but in France, you must watch your tongue.”

  “Of course I will, ma’am,” said Dale, slightly affronted.

  I hoped so but Dale was an essentially simple being whose remarks were apt to reflect her thoughts. Well, I could rely on Brockley to back me up.

  Brockley, however, was still worried. “From what you’ve told us, Master Blanchard has chosen a very long route to this place, Douceaix. I wonder the queen hasn’t asked him to change it. Quickest is safest as a rule.”

  “Master Blanchard wants to travel through country where Huguenot influence is strong,” I said. “He hasn’t been asked to think again, apparently.”

  I had felt puzzled by it, too, but I hadn’t commented for I had my own reasons—albeit absurd ones—for favoring his choice.

  Most people, when traveling to Paris, sailed from one of the southeast ports, or perhaps from the Thames, crossed the Channel, and then either went overland from Calais, or traveled down the coast and up the Seine. But Master Blanchard meant to take ship from Southampton, go south and sail up the Loire. It would take two days to reach Southampton and even with fair winds, about four days to reach the Loire. We would disembark at Nantes, nearly forty miles up the river, and then ride northeast for a hundred miles or so to reach Douceaix, where we would collect Helene. The Huguenot influence, which Luke Blanchard seemed to think would be a safeguard, was strong in the area between the Loire and Douceaix. Now, however, we would have to ride on for a further hundred and thirty miles or thereabouts to Paris.

  “Well,” I said, “at least I shan’t look much like a royal courier and perhaps that’s better than looking too official. Couriers usually do assume that quickest is safest, as you put it, Brockley. Listen, both of you. I am not forcing you to come with me, not if you are uneasy.”

  But they shook their heads. “No, madam,” said Brockley. “We shall go where you go, as always. Now, you had better get your rest. May my wife join me tonight? She’ll be back in good time to help you rise.”

  “Yes, by all means,” I said.

  They had regular nights to be together and this wasn’t one of them. But they occasionally made a special request. I thought little of it at the time. Indeed, when I look back, I see that I was in a state of blissful ignorance about a great many things. Some of them directly concerned me; others were never meant to concern me but did so quite by accident.

  It was possibly that same night in early March that in a hostelry in Marseilles, in the south of France, an intrepid and resolute but by most people’s standards slightly crazy merchant adventurer named Anthony Jenkinson was disturbed in the night by would-be assassins. He and the two men with him woke up in time and it was the assassins who lost their lives. On a table by the bed, he left sufficient money to pay the innkeeper’s bill and then he and his companions fled stealthily from the inn by climbing out the window and down the creeper that clung to the wall outside. They also left two unknown corpses of Mediterranean appearance in the wide bed for the innkeeper to find in the morning.

  The meeting that had put the assassins on Master Jenkinson’s track must have been held much earlier, perhaps late the previous year. We never knew for sure, nor did we know exactly where it was held. But it probably took place in Istanbul. Quite a number of men must have been present, some of them Venetian and some Turkish. I can visualize them seated around a table in some well-appointed room with windows designed to protect the occupants from the sun rather than let it in. But this must have been winter and the weather could well have been quite cold. If any of the windows gave a view of the Bosporus, the gleam of the water could have been steely rather than bright. I have never seen the Bosporus but my cousins’ tutor was a traveled man and rather good at geography. He had been to Istanbul, and had described it.

  I can visualize, too, the men who sat at that table: their olive complexions and their dark eyes; some lively, some unfathomable, all intelligent. Some would have worn robes and some would have been in dignified gowns or doublets; most would have had rings on their hands and jeweled brooches in their turbans and hats. I can hear their voices: grave, courteous, formal, speaking—what? Greek, very likely. The tutor had once said it was a commonly spoken language in the area.

  Venice and Istanbul—different cultures, but both based on Mediterranean ports with much coming and going between them over the centuries. The representatives of the two cities had much in common. They might have different religions but they were all men of commerce. They were a consortium of Venetian and Turkish merchants, working together to get the best profit possible out of goods passing from the East to the West. They considered themselves sober, practical businessmen. I have no doubt that in general they were responsible husbands and fathers, respectful sons to their parents, probably well loved by their families.

  I feel sure that if you were to stumble in the street and fall down on the cobbles in front of them, they would help you to your feet, inquiring solicitously if you were hurt, and might even beckon a servant from their entourage to escort you safely to your home.

  If you threatened their profits, they’d kill you.

  Lightheartedness wasn’t one of their most noticeable traits but, nevertheless, I think that to some extent they shared Anthony Jenkinson’s sense that to be a merchant is to be an adventurer, for their name was imaginative.

  Translated into English, the title they gave themselves was the Levantine Lions.

  3

  An Aversion to Cheese

  Elizabeth’s errand changed my feelings about the forthcoming journey and next morning, as we prepared to set out, my spirits were low.

  Today, I knew, the queen would be receiving a visit from the Spanish ambassador, who would be rowed from his house in Whitehall in the official Greenwich barge with the red satin awning and comfortable cabin. She would receive him in audience, with her ladies and courtiers in attendance, and later on, they would all go to watch a tilting contest. I wished I were going to watch it, too.

  I had other regrets, as well. Dale and Brockley came to me early, Dale to help me dress and Brockley to take the hampers downstairs. I saw that both of them were heavy-eyed, the mark of a couple who have had a night of conjugal passion. It annoyed me. I was married, too, but the privilege of conjugal passion was out of my reach. Before I was dressed for departure, I had managed to snap at poor Dale twice, out of sheer envy.

  The last thing I did before we left was to stow the queen’s two letters safely out of sight, but on my person. I was as usual wearing a kirtle and an open overgown and like all my overgowns, this one had a capacious pocket stitched inside it. Here, I was in the habit of carrying a purse of money, a small sheathed dagger, and a set of lock picks. I left what I thought of as the tools of my trade behind when entering the presence of the
queen—one does not come into the vicinity of royalty carrying weapons and lock picks—but I was rarely parted from them otherwise. I had them with me now, and the two letters with Elizabeth’s signature joined them in their hidden pocket.

  Luke Blanchard knew about the letters. But I remember wondering what on earth he would say if he knew what company they were keeping. Thinking about it gave me just a little amusement on that cold, depressing morning.

  My former father-in-law was not short of a penny or two. He had done more than just buy passages for us; he had chartered the whole ship, which meant that he could dictate the route. The Chaffinch was not one of the big merchantmen, but a trim craft, about ninety feet long, painted in shiny green and built for passengers and cargo alike. Her interior belied her pretty looks, though. The cabins were tiny and Master Simon Ross, her hearty, weather-beaten owner and captain, was not one to miss a chance of trading. His hold was packed full of merchandise. This included bales of good wool cloth and, unfortunately, well-ripened cheeses. Belowdecks, the whole ship reeked of them.

  “I regret the discomfort,” said Master Blanchard’s deep voice from my threshold. He ducked his head in at my cabin door and stood there, sniffing the air with distaste. “You are a good sailor, I trust?”

  “Reasonably so, I think,” I said. “I’ve crossed the North Sea twice. But neither ship had an atmosphere quite as exhilarating as this.”

  “I have complained, but in vain. Captain Ross,” said Master Blanchard, “is a difficult man.” I had heard the altercation. Blanchard had tried to domineer, and Captain Ross had refused to be impressed. It wasn’t surprising. Ross could hardly be expected to unload half his cargo and throw it into the harbor. “Let us pray for fair weather,” Blanchard said. “A combination of cheese and rough seas won’t be agreeable. I would not have traveled in March from choice.”