I gnawed at my lip, thinking fast. I would of course be free to go out the next afternoon and although I wouldn’t be able to get as far as Brent Hay, I could hand the letter to Fran or one of Rob’s men then. But I hoped to meet Brockley then and hear anything further that he had to report, and besides, a day would have been lost and the more warning that Mistress Smithson-cum-Jester had, the better. Also, I couldn’t quite trust to being free tomorrow afternoon. I had only to irritate Master Jester—which was never difficult—and he’d make me stay at the shop and peel onions. I wanted to get this letter safely on its way now, before anything happened to prevent it.
“Are there any customers needing pies to be deliv—ered?” I asked her.
“Only one,” Ambrosia said. “The Hardinge family—the people in that cheap jewelry place three doors along.”
“Yes, I know where you mean. I need an errand to take me out of the shop,” I said. “I could deliver that order, take it along early. When your father comes back, say you sent me … no, wait, just taking pies up the lane won’t give me anything like enough time—is there anything else I could get while I’m out? Can I make a dash for the market and bring back some … some …” Ambrosia tended a herb patch in the back garden so we never bought herbs from the market, but there were other things. “ … some mushrooms or peppers? We use a lot of them.”
“Yes, we do. Get both,” Ambrosia said. “I’ll say I told you to. What are you going to do?”
“Find a messenger,” I said. “Give me that letter. And wash your face, for the love of heaven! Your father mustn’t see you like that.”
I was afraid of meeting Jester on my way out, but there was a quarter of an hour still in hand and he was no doubt still sketching somewhere. Armed with a basket of pies, I sped to the jewelers and delivered them, murmuring something about them being freshly baked and they’d heat up nicely or would be just as tasty cold. Then, carrying my basket with Ambrosia’s letter in the bottom of it, I sped on, making for the heart of Cambridge, where the produce stalls were, and the lodgings where I had originally meant to stay.
From the start, I had insisted that a small room be hired there for Brockley so that he and Dale could sometimes be together. Married though they were, my unfortunate servants often had to sleep apart because ladies’ maids were supposed to share rooms with their mistresses. I used to send Dale to her husband at regular intervals, though, and when I first moved to the pie shop, I thought it would be a good chance for them to have a few connubial nights. Now, of course, Brockley had moved into Giles Woodforde’s rooms. But I hoped to find Dale in our lodgings.
I arrived breathless and very hot, my face shiny and dust on my plain brown skirts along with traces of the flour I had used that morning making pastry. The ultra-respectable landlady opened the door to me, looked me up and down, and raised inquiring eyebrows.
“Is Frances Brockley here?” I inquired.
“And who might you be?”
I blinked and then realized that she hadn’t recognized me in my servant’s garments.
“I am Mistress Ursula Blanchard,” I said with dignity. “I have lodgings here although I am not at the moment using them. I am also the employer of Frances Brockley. Is she here?”
“You’re Mistress Blanchard? You don’t look much like her, I must say. She’s a court lady.”
“I’m a court lady,” I said sharply. “I’m dressed like this because I am making a private inquiry on behalf of the queen and need to look like a plain working-woman. Now, is Frances Brockley within?”
“I don’t know what game you’re playing, my good woman, but I do know this—court ladies don’t go round dressed as cookmaids with flour on their skirts and no one sends a woman to make private inquiries as you put it, for Her Majesty or anyone else. Private inquiries for the queen, indeed! Be off with you!”
I was aware of time sliding past, being wasted, while Master Jester was by now, no doubt, back in the shop and wanting to know why there was quite such an urgent need for mushrooms and peppers. Ambrosia and I had laid our plans in haste and I had an uneasy feeling that there was a basket of each on the pantry shelves.
“Fran will know me,” I said through my teeth. “Please call her.”
“Mistress Brockley’s working for the queen, right enough, and proper woman’s work, at that. She’s sewing and she’s got a lot to do and I’m not disturbing her for the likes of you.”
“Oh, for the love of heaven! Fran!” I bawled. “Fran! FRAN!”
“Stop that! Shouting like a fishwife on my very doorstep! I never heard the like. And me with a sick man upstairs who isn’t to be disturbed! What are you? Some kind of gypsy woman with no manners? Oh! Now see what you’ve done! There are my neighbors looking out of their windows to see what all the uproar is about. You’re making a spectacle of my premises. Go away at once—at once, do you hear, or I’ll send my girl for the constable!” She made a violent shooing gesture with one hand and started to close the door with the other. I rammed my foot into it.
“Stop being ridiculous! I am Mistress Blanchard and …”
“How dare you? Joan! Joan!”
“Fran! FRAN!” It was turning into an absurd shouting contest. People really were putting their heads out of upstairs windows to see what it was all about.
Mercifully, the racket had roused people inside the house as well as outside. One of the landlady’s cowed maidservants, presumably Joan, now came running up from the basement, just as Fran herself, holding a threaded needle, and Rob Henderson, wrapped in a bed gown and looking wan, came down from their rooms above stairs.
“Ma’am!”
“Mistress Blanchard!”
“What is it, madam? Is it one o’ they nasty vagabonds?”
“Is this Mistress Blanchard?” inquired the landlady, addressing Fran and Rob together, and folding her arms in an outraged fashion.
“Yes,” said Henderson. “It is. Come in, Ursula.”
“Very well, Joan. Back to your work. I never heard the like. No one’s more loyal to Her Majesty than I am, but I must say her coming to Cambridge is doing Cambridge no good. Why, they said a Cambridge woman was to give her flowers and they picked someone who doesn’t even live in the town anymore, as if them that do aren’t good enough, and I have to say that I don’t care for her taste in her court ladies!”
“Mind your tongue, woman!” said Rob, managing to summon up a commanding tone from somewhere. “Better come up, Ursula.”
The three of us went into the Brockleys’ room, where the settle was heaped with a mass of green and silver silk, on which Dale had presumably been working. “It’s curtaining,” she said as she pushed it aside so that I could sit down. “Oh, ma’am, there’s so much of it; I’m right tired of it. I can’t abide being told to embroider fast. It spoils the work.”
She herself took a stool and Rob sank down onto the window seat. Eyeing him with anxiety, I asked him how he was. “Brockley told me you had the marsh fever.”
“I have but I’m better,” Rob said. “The fever died out by sunset yesterday. I’ll be about again by tomorrow. The physician said I should rest today. Never mind about that. What’s brought you here, pounding on the door and in such a hurry that—well, I heard our landlady say you had flour on your skirt and so you have. Didn’t you even stop to brush it off?”
“No,” I said brusquely. “I haven’t had time. I have a letter to be taken to a place called Brent Hay Manor, just to the north of Cambridge. It’s urgent. I would send Brockley but he isn’t free. I thought Fran might go … unless your manservant could?” I looked at Rob hopefully.
“I’d send him or any of my other men gladly but I’ve lent them all to the Gentlemen Ushers for the day. There’s so much going on and I’ve been too sick to work—I thought at least I should provide what help I could,” Rob said dispiritedly. “And Fran here is stitching away, as you see. She’s been seconded to the Wardrobe, as it were. She’s not free either.”
“Oh yes, s
he is. Dale is my tirewoman and I never gave permission for her to be seconded to anyone.” I was too hot and exasperated to waste time being tactful. “Dale, I would go on this errand myself if I could, but I can’t, not if I’m to keep my place at Jester’s. I’m in the same position as Brockley. You must go instead. Be my Mercury, my winged messenger! Here’s the letter.” I opened my basket and took it out. “It is to go to Mistress Sybil Smithson at Brent Hay Manor, on the north road out of Cambridge. I believe it’s quite easy to find and if it’s a manor house I expect it’s fairly big. You can ask the way. Take my mare, Bay Star, from Radley’s. I’ll give you a note for Radley so that he’ll know that it’s all right to let you have her. He can read. The letter is very urgent indeed. The embroidery will have to wait.”
“Mistress Smithson? Isn’t that the woman who is to present the flowers?” Rob asked. “What on earth can you have to say to her, Ursula?”
“Her name isn’t really Smithson,” I said. “It’s almost certainly Sybil Jester and she’s the wife who ran away from Roland Jester and it seems that this playlet is going to bring her straight back into his pie shop and she doesn’t realize it. She thinks she is only coming to Jackman’s Lane. She’s worried enough about that! Her daughter is horrified and so am I. I’ve had some experience now of Master Jester. The daughter and I are trying to warn her!”
I looked around and cursed because the need for a note for the stable had only just occurred to me and I hadn’t brought one with me. “There’s nothing here to write Radley’s note on. Just a minute while I go to my chamber and see to it.”
“What a fuss you’re in!” said Rob. Illness seemed to make him querulous. Ignoring this, I raced to my own chamber, found everything undisturbed and my writing set on the table, scribbled the note, raced back again, and thrust it into Dale’s hands. “Go on, now, Dale. Don’t delay. I have to get back to that pie shop. Don’t just stand there. Hurry!”
Sometimes, getting people to cooperate was amazingly difficult. It could be like trying to move a boulder or shift a balky mule. Dale never did like being harried and it took several maddening minutes to get her shoes changed and her hat on and to make sure she had some money with her in case she had to ask directions from the kind of person who needs tipping. I got her on her way at last and then I made further kindly, if brief, inquiries after Rob’s health, took my leave without seeing the offended landlady again, hurried off in search of mushrooms and peppers and remembered, too late, that in all my anxiety to communicate with Mistress Jester, I had forgotten to ask Rob if he had talked to Shawe’s fellow students yet. Well, it was too late now.
It was the wrong end of the day for buying produce. I found some peppers but there were no mushrooms to be had. When I brought my inadequate booty back to the shop and took it through to the pantry, Jester was there, poking about on the back of a shelf. He spun around at my entrance and I saw that he was in a thoroughly bad temper.
“And just where d’you think you’ve been? Mushrooms and peppers indeed! We’re not short!” Reaching back, he snatched a couple of baskets off the shelf and brandished them at me. “What’re these then? Just because they’ve somehow got pushed to the back, Ambrosia can’t see them! She ought to use her eyes and so ought you. Wasting good money like this! Now get to your work before I lose patience with you altogether!”
I obeyed him, joining Ambrosia in the kitchen. She looked pallid, as well she might. But no, she said, he hadn’t struck her. “I pushed the peppers and mushrooms behind a crock of lard,” she said, “and pretended I thought we’d run out. I think he believed me.”
“Your letter is on its way,” I said.
“Thank God,” said Ambrosia. Then, miserably, she said: “Sometimes, I’d give anything to have my mother back again but I wouldn’t want her to come back to be used as she was, and Barley told me that she couldn’t have me with her wherever it is she’s living now—this place Brent Hay, I suppose. I don’t know why. I know I’ve got to do without her. She’s not dead,” said Ambrosia, with sudden and startling bitterness, “but sometimes I think that she might as well be, as far as I’m concerned.”
I had a troubled night, thinking things out, trying to make sense of them. The next day was Wednesday. On the day after that, Cecil and Dudley would arrive. I would lay whatever I knew before them and then the responsibility would be theirs and not mine.
I only wished I could tell them more. What, after all, did my discoveries amount to so far? There had been two unlikely coincidences. Thomas Shawe, who had suspected that something was amiss with the playlet, had been thrown from his horse and cracked his skull, and through the playlet, a runaway wife was to be brought within reach of her husband, apparently by chance.
In addition, a sick, elderly retired tutor had suddenly died, an event that could have stopped Ambrosia from warning her mother of her peril.
Assuming, of course, that Mistress Smithson really was Sybil Jester, and that someone had reason to think that Ambrosia knew it, and was also in touch with her mother. It didn’t add up to very much. If the someone was Woodforde, why on earth hadn’t he just told Roland Jester where his errant wife was? Neither Woodforde nor Jester could have killed Thomas, either.
As it happened, I managed not to irritate Master Jester that morning, and in the afternoon I was able to go out as usual. I went first of all to the river where Brockley had said he would meet me if he could. His duties had evidently kept him, however, for he was not there, though the woman in the mourning garments was, alone as before. This time she was not lingering by the riverbank but merely strolling, and as before, she turned away into the town. Newly bereaved, I supposed, pitying her, for I feared for Matthew and still at times remembered Gerald, and I knew what the loss of a husband was like. In time, one hoped, she would heal, as I had done. I could not tell her age but I didn’t think she was very young. If she had some wealth, a new marriage might present itself in due course but in the early days of bereavement, one didn’t believe that.
I didn’t wait long, for I also wanted to see Dale. Presently, I set off into the town to visit our lodgings. The landlady let me in without protest this time though she still bristled with disapproval. I found Dale sewing again, sitting where the sunlight could fall on her work. I startled her by coming in unexpectedly and she exclaimed and sucked her finger where she had pricked it. “Ma’am! I didn’t expect you today.”
“Don’t be silly, Dale! Naturally I want to know how your errand to Brent Hay prospered. Did you get the letter there?”
“Yes, ma’am. Yes, I did. Oh, there now, I’ve dropped blood on this work …” Dale found a handkerchief and furiously scrubbed at a minute fleck of red that no one would ever be able to see when the curtain was hung unless they went right up to it and peered at the material with a magnifying lens.
“Just put your work down for a moment. I want to make sure of this. You found your way to Brent Hay and delivered the letter personally. I take it you found someone to tell you the way. I hope it wasn’t too long a ride. What sort of a place is it?”
“I didn’t take it in much, ma’am. There now, I’ve made a knot in this thread, and it’s real silver thread, silver leaf wrapped round silk. I was told to be so careful with it …”
“Dale, will you please put that needle down and attend to me?”
Dale stabbed her needle into the curtain fabric, and laid it all down on a table beside her. “It wasn’t so very far, I suppose, only it seemed as if it was. I can’t abide riding alone like that …”
“I know, Dale, I know. There are all sorts of things you can’t abide.” That phrase was all too familiar. “But you got there?”
“Yes, ma’am. It was a big house, like you said. I found someone along the road who directed me. A woman like a housekeeper said she would give the letter to Mistress Smithson. I couldn’t press to see her in person. I didn’t like to, in a big place like that, and besides, I was needed back here. There’s this silver embroidery to finish repairing and t
hen a cushion cover that has to have white flowers embroidered on it …”
Dale sounded thoroughly fussed. Her eyes looked tired and I noticed with disquiet that there was a big box of candles on the window seat. “Dale, have you been stitching at night and spoiling your eyesight? What are all those candles for?”
“Oh no, madam, I haven’t been doing that, at least not much. But I get nervous, sleeping in this room all alone. I know there’s others in the house, but still, I never could abide being alone at night. So I have a lot of candles. But I put them out before I go to sleep; I’m careful.”
“All right, Dale, all right. But why don’t you ask our delightful landlady if one of the maids can share the room with you till Brockley comes back?”
“I thought of it, ma’am, but I’d feel foolish. She’d make me feel foolish.”
“I daresay!” I could believe that. “Well, Brockley will be back with you in a few days. All our pretenses will end when the queen arrives. But you are not to sew by candlelight. You don’t have to worry about neglecting that stitchery. I’m your employer, not the harbingers. Have you seen Brockley since yesterday? I hoped to meet him by the river before I came here, but he wasn’t there.”
“I haven’t seen him either, ma’am,” Dale said in a miserable tone of voice. I looked at her anxiously, realizing that she was probably lonely, probably missing her husband badly, and certainly being bullied by the harbingers.
“You had better finish the silver stitching,” I said, “but after that, you are not to work for anyone else but me. Leave the cushion cover and its wretched white flowers. They’ll have to be done by someone else who will at least be paid for it. I’ll have a word with Master Henderson … oh, Rob, there you are.”
Queen of Ambition Page 13
