“So you have discovered that she is here. Well, Ursula, this is a serious family matter and you can hardly expect to hold a discussion on it in a matter of moments, least of all out here. How do you come to be here unannounced, by the way? Fenn should have known better.”
“Harry Fenn had no choice, Aunt Tabitha. I was prepared to ride him down. I repeat: I have come for my daughter. How did you find out where she was?”
“I saw her with you once, if you remember, when you came to see Anna’s grave, though you did not care to call on the people who supported both you and your mother, only to be rewarded with base ingratitude, and who offered to take you back when your husband died, in spite of everything.”
To answer that would have taken a long time and done nothing to improve family relations. It was better ignored. Slowly, I dismounted and signalled Dale to get down as well. We handed our horses to Brockley. He was emanating unspoken outrage in Aunt Tabitha’s direction in a way which I found comforting, but my aunt, of course, was unaware of it.
“Are you telling me,” I asked her, “that you chanced to go to Westwater, and saw Meg and recognised her from that one brief glimpse?”
“No. You wrote to that stupid woman you left her with, and she went to the vicar in Westwater to get help with reading the letter. Some weeks later, he was dining with dear Dr. Bryant, who is still our vicar here at Faldene, and mentioned the matter. Dr. Bryant realised at once that it concerned you and your child. There was some further delay because Dr. Bryant considered for a while before he came to us, and we in turn considered before making up our minds. We called at the cottage to see it for ourselves, and we were shocked to see the child in such a place. I can tell you, Ursula, that we did wonder if we should simply leave her there. After all, you have disowned us; why should we not disown you and yours?”
“No reason at all,” I said candidly.
My aunt ignored my tone. “Better counsels prevailed in the end,” she said. “Two weeks ago, we finally decided that we should forgive you, and do our best for your daughter. We then brought her here. You should thank me.”
I didn’t thank her. I stood there choking at her effrontery, and silently, unjustly, cursing Bridget for being unlettered and too simple and honest to understand things like family feuds and clerical grapevines. The Junipers had been right. Vicars did all know each other.
I cursed myself for leaving Meg in Westwater, so near Faldene. Stricken by Gerald’s death, I had rushed to a familiar place, even though it was infested by Faldenes. I had been a fool, and now Meg was paying for it.
“I repeat,” said my aunt, “we cannot hold a discussion of this kind out here. Come inside.”
I beckoned to Dale and we followed my aunt into the great hall, which was still the centre of Faldene life, just as the hall always was in medieval days. It was a big room, decorated in somewhat boastful fashion with the swords and pikes of forebears who had fought at Crécy and Agincourt. My mother had once told me that when she was sent home from court in disgrace, carrying me, her parents marched her into the hall and pointed at these relics, and told her that she had betrayed all those noble names.
She had considered it unfair because some of the noble names in question had been anything but monuments of purity and of this there was physical evidence. The Faldene family had a tendency to thick eyebrows. This was all right for men—Uncle Herbert’s eyebrows made his face quite impressive—but it was a great trial to the women. My mother and I had escaped the Faldene eyebrows but my female cousins, especially Mary, all had them and Mary in particular spent much time plucking her eyebrows into a more ladylike shape. The same characteristic occurred quite often among the local villagers and labouring families. It was all too evident that in bygone days some of the Faldene men had been large with their favours.
The hall was handsome, though, and well lit, with big windows looking out to the front and a row of narrower ones to the yard at the rear. A maidservant—a stranger, new since my day—came at once with cups of wine on a tray. I sat down and nodded to Dale to take a seat and a cup of wine as well. She did so warily. She had heard enough about Aunt Tabitha to be nervous of her and was now eyeing her as though she were a keg of gunpowder in dangerous proximity to a bonfire.
I sipped my wine grimly and repeated that I wished to see my daughter. “Where is she, Aunt Tabitha?”
“At her needlework. She is sharing your youngest cousin’s governess, who just now is teaching them embroidery. She is perfectly well and far better off here than in that cottage, grubbing in the ground and feeding hens like a peasant’s child. How could you leave her with that idle, dirty creature Bridget?”
“Bridget is not idle, Aunt Tabitha.”
I could hardly deny the charge of dirtiness. Aunt Tabitha noticed the omission and her blue eyes flashed triumphantly.
I gulped at my wine. I had spent the most of the first two decades of my life under my aunt’s control. I had come here borne up by fury and fear for Meg and by the new independence I had learned with Gerald and at court. Now, old habits of mind were closing me in again like tight stays. I had to force myself to speak firmly.
“Aunt Tabitha, I came here to fetch Meg. She is my daughter and it is for me to say how and where she shall live. You should not have brought her here.”
“You need not be so abrupt. Naturally, you can see her. But,” said Aunt Tabitha, her eyes snapping anew, “make no mistake. You are not taking her away with you. She isn’t going back to that cottage. You were always wilful, Ursula, and not prepared to accept the place to which God was pleased to call you, or to accept the teaching of the true Church. Well, you may destroy your own soul if you choose, but we shall save Meg’s. You were the fruit of sin but she at least is not, and she is after all our great-niece. We brought her here so that she might be reared in clean conditions and properly educated, and taught the true faith instead of being condemned to eternal damnation as a heretic. We shall not let her go.”
I opened my mouth to say, “No, you hypocrite, you brought her here to hurt me. You want to humiliate her and turn her into the unpaid servant that I refused to be. Give her back at once, or I’ll report you for having had mass said in this house.” That was the ploy I had thought of on the way to Faldene from the cottage and I believed it would work. The Masons were getting away with it, but if the authorities received a formal complaint, they were duty bound to act.
She looked at me with those chilly, righteous eyes, and my body cringed, remembering other passages of arms with Aunt Tabitha, and how they had so often ended. I wasn’t even sure I was physically safe from her even now. I was in her house, and Brockley was out of hearing. If she called a couple of strong servants and made them hold me while she “brought me to my senses” with a birch as she had so often done when I was a girl, I couldn’t prevent her.
So I held my tongue, despising myself for my weakness. I had lost control of the situation and how I was to rescue Meg now, I could not imagine. Out in the yard, a horse squealed and a man cursed and I glanced through the window in time to see a groom rubbing his thigh while the piebald horse rolled its eyes and laid back its ears at him.
The piebald.
With that, the small cold voice whose existence I had never suspected until the day I fled from Abingdon Fair, spoke to me again. I would be wise, it said, not to quarrel with Aunt Tabitha; and not just because I feared her.
There are things you want to find out. The words fell into my mind like tiny drops of cold rain. I had followed William Johnson and his friends from house to house through southern England and I had arrived at a theory which explained their purpose. You are seeking confirmation. The answer may be here. You know one way to seek it, but you will need to stay the night. Don’t provoke your aunt just now.
But what of Meg!
One night. With luck, you will only need one night.
Quietly, I said, “I just want to see my child. I want to see for myself that Meg is well.”
Aunt
Tabitha rose. “You are very impatient. Very well. I will take you to her now,” she said.
• • •
“Oh, Meg,” I said. “My dearest, darling Meg. You’ve grown so much!”
I had missed those stages of growth. I did not know my daughter as I should. It was months since I had last held her in my arms. I pulled her close to me.
At first sight of me, to my distress, she had been stiff and timid, putting her sewing aside to curtsy in formal fashion, hesitant to run into my arms even when I opened them wide for her, but I was embracing her now. Aunt Tabitha, doing the considerate thing for once, had let me be alone with her, although I knew that she wasn’t far away.
“I’m so very glad to be with you again, sweetheart! Are people being kind to you?”
I set her back from me so that I could look at her. She was clean and prettily dressed, but her little face was too serious. She took after Gerald. Her dark hair was like his, rougher in texture than mine. The sight of her brought him back vividly. That small square rosy-brown face and brown eyes were meant for laughter, though, not for this strange gravity. She curtsied again.
“Indeed, everyone has been very kind, Mother. Aunt Tabitha says I must be grateful to have come here.”
“I’m sure she does,” I said. I had held her very tightly a moment ago, and she had not shown any discomfort, but there was one thing I must make sure about. “You look lovely,” I said, “but I hope your shift is as clean as your dress. Let me look.”
A moment later, holding her to me, I breathed a silent prayer of relief. In two weeks, my small daughter had been reproved and lectured out of natural spontaneity, and I knew she had done some weeping, for her brown eyes were sad and somehow dimmed, but I did not think she had been beaten.
No serious harm had been done to her, and she would only be here for one more night, I said to myself. Tonight, I must stay here and satisfy the small, cold voice, and so, perforce, must Meg stay, but tomorrow I would get us both away somehow.
I wasn’t sure how. I was hunting dangerous men, and if the guesses I secretly made were right, it might be just as well that I hadn’t used illegal celebrations of mass as a lever. I had already shown a surprising degree of interest in the piebald horse. I should be careful. My fear of Aunt Tabitha could have saved me from a bad mistake.
However, escape we would, all the same. I would not take Meg back to the cottage, but to Tom and Alice Juniper instead. Tomorrow, we would both be free of Faldene.
I stayed with Meg for some time, playing with her, and making much of her, and presently saw her to bed, then I went back to Aunt Tabitha. Forcing myself to smile, I said that on reflection, and because I must in fact start my journey back to court the next day, I felt it best to leave Meg at Faldene for the time being. I asked if I could spend the night there, as it was late for setting out again and there was no inn in Faldene village.
“Of course,” said my aunt, frostily. Always one for doing the correct thing, was Aunt Tabitha.
It still felt as though I were betraying Meg, but John’s murderers must not go free, and the stakes might be higher even than that. I was still the implacable huntress.
• • •
Uncle Herbert, who had been in his study working at his ledgers, emerged for supper. Unlike my aunt, he had altered lately, putting on more weight and becoming very fleshy round the jowls. His fashionable puffed Venetian breeches and his elaborately padded doublet made him look even bigger. He was hobbling—“Gout, my girl. I’ve gone and developed gout”—and he wasn’t pleased to see me.
“So you’re here. If you think you’re taking your wench away, you’re mistaken. We’ve taken her in hand now.”
He became a little more amiable (if not much) when Aunt Tabitha assured him that I had agreed to the new arrangement.
“I’ll never say you’re welcome here, not after the way you’ve gone on, but we treat family members civilly, however they behave, and we care for their neglected children, too.”
I said I was sure their intentions were good. Making my tongue frame the words was almost physically painful but if I had to dissemble, I would do it properly. We sat down to eat, and over the meal, my aunt and uncle made conversation, bringing me up to date on family news. The eldest son was in London, conducting business for Uncle Herbert, whose gout now made riding difficult, and the second son had a place in the ambassador’s household in France. Cousin Mary had at last been married off, although her husband had only comparatively modest means. “The Blanchards are well connected, and could have brought us many advantages. We much regret the loss of the Blanchard match,” said my aunt.
This was provocation and I gave way, in a small degree, to the urge for retaliation. “But you had a Blanchard match,” I said, “if only you had given me a dowry to sweeten Gerald’s family.”
They did not actually say, “You? Unthinkable!” but their expressions said it for them before they returned their attention to their food.
“However,” Aunt Tabitha said after a pause, “Mary is settled after a fashion. Her sister Honoria has had another daughter and . . . ”
When they had finished talking about my cousins, Uncle Herbert showed some interest in my life at court and asked what the queen was like at close quarters. I answered politely, and carefully.
I went to bed early.
I hadn’t been given the best guest chamber, or even the second best. Instead, Aunt Tabitha showed me into the old attic room with the plain uncurtained bed which I had once shared with my mother and was now invited to share with Dale. If I hadn’t already known that I wasn’t a favoured visitor, this would have made it clear.
I ventured a pleasantry. “I saw that the ivy’s been removed. Still, I won’t be wanting to climb down it tonight, Aunt Tabitha.”
My aunt had no sense of humour. “You were always a hoyden. I tried to whip it out of you but you never change. I don’t trust you. Don’t think you can steal Meg away in the dark, by the way. Our mastiffs don’t know you, and they are loose at night.”
“You may rest assured,” I said, “that I shan’t leave the house until tomorrow.”
It was true enough. I wouldn’t be staying in my room either, but my purpose this time lay on the premises.
I was tired but I must stay awake somehow. I didn’t want to tell Dale what I intended, so I said I wasn’t sleepy and would sit up by the window for a while and keep a candle burning.
I let the fresh air blow in on my face, while I gazed out on the perilous slope of tiles down which I had slithered, five years ago, clutching at a venturesome ivy stem which had crept over the top of the wall on to the roof, and finally trusting myself to the creeper on the wall itself, in order to make my escape.
I remembered how Gerald had taken me across the gardens and how we had scrambled over the bank and ditch which bounded the grounds, out to where John was waiting with the horses; and how I had fallen into the ditch in the dark, and Gerald had jumped in to help me climb out; and how, down there, with only the stars to see, we had stopped to kiss and cling.
It was all over now, all lost and long ago and Meg was my only reminder.
I shook myself fully awake, because it was deep in the night by now. Dale was fast asleep and it was time to tackle the errand I had set myself.
I put on soft slippers, lit a fresh candle from the guttering old one, and blew the old one out. Then I made my way stealthily out and down through the sleeping house. It was just as alarming as my creep through the house at Cumnor Place, after listening behind the hangings, but I forced myself not to be afraid of the dancing shadows as my candle streamed and wavered in draughts. I knew my way. I also knew that Uncle Herbert’s study would be locked. I hoped that he still kept the key where he had kept it before my marriage, when I used to help him with his accounts. It should be hanging on a nail inside a closet door at the top of the first flight of stairs.
I found that inside the closet door there were now three nails, adorned with keys, all very s
imilar. I took the lot and crept down to the hall. It was hushed and empty. A waxing moon looked in through a window and cast a pale light across the floor. I hoped no one sleeping in either of the two wings was suffering from toothache or insomnia because if they were to look out of their windows they might catch sight of my flickering candle crossing the hall.
My uncle’s study led off the hall. I crept to the door and held the candle in one hand, while I tried the keys. The second worked. A faint rattle as it slid home, a click as it turned, and I was in, back amid the familiar smell of paper and ink. The candlelight revealed things well remembered: the desk, old and scored, with inkstains here and there; the silver writing set, with inkstand and sander, quills in their tall holder and a trimming knife in a shaped trough; my uncle’s carved chair; the panelled walls and the shelves full of leatherbound ledgers; the padlocked cupboard which I knew held the money-chest.
I wasn’t concerned with the money-chest. I was after the ledgers. I pulled the curtain across the window to conceal my candle, and set to work.
My uncle had done some rearranging and it took a minute or two to find the current ledgers, but presently, heart pounding and ears alert for any sound elsewhere in the house, I was sitting at his desk to examine his records. If my guess were right, then what I wanted would be here in some form. Uncle Herbert’s accounts were always so very meticulous, and he did full-scale balance sheets at the end of each year, showing exactly what had come in and how it had been disposed of. He might disguise the item—he was almost bound to—but it would be there.
I found it almost at once. It was an entry in a current ledger labelled “Expenditure, July to December 1560.” It was dated 3 September. The entry read: “Donation to charity, for the furtherance of instruction in lawful religion—200 marks.”
One man’s lawful religion was another man’s heresy. Uncle Herbert, I thought, unlike Aunt Tabitha, had a certain sense of humour. But 200 marks! Over £130 pounds. “Generous of you, Uncle Herbert,” I muttered. “Unusually generous. You were never one for giving much to charity.”
To Shield the Queen Page 21
