Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  “I’m relieved to hear that you’re fallible!” said Blanchard, quite sardonically.

  “But I can’t afford to be fallible,” Jenkinson said. “It’s too expensive a luxury. It could cost me my life! I am very glad of the chance to come to St. Germain and I thank you for it. You have found a ship, you say? When does she sail?”

  “Two days after the wedding,” I said. “And the wedding’s tomorrow. It isn’t long to wait.”

  Throckmorton had a rented house in the town below the castle, and was able to give advice about finding good lodgings. Jenkinson and most of the men took rooms in the town accordingly. Harvey, though, stayed with Blanchard, sharing his master’s room in the suite we had been lent in one of the towers at the palace. It was empty because the court official who had occupied it had gone to join the marshal of France and the Catholic army, and sent his family out of the country until peace was restored.

  With the suite went the right to eat in a dining hall reserved for guests or else to send our servants to fetch food from the kitchens, and it provided us with three good-sized rooms: two bedchambers, one for my father-in-law and Harvey; one for the women to share, and in between them, a sitting room with a writing desk in it as well. Most of the windows overlooked the river, but the women’s chamber also looked north, over the forest.

  I wanted Brockley to remain at hand and he found a bed in a stable loft among other grooms. When he discovered that there was a great to-do among the palace servants because the preparations for the wedding banquet were behindhand, he offered his help, and later on, he came to me with a highly entertaining report on the preparations.

  “Quite astonishing, madam. The bride is only a lady-in-waiting. I can’t think what they’d do for a princess. There are satin ribbons and silk banners all over the place and the cooks are going mad in the kitchen, because there’s to be a giant pie with live singing birds in it that’ll fly out, tweet-tweeting, when the crust is lifted, and the first try at making a crust big enough all fell into a heap of crumbs. There will be garlands of spring flowers, too; the maidservants will be out at dawn on the great day to fetch them in.”

  “It all sounds very pretty and charming,” said Dale, going misty-eyed. “Jeanne and I must peep in if we can.”

  “If you do, there’s something I’d best warn you about,” said Brockley in a prim voice. “Up on the top table where the bride and groom will sit, there’s a clockwork toy.”

  From his tone, he might have been saying giant slug or pile of manure. I raised my eyebrows at him.

  “It’s clever in its fashion,” said Brockley. “It’s two bronze horses, a couple of feet high, and when they’re wound up, I’m sorry to say that they do what horses have to do if there are ever to be any more horses, but as a table decoration at a wedding party—or anywhere else for that matter—I don’t call it respectable.”

  “I’m glad you told us, Brockley,” I said, strangling a desire to laugh. “I’ll try not to be too shocked.”

  “Shocked is what you ought to be, madam. You’d never see a thing like that at Queen Elizabeth’s court. I’ll be glad to see the back of this place.”

  “We’ll be sailing in two days’ time,” I said. “Even if the winds turn contrary, we should be home in a week.”

  Jenkinson wasn’t going to the wedding, but he supplied us with a gift for the bride. It was a golden brooch, in the shape of a bird, with a spray of turquoise for a tail, and a ruby eye. “I got it from a Persian jeweler,” he said. “I buy such things whenever I get the chance. On long journeys in foreign lands a few small valuables can be as useful as money, or more so. If my voice isn’t sweet enough to talk me past border guards or into houses I want to visit, maybe a little golden bird with a ruby eye and a jeweled tail will do the talking for me, and I don’t even have to worry about local coinage.”

  Brockley was right to be impressed by the splendor of the occasion. The chapel ceremony the following morning was lengthy, dignified, and crammed with guests in such a magnificence of silks and velvets and jewels, ruffs and farthingales, billowing sleeves and flowing mantles, that the congregation seemed to consist more of clothes than of people. The bride and groom were if anything the most simply dressed of all; the groom in red velvet and the bride in blue and cream brocade.

  The service was followed by a long parade to the banqueting chamber, and an interminable reception, before at last trumpeters announced the arrival of Queen Catherine, who came in accompanied by the young King Charles, to take her place at her own separate table. When the food was served, I was not surprised that the cooks had, in Brockley’s words, been going mad. They had been required to work miracles. And they had succeeded. There were astounding subtleties of spun sugar; a complete model of St. Germain in marchpane; and the promised pie full of singing birds had been made successfully at last. The birds duly flew out, piping and twittering, to perch on lamp stands and banners and the tops of the exquisitely molded and gilded pilasters around the walls of the chamber.

  There were a few untoward moments. The clockwork horses that had scandalized Brockley jammed at a point in their performance that drew whoops and whistles from a gathering by this time more than a little flown with the excellent wine, and some of the singing birds, probably frightened, misbehaved.

  And although it looked as though the entire court had been wedged into the banqueting hall, this was not the case. I saw messages brought now and then to guests, including Nicholas Throckmorton, who was seated near the dais. At one point, too, a party of drunken young gentlemen tried to gate-crash, and I saw the Seigneur de Clairpont, who was also among the guests, leave his seat and go to help the guards deal with them. He came back presently but within five minutes had been summoned out a second time. The man in charge of the royal security was never off duty, it seemed.

  A second variety of wine came around, and at the top table, someone began to make a speech. We were not at Throckmorton’s table, but farther back, so that I couldn’t quite make out what was being said, or who was speaking, but thought it was the bride’s father. I didn’t mind, however. I sipped appreciatively at my wine, thinking that this was the first time I could say I had enjoyed myself since I had set foot in France.

  I felt so mellow that I turned to Helene, who was beside me, and asked if she was enjoying herself, too.

  “Yes, madam. But naturally,” said Helene primly, without smiling. Oh well. Very soon now, we would all be in England and she and I could part company.

  “We won’t be able to manage quite such an elaborate affair for you on your wedding day, but we’ll do our best.” Luke Blanchard, on the other side of her, was in a jovial mood, too. “It will be summer, and if it’s fine, we can have lanterns outside. We could time it for full moon and hope for clear skies. How does that strike you?”

  Helene said something in reply, but I didn’t hear what it was because at that moment, there was a commotion at the door, and suddenly, I saw Brockley there, arguing with the guards. I came to my feet and he saw me. I signaled to the guards to let him through. They did so, and he came striding, and then running, between the tables to reach me. I went to meet him.

  “Brockley?”

  His face was shockingly white, and his eyes held a blank look that horrified me because I had never seen him like that before.

  “Madam—Mistress Blanchard—come quickly!”

  “What is it? Brockley, what’s happened?”

  He seemed unable to speak further. He caught my elbow and almost dragged me toward the door. Heads turned and people stared. There was a little laughter and a hum of gossip. Behind me, I was aware that Helene and my father-in-law had got to their feet and were following us out. I kept on saying: “Brockley, what is it?” but until he had hustled me past the guards at the door and out into the wide antechamber beyond, he made no answer. Then he said frantically: “Madam, it’s Fran! Oh, God, something terrible has happened to Fran!”

  “What do you mean?” Blanchard had caught up by now,
with Helene close behind him.

  “Men came to search your rooms,” Brockley said, still hurrying us along through the linking chambers, the corridors and staircases that led to our suite. “Fran was there, and Jeanne. Fran tried to say they should fetch you, that you should be there, too, but it was no use. They wouldn’t let her go, to tell either you or me. But they did let Jeanne go, and she came straight to me. But by the time I got there . . . oh, I couldn’t believe it!”

  He was almost crying. “Yes, Brockley?” I said. “And by the time you got there?”

  “They’d searched all your things. They’d found that phial—with the yew-leaf brew in it—in Fran’s saddlebag. I arrived to find them in the very act of arresting her on suspicion of trying to procure the death of the queen mother or the young king or both. And it was me that thought of bringing the venom. Oh, my God, madam, they’ve taken Fran away!”

  “Yew-leaf brew? What is all this?” Blanchard demanded. As we raced up the last staircase toward our rooms, I gave him a rapid explanation. “Helene has seen the phial, too,” I said.

  We reached our door. We had returned there, I think, instinctively, wanting privacy; somewhere to talk and decide what to do. But the door, which should have been locked, was open, and there was no question of privacy. The room was quite full. Jeanne was there, trembling on a settle. Two helmeted guards were also there, standing side by side behind the writing table, and seated at the table, looking at us across the room, was the Seigneur Gaston de Clairpont.

  We all burst into speech at once but De Clairpont raised a hand for silence and we stopped, intimidated by his cold stillness and the presence of his guards. Only Brockley said: “My wife . . . my wife . . . !” But even his voice tailed away.

  “I will speak English,” De Clairpont said, “so that you may all understand. I gather that even the serving woman Jeanne can follow it.” I had not somehow thought he would have English, he was so much a Frenchman, but he turned out to be fluent. “I waited,” he said, “because the suspected person is in your employ, Madame Blanchard, and you may be able to answer some questions about her. You may all be seated.”

  “This entire charge is nonsense!” I found my voice again. “I have heard what it is. Something about a suspected attempt on someone in the royal family. Why should anyone suppose such a thing?”

  “Why,” said De Clairpont, “should anyone enter a royal residence carrying poison in their baggage? A somewhat perilous thing to do, I would have said, above all in these disrupted times when anyone in a position of power could be a target. But do, please, be seated. I have sent for wine.”

  “Sent for wine?” My father-in-law was ashen, as though he feared that the arrest of one of our party presaged the arrest of us all. The same thought had occurred to me. But he was trying to put a bold face on it, and for that I admired him. “Is this a social call, sir?” Luke Blanchard demanded.

  “No. But one should be civilized, should one not? Ah. Here it is.”

  And there it was, indeed. A page boy had arrived with a tray laden with goblets and a flagon. In bemused silence, disposing ourselves on various stools and settles, we let him bring it in and serve it. When the boy had gone, I said: “The reason why my servant had poison in her baggage was in case of any danger to herself—or to her husband or to me. She was frightened of coming to France. She is a most pious Protestant and there has been persecution of such people here quite recently.”

  “And it was my idea, not hers!” Brockley burst out. “I was afraid for her, and for us all, if you want to know.”

  “Really?” De Clairpont’s voice was coolly questioning. “But the persecution, as you call it, has been ended, by royal decree.”

  “How can one tell what will happen in a land at war? I tell you, it was my idea!” Brockley said furiously. “Arrest me and let Fran go. It was my idea, I tell you!”

  “Your chivalry does you credit, Master Brockley, but you are not under suspicion. A certain amount is known about you. You are of good repute, you will be glad to hear.”

  “What I can’t understand,” I said quickly, “is why we are not all under arrest.” It needed to be said. It was frightening me and Blanchard alike and it was better aired than hidden.

  “You, madame, are an emissary of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Such rulers as your Queen Elizabeth and our Queen Mother Catherine do not poison each other. Also they are careful in the messengers they choose. You and the Seigneur Blanchard are not under suspicion either.”

  It is a wicked world, full of deceit, and even queens can be misled about the nature of their employees. Our immunity from suspicion struck me as being based on thin evidence and Brockley’s apparent immunity on no evidence at all. Furthermore, the sophisticated De Clairpont must know that perfectly well. Once again, I had the sensation of being surrounded by mystery, of standing on ground that might disintegrate beneath my feet at any moment and plunge me into a pit. Or a dungeon. I suddenly saw that it was dangerous to delve into this particular mystery because if De Clairpont were encouraged to think about it too much, he might yet change his mind and clap us all into prison. I kept silent. So, wisely, did my father-in-law.

  De Clairpont smiled. “We have, however, no information about Mistress Brockley, or Dale as she is sometimes called, beyond the fact that she is ardent in her faith. She could perhaps have been persuaded to cooperate. Or bribed or threatened, even. She could have been approached by an enemy of our royal house either in England or after arriving in France.”

  “My wife is a decent, simple woman!” Brockley shouted. “I keep on telling you! It was I who—!”

  “Again I say your sentiments do you honor.”

  Brockley swore.

  “Oh, this is all absurd!” Blanchard ran frantic fingers through his gray hair. “How could a mere tiring woman such as Dale possibly put poison in the food or drink of a member of the royal house? How could she get near such things?”

  “Believe me,” said De Clairpont, “the simple serving man or woman is often best placed of all for such a task. Such people can go into the kitchen on errands for their employers, may even lend a hand here and there at busy times. I believe that Brockley here helped to prepare the banqueting chamber today. Such a person might perhaps find out which dishes are being prepared for the royal table. May seize a chance to doctor something. The royal family have tasters, of course, but poison does not always show itself at once. A taster is not complete protection.”

  “This is fantasy!” I said in despair.

  “Of course it is. Complete nonsense!” My father-in-law backed me up valiantly.

  “Perhaps, Madame Blanchard,” said De Clairpont, unperturbed, “you would answer some questions.”

  He questioned me for half an hour. He spoke only to me; the others were ordered to be silent. Helene and Jeanne sat together, round-eyed, listening. Blanchard quietly seethed. In the midst of it all, William Harvey, who had been off duty, came back, beheld the scene with amazement, was briefly explained to, and also sat down to listen in bemusement. Brockley, who had sunk onto the window seat in misery and dejection, tried several times to break in, but in vain. “The husband’s testimony cannot be taken into account.”

  “But it was my idea; I keep on telling you—”

  “Hold your tongue, man. You may know less than you think. We are aware that you and the woman Frances Dale have not been man and wife for very long. Now then, Madame Blanchard . . .”

  On and on. How much did I know about Dale? How long had she been in my employ? Who were her friends? What, at home, was our pattern of worship?

  I did my best, but it was difficult. De Clairpont had a disagreeable knack of assuming that whatever I didn’t know about Dale must of necessity be dubious.

  So I didn’t know very much about her family? I knew little about her acquaintances? I need not give my opinion on whether or not she was rabidly anti-Catholic, for she had expressed such views openly in Le Cheval d’Or. Silently, I cursed Dale’s outspokenne
ss. I had tried to warn her, but she hadn’t heeded me. De Clairpont was still persisting. Could she, either in England or since reaching France, have met anyone who was a secret representative of the Huguenots? Could I swear on the rood that she had not? Oh, I thought it was most unlikely? But could I swear . . . ? No, he thought not. Perhaps I could tell him . . . ?

  I did my best, fighting for Dale as best I could, with words, and knew I was losing.

  At the end, I said: “I want to see Dale. Where is she?”

  “That I cannot allow, madame.”

  “And her husband? Can Brockley see her?”

  “Not until she has been questioned, madam.”

  I shuddered. Dale was under arrest. It would not be the kind of questioning I had just gone through.

  “Seigneur,” said Blanchard suddenly,“do you regard yourself as a man of honor?”

  “Naturally.” De Clairpont looked mildly surprised.

  “And do you, as a man of honor, consider that you have a responsibility toward those whom you employ?”

  De Clairpont’s odd-colored eyes narrowed. “I do.”

  “In that case,” said my father-in-law, “it is natural that Madame Blanchard should wish to see her servant and offer what comfort she can. I cannot see that your case would be harmed by it and it would be an honorable way for Madam Blanchard to behave toward her tirewoman.”

  “And for a husband to behave toward his wife,” I said. “Seigneur, please!”

  “The Catholic cause in Paris,” said De Clairpont,“is troubled at the moment by the need to arm and feed the soldiers we are mustering. I might,” he said, with a frankness that I think was meant to be disarming but was actually chilling, “look favorably on a reasonable request from anyone who offered a contribution . . .”