Queen of Ambition

by Buckley, Fiona

  22

  The Dormer Window

  “It would appear so,” Cecil agreed. “It certainly sounds like it. Woodforde’s aim, I fancy, is to please Lady Lennox and your demise would probably please her very much. She is afraid you’ll go to Scotland, marry Mary Stuart, and destroy her son Henry Darnley’s chances of marrying her instead.”

  “If she’d simply asked me,” said Dudley, “I would happily have sworn on a pile of Bibles that I have no intention of doing any such thing! As the queen herself well knows. Though the suggestion was serious when she made it. You have never believed that, but I can assure you that it was so. I have been much afraid that she would actually order me to Scotland and in that case I would have had to go. I’ve been in the Tower once in my life and that was enough! As matters turned out, by the time she understood that I didn’t wish to go—and that Mary didn’t wish to receive me, either—she was relieved. But at the start—oh yes, she meant it. At that time, she was willing to sacrifice me in order to cut young Henry Darnley out. I mean much to her—though not as much as some people think.”

  I glanced at him curiously. I did not like Dudley for I knew him to be ambitious and ruthless with an icy core to his heart. Yet I also knew that I must not condemn him too much, at least not for the latter, for Elizabeth had that same core of ice within her and I understood it because to some extent I shared it. I could not have worked as an agent without it. Rob knew. He had commented on it during our journey to Cambridge, when he talked of the affinity between me and the wild geese. Now as I covertly studied Dudley, I found that I really was sorry for him. In his way, I think he did love Elizabeth and still harbored hopes of winning her, though I had reasons for believing that he wouldn’t succeed.

  “She is changing her opinion on the matter of Darnley,” Cecil said. “So am I. Before I left Richmond, we discussed him at some length. I have learned recently that although Darnley is officially a Catholic, like his mother, he has Protestant leanings. The queen and I are now wondering if we might do better with him as king consort in Scotland than with some Catholic prince or other—and that would be Mary’s likely alternative choice. I didn’t, of course, say this to her, but I feel that the Darnley marriage could have one great advantage. It might produce an heir with the right credentials! A legitimate child, descended twice over from Henry VII, would certainly be that and such a child would have to grow up before it could be a rival. By then, I trust, Elizabeth would be too secure to fear it. I’m beginning to despair of Elizabeth herself ever providing us with an heir. I believe I said something of the kind to you, Ursula, before you left for Cambridge. Since discussing it with the queen, I have come to feel it more strongly.”

  “Yes,” I said. “But surely …”

  “But surely all this is by the way,” said Dudley abruptly. “However little Lady Lennox has to fear from me, she doesn’t know it, nor, apparently, does this lunatic Woodforde. I wonder, Cecil, if your men have been able to lay their hands on the brothers, or not?” He paused, his head on one side. “I can hear booted feet on the stairs. I think we are about to find out.”

  The tap on the door came almost at once. Cecil called: “Enter!” and Rob Henderson came in, accompanied by John Ryder and Dick Dodd. Cecil looked at them with raised brows.

  “Too late,” Rob said in exasperated tones. He looked both weary and hot, and no doubt was still suffering from the weakening aftereffects of his fever. “If you left them in the garden at the side of the house, Ursula, they’re not there now. We took four extra men and put them round the house and then, with Ryder and Dodd here, I went in through the private door. It was locked and we had to break in. We went right through the house and the garden as well. We found the secret room and the way out through the cupboard and the tower. What we didn’t find was any sign of human life. They could have got away either by river or by road.”

  “My husband kept a boat on the river,” Sybil said. “They may have used that.”

  “Maybe. We sent two men galloping toward Lynn and two toward Norwich, straightaway, and now others have gone after them to help if need be, and to follow the course of the river. We’re doing all we can,” Rob said, somewhat defensively.

  I said: “They meant to kill us, you know. At least, Woodforde did.” It was evening now, but still warm. Nevertheless, the gooseflesh came up on my arms. “We’ve had a narrow escape.”

  “I trust that they won’t have an escape at all,” said Cecil ominously. “I hope they are overtaken very soon, Master Henderson.”

  I took a grip on myself, and said: “Should we decode the rest of these letters? In case there is something more?”

  By ten o’clock that night, Sybil and I had finished decoding all the material we had. By the end, we had mastered virtually all of the code words including the additions since the days when Sybil was at home. We worked out that the mysterious sleeping man on the page for J meant jaded—or jade. The Latin was very simple, dog Latin, in fact, with the words more or less in English order. Since Woodforde actually taught the language, he had probably done that to make things easier for the less accomplished Jester. There were a few grammatical errors. There were several of these in the letters written by Jester, but some occurred even in Woodforde’s, usually, we thought, for the sake of brevity. It didn’t matter. We could always arrive at the gist.

  Jester had written twice to his brother while Woodforde was at Richmond, stating that he was afraid, but not specifying why, although he did complain that Thomas Shawe was courting Ambrosia and that this might lead to trouble, its nature again unspecified. In Woodforde’s second letter back, he had again told his brother not to fear for his safety, but recommended him to put a stop to Thomas’s wooing.

  That was all, but with what we had already, it was enough. Once Jester and Woodforde were caught and brought back, a very little questioning should get results. “Woodforde keeps telling his brother that he will be safe—from what?” Cecil said. “Then he exhorts Jester to consider: if Dudley should die, then he can’t—obviously!—marry Mary and that must mean Mary of Scotland. In that case, Woodforde’s lady will love him again. That can only mean Lady Lennox. Judging from what you witnessed and what Brockley has reported, he’s obsessed with her and she certainly doesn’t want Dudley to marry Mary Stuart. He ends one letter by saying that he will give Jester’s wife to him. Both Lady Lennox’s love and the return of Jester’s wife to Jester appear to be conditions following the death of Dudley. That’s the heart of the plot. We’ll get the rest when we bring them in, and bring them in we will, and that before long, I trust.”

  He contemplated the letters in silence for a further moment and then added: “Sir Robert, it was Woodforde, was it not, who invited you to be the queen’s champion in that tiresome playlet—and, therefore, arranged for you to step forward, out to the front of the queen’s dais, to act out your duel?”

  “I was provided, in writing, with a list of moves,” said Dudley. “A very precise list. I imagine its purpose was to position me as a convenient target. Well, well.”

  “There have been reports from an agent in Scotland that Mary has been in touch with Lady Lennox,” Cecil observed. “We haven’t managed to trace the couriers or intercept any letters, but I daresay that the subject was the good looks and excellent education of Henry Darnley. Margaret Lennox may well see you as a threat, yes.” Cecil looked Dudley up and down in a most remarkable way, one man assessing the stallion potential of another. “The interesting point that we still have to deal with is whether all this springs only from an aberration in the mind of Woodforde, or whether Lady Lennox employed him to murder you.”

  Sybil Jester had hardly been listening. Her mind was taking another path. “Wherever my husband and brother-in-law are,” she said in distress, “Ambrosia must be with them. When you fetch them in, what of my daughter?”

  “From what Ursula says, she knows little if anything of the plot,” Cecil said. “I think you need not fear too much for your girl, Mistress Jes
ter.”

  We were all tired. Rob had been dismissed to rest, some time ago. Dale was dozing on her stool. I had tried to bear up, but that afternoon I had not been far from death at Woodforde’s hands and it had drained me. Now I felt exhausted, and Sybil’s white face and shadowed eyes revealed a weariness nearly as great as my own. “I do believe,” she said, “that all this goes back to my father and his terrible fear of being arrested for heresy. You have no idea how fast those houses in Jackman’s Lane were built!”

  “How do you mean?” Dudley asked her. Cecil’s explanations had evidently not covered this. Sybil explained how the secret escape route had been provided because of her father’s dread that one day he might need it to escape Queen Mary’s commissioners.

  “In 1556, only months after we moved to Jackman’s Lane,” she said, “the place actually was searched, by a party of royal commissioners—some of them from London and some from the university. Nothing was found to incriminate any of us though Father had an English Bible and various Protestant works in his possession. He told me afterward that he had hidden them. In the secret room, I imagine, though I didn’t know that then. The searchers didn’t find it, anyway, though they went through every cranny they could see. I remember how we all stayed in the parlor while they did it. Father was very brave when it came to the point. He told us we had nothing to fear and must not hinder the officials in their work. My mother was some years dead by then. My husband, Roland, was downstairs, serving customers. Father sat reading a book of verse and Ambrosia and I sat with him and I taught her a new embroidery stitch … but I remember seeing my father’s hands tremble as he held his book. It seemed forever until the men apologized for troubling us and went away.”

  We were silent. Sybil’s eyes were remote as she gazed back into the past. “But when the commissioners had gone,” she said, “Father broke down. He cried. I didn’t know what to do. He was my father, you see; someone I’d always trusted to stand between us and danger, someone invincible. But he cried and I put my arms round him as though I were his mother and he were my child. He told me that if he was ever taken up for heresy and threatened with burning, he thought he would lose his mind with terror, and that if it ever happened, he would have to rely on us to get in to see him, and smuggle a knife to him so that he could end his life himself. If not, he said he would beat out his brains against the wall. No wonder there were secret hiding places in the house! Yet—if it hadn’t had that secret way out … then perhaps none of this would have happened.”

  “Why do you say that?” Dudley asked her.

  “The letters don’t say exactly how the deed is to be done, sir, but if you are to be positioned in some special way during the playlet, out in front of the dais, isn’t it likely that the idea was to shoot at you, very likely from an attic window above the pie shop and then take shelter in the hidden room? If it hadn’t been there …”

  “One could say if only for evermore,” Cecil said. “Having a house with a secret way out of it doesn’t necessarily turn people into criminals!”

  Sybil sighed. “I suppose not. It might not have happened either if Mistress Grantley had never put me forward to present those wretched flowers! Once my brother-in-law knew that I was Mistress Smithson, he decided to use me as a bribe to persuade my husband to help him. A better bribe than money, though money was at the root of it. My father’s will turned my husband against me, and so I fled, and thus I gave Giles his weapon. Both he and my husband … are unreasonable men. Giles is not balanced concerning Lady Lennox and Roland is not balanced concerning me. And yet … oh, my God, I used to love Roland. He fathered Ambrosia! I’d save him, too, if I could!”

  “Honorable feelings,” said Dudley, “but apart from the plot against my life, he and his brother threatened and assaulted Ursula here, and Wat as well.”

  “And one of them probably murdered Thomas Shawe,” I added.

  “Though I don’t see how,” Cecil said. “From what you’ve found out or seen for yourself, Ursula, Woodforde was in his rooms, suffering from the marsh ague, under the eye of his man at the time when Thomas Shawe was killed, and you told me, Ursula, that Jester was at home under your eye.”

  “I daresay Woodforde’s man is in it, too,” said Dudley.

  “He’s left now,” I said. “My servant Brockley has taken his place. I suppose we could track the fellow down if we wanted to. I don’t think he was in it, though.”

  Cecil glanced at me sharply. “You have a reason for saying that. What is it?”

  I hesitated. The moment that I found the bloodstained table arm hidden in the cupboard, an idea had moved in my mind, and gradually, through all the hours since then, it had been clarifying. I thought I now knew who had killed Thomas and how. But I could be wrong. I needed proof. “I do have a reason,” I said slowly. “But before I talk about it, there is someone I must speak to.”

  “Who?” demanded Cecil.

  “Well—it’s Jem, the groom at Radley’s stable.”

  “The groom at where?”

  “Thomas kept his horse there,” I said. “And I want to know whether the groom was late in to the work on the day that Thomas Shawe died.”

  Cecil surveyed me thoughtfully. “You want to know whether a stable groom was on time at his work. Is the groom your suspect?”

  “No!” I said, in some alarm. “I’m sure Jem wouldn’t harm a fly. I just want to know if he was late that morning. That’s all! I do have a reason.”

  “For a woman,” Cecil said, “you have one of the most tortuous minds I’ve ever come across. The only one I know who is worse is Her Majesty herself. But I’ve learned to trust your instincts. I’ll let you have your way. At the moment I am much occupied and my gout is a nuisance. Report to me when you have questioned this man, and learned whatever it is you wish to learn. For the moment, I must have you and Mistress Jester escorted back to your lodgings. You will not mind sharing your room with Mistress Jester?”

  “No, of course not. The landlady may object, though.”

  “The landlady,” said Cecil, “will do as the Secretary of State tells her. My clerk will accompany you.”

  Cambridge was en fete for the queen. The dais in Jackman’s Lane had been hung with brocade of blue and gold, and spanning the streets through which Elizabeth would ride were strings of flags and pennants, some of them elegant and official and gracefully festooned, some of them homemade and haphazard. But it would not matter, for Elizabeth had always appreciated a nosegay of wildflowers as much if not more than any gracious bouquet of cultivated roses; she would probably like the sagging strings of homemade pennants best.

  At two o’clock on Saturday the fifth of August, her expected hour of arrival drew near, and the townsfolk gathered in force to greet her. I doubt if there was a stall or shop left open for business. All the tradespeople wanted to see her go by and so did their customers. No one was going to be out buying milk or onions when they could be jostling for a view along her route. The sun shone on an array of best clothes; even humble folk who had no silk or satin could still produce jerkins and kirtles, glass beads and brooches in vivid colors, and they had.

  Those who could afford better were as fine as peacocks. I was in green with silver embroidery (though I had my usual pouch inside the overskirt, naturally). Sybil Jester’s belongings had not yet arrived from Brent Hay but she and I were much of a size and I had lent her my cream and tawny ensemble, which, she said, was far better than anything of hers, in any case.

  The beadles and university dignitaries who had escorted Cecil from his lodgings to Jackman’s Lane had taken charge of Sybil and separated her from me. I was waiting just in front of the dais, in the company of Rob Henderson, with Brockley and Dale in attendance.

  Cecil himself was already on the dais, ready to step down and hand the queen to her place when she arrived, and Dudley, after a morning of formal greeting ceremonies and orations, had set forth in his capacity of Master of the Queen’s Horse, to meet her at the city boundary an
d escort her in.

  Dudley was in good spirits, Rob told me. The discovery of a plot against him hadn’t shaken his nerve overmuch. But neither Cecil nor Rob Henderson himself were in a happy mood. Both were finely clad, Cecil in a formal gown of black velvet and Rob in a dashing black doublet and hose, slashed and striped with gold, and Rob himself was now properly recovered from his illness. Both, however, were annoyed because so far there were no reports that Woodforde and Jester had been sighted. The pursuit along the roads and the riverbank had yielded nothing. Our quarry had either got farther than we thought, or else they had taken shelter somewhere along the way. Cecil had sent messengers off to order searches of all ships leaving port at Norwich and Lynn and no one doubted that the fugitives would be found. Until they were, however, neither Rob nor Cecil were likely to feel happy.

  I regretted the escape, too, but to a lesser degree because I had had a small success of my own. The exhausting day when Wat and I barely escaped alive from the pie shop, and the cipher was broken in the evening, had been Thursday and today was Saturday. On the Friday, I had done as I intended and visited Radley’s stable to talk to the groom, Jem. He had confirmed what I had guessed. As soon as Cecil was free to listen, I would explain it to him.

  Meanwhile, though, the original plans for the queen’s welcome were going ahead after all. There was no danger now either to Dudley or to Sybil. She was to present the flowers as planned, and even the playlet was to be performed. Cecil had countermanded his order to cancel it. Young Francis Morland, nervous but determined, was waiting nearby with his band of students. Costumed as outlaws and rustics, they were all assembled in front of the house belonging to the bronzesmith, Master Brady. The locked and shuttered pie shop beside it had now had bars nailed across its street entrances.