Queen of Ambition

by Buckley, Fiona

  Toward morning I dozed but was wakened early by Ambrosia, who was getting up. She was too restless to stay abed, she said when I heard a distant watchman proclaiming that it was four of the clock and all was well, and protested. In the dawn light, I saw that she looked exhausted and from her reddened eyelids, I knew that I was right; she had wept in the night. When we were alone for a moment because Phoebe, who had also woken up, had carried our chamber pots out, she said to me: “You promised.”

  “I know. I’ll see to it. I’ll go as soon as I can.”

  I felt dreadfully weary as I went downstairs with Phoebe, and at first, I could not think how to get away. I would have to ask Ambrosia to invent an errand for me, I thought, at some moment when her father wasn’t within hearing. However, Ambrosia, who had gone down ahead of me, had eaten quickly and gone straight out to the yard to save Wat a task by helping her father kill fowl, so that I couldn’t speak to her at once.

  Instead, however, I ate my breakfast comfortably at the table, along with Phoebe and Wat. Some rolls and drippings and a good drink of small ale, taken for once in peace and in company that didn’t include Roland Jester, had the effect of clearing my mind as if by magic.

  Suddenly I saw that I had been trying to do too many things at once and had failed to put them in order of importance. The vital things I had to do today were to dispatch a new message to Brent Hay and to see Cecil. I must see Dale too because I needed to know why the message I had entrusted to her had miscarried.

  Snooping in the attic, however, was a lesser matter. I could try persuading Cecil to have the premises searched officially and the drawings confiscated. But if he would not and I returned from seeing Cecil and Dale to find that Jester no longer wished to employ me, then I must let the search of the attic go.

  And I had better set out at once, while Jester was still engaged in slaughtering poultry. I gulped the last of my ale and stood up. “Phoebe, Wat, I’m going out. I’m going without permission but I have … I have a family matter to see to and I must call on my cousin. Will you tell Mistress Ambrosia? I’ll be back later on today.”

  “But Master Jester will be so angry!” Phoebe’s eyes were round.

  “Tell Mistress Ambrosia,” I said again. “She knows something of the matter already. Let her tell her father. And, Phoebe, try to work deftly this morning; don’t give him any reason to take it out on you if he’s annoyed with me. You can be deft if you try.”

  “I’ll keep my eye on ’er,” said chivalrous Wat. “And ’im!”

  The morning was warm and I had with me everything I needed. When rising, I had put a purse of money into my pouch with my lockpicks and dagger. Now, equipped for the day, I simply walked out of the shop. The front of it was still shuttered, but I went out through the private door, cursing when it creaked, although it wasn’t likely to be audible in the backyard where Jester was. Once outside, I set off rapidly to my first objective.

  In the long dark hours, I had done some thinking. When I asked Dale to describe her visit to Brent Hay, I had noticed that her manner seemed odd, but I had thought she was merely feeling harassed. I could have been right. It was just possible that Dale had not been seriously at fault. She had given the letter to a housekeeper, she said. Perhaps the housekeeper had forgotten to give it to Mistress Smithson, or not done so until after Mistress Smithson had written and dispatched her letter to Ambrosia. I should be fair to Dale and make sure of my facts before pouncing on her with questions. Cecil would not be in Cambridge yet. I had a little spare time. I would begin, I thought, with Radley’s stable.

  Cambridge was busy. The queen’s wagonloads of goods—the personal tapestries and bedding for her bedchamber and the chambers of her principal ladies and courtiers, the boxes of clothing and documents, and the plate that had so disappointed the university vice chancellor—had started rumbling into the town the day before and they were still coming. There must have been over two hundred wagons altogether. Most of them had six horses; the fields on the other side of the river were already filling up with grazing animals, and when I reached Radley’s, I found that whatever its shortcomings, it didn’t have a single stall to spare. Indeed, the hay bales had been shifted into a mountainous pile in one half of the hay barn so that makeshift partitions could be put up to make extra stalls in the other half.

  I made a quick inspection of my own animals and found with relief that they had been groomed and that their standard of feed was adequate. Brockley and Rob Henderson’s men had terrorized Radley to good effect, I thought. Going outside again, I found Radley arguing with a carter over the proper treatment of a draft horse that had gone lame. Ruthlessly interrupting them, I demanded to know whether, the day before yesterday, a Mistress Brockley or a Mistress Dale had brought a note from me, requiring her to take my mare Bay Star out on an errand and asking for the mare to be saddled up for her.

  Radley recognized me, fortunately, but said that it was the groom, Jem, that I wanted. “It was him she dealt with—Mistress Brockley she were calling herself.”

  He bellowed Jem’s name in a roar that must have been audible two streets away. The harried groom appeared at a run. “Where’ve you been hiding yourself?” Radley asked him. “Never in sight when you’re wanted. Late again this morning,” he added to me. “Too idle to get out of bed on time, even though he knows I’ll be waiting for him with a strap. All right, Jem. You tell the lady about your errand the day afore yesterday, for Mistress Brockley.”

  “Errand?” I queried. “It was Mistress Brockley’s errand. I gave her a note so that Master Radley here would let her have my horse, Bay Star. I had to send an urgent message to a Mistress Smithson at a place called Brent Hay.”

  “Oh yes, ma’am.” Jem gave me his brown-toothed smile. “Yes, Mistress Brockley, thass right. Only she was scared of riding alone, she said, and Master Radley here, he said I could take the mare and the letter. Get Mistress Brockley to tell you ’zactly where you’re to go, he said to me, him being busy at the time, trying to fit up that there hay barn to take hosses instead of hay. So I did what he said.”

  “I see. And when did you take the message?” Dale had passed on the errand to someone else, and she would hear from me about that, but it was possible that if Jem hadn’t taken it until yesterday, it had reached Mistress Smithson-cum-Jester safely enough after all, but not until after she had written and sent off her own letter to her daughter.

  But no. “I took it right away,” said Jem, slightly affronted.

  “The day before yesterday, you mean? And you found Brent Hay and gave it to Mistress Smithson herself?”

  “I think so. Leastways, I misremember exactly what the names were, but Mistress Brockley, she said the letter was for a Mistress Sybil someone or other at a place called something-hay and I got directions and there was a Mistress Sybil there all right. She opened the door to me.”

  “And just where was this place?” Radley joined in. “What did it look like?”

  “It weren’t as big as I thought it ’ud be, from what Mistress Brockley said,” Jem said. “She said it ’ud be like a manor house, but it was just a sort of biggish cottage, along the road out northward, opposite that place where they breed pigs and there’s allus such a stink that I wonder how folks can stand to—”

  The clout that Radley now administered to the side of Jem’s head sent the unfortunate groom staggering. He bumped into a horse trough and Radley, leaping after him, grabbed him by the neck and dunked his head into the water until Jem, struggling, started to bubble. “You damned stupid … I took good money for that there errand … and let you have your tip and … this is how you serve me … you oaf ! … You lackwit! … You addlebrain!” Between each enraged exclamation, he shoved Jem’s head back down into the trough again.

  “Here!” I caught at Radley’s arm. “I want to know just where he really took that letter and how can he tell me if you drown him?”

  “He don’t need to tell you!” Radley desisted, however, and Jem, soaked and pur
ple in the face, sagged against the trough, coughing into it. “I can tell you where he took it!” Radley snarled. “I know that place! A biggish cottage, opposite the fellow that breeds pigs? Thass Rosehay, that is! Belongs to Brent Hay, but Brent Hay Manor house is another half mile on. What did the lady look like as took the letter, Jem? Come on, you tell Mistress Blanchard here. What did she look like?”

  “Just a woman!” Jem spluttered. “An old sort of woman, skinnylike. No cap. Seemed all amazed when I said I’d got an urgent letter for her. ‘Who’s writin’ me letters?’ she said to me.”

  “I’ll wager she did!” said Radley with contempt. “Her name’s Sybil, right enough. Sybil Lessways, that ’ud be. No wonder she said who was writin’ letters to her. No one would as knew her. She can’t read nor write.”

  “But she took the letter?” I said persistently.

  “Well, I said as it were for her, so, yes, she took it,” Jem said sullenly, wringing his hair into the trough.

  “And I can tell what she did with it,” said Radley helpfully. “Or more or less. Chucked it in her fire, or twisted it up for a spill to light candles with, come the dark.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I’m most grateful. Do drown him if you want to, Radley.” I brought out my purse, found a gold coin, and pressed it into Radley’s hand. “Here’s something for your pains.”

  It was still too early for Cecil to have reached Cambridge. I made straight for Dale.

  She was in the lodging, on the settle by the window, stitching a cushion cover against my orders and when I marched into the room, she dropped it and pushed it furtively aside, misinterpreting the anger in my face. I corrected her at once.

  “I don’t care a straw about the cushion cover. I want to know just why you lied to me when you told me you had delivered my letter to Mistress Smithson at Brent Hay. I told you to take it yourself. I now know you didn’t. You passed the errand to a fool of a groom who took it to the wrong place! You said you were afraid of riding alone. You may not be the world’s finest horsewoman but you’re more than capable of riding my nice well-mannered Bay Star for a few miles on a warm summer day and you know it! And then to lie! I want an explanation!”

  Dale stared at me, read just how intense and implacable my anger was, and burst into tears.

  “Stop that! Stop it at once!” Crossing the room, I seized her shoulders and shook her. “Just stop it! Now tell me. Why wouldn’t you go to Brent Hay for me? And why did you pretend you had?”

  “I’m sorry. I’m sorry!”

  Unlike Queen Elizabeth, who threw things at people and slapped her ladies whenever she felt like it, I had never gone in for striking the people who served me. After being brought up by Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert, I knew all too well what it felt like and if time had blurred my memory in any way, Roland Jester had now refreshed it. But I was never nearer to striking Dale than I was at that moment. There was still ample time to warn Mistress Smithson, and with luck, Cecil would stop the entire playlet anyway, but it would have been all the same if there had been no time to spare and no Cecil to intervene. Above all, the lie stuck in my gullet.

  “I don’t care whether you’re sorry or not!” I shouted at Dale. “I want to know why!”

  “Oh, ma’am … !” Dale’s tears, far from ceasing, intensified. Wailing with abandon, she threw herself at my feet. I hauled her up again and put her back on the settle.

  “Will you stop it? Now—talk sensibly and explain!”

  The explanation came, in a stream of words so incoherent that at first all I could make out was that Dale loved Roger Brockley desperately and he was all she had, which hardly seemed to be the point. Dale, however, was nearly hysterical and out of sheer pity for her, I damped my anger down. Bewilderment replaced it. I sat down beside her.

  “I wish I knew what all this was about! Dale, do try to sound rational. What has Brockley to do with this? I know you love your husband, of course I do. But why did that stop you from going to Brent Hay and make you lie to me about it?”

  “I didn’t want you to know, ma’am.”

  “Know what?”

  “What I feel like, ma’am. What I’m afraid of. You’ve been so good to me and Roger’s so dear; I can’t believe either of you ’ud do anything wrong but I’ve always known … I’ve always known …”

  “Known what? Dale, please! There’s something here that I don’t understand, it seems, and I ought to understand. Just tell me.”

  Dale gulped and then looked me in the face. She straightened her back. I saw her pull dignity, a peculiarly feminine dignity, around herself as though it were a robe. “I have always known, ma’am, that you and Roger mean a lot to each other. You’ve got your private jokes, your special way of looking at each other, and … it’s as though you’re more than manservant and lady, and then, here in Cambridge, when I met you that afternoon on the bridge, I saw you in his arms.”

  “I know you did. But surely Brockley explained?” I said. “He was only comforting me because I was missing my own husband! I gave way and he provided a shoulder for me to shed a few tears on.”

  “Yes, ma’am. So he said to me. But … I’ve sensed something … even in France I did, and it got stronger after we came back to England. I’m an ignorant woman in many ways, ma’am, not like you with your Latin studies and so forth, but there are things I’m not likely to be mistaken about, all the same.”

  “But what has this to do with Brent Hay?” I asked again.

  “I haven’t liked it,” said Dale steadily, “that you and Roger have been meeting, and me not there.”

  “We have only met to discuss the inquiries we’re making—Brockley must keep me informed of anything useful that he learns. He can’t do it through Master Henderson. Even if Master Henderson hadn’t been ill, he couldn’t come visiting a cookmaid. It’s not been easy, with me at the pie shop and Roger now with Master Woodforde. We’ve had to meet when we can.”

  “Yes, ma’am, so I understand. But after seeing you on the bridge that day …”

  “Yes, well?”

  “I’ve been keeping watch on Roger!” Dale burst out. “I’ve been following him. I watched you both meet by the river once, and another time I saw you there, waiting for him, though he didn’t come. You came here after that—I only just got back ahead of you. That was when you sent me to Brent Hay, but I couldn’t go, ma’am, I just couldn’t go. I thought—I was afraid—I don’t know what I thought! That perhaps you’d manage to meet him again and it would be here and you wanted me to be somewhere else and …”

  “You were watching? We never saw you! Where were you?”

  “You did see me, ma’am, and so did Roger but you didn’t know me. I wore black and put a veil over my face.”

  “You were the woman in the mourning veil!”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But she had a big ruff on, not the sort of thing you ever wear … oh, I see! I see! You used one of my ruffs!”

  “And that old mourning veil, ma’am, that’s always with your things.”

  “I’ve had that since I was a child,” I said distractedly. “I used it for my grandparents’ funerals, and my mother’s and Gerald’s.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Dale wearily. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I didn’t harm your things. I washed the ruff and pleated it fresh and I folded the veil away, just as it was …” Her dignity fell from her again. She sagged back, turning her face away from me, waiting to hear her fate.

  I said nothing for a moment, for I was badly shaken. I was also thanking heaven that although it was true that Brockley and I had once nearly forgotten our marriage vows, we had not actually done so.

  I took her chin in my hand and turned her face toward me again. She met my eyes miserably, searching them for the answer to a question she dared not ask.

  “Never mind about the ruff and veil,” I said. “Now, listen. Be assured—and I will swear it on a Bible if you wish—that there has never been any impropriety between me and Brockley.�
� I hoped she would believe me. Among the items of gossip I had gleaned during my visit to court had been the fact that while I was in France, Elizabeth had fallen sick of the smallpox and when she believed herself to be dying, had sworn that there had been no impropriety between her and Robert Dudley. I had reason to know that she spoke the truth but plenty of people didn’t think so. Words are cheap, after all.

  “Brockley and I are friends,” I said. “We have shared peril together. But I promise you, his heart is yours. When we first went to France and you fell into danger, he was nearly out of his mind with fear for you. As for me, my heart belongs to Master de la Roche and the sooner I am home with him again, the better. You know very well that I intend to leave Brockley behind at Withysham as its steward, and you with him as its housekeeper.”

  I had decided on that because my husband, Matthew, had himself concluded that Brockley and I were rather more than just friends; but Dale mustn’t know that. “You have nothing to fear from me,” I said. “Nothing. You can go on any errand I choose for you in the perfect certainty that nothing amiss is happening behind your back and you need never lie to me.”

  “Is it possible,” said Dale, “for a man and a woman to be friends and nothing more?”

  “Many people think not,” I said. “But the queen manages it.”

  “Dudley?” asked Dale, a little too acutely. She knew the court gossip just as well as I did.

  “Yes, in a way,” I said. “She and Dudley aren’t lovers, though she loves him—and what she meant by offering him to Mary of Scotland as a husband, I can’t imagine. You know about that?”

  “The whole court and half the world knows it, ma’am.” Dale was calm now, reassured because I was willing to gossip with her.

  “The queen would never let Dudley go,” I said. “Cecil said as much and I think he’s right. But nevertheless, they are not lovers. We were speaking of friendship between men and women. The queen and Dudley are one kind of example. She and Cecil are another. They are genuine friends, and there are many others in her council whom she trusts and regards with friendship. It can be done, and one needn’t be a queen, either.”