The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  I heard this with relief. A further enlightenment had come to me, like cool water on a fevered wound. I turned to Mew. “Mr. Mew, did you tell Mr. Mason that I was a . . . a woman of dubious reputation?”

  “Yes. I did. Fenn reported that you were coming to Lockhill, and it looked suspicious. So I got here ahead of you and tried to persuade Mr. Mason to say you couldn’t come.”

  Mason had said that the slander came from Mew. If Mason were innocent, then perhaps he had just, quite simply, believed it.

  “He wouldn’t listen, or his wife wouldn’t!” said Mew in aggrieved tones. “Fenn and Dr. Wilkins were in London, and I had to send Wylie back there to tell them and—”

  “I seem to have created a flattering amount of furore,” I said, cutting in before the incident of the boathouse could cease to be a secret. I had an amusing mental picture, though, of Mew and Wylie scurrying to Lockhill, and Wylie scurrying away again to consult with Wilkins and work out how to export me. They had done a lot of hard work for nothing.

  “Never mind all that.” Forrest kept us to the point. “Mr. Henderson, surely you should arrest Dr. Crichton forthwith? No doubt there is somewhere in this house where he can be kept close until tomorrow morning? You have authority?”

  “Any citizen has authority to arrest a miscreant,” said Rob, “but in this case, I have Sir William Cecil’s written mandate too.” He nodded to the four dismounted men and they moved forward. “Dr. Crichton, in the name of our sovereign lady Queen Elizabeth, I place you under arrest. You will be taken to London and . . .”

  Crichton’s eyes had been going from side to side, looking for a way of escape. Before Rob’s formal speech could finish, he ran for it, apparently hoping to dash round the crowd of horses and make for the gatehouse. The men on foot at once stepped into his path. They were grinning, half crouching, and holding their arms out wide, as though in parody of a children’s game. Crichton made a high-pitched sound like a hare in the jaws of the hounds, spun round and fled back into the house. All four sprinted after him.

  “They’ll bring him back in a moment,” Rob said, after a pause. “Meanwhile, I suggest that we all go inside and that something can be found for us all to eat. We had very little on the way and—”

  “I think,” said Dr. Forrest, “that panic has driven Crichton out of his senses. What in the world is he doing, Mason, up on top of your tower?”

  CHAPTER 22

  Tragedy and Farce

  Startled, we followed Forrest’s gaze upwards to the tower. Crichton was indeed up there, apparently trying to shut the trapdoor behind him. Someone below, however, was resisting him, and as we stared, Crichton backed away, bumping into one of the catapult supports. One of Rob’s men hoisted himself up through the trap and called to Crichton to come along quietly now—he’d have to in the end. “Nowhere you can go from here, fellow, unless you jump into thin air!”

  He did not at once lay hands on Crichton. Instead, he paused to wait for a second man to emerge from the trapdoor behind him. Up on the tower, we heard Crichton give his hare-squeal again; then he turned to the engine in its cradle, yanked the meal-sack out of it and scrambled into its place. Producing a belt knife, he leant over the side to slash at the rope which held the cradle down. The weight on the other end of the catapult came down with a rush and the engine shot upwards and then hurtled out of its cradle, over the gatehouse and into the air beyond.

  Down in the courtyard, everyone cried out simultaneously. The giant assembly on the tower was visible from the stableyard, and Thomas, together with one of the young undergrooms, ran out to us, pointing and shouting. After them, with a pail of pigfeed in her hand, came Jennet. Rob Henderson barked a sharp order to two of his men to stay where they were and guard Mew; then he wheeled his horse and rode for the gate. Everyone followed except Mew and his guards, horsemen and people on foot together pouring out through the gatehouse to see what had become of Crichton.

  Spurring Bay Star, I arrived in time to see the huge imitation bird’s last moment of wavering flight before it plunged headfirst towards the Lockhill ploughland. Brockley was at my side, with Dale on his crupper. Leonard Mason appeared, running. Rob reached a hand to him and Mason scrambled up on to the horse behind Rob’s saddle. Thomas dashed forward to open a gate, and all those on horseback thundered through, leaving those on foot to follow.

  We galloped across the furrows to pull up beside the heap of wreckage in the midst of them. The horses snorted and shied, and when I dismounted, pulling Bay Star’s reins over her head, she tried to sidle away. I gentled her with one hand but dragged her forward with the other until I could see.

  Crichton lay trapped in the ruin, his whole body horridly twisted. A long splinter of wood was driven deep into his chest. Blood bubbled out round it and poured from his mouth and nose, but he was still alive and his eyes rolled, looking at us as we clustered round him.

  He was still coherent, too, despite his wheezing breath and the oozing blood. When Dr. Forrest, sliding off his mare and leaving the placid creature to stand, hurried forward, speaking the words of the last rites as he came, Crichton exclaimed thickly that he would let no Protestant pray over him, and raised a feeble hand to swat Forrest away, as though the vicar were a gnat.

  “Hoped to fly away. Cheated the disembowelling knife, anyway,” he said, spitting. His eyes rested on me. “Hate interfering women. Should stick to your embroidery.”

  Leonard had also dismounted. Impatiently pushing bits of shattered wing out of the way, he came to Crichton’s side. “Nicholas! I took you for a friend. How could you so misuse the shelter of my house? Oh, for God’s sake let’s get you out of this tangle!” Mason attacked the wreckage and some of Henderson’s men came to help.

  Brockley joined them, leaving Dale to look after Blade. Crichton squalled as the splinter in his ribs was knocked, and the blood bubbled faster from the wound, spreading in a wide red stain across the beautiful blackwork doublet.

  “Careful!” said Henderson. “Stop!” Crichton’s shuddering agony passed its peak and though his mouth was still twisted in pain, he spoke again.

  “Idea was mine!” he said. “About the coinage. Told my friend Wilkins. Thought he might like it. Knew it wouldn’t do much harm. But it might do some, to that redhaired heretic you all call a queen and I’d get some money out of it. Sick of being hard up. Wanted good clothes of my own—not castoffs—and my own house . . . my tapestries in my dining room. Wilkins . . . no financier. Easy to talk round. You gave me the idea, Mason and . . . didn’t know it.”

  “What are you talking about, man?” Leonard demanded.

  “Said . . . over dinner, so often . . . a country . . .” His eyes were going out of focus and his voice was losing strength. His consciousness was fading, but he got his final words out.

  “A country . . . needs a sound coinage to survive . . .”

  “Oh my God,” said Leonard Mason, and watched without pity as Crichton, his body arching, choked on his own blood. “It was my fault. I gave him the idea.”

  The people on foot were only just catching up. Thomas, indolence for once abandoned, was in the lead. Ann Mason had appeared, adding a note of inappropriate domesticity because she was holding a pan and a hearthbrush. Jennet, who was a big girl and not fast on her feet, arrived last, stumbling on the muddy furrows.

  And then, without warning, tragedy turned to black farce. The breathless Jennet, seeing the bloodstained blackwork doublet on the slack and motionless figure in the wreckage, thrust a muddle of wood and canvas out of the way, threw herself on her knees by the body, and burst into tears.

  “Oh, Mr. Mason, poor Mr. Mason, oh, how horrible!” wailed Jennet, and with that, she caught Crichton’s shoulders, lifted him against her and planted her lips on his forehead.

  “Jennet!” shouted Thomas, wrenching her away. “Let go! Don’t make such a fool of yourself!”

  “Leave me be! Leave me be! Poor Mr. Mason! He’s dead and I can’t bear it . . .”

 
; “Jennet!” roared Leonard Mason from barely four feet away. He realised that he was hidden from her by the remains of the wing, and rose on tiptoe to shout at her over the top. “What’s the matter with you? That’s Nicholas Crichton!”

  Jennet twisted in Thomas’s grasp and saw him. Her mouth opened. Leonard, who looked and no doubt felt somewhat absurd, standing on his toes to peer over the wreckage like a gossiping housewife over a fence, marched round the wing instead and confronted her. She turned scarlet.

  “B-b-but I saw the thing fly off the roof with you in it! I’ve never seen nobody but you in that black and white, sir, and I hadn’t seen you today at all,” said Jennet lamely, taking in that this morning Mason was wearing brown. “I thought you was dead, sir,” she said blankly.

  “What is the matter with this girl?” Leonard Mason demanded. “Anyone would think she was—”

  “And so she is! It’s perfectly obvious! I’ve been harbouring a hussy in my house and I never knew it. Shame on you, girl! Shame on you!” Ann, still clutching her pan and brush, marched forward and shouted her indignation into Jennet’s face.

  Meanwhile, Leonard, too, had turned scarlet. “I have never,” he said to all of us impartially, “by word or deed encouraged this girl to regard me with affection beyond that of everyday respect. Never!”

  Thomas, who had a restraining arm still wrapped round the sniffing Jennet, said, “Don’t be too hard on her, sir. Or you, Mrs. Mason. These wenches get greensick and fancy themselves in love, but it means nothing. She ought to be married. I’d marry her today if she’d have me. I wish she’d listen to me. I wonder, would she listen to you?”

  “You’d still marry her?” enquired Leonard Mason, in tones of unflattering if understandable disbelief. Her damaged reputation apart, Jennet was not a prepossessing sight just then, with her red, tear-stained face, and her fustian skirt all stained with Crichton’s blood and what was probably spilt pigfeed. There was no sign of the bucket, which she had presumably dropped in her rush to reach the wreck.

  “Willingly, sir,” said Thomas.

  “Then marry her you shall!” Ann took control. I saw clearly now what I had only glimpsed before: just how strong a character Ann actually was. She had turned Leonard from his scheme of flying off the roof along with his invention, and she had never been in any danger of having a traitor for a husband, because she would never have let Leonard become entangled in a plot even if he’d tried.

  “You have it right, Thomas,” Ann declared. “Single, she’s a menace, and even married, we can’t have her at Lockhill. If you wed her, she’ll have to live with your mother in the village and not come up to the house. In fact, Thomas, if you look about you for another position, I’ll give you the best of references.”

  “Ann . . .” said Leonard complainingly, but his wife was relentless.

  “I don’t want this girl anywhere near Lockhill. I want Thomas to take her in marriage and take her to another county as well! Jennet, be quiet! You can marry Thomas and leave Lockhill with him, or leave Lockhill without him and without a character, either. You could go back to your own mother, I suppose.”

  “She’s dead and so’s my father! I ain’t got anywhere to go!”

  “Then you’ll wed Thomas. Dr. Forrest, come here!”

  On the long ride from Windsor, I had wondered what awaited me at Lockhill, what grim or dramatic or extraordinary scenes would there be enacted.

  But I hadn’t for one moment expected to be a witness at a spur-of-the-moment wedding engendered by the absurd and trivial fact that Jennet had never chanced to see Crichton in the blackwork doublet. Nor, in my whole life, had I never expected to witness a marriage ceremony in the middle of a ploughed field, beside a dead body trapped in the shards of an insane machine which had been intended to fly but couldn’t. A wedding, furthermore, with a priest who stumbled over the vows because he had no prayer book with him, while the weeping bride was given away by one of Henderson’s retainers and bullied into her responses by Ann Mason.

  I stood there obediently, dizzy from lack of sleep, joining in the prayers, and silently shaping a prayer of my own, that my husband would escape the hue and cry and flee unharmed from England. While Jennet was being saddled with a marriage she didn’t want, my husband was going out of my life for ever. If Sir Thomas Gresham’s chaplain had appeared at that moment and told me to have faith in the deity’s plan for mankind, I think I would have hit him.

  When it was all over, Thomas led the still-sobbing Jennet away, the horses were taken aside, and the work of freeing the body was resumed. Rob Henderson exchanged a few rapid words with the Masons and then beckoned me to join them.

  “We all know the truth about you and Mr. de la Roche now,” Ann said. “I knew you were a decent woman, and I am sorry that you are parted from your husband. How can you bear it?”

  Mason’s face was less friendly. “I suppose I should commend you, Mrs. Blanchard—that is the name you prefer, I understand, though it is not your legal one. You serve your queen well, but you seem to have harboured appalling suspicions of me without my knowledge, and through you, I have lost a priest and a tutor and a maidservant, and will shortly have to find another groom. You have also brought about the destruction of my gliding invention. You will forgive me for saying that I hope you will not wish to stay long under my roof.”

  “Only until tomorrow, I think.” I looked at Rob. “We are leaving in the morning?”

  “Yes. You are still required to come with us. So is Mr. Mason.”

  “Quite,” I said. “Well, tomorrow, with your persmission, Mr. Mason, I will this time say goodbye to the children before I go. At least you need not now fear that I will contaminate them. Have I your permission?”

  Mason, though annoyed, was a fair man. “Very well. I regret my accusations, Mrs. Blanchard.”

  “The children are out riding on their own,” Ann said. “I am only thankful that they saw nothing of all this. They will be back very soon. I must decide how much they should know.” She looked at the pan and brush in her hand. “Oh, how absurd. I heard the shouting and saw a shadow as that gliding thing went off the roof and I just ran. I didn’t even stop to put this down. Look, Ursula, isn’t this odd? I’d been going round the house to see that Jennet had done her work properly this morning. She can be so careless. I went into Crichton’s room because she was supposed to clean it before dinner. She hadn’t done it very well. And look what I found on the floor!”

  She held out the pan. She must have been carrying it instinctively so that it would not spill its contents, and the sweepings from Crichton’s floor were still there: dust, what looked like marchpane crumbs, and several little twigs, bearing small, green, needle-like leaves.

  “I think it’s from a yew tree,” said Ann. “Crichton was making a fuss about the topiary the other day. I suppose he tried clipping it himself and brought this in with him, caught in his clothes, perhaps. I don’t like finding it in the house, I must say. It’s poisonous. One of the home farm cows got into our garden last year, and died in convulsions after browsing on a yew tree. Cattle have no sense.”

  “Yew twigs?” I said. “Ann, that day when Crichton made a fuss about the topiary and upset Edwin Logan . . . Crichton was angry with the boys, wasn’t he? He went out in a temper?”

  “Yes. Why?” Ann was puzzled.

  “I came back from a journey late that afternoon,” I said. “You said—I believe—that you had just seen Dr. Crichton in the yew garden. Had he only just left the house?”

  “Oh, no,” said Ann. “He stormed out much earlier. I don’t know where he was in between. Does it matter?”

  “Crichton taught archery to the boys,” I said slowly, “but I don’t think I ever watched him. Did he shoot well?”

  “Certainly, though not so well with the bad thumb that Leonard’s hammer gave him. Ursula, what is all this about?”

  It was about Crichton, alerted by Wylie’s message, deliberately provoking the boys into rudeness which woul
d give him an excuse to abandon them. It was about Crichton, making his stealthy way, bow in hand, using the cover of bank and spinney and boundary hedge, to lie in wait for me on my return. And, fortunately, being unable to shoot straight because Leonard Mason had such a poor aim with a hammer. We had lingered on the way, discussing what Brockley should do when he got back to Windsor. The angry and frustrated Crichton had had time to return to Lockhill and make a show of his presence there, striding round the yew garden and annoying young Logan.

  That wasn’t all he’d done, either.

  “Ann,” I said. “All this is very dreadful, but take heart. Leonard is coming to London, but he will return to you safely. I am already sure that your husband is innocent—and I think you have just found one more piece of evidence in his favour.” I knew now who had tried to poison me.

  • • •

  Before I left Lockhill, I enquired into just one more thing. I went to the arrow chests in the long room and examined their contents. In one, I found the simple shafts with plain points which the boys used in their archery practice, but in the other, I found a bundle of very different shafts, a reminder of the days, not so long ago, before army commanders began to prefer firearms to longbows. These deadly-looking arrows had the ugly, barbed heads which had so nearly killed me and Brockley and Dale as we returned to Lockhill from Windsor.

  Odd to think that all three of us probably owed our lives to Mason’s mad theories of gliding on the wind, and Crichton’s blackened thumbnail.

  And poignant to realise that I also owed mine to Matthew. It was because I was expecting him that night that I had not drunk that posset with its poisonous dose of yew extract.