To Shield the Queen

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  “My love, my sweeting. Let me say it once again. I was not one of the men you have been following through the southern counties. They were led by William Johnson—I admit he is my second cousin, who has come to live at Withysham with me—and two gentlemen of our joint household, Mr. Brett and young Mr. Fletcher. I have been at Withysham all the time. I have dealt with tradesmen from outside and dined here several times, and at other houses too. Lately, I’ve been making an effort to get to know my neighbours. You may question whom you will. I had no hand in the death of your servant Mr. Wilton, and if I had been there it wouldn’t have happened. Will and his companions reported the matter to me and I have censured them . . . ”

  “Censured! John is dead.”

  “I know, and I deeply regret it. My cousin and his associates were extremely foolish.”

  “So you said. It seems,” I said bitterly, repeating what Matthew had already told me, several times over, “that they shared a room with John at the Cockspur, and that their foolishness took the form of discussing their errand when they thought he was asleep. He heard them speak of raising money for the Catholic cause, but he wasn’t asleep, and in the morning, when they all set out again, he took it upon himself to remonstrate with them. Yes, that’s very like John. He used to argue with people who did things he didn’t approve of, regardless of who they were. And so they killed him.”

  “If I had been there, I assure you, there would have been no unwise talk and therefore no killing, which, I repeat, I deplore as much as you do.”

  “Do you? Suppose you had been there and the unwise talk somehow happened anyway? What would you have done then?”

  “Making sure that such things don’t occur is the very root of efficiency. I am efficient,” said Matthew.

  There was a silence, during which I took in that he was offering this efficiency of his as a matter for pride, even attempting a smile as he said it, and that, sickeningly, I could see straight through him. He was peacocking, presenting his accomplishments, in this case efficiency, in an effort to impress me as a man impresses a woman. He was saying in effect, “Don’t look at the wider scene, don’t think of such things as affairs of state or religious conflict; let me fill your horizon; let your vision be bounded by me!”

  However, John lay mute and still in his grave, when he should still have been alive under the sky. I shook myself free of the snare. “That is no answer! Your men were raising money for Mary Stuart and the Catholic cause in England. They were acting on your orders; you’ve said so. Does Mary Stuart pay you?”

  “No, Ursula. I work for my faith of my own free will.”

  “Do you? I suppose I should be relieved to hear it, but in England, it’s still treason. Well, John would present a serious danger. I can see that. And so, now, do I. What is to happen to me, Matthew? Tell me that!”

  “Oh, my God. My darling Ursula. There is no question of harm coming to you. You can’t think that! Of course I shall not let anyone hurt you.”

  “I rather think my uncle and aunt believe otherwise.”

  “Your uncle is a loyal supporter of the faith, but as a man I don’t care for him much,” said Matthew frankly. “Why oh why did you enquire into his affairs as you did? I know all about your encounter last night. He sent a letter to me by his groom. It told me everything, except your name.”

  “I enquired because I wanted to know,” I said. “Matthew, don’t you understand that this is treason, and that decent people are being drawn into it? I’m thinking of two households in particular, the Masons and the Westleys. Did they give money? What exactly did they think it was for, by the way? I find it hard to imagine either of them wanting a civil war, but when Mary Stuart and the Catholic cause are bracketed together, they amount to just that. Perhaps,” I said with scorn, “your poor dupes thought it was just to pay priests to go about and teach! I think my uncle knows better because it was plain enough from what he said to me that he supports Mary’s claim to the throne. I noticed that none of the charitable people your men called on would mention that they’d been there, but even giving money to train priests could get people into serious trouble. Is that the way you’ve been tricking money out of the innocent? By leaving Mary Stuart out of it and just talking about the faith?”

  I had struck home. The red ran up under his skin and his dark eyes became hard and bright with anger. “Tricking is an ugly word, Ursula. Yes, we asked for money to support and train priests. My men also asked people about the kind of support they might be willing to give if ever Elizabeth . . . ”

  “Queen Elizabeth,” I said in a shaking voice.

  “So be it, if you wish! If Queen Elizabeth were to die childless, or the realm should turn against her and Mary Stuart land on these shores, we want to know what support she would find. Yes, we mentioned Mary, of course we did! Most of the people visited contributed, although some said they could only decide about giving further support when the time actually came. And yes, my men did warn people, for their own safety, not to mention their visit to anyone—although whether those contributions and half-promises were treason, is a matter of opinion. Which is the higher loyalty: that to the crown or that to God? I believe, as many others do, that the rightful queen of England is Mary Stuart and that the Catholic religion is the true one which must one day return. The way will be shown. Something will happen. Anyone may die, at any time, even a queen . . . ”

  “Even Mary Stuart?” I said hopefully. He paid no heed.

  “The people of England may well turn against the queen, especially if she marries Dudley, as now seems all too likely.”

  “My uncle said that,” I said sourly.

  “Did he? Well, it’s true. If that day ever dawns, money will be needed for arms and to pay Mary’s army, when she comes to take her own in the name of God and true doctrine. That is what I—and others—are doing. We are making sure that the money is gathered and ready in her coffers against the moment which we know that God will send.”

  “Did you or some friend of yours arrange the murder of Lady Dudley, by any chance?” I demanded. “Hoping to encourage the queen towards disaster? I trust she’ll be too clever for you, that’s all.” He stared at me. “Oh, my God,” I said. “Is that what you were doing at Cumnor Place? Helping to plot her death?”

  “Helping to . . . ? Murder Amy Dudley?” I had obviously disconcerted him. “What are you talking about? I came to Cumnor Place to see you! I know nothing of Lady Dudley’s death except of course that the news of it has reached me. The verdict was accident, or so I heard, and if the verdict’s wrong then I assume that Dudley had her killed, with an eye on becoming King of England.”

  “Well, he didn’t,” I told him. “I can assure you of that. I’ve known that for some time, never mind how, and since then, I’ve believed it was accident or suicide. Now I’m beginning to wonder!”

  “What are you saying?” Matthew shouted. “I repeat: I came to Cumnor Place to find you, you! Do you think I, or any of us, would murder an innocent, sick woman!”

  “Your cousin and his friends murdered an innocent and honest man!”

  “I tell you they had no choice!”

  “And what,” I asked him, “if I had turned out to be one of Uncle Herbert’s other nieces—he has half a dozen by marriage, the daughters of my Aunt Tabitha’s sister and brother—instead of being myself? What would you have done to her?”

  “It is easier to control a woman than a man. I would not have let her be harmed, either,” Matthew said angrily. “But we must protect ourselves, yes, of course. We take risks too!” He saw my angry eyes, and he caught my shoulders and shook me. “Yes, we do and you know it! Tell me, if you get the chance, will you go running to the authorities with all this information? Would you like to think of me under the disembowelling knife?”

  I began to cry once more. My feelings were not numb after all. His physical presence was as powerful as ever. Even while we talked of these terrible things, even while I was being angry or contemptuous, or seeing t
hrough him, I was conscious of his warmth, of his smell, masculine and glorious enough to make my head swim. Even while he made excuses for John’s murderers, I still wanted to reach out with a fingertip and trace the line of his eyebrows, the angle of his jaw. When he was angry, his magnetism was only greater. It pulled me towards him as though I were a fish on a line. Look too long into those dark, diamond-shaped eyes and I would not be able to fight him any more, but I tried.

  “Matthew, Matthew, can’t you see that Mary Stuart can’t be put on the throne without bloodshed and destruction; that this true faith of yours can’t be restored without . . . without horror, the sort of horror that makes even John’s death look kindly? I told you, I never saw a burning, but Uncle Herbert described one to me and Aunt Tabitha made me listen . . . ”

  “My heart, it need not be like that. It will all be different. Philip of Spain was here then. The English hated him because he didn’t belong here, but Mary Stuart is of the true Tudor line, and people will follow her. Ursula, listen to me. I will not harm you, and I did not murder John or want him murdered. I promise you . . . ”

  Round and round and round. Someone brought yet another meal and I believe I ate some of it although I can’t remember what the dishes were. Another hour and I was as exhausted as though I had gone three successive nights without sleep and ridden fifty miles on every day in between.

  He would not see, perhaps could not see, that the dreams he and his friends harboured would be for the people of England a nightmare. He had been reared in his beliefs so intensely that they were stamped into his mind. He could not think in any other pattern, could not see that if the attempt to stamp the pattern on others led to dreadful things, then that simple fact brought his beliefs into question.

  “Ursula, it is simply a matter of what is true. People must not, for the sake of their own souls, be left in error. I would be the most loyal of subjects to Elizabeth, if only she would change her ways and bring back the old faith but . . . ”

  “But she can’t, Matthew, even if she wanted to. In the eyes of the Catholic world, her parents weren’t legally married and therefore she is not lawfully queen.”

  “I’m sure that after all this time some sort of status quo could be agreed.”

  “No, it couldn’t,” I said, remembering my first day at court, when Elizabeth had stamped up and down a gallery, afire with rage because of Mary Stuart’s pretensions, and remembering too Elizabeth’s own ruthless reading of the situation. “It couldn’t,” I said, “because such people as Mary Stuart, and probably Philip of Spain, too, don’t want to take England over just for the sake of God. They want it because the grass is good and the sheep and cattle thrive and because we have tin and iron. You are so innocent!”

  “No, Ursula, you are too cynical.”

  “I am not. What would happen to Elizabeth if Mary Stuart were to take the throne?”

  “Honourable captivity, I suppose.”

  “While those who still supported her plotted on her behalf? Her honourable captivity, Matthew, would be in a prison two yards long and six feet underground! Oh, God, why can’t you see . . . ?”

  But he couldn’t. His body was that of a very adult and experienced man; his mind was intelligent, but his faith was as simple as that of a child. He was puzzled and wounded because I had challenged it.

  And this, like his anger, only made his attractiveness greater. I wanted to hold and comfort that child; I wanted to kiss the wound better. There was no aspect of him that I did not want to take into myself and hold there for ever.

  At last I came to what, after all, was for me the major point at issue. “Matthew, what happens to me now?”

  He ran a hand, a strong, long-fingered hand, through his hair. “Ursula, if you were to walk free from this house today, where would you go? What would you do?”

  I said nothing. The answer was obvious, and hideous. He made it for me.

  “You would go straight to the court of Queen Elizabeth and report what you know. What good do you think that would do? It would place me—and I believe you have some feeling for me—in danger of a traitor’s death. It would bring down peril on the heads of the Westleys and the Masons, and you say you don’t want to do that. It would be all quite useless, for I am only one of many who are engaged in this fund-gathering. I have volunteered to take charge of one little group. There are others, although I don’t know who they are. It would make no difference to anything in the end.”

  “It might bring John’s murderers to justice.”

  “You are prepared to sacrifice the Westleys and the Masons—and me—for that? I understand how you feel about him, but nothing now can bring him back.”

  I wept again, unable to see a way through, unable to see anything but a fog of exhaustion and despair. Then I felt his arm round my shoulders and heard his voice say, “Well, one thing’s clear. I can’t leave you here. I don’t think I trust your aunt and uncle . . . ”

  On the edge of hysterical laughter, I hiccupped, “No, nor do I!”

  “And nor,” said Matthew calmly, “can I set you free. However, there are other alternatives. One is simply to keep you at Withysham for the time being. You would have to stay until I could finish my work in this country for Mary Stuart and could sell Withysham and get away to France. You would be well treated, but not allowed to leave until it was safe for us. That is one possibility. It’s what I would have done had you been one of your uncle’s other nieces. However, for you, there is another.”

  “Is there? What?”

  “Again, it means coming to Withysham, but in order,” said Matthew simply, “to marry me.”

  “Marry you?”

  “Why not? Didn’t we begin to talk of just that, at Richmond and Cumnor? Then we could go to France together. I think I must give Withysham up either way, but then, I only came to England and bought it to please my mother. I’ll be happy enough to exchange it for a home on the other side of the Channel. Especially if it’s a home I can share with you.”

  “Marry you? But what difference would that make?” I asked wearily. “I’d be a prisoner for life instead of only for a time, that’s all.”

  “Oh Ursula, no. It isn’t all. A prisoner? You have been married before; so have I. We both know what marriage is. Marry me and I will spread before you such a banquet of the senses that you will desire nothing else. We will be lovers and soon there will be children. I will be a father to your child. You will be mistress of my household. You will have the life you ought to have, that all women ought to have. Believe me, I will so gladden your days, that all the hard questions that worry you now, of royal successions and this or that faith will fade away. Your husband and your home and your children will fill your world. In France you will be as free as any other lady. Your servants, your woman—” he glanced at Dale where she sat, as unobtrusively as possible, in a corner of the room listening to us with amazement—“and the manservant your uncle told me you brought with you, they can remain with you. Indeed, it is best that they come to France too. There, if they gossip, it won’t matter. What do you say?”

  I said nothing at all. He repeated it, lovingly, his anger all gone, and drew me tightly against him, nuzzling into my hair. I did not resist. I was dizzy with the swift change in my fortunes. From the prospect of imprisonment or even death—yes, I had feared it could come to that—to the prospect of marriage was a big reversal on its own.

  I was confronted with more still, however. I could not yet quite grasp it.

  “I must think,” I said at last. “I can’t answer you just like that.”

  “Shall I leave you alone to think? There is a man on guard outside your door. You have only to knock when you want to speak to me again.”

  I nodded. He took my face between his hands and kissed me before he left the room and I didn’t stop him. The choice was already made, was inescapable, and this delay was only for the sake of appearances.

  And to gather strength. For what lay ahead seemed impossible, as impossible
as throwing myself off a cliff.

  • • •

  I threw myself on to the bed and told Dale not to disturb me. I lay there for hours, thinking.

  At eight o’clock that evening, I faced it. How I would do it, I couldn’t imagine, but somehow I must find a way. There was a hand mirror on the toilet table and I looked at myself in it. My eyes were red rimmed, but the rest of my face was white and hollowed, like the scooped rind of an orange. I knocked on the door and demanded, first of all, washing water and a fresh white headdress.

  Then, when with Dale’s help I had made myself as presentable as possible, I asked to see Matthew. He came in with his usual long, swift stride, and this time sat on the window seat, facing me. His own face was drawn. “Before you say anything,” he said, “I want to say this. I love you. Truly. Please believe that. Now, Ursula, my very dear love, say what you want to say.”

  “I’ll marry you,” I said. And then, before the relief and joy which at once appeared in his eyes could entirely take him over, I added, “But there are conditions. Unless you can meet them, there can be no wedding.”

  He tensed warily. “What are they?”

  “I never want to set eyes on Johnson, Brett or Fletcher again. They are not to be, ever, under the same roof as myself. Send them off to collect some more money, if you like, but get rid of them. The further they go, the better I’ll be pleased.”

  “It had occurred to me that you would not want to have Johnson or the others near you,” Matthew said. “They are leaving Withysham at dawn tomorrow, for the midlands.”

  “Good,” I said. “That’s not all. The second thing is that my uncle and aunt must not be at the wedding, either.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it! I’ve been talking to your uncle. I fear that you are right and that he really wouldn’t be unduly surprised—or shocked—if I made away with you. Is there anything else?”

  “Yes, there is, and it’s very important. Did you know that my uncle and aunt have brought my daughter Meg here against my wishes? I left her with her nurse Bridget, in a cottage in Westwater, and they fetched her away without my consent.”