A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court)

by Buckley, Fiona

  He was being allowed to go only because he was a slightly less lethal prospect than a marriage between Mary and some Catholic prince with armies at his command. Even so, a Mary Stuart reinforced by a Tudor-bred consort could be very interested indeed in having up-to-date details of people who might help her to raise an army on English soil. It was my duty to get my hands on that list if I could and destroy it.

  And I had another reason for agreeing. I didn’t say yes simply because it was my duty or even because Edward was family (though I did have a glow of satisfaction over my own good-heartedness).

  It was the excitement that drew me. I did not have the kind of nature that could be satisfied forever with well-planned dinners and linen rooms full of faultlessly folded sheets interleaved with dried lavender. Plenty of people considered that wrong in a woman—there were times, indeed, when I thought so as well—but it was the way I was made. Queen Elizabeth and Cecil had recognized it and made use of it.

  This particular opportunity had come to me in a time of grief and loneliness like a summons back to life. It was like the call of the wild geese in the cold, wide sky, a sound that I loved.

  Or so it seemed when I was sitting by the hearth at Faldene. The mood didn’t last through the cold early start next morning. Then, as I rode reluctantly through the gatehouse arch of Withysham, I wondered at myself. On more than one occasion in the past, I had determined to give up my perilous way of life. Every time I made such a resolution, I seemed to break it five minutes later. A new task, a new set of challenges, would call to me, like the siren voices of the wild geese. It seemed that I would just never learn.

  3

  Lying to a Friend

  “I can give you money,” said my uncle Herbert. “A hundred and fifty pounds in sovereigns.”

  An anguished spasm, which had nothing to do with gout, crossed his face as he spoke. My uncle hated broaching his coffers. His anxiety about Edward must be intense. “A horse could go lame,” he explained. “You might need to buy another. Or you might get into some kind of trouble and . . . need to bribe someone.”

  Edward, annoyed at being pursued and alarmed at being threatened, might arrange for me to get into trouble, he meant. We both knew it but neither of us spelled it out.

  “I’ll take it and return what I don’t need.” I was thinking rapidly. “I’ll have to make arrangements for Meg,” I said. Aunt Tabitha started to say that Meg could come to Faldene but I looked at her, and she fell silent. She knew that I would never consign Meg or any other child to her.

  “What I do need,” I said, “is all the information you have. All. Everything that you can tell me about Edward’s journey and the people he intends to visit in Northumberland and Scotland.”

  My cousin, it appeared, had not been indifferent to the risk he was running. His sense of duty had sent him northward but he too had been alarmed by the incident of the valet and the fate of the two couriers. His decision not to travel fast was partly because he wanted to be unobtrusive. For the same reason, he was riding his own horse rather than attempting to hire as he went along.

  “Hiring makes a traveler more noticeable. He didn’t want that,” Helene said. A strand of mousy hair slipped out of her cap and she pushed it aside with a tremulous hand. “He’ll have to be careful even in Scotland itself! Queen Mary’s right-hand man is her half brother James Stewart—the Earl of Moray—and they say he’s a Protestant! He may not be in sympathy with this business—with his sister collecting the names of English supporters, I mean. Edward might not be safe even in Edinburgh!”

  I gathered that Edward intended to stay at inns as he journeyed through England. “Until he reaches Northumberland,” said my uncle. “Once there, as we’ve told you, he’ll stay with his various friends.”

  Northumberland was a Catholic stronghold, which was why Edward and his brother Francis had been educated for a while in a Northumbrian home. The family concerned was gone now. The older generation had died and their son had left the county. They had however had a social circle in their district, and Edward and Francis had of course made acquaintances among the neighboring families.

  Edward was apparently going to call on four households between the Northumbrian town of Newcastle and Scotland. There were the Elkinthorpes, who lived in Newcastle, and the Wrights, whose home was about ten miles farther north. Two others, the Bycroft and the Thursby families, lived close to the border, and within nine miles of each other.

  “He knows the Thursbys very well,” Helene said. “Or so he told me. The Bycrofts are the ones he knows least—he only met them through the Thursbys last summer. They and the Thursbys are friends. He means to visit both, though. He said that the Bycrofts live a mile to the west of a hamlet called Grimstone. They have the same name as their house—Bycroft. The Thursbys live somewhere called St. Margaret’s.”

  I asked for writing materials and took notes busily. “Tell me,” I said, “in case I have to chase him right across the border, where exactly is he going in Edinburgh? To the court? Does he have an entrée there?”

  “Not directly,” said Aunt Tabitha. “Your husband’s original messengers, the peddler and the tooth-drawer, were humble folk and they passed messages to Queen Mary through intermediaries. Edward means to use the same intermediaries. He knows them—he met them when he went to Scotland last year. There are two of them. Dear God, I would go after him myself but I cannot ride far or fast any longer. Age tells.”

  For the first time ever, it struck me that Aunt Tabitha was indeed looking older. She gazed at me out of tired eyes. “Helene knows their names,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Helene. She frowned, putting her fingers to her temples. “If I can remember aright. I made him tell me, before he went. He didn’t want to—I think in case suspicion pointed to this house and we were questioned. But I said I had to know where he was going and who he meant to see; I had to!” Her voice rose, with a hysterical edge. “So in the end, he did, though he didn’t write them down and said I mustn’t, either. One of them is a man called Sir Brian Dormbois. He is in the service of an uncle of Queen Mary—I think he controls the retainers. But he has a house of his own outside Edinburgh. The other’s a woman—a widow, related in some way to one of the queen’s maids of honor. There are four of them, all called Marie. This woman’s name is Simone . . . Lady Simone Something.” She massaged her temples fiercely. “Lady . . . Lady Simone Dougal, that’s it. But I can’t tell you how to find her.” She looked at my rapidly moving pen. “I don’t think you really ought to write down names.”

  “I’ll be careful,” I said. “But this is information I must have and though my memory is good I dare not risk a lapse. I’ll carry this note folded small and squashed into my stays.”

  Uncle Herbert said anxiously: “You should be able to catch him up. You will be trying to hurry, while he isn’t. But you must go properly attended, for safety and propriety. Take those two servants of yours with you, but don’t let them slow you down. I advise you to use your own horses, as Edward is doing.”

  “I agree,” I said, thinking that Dale would hate all this. She was a poor rider and apt to tire quickly. I really ought not to take her, but I must have Roger Brockley and there were good reasons why, in that case, I couldn’t leave Dale behind. My best chance of overtaking Edward before the Scottish border probably depended on the visits he meant to make in Northumberland. They would halt him for a few days, and with just a little luck, I would catch up with him there. I had better not use my favorite mare, Bay Star, because with her Arabian blood and delicate legs, she wouldn’t be strong enough to cope with long distances in what might well be terrible northern weather.

  “Leave quickly, for the love of God!” Aunt Tabitha implored me.

  “Yes, as soon as you can! You must, you must overtake him in time!” cried Helene.

  • • •

  Roger Brockley had come with us to Faldene and was waiting to escort me home. On the way, I told him what I had undertaken. As always, I w
as frank with him. Roger Brockley was a countryman approaching fifty, a stocky, dignified figure with a high, polished forehead strewn with gold freckles and steady blue-gray eyes. His calm voice had a country burr and he was as reliable as granite. I could trust him with my life. Indeed, in the past, I had. We were friends, no more, but no less, either. I knew what he would say to this and he duly said it.

  “Oh, madam!” he said, and shook his head at me reprovingly, as though I were an erring child. “Setting out for Scotland in January!”

  “Edward’s my cousin,” I said firmly, “and I have to get him back before he runs into real danger. I have no choice. Nor, I’m afraid, have you—or Dale. I know,” I said, “that in her own favorite phrase, she just can’t abide long-distance riding, but it will be that or stay behind at Withysham and she won’t agree to that, I know.”

  “Nor should she,” Brockley agreed.

  We didn’t enlarge. We understood each other well enough. There had been a time—a very brief time—when the friendship between me and Roger Brockley had slid perilously close to love, and Dale had known it. We had drawn back from the brink, and Dale had nothing now to fear. The decision we had taken was forever. Nevertheless, I knew quite well that Dale would rather die in the saddle than stay at Withysham while Roger and I rode for Scotland without her.

  • • •

  Once I was home, what seemed like half a hundred things had to be settled at top speed. Dale, predictably, set up a wail at the prospect of such a journey in such a rush—“and oh, Mistress Blanchard, in January, oh dear, oh dear . . . !” But when told to pack she did as she was bidden and packed for herself as well, without further ado.

  The most difficult matter to deal with was that of Meg. Her small face drooped when I told her. “But, Mother, I thought you were going to stay here and that we were going to study together.”

  I put my arms around her. Meg would be ten years old next June, and every day she seemed to grow more like my first husband, Gerald. Lately, perhaps because she and I had been together more than we had been for years, I had noticed the resemblance more. At times it was so strong that it even sent me to my mirror to look at myself, to notice that in this way or that I was like my mother—and then to wonder which characteristics came from my unknown father, and wish, more strongly than ever before, that I knew who he was and what he had been like.

  Meg was so much her father’s child. Her hair was rook’s wing dark, and her eyes were brown, just like Gerald’s. My own dark hair had a faint reddish tinge and my eyes were hazel. Her face was shaped like his, too, with a square chin, quite unlike my pointed one. In Meg, I saw Gerald again, and despite all that had happened since I lost him, I would never forget him. I was glad to have Meg as a living testimony to that happy, stolen first marriage of mine.

  I had enjoyed teaching her. She was an apt pupil, neat-fingered at her embroidery and on the virginals, but sharp-minded too, so that instructing her in Latin was a delight, like filling a bright glass with good wine. “It’s only for a short while,” I told her. “Perhaps a month. It might be less if the weather is kind. In the meantime, you can stay with Mistress Henderson at Thamesbank. You know you like it there. Why, it’s your second home! You spent years there when I was at court—and in France.”

  “Yes, Mother,” said Meg with a sigh, and not until we were actually setting off did she tacitly admit that she knew that the Hendersons and I were no longer the friends we had once been because she had heard me talking to the Brockleys.

  I didn’t have secrets from either of them and it was true that I had talked to them about my rift with the Hendersons. It was not a rift with Mattie, but with her husband. He too was an agent in Cecil’s employ. The previous year, we had worked together on the same task, seeking out the truth of a dangerous plot in East Anglia and delving into the life of a curious and far from amusing family with the unsuitable surname of Jester. I had been more successful than Henderson, and he had resented it.

  All the same, I hoped the Hendersons wouldn’t refuse to take care of Meg for me. She would be better off at their home, Thamesbank, than here with only her nurse, Bridget, to look after her. At Thamesbank, she would have the company of the Henderson children, and could study with their tutor.

  • • •

  I decided that we would carry saddlebags and shoulder satchels and dispense with a packhorse, although it would limit the amount of spare clothing we could carry. To Uncle Herbert’s sovereigns, worth thirty shillings each, I added the same amount from my own coffers, including some coinage of smaller value. The total was heavy in weight, but divided among the three of us, it was manageable.

  As an agent of Sir William Cecil, I also had a habit of wearing an open overskirt with secret pouches hidden inside them, in which I could carry a dagger and a set of lockpicks (this had often proved useful). I added a few extra sovereigns as well.

  Our first day’s journey brought us to Thamesbank, to the west of London, near Hampton, just as dusk was falling. The porter sent his son running ahead of us from the gatehouse to alert the household, and as we rode into the courtyard, to the usual greeting of barking dogs and cackling geese, Mattie Henderson came out to meet us. “Ursula! The boy said it was Mistress Blanchard, with her daughter, but I could hardly believe . . . you sent no word in advance and I didn’t expect . . . !”

  “No, I suppose you didn’t,” I agreed. “I didn’t have time to forewarn you. But we’re here now, and the reason why we’ve come is important. Can we shelter here for the night?”

  “Of course you can. Get down and come inside!”

  Presently, I joined Mattie in her parlor, where a fire was burning, candles were lit, and hot food was already waiting. Bridget and Meg had gone to the nursery and Dale had withdrawn to eat with Brockley in the kitchen. “But they’ll have the same as us and there’s hot milk for Meg, as well,” said Mattie. “I didn’t think you’d want to wait for supper. You must be perished. Rob isn’t here. He’s at court. Now, sit down, and tell me what I can do for you.”

  I sat opposite my friend, and in the light of the candles, we studied each other’s face.

  “I’ve missed you,” said Mattie. “It’s a long time since we have even exchanged letters. How are you? I was so sorry to learn about Matthew’s death.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I never thought it was a wise marriage for you,” said Mattie honestly, “but you loved him and I know what that’s like, too. I have thought of you often and prayed for you. Please believe me.”

  “I do. How is your new baby? Well, she’s some months old by now, of course. You called her Elizabeth, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. You shall see her presently. She’s a bonny child, though she was so small when she was born that we feared for her. They feared for me, too, but I came through safely though forty is late for childbearing.”

  “I prayed for you,” I told her. “Rob was very worried about you, you know.”

  Mattie nodded. She had changed, I thought. The Mattie I had known had been bubbly and slightly irreverent, but now her face was grave and her dark blue woolen gown and plum-colored kirtle were a sober choice of colors for her. The beginning of an extra chin was propped on her neat white ruff.

  “Mattie?” I said.

  “Oh, Ursula. I’m so glad to see you again! I just wish things were not so . . . so difficult.”

  It was time to be frank. “Last year,” I said, “I accidentally offended Rob. I did nothing that I am ashamed of; it was just—accident, as I said. I only hope that it won’t keep you from helping me now.”

  “In what way?” Mattie gestured toward the food, and I reached out to help myself.

  “I want to leave Meg and Bridget here with you,” I said, as I loaded a trencher. “I have to take an unexpected journey.”

  “Oh? Where are you going?”

  I had been afraid that she would ask that. In the eyes of the court, in the eyes of Queen Elizabeth, and Sir William Cecil, and also of Rob Henderson
, my mission to rescue Edward was thoroughly illicit. To them he would be a traitor. Since I was setting out to stop him from performing a treasonous errand, I was not actually breaking the law. It is not a criminal offense to stop someone else from committing one. Nevertheless, as a Lady of the Queen’s Presence Chamber, I should not be going on a journey that might lead me into Scotland unless I had official sanction, and I could not seek such sanction because for one thing I didn’t have time, and for another, I couldn’t do so without betraying my own family. This meant that I could not confide in Rob’s wife either. Rob was a courtier.

  However, I had had time to think of a story. I took a mouthful of food to hearten myself and said: “It’s a family matter. You know that my cousin Edward Faldene married a girl called Helene, who was brought up in France—she was a connection of my first husband.”

  “Yes. I recall that,” said Mattie cautiously.

  “Since then, Edward has visited France and sold some of her property but a mistake of some kind was made and he also sold some jewelry which she wanted to keep. It was her mother’s and is of great sentimental value to her. It’s gone to a family in Northumberland. I am going to try to get it back from them. Edward himself is . . . is too busy to go just now.”

  “It must be of very great value, sentimental or otherwise, if you’re setting off in such a hurry and in the depths of winter,” said Mattie.

  “There’s been a death in the family concerned and the property may be distributed round various relatives,” I said, lying smoothly. “So yes, it’s urgent.” That was true, anyhow! “I’m trying to mend relations with my family,” I said. “We’ve been too long estranged. Families shouldn’t be divided. And, Mattie—nor should friends.”

  Mattie looked at me and then away, and sighed. “No. There I agree. And you want to leave Meg with me? That’s all?”

  “I can’t leave her at Faldene. Family feeling doesn’t go that far! But at Withysham I still haven’t got the kind of people I need before Meg can stay there without me. She needs a gentlewoman as a companion and a proper tutor and I haven’t found them yet.”