It was a pleasant two-mile ride to Cobbold Hall, through narrow lanes fringed by hedgerows tangled with dogrose and honeysuckle, and banks submerged in tides of long grass and foaming cow parsley and starred with clover, dandelion, campion, St John’s wort, the mauve-pink of valerian and the vivid blue of bellflowers. It was the season of abundance.
For most of the way, it was possible, just, for two to ride side by side so I rode with Christina, while Thomas, behind us, was alongside the quiet mule on which sat little Anne’s nurse with the child in her arms. Joseph brought up the rear. Christina and I talked about my Harry and her Anne while we enjoyed the warmth of the sun on our faces.
It was impossible not to feel eased by such a golden afternoon. Jewel, moving gently beneath me, seemed contented, too. All would be well, I said to myself. There would be talk of harmless things. I would not stay long, and perhaps the unhappy breach between me and Jane would indeed begin to heal. Hadn’t I been striving for that all along?
This agreeable tranquillity was somewhat disturbed when, arriving at Cobbold Hall and glancing through the archway to the stableyard, we could see a tall black horse being groomed out of doors. I was sure it wasn’t a Cobbold horse. So was Christina.
‘Maybe there are guests,’ she said doubtfully. ‘I don’t recognize that black horse. Oh, dear. We may have chosen a bad day.’
‘Well, we’re here now and we can’t very well just turn round and ride away again,’ said Thomas in practical tones. ‘Anyway, here comes our host. Good day to you, Father-in-Law.’
Anthony had appeared at the front door, waving away the butler who had opened it. He came down the steps towards us, looking pleased. ‘This is an agreeable surprise. Christina, my dear, why didn’t you let us know you were coming today? You could have come earlier and dined with us.’ He came to help me dismount. ‘Mistress Stannard, I am truly glad to see you here. It’s been too long.’ Then he cleared his throat and added in a low voice: ‘There is nothing to worry about. I assure you.’
He turned from me to embrace Christina and exclaim over the healthy looks of his granddaughter, while Thomas beamed on all of them. Grooms took our horses and they and Joseph went off with them to the stableyard while the rest of us found ourselves being steered up the steps and into the house.
‘But it seems as though you already have visitors,’ Thomas said as we went into the parlour. ‘I hope we’re not going to put you out.’
‘By no means.’ Anthony went to the table, where there was a trayload of glasses and wine flasks. ‘There are clean glasses here,’ said Anthony. ‘Let me help you to wine. We did have two guests at dinner but one of them has already left. Sir Edward Heron came to dine today and Roland Wyse was here as well because he had come into Surrey with some message or other for Heron, from Francis Walsingham’s office – he’s in Walsingham’s department again now. He caught up with Sir Edward here and joined us for the meal. But then he said he couldn’t stay but must set off back to London, and took his leave. He seemed to be in a hurry. He was in quite a panic because he hadn’t been able to find Sir Edward at once – as if he felt he might be blamed for it, though it wasn’t his fault in the least.’
‘From various things I’ve heard, I expect working for Francis Walsingham is demanding,’ Thomas remarked.
‘I daresay. Wyse did seem harassed. Maybe he had to set out at short notice, because he was riding alone. He usually has a couple of men with him as an escort,’ said Anthony.
‘I’ve met Roland Wyse,’ Thomas remarked. ‘Indeed, I met him here, Father-in-Law, only last month, did I not? He had an escort then. But I suspected it was there to show off his importance. I can’t say I took to him.’
‘Whyever not?’ said Anthony in surprise.
‘Just because I think he shows off. I can believe he wouldn’t like anyone to think he couldn’t carry out an errand on time! I’ve gathered from that cottager, Jack Jarvis, that Wyse always gives him alms when he comes this way. Jarvis is grateful but if you ask me, it’s just another way of making sure he shows up well.’
I looked at Thomas in surprise, for he wasn’t usually waspish. It seemed clear that the dislike he had taken to Roland Wyse had been not only instant, but intense. I said nothing, however, because Anthony looked annoyed and I didn’t want to annoy him further. Even though, privately, I rather agreed with Thomas.
‘Personally,’ Anthony said testily, ‘I find Mr Wyse rather good company. He is very much a man of today, of course. He insists on being called Mr instead of Master, in the modern fashion. But there’s no harm in that. He always tips the groom who looks after his horse. I think that’s a virtue and shouldn’t be a cause for criticism.’
‘Well, well. You may be right,’ said Thomas pacifically, having caught Christina’s eye.
We had just finished our wine, when Sir Edward Heron came into the parlour. He had a letter in his hand, which he was reading as he pushed the door open. He folded it when he saw us, and bowed politely. He was a tall, lean man who actually bore a resemblance to his surname, because of his long legs and neck, his sharp aquiline nose which really did have a faintly yellowish tinge, and the keenness of his grey eyes. Sir Edward Heron was a man of integrity but he was also a fanatical Protestant who believed in and loathed witchcraft to a dangerous degree. He had accused me of it once. However, his presence might help to ensure that Jane, when we met, would be polite. She wouldn’t want to display bad manners before the Sheriff of the County. I wondered where she was, having seen no sign of her as yet.
‘Roland Wyse was chasing me round Surrey with this,’ he said, flicking the letter at us. ‘And making a great to-do about it though the matter isn’t that urgent. There are a couple of prisoners in Lewes gaol, French priests suspected of attempting to convert honest Protestants, who Francis Walsingham wants brought to London. They were arrested in Surrey. We only keep short-term prisoners in Guildford Castle these days; the rest go to Lewes.’
‘Francis Walsingham is still hot in pursuit of priestly invaders, then,’ Thomas said.
‘Very much so.’ Heron folded the letter away in his doublet and sat down on the nearest seat. ‘And rightly. These intruders are dangerous. Probably more dangerous than the schemes laid by romantic Florentine bankers and ambitious noblemen dreaming of becoming royal consorts. These young priests are trained in the arts of seducing others and talking money out of them, and creating networks. Though,’ he added, ‘they might be less of a menace if Mary Stuart’s lifetime could be cut short!’
‘I doubt if the queen will ever agree to that,’ Anthony said.
I found this subject no pleasanter than the French massacre. I said to Anthony: ‘We should pay our respects to Mistress Jane. Where is she?’
‘She went out after dinner,’ he said. ‘To see that cottager, Jarvis. I saw her come back a little while ago but she went straight into the garden – I think to check on the weeding the gardeners have been doing. She’s still there. She keeps the gardeners very much in order, you know. They regard her as a slave-driver; I’ve overheard one of them saying so. He didn’t know I’d heard, of course. I didn’t mention it. He may have had a point.’
It occurred to me that if Anthony Cobbold really had taken his wife to task for encouraging her servants to be rude to mine, it was a rare event. He probably didn’t like giving orders to Jane. The fact that the old, and at one time very bitter, feud between the Cobbold and Ferris families had now died away completely, no doubt owed something to Anthony’s essentially peaceable nature.
‘Christina and I ought to go out into the garden to find her,’ I said. And get it over. ‘Christina?’
‘Of course.’ Christina, who had been rocking Anne on her knee, rose, handing her daughter to the nurse. ‘Mary, you come with us and bring Anne with you. It’s a lovely afternoon for a saunter out of doors.’
If Jane had been slave-driving the gardeners, the result justified her for the garden was a delight. It was L-shaped, extending round two sides of the hou
se, and though it was a knot garden, it wasn’t rigidly patterned. The beds were laid out in a casual way, as though someone had shaken them like dice and then cast them on the ground to fall where they would. The effect was charming, and just now, the place was at its best, for here, too, it was the season of abundance.
On the sides away from the house, the garden was bounded by walls of weathered brick that supported climbing roses and an espaliered pear tree. Soft, grassy paths wound here and there, low hedges of box and lavender sweetened the air. There was one whole bed of heartsease in a variety of colours: yellow, purple and velvety red. A big triangular patch was full of sunflowers and hollyhocks. There was a display of marigolds in a riotous tangle that spilt on to the pathway, wallflowers in a glorious mix of yellows and dark reds, and framing them, by way of contrast, the slim blue spires of larkspur. There wasn’t a weed to be seen as far as I could tell and the grass paths had been scythed to a perfect smoothness.
‘I wonder where Mother has got to?’ Christina remarked.
We had been walking at the side of the house, moving towards the rear of it. We turned the corner into the other arm of the L. Here there were beds of scented herbs as well as flowers and a few evergreen bushes, and in a far corner, there was a gap in the wall and a path leading away into the inviting green shade of a shrubbery. The path we were on led past another well-weeded bed of heartsease, skirted one of the bushes and brought us to a patch of deep pink gillyflowers.
We stopped short. Christina uttered a shriek and threw herself on her knees beside the flowerbed, and the nurse, her eyes wide with horror, turned Anne’s face into her shoulder so that the child shouldn’t see. I stood rigid, a hand jammed against my mouth to hold back a shriek of my own, unable to believe what was before my eyes.
We had found Jane. She lay on her back among the gillyflowers and a silver dagger hilt jutted from her heart. It had an engraved pattern of curving lines, interlinked as in a plait, and it sparkled in the sun. Her blood had spilled round it, drying on the cream silk of her dress, running down to darken the pink blooms of her flowery deathbed.
Pale in death, her too-plump features might have been moulded in uncooked dough. Her left hand had been flung out, palm up, and the sleeve from which it protruded was, once again, tautly creased by the short fat arm within. When I saw her at that disastrous dinner party, I had thought she was beginning to look ugly. Now, she just looked pitiful.
She was quite dead.
FIVE
Summons to Court
‘They’ve taken Roger away!’ Dale screamed. ‘Ma’am, those sergeants have taken my husband away! They’re taking him to Lewes. Where’s Lewes? I’ve never heard of it! Will I ever see him again? Oh, God, they’ll hang him, I know they will, ma’am, can’t you do something? They’ve taken Roger away!’
‘I tried to argue with them,’ I said wretchedly. ‘I said to them, the inquest jury only brought in a verdict of murder by someone unknown. But they wouldn’t listen. They said they had orders. Dale – Fran – I’m sorry …’
‘They’ve taken Roger!’ Dale shrieked, and threw herself down on the floor of the hall and pounded it with her fists.
Coaxing, crooning as to a child, I somehow pulled her back on to her feet and shouted for assistance. Sybil and Gladys came running, their faces frightened.
‘We saw!’ said Sybil. ‘We were in the kitchen. We heard those two men – from the sheriff’s office, weren’t they? – ride in. We went to the door and we saw them dismounting and heard them asking where Brockley was, and then Brockley came out of the hall door and they seized hold of him and the young groom Joseph went rushing off to fetch you …’
‘We saw you run from the garden,’ said Gladys, ‘and Dale was there all of a sudden, pleading and crying. You tried to argue with them but they took no heed of either of you. Faces like stones they had, and they took Roger Brockley off with them, on that spare horse they brought, white as the moon in the sky, he was, horrible!’
‘They’ll kill him!’ Dale wailed. ‘And all for nothing! He never harmed that Cobbold woman! That dagger – I didn’t see it but you told me what it was like, ma’am, and Roger never had such a thing, never. I’d have known! It wasn’t his! He didn’t do it!’
‘Gladys,’ I said, ‘do you have any of your calming valerian and camomile draught made up ready? If not, make some! Quickly. And put it into warmed wine and bring it up to Dale’s room.’
‘They’ve taken Roger!’ Dale moaned, sobbing in my arms.
‘I know, Dale, dear. I know. But we’ll get him back, you’ll see. Now come upstairs. I’m putting you to bed. Gladys will bring you a potion to soothe you. Then we’ll plan what to do.’
‘We know it’s a mistake,’ said Sybil reassuringly. ‘We all know that, and we’ll get the authorities to know it as well. You’ll see.’
‘He had fights because of the things the Cobbold woman said and they’ve no one else they can fasten it on and what can anyone do?’ The tears streamed down Dale’s face. ‘They’ve taken my Roger away and we’ve never really made it up after we had that great quarrel …’
‘Never mind that now,’ I said. ‘We have to think about how to help him, not worry about bygone arguments. Come along.’
Somehow, between us, Sybil and I persuaded her upstairs and settled her in bed. Gladys followed with her herbal potion. Gladys could be and often was utterly maddening but in times of crisis, she showed her worth. Most of her troubles had come about because she was old and ugly, had been at times ill-used on account of this, resented it, and said so, roundly. She was sound at heart.
Dale turned her head away from the potion at first but somehow we coaxed her into swallowing it and got her to lie back on her pillow. I gave the empty glass to Gladys to take away and she went out of the room but came back almost at once.
‘Met Wilder on the stairs, mistress – he says Sir Edward Heron’s here asking for you.’
‘I’ll stay with Dale,’ said Sybil.
Dale heaved herself upright and said: ‘It was him who decided Roger was guilty. The jury didn’t! I’m getting up! I’ll tell him …’
‘You won’t tell him anything!’ I said. ‘I’ll go down and talk to him myself. Sybil, stay with Dale and don’t let her out of this room. Dale, if you don’t lie down and do as I bid you, I … I’ll have to lock you in! Gladys, go and tell Wilder I’m coming!’
I went downstairs on shaking legs.
It had all happened so fast. That morning, we had all awakened to an ordinary day. After breakfast, I had gone into the rose garden with Tessie and Harry. Harry was vigorously engaged in trying to toddle more efficiently and Tessie kept a careful eye on him while I cut away dead blooms and thought of Hugh and how much he had loved his roses. Then Joseph, our youngest groom, came running to say that there were sergeants in the courtyard, and they’d come to arrest Brockley.
‘Take Harry indoors!’ I barked at Tessie and then I picked up my skirts and fairly raced to the courtyard, to find that they had already got Brockley on to a horse, and had tied his hands. Dale was there, weeping and imploring. Brockley himself was silent but, as Gladys had said, horribly white.
The sergeants told me that he was being arrested for the murder of Jane Cobbold and was being taken to Lewes until the assizes. They rode off, leading him. I led Dale back into the hall, where she collapsed in hysteria, and engrossed in looking after her, I had scarcely had time to take in what all this meant to me. But it was coming home to me now.
Brockley, despite the suspicions that Dale had once had, had never been my lover but throughout his many years in my service, he had been my friend and in times of danger, my ally. If anything happened to Brockley, my heart would break as completely as Dale’s would. And, as I knew perfectly well, it would all be because he had fought in defence of my good name. There was no other reason to accuse him of this killing. He would – he might – die because he cared for me enough to use his fists on my behalf.
Halfway downstair
s, just before the turn that would bring me in sight of the entrance vestibule below, I stopped short, feeling faint. I couldn’t bear it. If Brockley came to harm because of his friendship for me, then Dale would blame me and she would be right. She would not forgive me. I would lose her, too.
Black spots whirled before my eyes and I sat down on the stairs and put my head between my knees. Gradually, the spots faded. I stood up, warily, holding on to the banister, telling myself to stop this. This was no time for me to have the vapours. Hideous though the situation was, I must deal with it, not retreat into a swoon. The world steadied. I went slowly on, round the turn and saw Wilder awaiting me in the vestibule.
‘Madam, I have asked Sir Edward to wait in the hall.’
‘Thank you. I’ll see him there.’ With a great effort I managed to speak calmly.
Sir Edward was pacing round the hall when I entered. He turned to face me and bowed. I looked at him fearfully.
‘Mrs Stannard.’ Like Roland Wyse, Heron always used the short modern forms of address.
‘Sir Edward. Please sit down.’ I did so myself, glad to take the weight off my uncertain legs. ‘What brings you here?’
‘I felt that, since my men this morning arrested your manservant Roger Brockley for the stabbing of Mrs Jane Cobbold, I should at least call on you to explain why. I believe you hold Mr Brockley in some esteem, and of course, in view of your relationship to the crown, you are owed some courtesy.’
He had once come within inches of having me arrested for witchcraft. Possibly, I was on his conscience. I folded my hands in my lap, kept my back straight and said with as much composure as possible: ‘I would certainly like an explanation, Sir Edward. I know perfectly well that Roger Brockley did not murder Jane Cobbold and I would very much like to know why anyone supposes that he did.’
A Traitor's Tears Page 5
