The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  Meanwhile, Cecil was talking to me.

  “I came to tell you something, Ursula. You were aware, of course, that Mew was to be executed a week ago?”

  “Yes. Was to be executed?” I enquired. “I have not heard the latest news, I’m afraid.”

  “Had you been at court, you would have heard. The Queen has been generous with her leave of absence.”

  “I fell ill, Sir William, while visiting Meg. Today is my first day up.”

  “Indeed? What was it? A fever?”

  “A fever and a series of sick headaches. I am prone to them, unfortunately. But what of Barnabas Mew? You said he was to be executed—does that mean that the execution didn’t after all take place? He was reprieved?”

  “No. He died in convulsions, possibly from fear, before he came to Tyburn. Shortly after your visit, in fact.”

  “Really? A merciful escape, I suppose.”

  “Yes. Something strange,” said Cecil, “was found when Mew’s cell was cleared out. I was informed of it this morning. Hidden among the rugs on his bed was a little glass phial, empty except for a drop or two of some dark liquid. According to the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, who passed the information to me, a single tiny leaf was stuck at the bottom of the phial—a little needle-shaped leaf such as the yew tree bears. The inference is that the phial contained yew tree poison. One wonders how Mew could have come by it.”

  “Indeed yes. How extraordinary,” I said.

  “You believed, did you not, that the poison which was meant to kill you and nearly did kill Dale, was a brew made from yew foliage?”

  “I think it possible, yes. Yew twigs were found in Crichton’s room.”

  “The means to make the poison would be easily come by, of course. Anyone might have done it. Mew had various visitors. You were one. There were also different gaolers at different times, officials who came to question him, chaplains bringing religious comfort.”

  “And gaolers,” I said, “are notoriously willing to be bribed.”

  “Quite. It’s a mystery,” said Cecil, “and I daresay it will never be solved.” He rose to his feet. “Are you returning to court soon? There will be work for you. Lady Catherine Grey, the Queen’s cousin, has been behaving oddly. She is very often not where she ought to be, and has been seen in places—rooms, courtyards, gardens, here and there in the royal residences—where she has no business to go. If challenged, she always has an excuse, but she had been involved in intrigue before, as you and I know. We thought you might like to undertake the task of watching her.”

  “I shall return to court tomorrow, Sir William,” I said.

  “Does her musical box still amuse Meg?” Cecil rose, brushing a few sycamore leaves from his doublet.

  “No,” I said. “Meg is a child, after all. The box lasted a fortnight and then she broke it.”

  “And you told Mew she was still playing with it, to comfort him? You really are the most extraordinary creature,” said Cecil. “Until tomorrow, then. I hope your recovery continues smoothly. Take care of yourself.”

  He disappeared into the house, and I remained sitting on the bench, hoping that I really would feel equal to taking up court life again in the morning.

  It was true that I had had a sick headache after my visit to the Tower, but it had only lasted a day. I had woken, the day after that, to another kind of pain.

  At Lockhill, I had had one night with Matthew, just one night. During our brief married life the previous autumn, I had guarded against conception, with the aid of a vinegar-soaked sponge, but at Lockhill I had simply never thought about it. And one night had been enough, or too much.

  Not that it mattered now. The shock of seeing Mew in his condemned cell, which had brought on the blinding headache the following day, had also brought on the miscarriage the day after.

  Matthew’s child would have been a considerable complication in my life, but the strength of my grief surprised me. How I would endure the court, how I would hold up my head and smile when I felt as though the world had ended and my spirit had been torn in pieces, I did not know.

  I could do nothing, I thought, but rest against whatever satisfactions I had. I had penetrated the Lockhill plot, and I had done what I could for the pitiful Mew. My hidden pocket had that day contained more than just my lock-picks: I had used my body and my wide farthingale to hide my movements from the watchers in the doorway, and when I took his hand, I had pressed the phial into it. It had been more effective than prayer, although I had kept my word about that and spent an hour on my knees for him, that same evening.

  I rose from the bench and strolled down the path towards the river, moving carefully. I was still bleeding, although it was lessening now.

  What could Catherine Grey be up to? She had been caught out in serious delinquency in the past. It ran in her family. Her mother, a niece of old King Henry’s, had been as ambitious a schemer as the world had ever seen. Catherine’s sister, Lady Jane Grey, had been their mother’s pawn and her end on the blcok should have discouraged any ideas Catherine might harbour, of plotting against the Queen. However, I had reason to know that the warning hadn’t been entirely effective.

  Catherine had had a good, sensible friend in Lady Jane Seymour, but it was that same Jane Seymour who had lately died. She had always been frail. Catherine now had no one to give her good advice.

  If I were to shadow Catherine Grey at court, though, I would have to be careful. She didn’t like me. It would be quite a challenge, but I ought to take it up, not just for the pay, but for Catherine’s own sake. If she were really doing something stupid, I might, if I were quick enough, be able to deflect her before she put her neck at risk.

  Smiling at Bridget and the children as I passed them, I made my way to the landing stage and stood looking down into the water. Here, close to the bank and sheltered by the jetty, it was calm despite the wind, and I could see the reflection of my own face. I did not really resemble Elizabeth, for she had light red hair and golden-brown eyes, while my hair was black, and although my eyes were hazel, they often looked dark. However, my face was pointed, like hers, and like her I had a naturally pale skin. As I gazed at my gently rippling reflection in the water, it struck me that my face, like Elizabeth’s, resembled a shield. It was certainly no guide to its owner’s nature.

  No one, I thought, would see in me a woman who had picked locks and hunted criminals. They would not see the woman who only recently had secretly plucked foliage from the Henderson’s topiary, and then asked to spend the night at Thamesbank, and sat up into the small hours, stewing the green yew needles over the hearth in her bedchamber.

  I had that night done violence to something in myself, even though my purpose was not murder, but mercy. Even then, something else had been at work. In asking to see Mew, I had made an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity over what, precisely, Jackdaw had overheard at Lockhill. Thinking of that, I recoiled from myself with distaste.

  It wouldn’t do. If I were to pursue my curious calling further, I must make what terms I could with its darker side.

  Elizabeth had called me tender hearted, but was I? Perhaps Matthew was right: perhaps deep within this heart of mine, there was a point of ice.

  That could also be true of Elizabeth. Perhaps she could not otherwise be a Queen, and carry out a ruler’s work. Perhaps my work required it, too.

  Matthew, my dear, my very dear, my lost one. If ever we meet again, will you recognise me? Or will this work of mine change me into something beyond your understanding?

  I think it may well change me into something that no man, ever again, can truly love.

  It was my work, though. It seemed to be part of my nature. I had only to think of Catherine Grey, of having a new task ahead of me, and at once my tired spirits lifted.

  Yes, I was strong enough. I would go back to Hampton Court in the morning. And go about my business.

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  In the course of this book, I have stretched a few historical points, bu
t not beyond the bounds of possibility.

  Bishop de Quadra’s secretary Borghese really did betray his master. In 1562 (the year after the action of this book), he passed on to Cecil information about a very serious intrigue in which de Quadra was involved. For all we know, he may have been passing on smaller pieces of information earlier than that.

  The musical box was not actually invented until the late eighteenth century and first appeared in Switzerland. It was developed from the watch mechanism, and to begin with consisted of a disc set with steel pins, which tapped against a fan of tuned teeth as the disc revolved. The cylinder type of box, in which the pins were set round a barrel and tapped against a comb of tuned teeth, was first invented in the early nineteenth century.

  Nevertheless, clock mechanisms were quite well developed by the time of the first Elizabeth. A clock which chimed the quarter hours was built for Wells Cathedral in 1389; by 1488 pendant watches, which would strike the hours, had come into existence. On New Year’s Day, 1571, the Earl of Leicester presented Queen Elizabeth with a ruby and diamond bracelet with a clock set in the clasp—in other words, a valuable wristwatch.

  The Renaissance and Tudor periods were times of great intellectual expansion. New lands were discovered, new trade routes opened, new commodities imported. Along with all this, fresh ideas and inventions sprang up everywhere. The cylinder musical box is not essentially very complex, and it seemed to me not impossible that an Elizabethan inventor with a fertile imagination might, perhaps with the image of a spinet keyboard as a starting point, arrive at the concept without the intervening stages of the Swiss watch and the flat disc.

  It also seemed quite conceivable that an Elizabethan inventor should experiment with a glider. The concept of flight had fascinated mankind for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci was much intrigued by it, although his ideas never developed very far, and someone might have been inspired by him into investigating further and carrying out a few experiments, even to the point of beginning to perceive, dimly, the principle of the airfoil section . . .

  My imaginary inventor’s glider fails, of course, and his musical box is consigned to the dustbin of history as far as the Elizabethans are concerned, because it is tainted by association with treachery.

  However, these inventions could have been conceived in the sixteenth century and after all, this is fiction. Let’s imagine what might have been. Let’s have fun!

  Fiona Buckley

  FIONA BUCKLEY is the author of six previous novels in her critically acclaimed historical mystery series featuring Ursula Blanchard: To Shield the Queen, The Doublet Affair, Queen’s Ransom, To Ruin a Queen, Queen of Ambition, and A Pawn for a Queen. She lives in North Surrey, England.

  ALSO BY FIONA BUCKLEY

  A Pawn for a Queen

  Queen of Ambition

  To Ruin a Queen

  Queen’s Ransom

  The Doublet Affair

  To Shield the Queen

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 1998 by Fiona Buckley Originally published in Great Britain on 1998 by Orion Previously published in hardcover in 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

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  ISBN: 0-671-01532-X

  ISBN: 978-1-4391-3947-9 (eBook)

  First Scribner printing December 1999

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  Cover art by Harry F. Bliss