The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  “The Queen isn’t cold of heart,” I told him, and then, wishing to defend Elizabeth, I repeated to him what she had once hinted to me. “She fears marriage. When she was two, her father had her mother beheaded. She was too young then to understand what it meant, but when she was eight he had her young stepmother Catherine Howard beheaded as well. The one illuminated the other. Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard both saw an adoring husband turn into the monster who sighed their death warrants. Elizabeth will not forget.”

  “What nonsense. She is a queen in her own right. Who would sign her death warrant?”

  “Mary Stuart,” I suggested. “Or her advisers.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Ursula! That salty tongue of yours again! Are we back again to the plots and politics that made you abandon me? Why can you not leave them alone?”

  “I want to, but . . . tell me something, Matthew. You say you came to England to complete some business, and you are riding on somewhere with Wilkins tomorrow. What is the business you have in hand?”

  “Oh really, Ursula. Does it matter?”

  “Yes, it does. You said yourself: I am your wife. There are things I have a right to know.”

  “For the love of God! Last year, I had to get out of England in rather a hurry, if you remember! Various matters I had in hand had to be left unfinished. Practical matters! I had left money in the hands of various people—one of them was Wilkins—to buy seed, farm animals, stone and timber, for Withysham. I was repairing it and stocking it. I had to leave transactions half-settled and in a state of confusion. I have come over in exasperation to sort out the muddle, and—I hope—to take some of my own money back with me. Is that enough for you?”

  “After last year,” I said quietly, “can you blame me for fearing that you are once again caught up in some political plot?”

  “To hell with plots! To hell with this passion you have for nosing out intrigue! There is no intrigue! I’ve got a herd of cows grazing in another man’s pastures, and a dispute to settle over whether I did or did not actually buy a pair of draught horses!” Even in the flickering light of the single candle, I saw his eyes blaze. “Satisfied? I am tired of this kind of talk. We’re man and wife, joined by a priest in the presence of witnesses! Ursula! Ursula . . .”

  The first time he spoke my name, it was a cry of exasperation. The second time, it was a groan.

  “Ursula . . .”

  The third time, it was a prayer.

  Setting the candle down once more, he came and sat on the window seat next to me. I could feel the warmth of him. The night, the pool of candlelight, encircled us, closing us in.

  “I’m as weary of plots as you are,” I said fiercely. “Why can’t we just live together and be happy?”

  “We can still be happy,” said Matthew. “Now, this minute, we can still be happy.”

  He pulled me into his arms and his mouth came down on mine. I yielded without resistance, and let him pick me up and carry me across the pool of light to the dark cavern of the curtained bed.

  He laid me down and moved away briefly to blow the candle out, then he came back to me, jerking the curtains closed, shutting us into a deeper blackness than ever. In it, we fumbled with each other’s clothing, undoing ties and buttons, pulling and pushing until at last we were free and our two bodies were together without barriers or hindrances.

  We held each other gently at first, exchanging caresses, but my betrayal and desertion still lay between us, and when the gentle caresses suddenly turned savage, I knew I had half-expected it. I did not care, though, for my spirit was as wounded as his. I, too, had a core of savagery in me. Let him grip and bruise; let him bite; let him thrust. I could give it all back and with interest. My fingers dug deep into his shoulders; my nails tore his back. My teeth scored his smooth skin and padded muscle, and when he drove, my loins rose in reply; until the cleansing flame kindled at last, and cauterised the suppurating rage and pain in us; and rose like a fiery wind and hurled us out of the world, back into our lost Eden.

  We fell apart at last, aching, gasping, exhausted. And then we were turning to each other, this time for comfort, holding one another, giving way helplessly to what, through it all, was still love.

  Some time later, we were united again, and this time gently, in kindness, in pleasure which rose smoothly to its height and then melted easily into the sighs and kisses of completion. Afterwards, we lay curled together, as in the past, as in the memories I treasured. My back was curved into his chest, his arms around me. In my ear, he whispered his old endearment. “Saltspoon!”

  We were fast asleep when the uproar began, when the kitchen door crashed open and we heard Thomas the groom shouting frantically for help.

  • • •

  The house was full of babble and slamming doors and running feet. Sitting up, fuddled with sleep, we heard someone hammering on my own door and shouting to me to wake up. Calling that I was coming, I was coming, just a moment, I scrambled out of bed. Matthew was up already and struggling with candle and flint. As always happens when one is in a hurry, he couldn’t at first get a spark to strike. He did it at last, and somehow or other he and I got ourselves into some kind of clothing: Matthew into shirt and hose; me into shift and wrapper.

  I whispered, “Wait till all’s clear before you come out!” and ran out to find a crowd on the landing, including a dishevelled Thomas with his shirt hanging out of his breeches, Redman in the act of shoving a flaring torch into a wall-bracket, Mrs. Logan behind him with a triple candlestick, and Jennet, who rushed at me, crying that Mrs. Mason had gone over to Brockley’s lodgings to help Dale.

  “She’s ill, ma’am, and Mr. Brockley’s not there!”

  Thomas pushed forward. “I sleep with the other grooms in the loft next to Brockley’s rooms, ma’am! We all woke up, all of a sudden, because there was a noise from there. A sort of choking, like, and someone trying to call for help and throwing themselves about. So we ran in and Dale was there, alone, in some sort of fit, struggling and heaving and half off the bed . . .”

  Without more ado, I pushed past them all, rushed down the back stairs and through the kitchen regions to the back door into the stableyard. Pelting across, I went up the outside staircase to the loft rooms as though it were a rope ladder, reaching for the steps above with my hands to pull myself up faster. I burst through the door at the top to find a lantern on the table in the outer room and candlelight wavering beyond the door to the bedroom beyond. There were horrible noises in the bedroom.

  Ann, dressed in a wrapper just as I was, was administering something to Dale from a pewter mug, while Dale gagged and choked. As I came in, Dale pulled away and lunged for a basin which was on the bed beside her. Ann caught hold of her to steady her, glanced at me over her head and said calmly, “I’m giving her salt water. I think it’s going to work. She’ll need strong wine afterwards, as a stimulant.”

  What looked like most of the household had followed me and now crowded up the staircase after me. Ann caught sight of the butler in their midst. “Redman, go and fetch some wine. Hurry! It’s all right, Dale. We’re all here. That’s it, bring it all up. Where’s Brockley got to, Ursula? I know he came back with you today.”

  “I . . . er . . . I had another errand. I had to send him back to . . . to Maidenhead,” I said, inventing rapidly. “I told him to lodge there overnight. Oh, Dale, however did this happen? Let me help her, Ann!”

  Ann surrendered her place to me. “There’s more salt here—Brockley eats here sometimes and keeps it handy, I suppose. There’s water in the pitcher on that chest. Ah, Jennet, there you are. Mix some more brine. We’ve got to get all the venom out of her, whatever it is.”

  “Ugh. No more . . . no more salt water . . . !” moaned Dale, between retches and gasps.

  “I know you can’t abide it, but you must,” I said.

  It went on for a long time. Jennet kept on stirring salt into water, and I worked on Dale as passionately as though she were my sister. She was more
than a servant to me: she was a dear friend. I forced the solution down her throat, and held her when she threw up, until at last her system was empty, though her greenish pallor and gasping breath still terrified me. Redman had brought the wine, and when we felt that Dale had no more to bring up, Ann and I poured her a draught and I helped her to drink.

  The room had been cleared. Mason, who hadn’t been in the first wave of people to come crowding into the room, had now appeared, decided that there were too many people there and chivvied everyone out, except for Ann and myself. Even Jennet was shooed away. Matthew, tactfully, hadn’t put in an appearance and neither had Dr. Wilkins.

  “At least,” Mason said, surveying the three of us as we sat on the edge of Dale’s bed, Dale in the middle, with Ann and myself on either side, “the rest of us are well, so there can’t have been anything wrong with the food at dinner.”

  “I should nope not!” said Ann indignantly.

  “But what caused it?” I asked in bewilderment. I held the winecup to help Dale drink again.

  “I don’t know,” said Dale wanly. “Perhaps something while we were out. We ate at inns, and you never know with inns.” I was still holding the cup to her lips, my face turned towards her. Her icy fingers had closed on my wrist and her eyes were on me. Her lips moved, framing words which were only for me. “Let me speak to you alone.”

  I turned to the Masons with a reassuring smile. “Do please go back to bed. I’m sorry your sleep has been so disturbed. I will stay with her. Take some more wine, Dale.”

  They withdrew, though Ann insisted that she would stay up and return if needed. “Just send a groom for me.”

  As the door closed behind them, Dale whispered urgently, “It was that posset, ma’am. That posset you passed on to me.”

  “What?”

  “There it is,” said Dale, and pointed to where my dented goblet still stood, on a shelf beside the bed. “You were kind enough to give it to me and I didn’t like to say no, but I just don’t care for these mixtures. I brought it over here but I didn’t drink it, or not at first. Only, I couldn’t sleep, Roger not being here, and I thought, well, it’s got cold and it’s bound to taste funny, but still, I’ll try it and maybe it’ll get me to sleep. But when I sipped it, I didn’t like it, not one bit, so I didn’t take any more. And then I started to feel ill, oh, so ill! I couldn’t breathe! I was so frightened!”

  “Oh my God!” I said.

  • • •

  Blessedly, Dale’s breathing was now more or less normal and a trace of colour had reappeared in her face. “I think I shall be all right now, ma’am,” she said presently. “Thank you for what you’ve done for me.”

  “Ann Mason got to you first,” I said. “I shall thank her, for both of us. If anything had happened to you . . .”

  It was too much. I had gambled on Lockhill being safe, on the grounds that our enemies would not, as it were, foul their own doorstep and cause the smell to attract unwanted attention. I had been wrong, completely wrong. I put my face in my hands and found myself being held by Dale and soothed as though I were the patient and she the nurse. The sleeve of my wrapper fell back and she saw the marks of Matthew’s fingers on my arms.

  “Oh, ma’am, look at that! Was it . . . did Mr. Matthew . . . ?”

  “He came to me. We’ve been together. Don’t ask any more, Dale. I don’t know what will happen next.”

  After that, I cried for a long time on Dale’s shoulder and Dale, too, grew tearful, apparently with remorse.

  “Oh, ma’am, I should have known. It’s always been Mr. Matthew for you. And I’ve been thinking such things. That Redman has a forked tongue. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry!”

  “What sort of things?” I asked, sitting up and wiping my eyes with the backs of my knuckles. And then I understood. “Oh no! Has he been making nasty remarks about me and Brockley?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Dale forlornly.

  “Dale, I did warn you that there might be gossip. I told you that Redman saw me and Brockley come out of the gallery, that first time I tried to get into Mr. Mason’s study, and that he was obviously thinking things. Is this why you and Brockley quarrelled?”

  “How did you know we’d quarrelled, ma’am?”

  “It was plain enough!” I said.

  “There’s been talk from more than Redman, ma’am,” Dale said wretchedly.

  “I know, and it isn’t true.”

  “But it gets into one’s mind, like poison. Like that!” Dale pointed at that posset. “We made it up before he went off last night,” she said. “We did that, at least, but if only he’d come back. I want him!”

  I knew that feeling all too well. I had felt like that when Gerald, covered with festering pocks, lay motionless on his bed with coins on his swollen eyelids. And nowadays I felt it all the time, for Matthew. I put my arm round Dale.

  “He’ll come soon, I’m sure. It must be nearly dawn. I’ll wait with you. Listen, Dale, there’s something I want to know. It’s about that posset. I recall Jennet saying that she’d remembered to get it ready. Had it been standing somewhere? Could anyone have got at it? Did people know it was for me?”

  “I found it on one of the tables in the long room next to the hall, ma’am—well, on one of those narrow chests they use as tables. All the things to eat and drink were set out there yesterday evening. I recognised your goblet.” She pointed to it. “Jennet said she put it there because the kitchen was in a muddle, with that big supper. It might have been thrown away by mistake if it was in the kitchen while they were clearing up. It must have been standing for some while, because when I felt it, the goblet was nearly cold. I had to take it to Jennet in the kitchen and say, is this Mrs. Blanchard’s posset, and if so, will you warm it up. She said yes, it was for you, and put it in a pan straight away.”

  “So there it was, standing, and people were coming and going, all over the place.” I thought back. “At the end of the evening, we didn’t all just go straight from the gallery to our bedchambers, did we? I went downstairs myself for a moment—I’d left a shawl in the hall. While I was there, I saw Mr. Mason come down with his guests. They went out into the courtyard for a breath of air. Redman was looking to see if the dining table had been properly cleared and I think Tilly got curious about what was going on. She never joined us during the evening but—yes, she drifted through the long room, come to think of it.”

  “The boys went out, too, last thing,” Dale said. “When I went down for the posset, Crichton was just calling them in. Everyone in the house could have gone through that long room, ma’am, and everyone knows about your posset and your dented pewter goblet. Mrs. Mason jokes about it sometimes.”

  There were no answers here. Anyone could have put poison into my bedtime posset. Anyone at all, including Mr. Mason.

  We fell asleep in the end, Dale and I, side by side on Brockley’s bed. When we woke, well after dawn, he had still not returned.

  • • •

  “Wait awhile,” I said. “He could have decided to sleep somewhere. He could have gone to an inn and be resting there now. He’d be tired.”

  “Oh, ma’am, where is he? I must get up! I can’t just lie here.”

  “Yes, you can. You need to rest.”

  Somehow, I persuaded her to stay in bed, and fetched her some bread and milk from the kitchen, feeling that this would be kind to her abused stomach. To my relief, she ate some of it. “Just stay there. I’ll come back soon,” I said. Then, once more, I returned to the house, this time to dress myself properly and go to my own breakfast.

  On the way, I found Thomas talking to a flushed and irritated Jennet, who was banging a mat outside the kitchen door. As I came past, Jennet turned away from him, evidently glad of an excuse, and asked how Dale was.

  “Much better,” I said. “My thanks for all your help, Jennet.” Jennet looked as though she wished I would linger and talk and thereby protect her from Thomas, so I added, “Leave that mat now and come inside. It’s chilly o
ut here.” Gratefully, she followed me in, and Thomas, with a shrug, took himself off.

  At breakfast, everyone asked after Dale, including Dr. Wilkins, who had apparently slept through it all and had only just heard of the night’s events. I reported that Dale was recovering and, as she herself had done, put her illness down to something she must have eaten while we were travelling.

  I did not want to mention the posset until I had had time to work out whether this would be a good idea or not. Would it warn the enemy off, or make the poisoner feel that my suspicions made me more dangerous than ever? I was careful to take only food which others were sharing, and I scanned the faces at table, seeking for disappointment, or eyes that would not meet mine.

  But all I saw was Matthew, once more watching me across the table, which had been laid this time in the dining room. The moment he entered the room, I felt the lightning zigzag between us and it amazed me that no one else sensed it. When we rose from the table, I found him beside me. I went with him, and we found our way into the stableyard.

  “Wilkins and I must leave today,” Matthew said. “It is a matter of urgency. After that, he will go home and I will set out for France. But first, I will return for you—if you are willing to come with me, that is. I warn you, Ursula, I will have no more shilly-shallying. You will come to France with me when I leave—or never. You can bring your servants and we will collect your daughter, too. Do you understand?”

  I was silent, thinking. I stood there, twisting my wedding ring. Matthew looked at it.

  “That is not the ring I gave you.”

  “No. It’s Gerald’s. Yours is different, heavier, and someone might have noticed, so I keep it in my jewel box. Few people know of our marriage.”

  “And you don’t want them to,” said Matthew bitterly.

  “It makes my life easier if they don’t,” I said. “Matthew, you can’t have entered the country legally. How would we travel? Have you made arrangements?”