To Shield the Queen
Page 30
“Yes, my lord. Tell me, when you pointed those three men out to me, did you already know they were scheming together? Did you draw my attention to them because you had heard something already—about their plans and Lady Dudley?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because the way you called my attention to them made me, eventually, think of them as possible associates. I wondered if you were trying to warn me, without saying too much, perhaps because you were not sure. If so—I suppose I want to thank you, but I wish you had been more explicit.”
“You attribute too much cunning to me, Mistress Blanchard.”
“My lord? I don’t quite understand.”
“I mean, dear Mistress Blanchard, that when I pointed that trio out to you and encouraged you to notice that Peter Holme—I too know his name now—was not of equal social status to the others, I merely wanted to instruct you in habits of observation. I had heard rumours about the threat to Lady Dudley—I said that at the time. I felt that anyone who went to that household should be alert, for their own sake. But I had no knowledge, then, that Derby, Smith and Holme were conspiring together. When I first heard of Lady Dudley’s death, I believed that her husband could be responsible. You sensed the conspiracy yourself, Mistress Blanchard. I think you have an instinct for nosing out such things. Do you intend to remain at court?”
“Yes, my lord.”
De Quadra bowed. “I shall be very very careful of you,” he said.
Historical Note
No one knows exactly how Amy Robsart came to be found lying with a broken neck at the foot of a flight of stairs in Cumnor Place, Oxfordshire, on 8th September, 1560.
Rumours that her husband Sir Robin Dudley had arranged it were rife, although the panic-stricken letter which he wrote afterwards to his cousin Thomas Blount goes a long way towards exonerating him.
It is possible that the theory advanced by Professor Ian Aird in the English Historical Review, 1956, is correct. Professor Aird observed that if Lady Dudley really did have cancer, she may have suffered from the secondary effect of brittle bones, which could have caused her neck to snap spontaneously, or as the result of a fall which would not have been fatal to a healthy person.
On the other hand, there were many people at Queen Elizabeth’s court who viewed the prospect of a marriage between the queen and Dudley with absolute horror. If there were any danger that Amy might obligingly die and release him, then the temptation to help her out of the world and create a scandal at the same time, was certainly there.
It is a fact that the queen regarded Lady Catherine Grey with dislike and was so angry when she found that Lady Catherine had clandestinely married Lord Hertford, that she put them both in the Tower.
Sir Thomas Smith prospered under Elizabeth on the whole, and in the early 1560s he went to Paris as her ambassador (not always a comfortable post). Although they were generally united in their loyalty to Elizabeth, Smith did at one point have a quarrel, cause unknown, with Sir William Cecil. The Earl of Derby was always apparently loyal to Elizabeth, although Cecil regarded him with suspicion—perhaps because of his strong Catholic leanings, perhaps for some other reason.
I have taken the liberty of inventing explanations for both of these mysteries.
photo from the author’s collection
FIONA BUCKLEY makes her mystery fiction debut with TO SHIELD THE QUEEN, the first in a planned series of novels that are set in the court of Queen Elizabeth I and feature Ursula Blanchard. Buckley began her career as a technical journalist and industrial editor before turning to fiction. She lives in North Surrey, England.
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Bibliography
While concocting this extravaganza I tried, nevertheless, to stay within the known facts of history and therefore studied many books on the life and times of Elizabeth I. Among the works consulted were:
Amye Robsart and the Earl of Leycester by George Adlard (1870).
The Elizabethan World by Lacey Baldwin Smith (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991).
The Reign of Elizabeth by J. B. Black from The Oxford History of England, edited by Sir George Clark (Oxford University Press, 1988).
Mary Queen of Scots by Antonia Fraser (Mandarin Paperbacks, 1989).
The Elements of Herbalism by David Hoffman (Element Books, 1990).
Elizabeth and Essex by Elizabeth Jenkins (Panther, 1972).
Elizabeth the Great by Elizabeth Jenkins (Victor Gollancz, 1968).
A History of Oxfordshire by Mary Jessup (Phillimore, 1975).
Elizabeth I by Wallace MacCaffrey (Edward Arnold, 1993).
Seven Hundred Years of English Cooking by Maxine McKendry, edited by Arabella Boxer (Treasurer Press, 1985).
Elizabethan England by Alison Plowden (Reader’s Digest Association, 1982).
The Tudor Age by Jasper Ridley (Guild Publishing by arrangement with Constable & Co., 1988).
Elizabeth I by Anne Somerset (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1991).
All the Queen’s Men by Neville Williams (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1972).
The Tudor Age by James A. Williamson (Longman, 1979).
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.
Originally published in Great Britain by Orion
First published in hardcover in the United States in 1997
by Scribner
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Copyright © 1997 by Fiona Buckley
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ISBN: 0-671-01531-1
ISBN: 978-1-4391-3945-5 (ebook)
First Scribner Books printing November 1998
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Cover art by Harry Bliss