Queen of Ambition

by Buckley, Fiona

  As I drew it toward me, the linen wrappings unrolled themselves. The faint light showed them to be a man’s shirt, and inside, to my surprise, was the heavy wooden arm of one of the discarded and broken-up settles from the shop. I recognized the lion’s head carved into the end of it. Puzzled I held it up, close to the nearest chinks, and then my whole body went still.

  The lion had been eating meat. Its mane and muzzle were darkly stained but under the light there was little doubt about the nature of the stain. It was blood, and not only blood, either. As I moved it I saw something glint and held the carving closer to one of the chinks. There were hairs caught in the dried-up, dark red stain, and a couple of them had free ends, clear of the blood, which were still clean and showed their color. In the bright streak of daylight, they glinted like brass.

  “What is it?” Wat asked me. “Mistress, do come on, afore we’re caught!”

  I cocked my head but there was still no sound from the room behind us. “This … it’s … just rubbish,” I said, and made my mind up quickly. My first impulse was to take it with me, but the place where evidence is found is evidence in itself.

  I wrapped the wooden arm up and reached back into the cupboard again. I shoved the bundle back inside the ewer, though I left the ewer lying on its side, and then moved down once more, out of the way of the swing of the cupboard’s false back. I could close this, at least. Gripping it by its bottom edge, I pushed it nearly shut. Its own latch stopped it from closing altogether but I hopped quickly up a step or two, to work the latch, and noticed as I did so that on this side, the door had bolts, top and bottom. With a gasp of relief, I shot them.

  It takes time to tell it all, but in fact we had lingered for no more than a minute, and now, if our captors came after us, their way was barred.

  “Now we can go,” I whispered.

  We moved warily downward. Further gleams of light came in through more little apertures here and there in the stone. The stonework outside was ornamental, I remembered, more so than the tower at St.John’s College. Small slits would be lost in the pattern and not easily visible from outside unless one were looking for them.

  I was beginning to have considerable respect for Master Jackman, Jester’s father-in-law and the ardently Protestant parent of the fugitive Sybil. He had seen the peril coming in time, and he had laid his escape route with remarkable thoroughness. A disguised door, leading to an attic room where he could hide if the heresy hunters came to the house. A second line of defense in the shape of an innocent-looking cupboard with a false back, and beyond that, if he needed to get out of Cambridge and flee England altogether, a hidden stairway to the ground.

  We were halfway down when we heard the sounds we had feared: angry voices from above and then a pounding as of fists against the cupboard back. We tried to hurry, though to make any kind of speed on such a steep, tight spiral of a stair was dangerous and difficult; to miss one’s footing would be all too easy.

  We went as fast as we dared, always ready to put out a hand to help each other. By the time we reached the foot of the stairs, the pounding had stopped and there had been no sound of splintering wood or feet on the stairs above us. The barrier, mercifully, had held.

  At ground level, we found a further door, nearly as small and low as that of the cupboard, oddly shaped with an angle in the middle of it, and provided with a bolt and an iron latch. The bolt was pushed home. As I slid it hurriedly back, I noticed that it moved silently, and under my fingers, I felt the smoothness of oil. Like the lock of the cupboard, this had been used recently.

  I pressed the latch and let the door open an inch or so while I peered through the gap. Immediately in front of me was the strip of garden—just grass and weeds at this point—between the side of Jester’s house and the surrounding wall, but just to the right was a side gate. “Come on,” I whispered, and stepped out, beckoning Wat to follow. As I closed the door, I saw how skillfully it was made, of wood faced with thin brick and how neatly it was fitted, across two facets of the tower. From outside, the latch was worked from a tiny lever in a crevice of the ornamentation. The patterned brick and the line of the facet through the middle of the door confused the eye and made the outline of the door extremely hard to see when it was closed. Master Jackman had probably intended to use his secret exit after dark, if he had to use it at all.

  “This way,” I said to Wat, making for the side gate, with my hand outstretched to open it, just as dark shadows loomed up to left and right, and Woodforde’s voice said: “Ah. There you are. You argued too long, Roland, but it seems we’re just in time,” and there was Jester closing in from one side, while on the other, Woodforde’s hands were reaching out to seize me.

  The next couple of moments were a blur. I had never used my dagger in earnest before. I had sometimes wondered if I could, if I would be able to bring myself to lunge with the blade at a living body. Now that the moment was here, I didn’t even pause to think. On the instant, I had flicked back my overskirt, and grasped the sheath through the fabric with one hand, while I plunged the other into the pouch and whisked the weapon out. I struck straight at Woodforde’s right arm. He sprang aside with an oath and the blade went through his doublet sleeve. At the same time, I was aware with half my mind that Wat had raised a mighty fist and landed it on Roland Jester’s jaw. The weight of the blow was probably backed by years of banked-up resentment for all the blows Wat had endured in the past. Jester went flat, immediately, and didn’t get up again.

  Then Wat was at my side, and as I tore my dagger free, he charged forward, got hold of Woodforde around the ribs, and picked him up bodily. Woodforde had his own dagger out by now but it did him no good because before he could make use of it, he had been thrown down on the ground with such force that he could only lie there rolling his eyes and gasping.

  Wat, becoming resourceful under the stimulus of excitement, promptly ripped Woodforde’s doublet open, tore a piece from his shirt, rolled him over, administering a couple of kicks in the process, and used the shirt to bind his hands and feet. Woodforde started to recover his breath and his powers of resistance, but I went to Wat’s aid, pressing my own dagger against Woodforde’s neck and recommending him not to struggle.

  Jester was just coming to his senses, but he was still dazed and it was easy enough for the two of us to serve him the same way. “Ambrosia can’t be far off. She’ll rescue them, I expect,” I said, as Wat tightened the last knot and I put my dagger away, “so we’d better be out of sight before she finds them.”

  Leaving our defeated foes, we opened the side gate and slipped out into Silver Street. Our pursuers were for the moment immobilized and could not rush out after us, shouting: “Stop thieves!” or demanding that the populace should help them retrieve an eloping couple. We were safe, in the open air, out in a public street, back in the world of the living, back into the midst of sunshine and daily business. People were about, striding, strolling. Two fashionably dressed ladies were walking toward the river with a small dog on a lead, and a crowd had gathered, laughing, around a stall whose raucous proprietor was claiming incredible virtues for his array of pots and pans. I straightened my cap, which had been been pulled awry by my adventures.

  “Mistress, where do we go now?” Wat asked.

  “St. John’s College,” I said. “To see the Secretary of State.”

  20

  Murderous Scarecrows

  Wat didn’t know what a Secretary of State was. As I hurried us back to the main thoroughfare of Cambridge, I tried to explain. It seemed that he had hitherto believed that the queen simply ruled and that was that. The idea that she had councillors who advised her was quite unfamiliar to him. When at last he did, more or less, understand, he stopped dead and said in frightened tones: “But I can’t go and see anyone like that, mistress! Wat from the pie shop can’t go talkin’ with folk like that! An’ you said summat about a college. I can’t go into one of they places, neither!”

  “It’s just a building. And Sir Willia
m Cecil …” I began.

  “What? Oh, mistress, you didn’t tell me he was a Sir!” In Wat’s mind, this evidently made things worse. “Mistress, I can’t!” He came to a dead stop in the street.

  “William Cecil,” I said patiently, leaving out the title and taking Wat’s arm so as to get him moving again, “is just a man like any other. He’s middle-aged and has gout and he’s brought his old nurse to Cambridge with him to look after him. He won’t frighten you any more than Master Jester did. A good deal less, I should think, and look how you’ve just served Jester! You have to come. I want you to be a witness to all that’s happened today.” I considered him anxiously, looking at him sideways as I continued, virtually, to drag him along. Passersby looked at us strangely, but I was too worried to care. The afternoon’s events had to be reported to Cecil and placed under his control, and that meant placing Wat under his control as well. What had happened was enough to make even the untalkative Wat become garrulous, and Cecil certainly wouldn’t want him rolling around Cambridge like a loose cannon on the deck of a ship, describing the day’s events to family and friends. I clearly remembered Cecil saying that he preferred the very notion of plots against the queen to be unthinkable and, therefore, unmentionable.

  “If you’re there to say that everything I describe is true,” I said deviously, “they’ll know that I’m not lying or imagining things. I’m just a woman, you see.”

  With his chivalrous instincts thus aroused, Wat, though still quaking like a blancmange, at last consented to come with me, and stopped resisting my tug on his arm. When we reached St. John’s, a groom who was waiting in the street, holding a stolid-looking gray cob with an old footboard sidesaddle behind the cross-saddle, gave us a curious glance and so did the door porter, although to my relief, he recognized me and let me in because he said that he had instructions from Cecil to admit me.

  He eyed Wat doubtfully but I said sharply: “This man has something to tell Sir William. I will vouch for him,” and he was allowed in as well.

  Wat quaked more than ever as we crossed the magnificent courtyard and I really think that if he hadn’t felt surrounded by it and intimidated by the dignified porter, he might even then have turned around and fled. As it was, he followed me obediently inside, but kept so close to me that he trod on my heels.

  There was a solitary clerk in the anteroom, someone I did not know. He too gave me an odd look. Sir William Cecil was in the lodgings, he said, but was closeted with some people who had been brought to see him unexpectedly. “Master Henderson was here and insisted that they should be seen,” he said discontentedly. “And the Fellows are awaiting a summons from him, too.”

  “Nevertheless, I must ask you, please, to tell Master Henderson that Mistress Ursula Blanchard is here as well,” I said crisply. The clerk’s gaze sharpened at the sound of my name.

  “Ah. Yes, I do have instructions. Wait one moment, please.”

  He disappeared through the door to Cecil’s private rooms. A moment later he came back, dismissed the porter, and led us through into the room where I had talked with Cecil before.

  It seemed much smaller this time, because it was so crowded. Cecil was there, of course, still sitting with his bandaged foot up. There was a document-strewn table within his reach. Near Cecil stood Rob Henderson, and there too were Dale and Brockley side by side, Brockley’s face even more expressionless than usual, Dale, pale and unhappy, her pockmarks very obvious.

  Nanny sat stitching on a stool by the window, and close to her, on a bigger stool with arms, was a woman older than Nanny, bent-backed and evidently lame, for an ebony walking stick was propped beside her. She had a downturned mouth and chilly pale blue eyes set in a white face with an aquiline nose. She had been handsome once in a haughty fashion though now her skin was lined and looked as thin as paper. She wore a costly ruff edged with silver, and a dress of black satin with a wide farthingale pushed into an awkward slope by the arms of the stool. Even the stick was intricately carved and must have been expensive. I could not imagine who she was.

  Standing quietly behind her, however, was another woman whose name I knew at once even though I had never met her before. She was perhaps forty years of age and plainly clad. There were worn lines in her face, and the expression in her dark eyes was not passionate but resigned. Nevertheless, there was no mistaking those strong, sweeping eyebrows or those broad nostrils.

  “You’re Ambrosia’s mother!” I gasped, before the clerk could even begin announcing us. “Mistress Sybil Jester!”

  Wat was anxiously bowing to everybody in turn. I hastily remembered my manners and dropped a curtsy, but I could hardly take my eyes from Sybil, who smiled at me, somewhat sadly. The elderly lady in black observed in a sour voice: “Will no one have the courtesy to present these persons to me? These disheveled persons?”

  Cecil opened his mouth to answer but before he could do so, Nanny let out a squeal and pointed a finger at me, while Brockley’s blank expression gave place to horror, and Dale gasped: “Oh, ma’am, whatever has happened to you?”

  Suddenly, I realized that the porter and the clerk and the people in the street had had good reason to look oddly at Wat and me. Our hands and clothes were smeared with dried blood from our cut wrists and with dust from rolling about on the attic floor, while strands of our hair had been dragged loose by the passage through the cupboard. My reflection in a highly polished walnut press told me that my efforts to straighten my cap had merely given it a crazy tilt. Disheveled was a mild way of putting it. We resembled a pair of murderous scarecrows.

  “Nanny,” Cecil said, “fetch some soap and warm water. And—er—my clothes brush and my comb.” Nanny scuttled out and Dale followed her. “Meanwhile,” said Cecil, waving the clerk to return to the anteroom, “I will do the presenting. Mistress Grantley, this is Ursula Blanchard, a Lady of Her Majesty’s Presence Chamber and a most trusted member of the court. Who is your companion, Ursula?”

  “Wat,” I said. “His name’s Wat. He works at the pie shop.”

  “Thank you. Ursula, this is Mistress Catherine Grantley, with whom Mistress Jester has been living. And now, my dear Ursula, what indeed has happened? What in the world have you and Wat been doing? You seem to have blood on your hands, literally.”

  “We haven’t been committing any violent crimes,” I said with a shaky laugh, hoping that punching Roland Jester and knocking the breath out of Giles Woodforde didn’t qualify as crimes. “We’ve barely escaped with our own lives. If I hadn’t had Wat to help me, I don’t know what would have happened. We’ve had a most exciting afternoon. We …”

  I was trying to speak with lightness, to be the capable and courageous agent I was supposed to be but there were dancing black specks before my eyes and in my own ears my voice echoed as though I were in a cave. The next I knew, I seemed to be waking, but for some reason, not in a bed. I opened my eyes to find myself on the floor, with Brockley pushing a cushion under my head, while Rob and Wat stood staring worriedly down at me. “Don’t try to sit up yet, madam,” Brockley was saying. Somewhere a door latch clicked, and then I heard Dale and Nanny exclaiming in distress. Dale’s face appeared above me.

  “You were supposed to be back at Master Woodforde’s lodgings,” I said vaguely to Brockley.

  “He didn’t obey orders,” said Cecil’s voice.

  “It was my fault,” said Rob regretfully. “When we sent Brockley back to Woodforde’s lodgings in case his master came home, I went part of the way back with him as I wished to return to my own lodgings. On the way he asked me for news of his wife, Fran Dale, and I told him that you had sent her to Brent Hay to warn Mistress Smithson that Dr. Woodforde knew where she was and that the playlet was a trap.”

  “He didn’t tell me everything, of course,” Brockley interposed. “Not that Fran had first been afraid to take the message because, well, because she was muddled about something.” Peering upward, I saw Fran biting her lip. There were tears in her eyes.

  “I told him
that myself, ma’am,” she said. “I told him all about it. And oh, he is so angry with me!”

  “I’ve grasped,” said Rob, “that there’s something private here, which I know nothing about. And I’m not asking.”

  “Thank you, Rob.” I turned my gaze toward Brockley and stared steadily up into his face. “I wish you to forgive her. That is an order,” I said, and my eyes passed on the silent message, You know why.

  He gave me a faint nod, and I knew that the memory of a night in a Welsh dungeon was present in his mind as it was in mine. He put out a hand and touched Fran’s arm in a gesture of reassurance. Aloud, he said: “Master Henderson only said that my wife had set off for Brent Hay today. He left me at the gate of King’s, and I went in, but halfway across the courtyard, I turned round and came out again and went to the stable to get a horse and go after Fran. I felt worried about her, somehow, as if something wasn’t right with her. It can be like that, sometimes, between man and wife.”

  “Yes, it can,” I said, and was glad to see that he was now giving Fran’s shoulder a kindly squeeze and that she was responding with a trace of a smile.

  “Anyway,” Brockley said, “I met her on the road coming back—with Mistress Jester and Mistress Grantley.”

  “When my gentlewoman companion receives a letter that flings her into a flurry and makes her insist that she should come instantly into Cambridge to find a woman called Ursula Blanchard, of whom I have never heard, and declares also that she is in a state of fear for a young relative I have never heard of before, either, I want to know what is going on,” said Catherine Grantley grimly.

  “I understand, madam,” Brockley put in, “that Mistress Grantley has read the letter you sent by Fran.”