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

  “Oh, I do hope so!” said Dale wistfully.

  I glanced at Brockley, who was riding beside me, while Dale, who had the quietest horse, was lagging behind. His face was impassive as a rule, but glancing at him, I saw that he was looking worried. “Traveling in such weather isn’t good for Fran,” he remarked in a low voice.

  I didn’t answer. I felt guilty about Dale myself. I nodded, pulled my hat farther down over my ears to protect them from what was now a sharp east wind, and rode on.

  We had stayed at inns of varying standard in the course of our journey, but I have to say that the one where we spent the next night was easily the nastiest of them all, being dirty and drafty with a landlord who seemed to be permanently drunk, and whose slattern of a wife produced dreadful food. Dale and I, after repeated demands for hot water, obtained a pailful that was more or less warm and washed some underlinen, but the sorry fire in our bedchamber hadn’t dried it by morning and we had to pack it still damp and ignore the fact that the linen we were wearing now smelled. We asked about Edward, but he hadn’t been there. “Too much sense,” muttered Brockley.

  That morning, we also woke to find ourselves in the midst of an interesting new weather phenomenon: fast-flowing fog.

  Fogs are frequent enough in the south, of course, but they usually go with windless weather. Here however we were evidently amid cloud blowing in from the North Sea. We set off determinedly enough, scarves around our faces to keep out the clammy mist. “We’ve got to watch for the fork,” Brockley said. “We need the right-hand road. Take heart, Fran. Even at this sluggard’s pace we should reach the Holly Tree in less than three hours and perhaps we’ll find a good fire there.”

  Keeping a lookout was harder than it sounded. The fog was as blinding as the blizzard. As far as we could tell, we were riding over bleak uplands, along a track edged with heather and coarse grass, but even the verges kept on fading into the vapors. “We ought to have found this place the Holly Tree by now, surely,” Brockley said, when rather too much time had gone by.

  We pulled up and listened. There was no sound but the hiss of the wind. We rode on a little way and then stopped again, also in vain. Not until the third halt, when we were all becoming very worried, did a faint clank come to our ears. “Ah!” said Brockley, and spurred on. A moment later, the blowing mists parted enough to show us a cluster of cottages. They were miserable places, made of gray stone, which seemed to be piled up rather than built, and roofed with a mixture of slate and thatch. They seemed to be huddling together for protection from the elements, like a flock of sheep. There was a well in front of them, and this was the source of the clanking, for a couple of shawl-wrapped women were hauling up water. Brockley urged his horse forward and hailed them.

  Communication was difficult because they spoke in such broad northern voices that he could barely understand them, while his southern voice was just as bewildering to them, but he managed in the end and rode back to us, shaking his head. “I asked where the Holly Tree was,” he said. “But it seems that we missed the fork and took the left branch without knowing it. This is Grimstone. Either we go on to Bycroft, which is another mile, or else go back.”

  “Can’t we go on to Bycroft?” pleaded Dale.

  “No,” I said firmly. “We go back.”

  What happened next was not Dale’s fault. She could not possibly have engineered the accident when her gelding stepped into a pothole, almost fell, and threw her over its head, and then, when we had picked Dale up and made sure she wasn’t really hurt, turned out to be lame.

  “It’s Bycroft for us, madam,” said Brockley, feeling the animal’s foreleg. “This poor beast can’t be asked to limp farther than that. I’ll have to lead it and Dale must ride behind me.”

  I swore, realized that this was pointless, and tried to make light of the disaster. “It’s fate. Some unknown providence doesn’t want us to catch Edward up. Did you know, Brockley, that the ancient Greeks saw fate as a woman spinning the inescapable pattern of our lives on a loom?”

  “My education didn’t have the Greeks in it,” said Brockley. “I was taught my letters and numbers and a tiny bit of Latin by the vicar in the village where I was born and that was it. I don’t see fate as a woman with a loom, madam. I see it as an unshaven fellow with uncut hair, wearing patched brown fustian, and crouching in ambush with a crossbow.”

  When Brockley made jokes he nearly always did it with an expressionless face. This was a perfect example. As usual, there was a brief pause while I worked out that he was jesting. Then I laughed and saw the answering glimmer in his eyes. And then I saw Dale’s face.

  I could have kicked myself. I was always doing it. No, we were always doing it. We so easily let ourselves slip into these moments of intimacy, when we shared an allusion, a joke, that Dale hadn’t grasped, shutting her out, hurting her, poor Dale, who loved us both and would never never have hurt us in return.

  Dale had said I should marry again. I had said I would think about it, but the truth was that even Gerald’s memory had not quite ceased to haunt me and Matthew was alive in me still. But Dale was right. Sooner or later, I must face it. Oh, dear God, if only Matthew were still alive, so that I could go back to him and leave the Brockleys in peace together at Withysham.

  “Very well,” I said resignedly. “Come along, then. Bycroft it is.”

  • • •

  The fog was clearing when we arrived at Bycroft. It was a harsh-looking place, for like most border manor houses it was built for defense, with a lookout tower at one end, complete with arrow slits, and a stout encircling wall. When the gatehouse porter led us into the cobbled courtyard, we saw that the living quarters of the house were on an upper floor, for a flight of steps led up to the main entrance. The ground floor, to judge by the wisps of hay blowing around its one low door, was an undercroft used for storing fodder and probably for housing livestock as well.

  Our welcome was friendly enough, though formal. As we dismounted, the door at the top of the steps opened, and a steward in black velvet livery, with a gold chain of office, came down to meet us, to bow in respectful greeting and ask our names. He recognized mine and his stiff manner unbent somewhat.

  “Madame de la Roche will certainly be most welcome in this house. Master Bycroft is with his bailiff at the moment but will join you shortly as will the mistress when she has finished hearing her chaplain’s daily reading from a devotional work. Mistress Bycroft is a most pious lady and ours is a pious household, but we are also hospitable as you will find. Here are the grooms to see to your horses. Come in!”

  5

  “Our Daughter Was Beautiful”

  The steward no doubt thought he was telling the truth when he said that Bycroft was hospitable. So it was, in a way. Dale and I were shown to a bedchamber with a crimson-hung four-poster bed, and a maidservant came to conjure a fire into life for us. There were, however, no fur or sheepskin rugs to welcome one’s toes on freezing mornings, as I had at Withysham and Mattie had at Thamesbank. Even the Elkinthorpes had had rugs. Here, there was just the floor, with an old-fashioned strewing of rushes.

  The ceiling was ornate, with painted and gilded crisscross beams, but the walls were bare gray stone, unadorned except for one small wall hanging depicting the Last Supper. A plain toilet stand held a simple earthenware set of basin and ewer. Far more noticeable—beautifully carved, in fact—was the priedieu for private devotions. The housekeeper who showed me and Dale to the room pointed it out immediately, as something that I would most certainly wish to use.

  “The mistress spends perhaps three hours a day at hers, madam.”

  “Most admirable,” I said, and was thankful that Dale, who was ardently Protestant, had the self-restraint not to make any acid remarks about popish practices until the housekeeper had gone.

  “I do say private prayers sometimes, Dale,” I said mildly. “You know that.”

  “You do it decently, ma’am; just a few quiet prayers, kneeling by your bed as a Christian s
hould. Not making a show of it like this.”

  “Well, we must keep up the pretense. We were told that this was a pious household. I can trust you, I hope.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Dale, and I knew she would keep her word. In France, failing to guard her tongue had once landed her in a dungeon and she had never forgotten it.

  Hot washing water was brought and Dale, after going to investigate, found a drying room where our damp linen could be aired. Brockley reported that the stabling was satisfactory, that the horses were being properly rubbed down and fed, and that he had been offered adequate accommodation among the other grooms in the stable loft. “You’d best stay with the mistress tonight, Fran, but I shan’t sleep cold, don’t worry.”

  The hospitality, in fact, was there, but it had an austere tinge. The steward’s statement that this was a pious household, though, was entirely true. Piety suffused the place. The priedieu and Mistress Bycroft’s hours at it were merely details in a bigger pattern.

  We dined an hour after our arrival, in a hall with more bare stone walls, except for some coats of arms and one large crucifix. Master Bycroft, tall, dark-bearded, and grave of mien, presided at one end of the table. At the other end sat his wife. Her hair was hidden under a matronly cap but her pale complexion and huge gray eyes suggested that she was probably fair. She had a disconcerting habit of fixing you with those great eyes when she spoke to you, as though she were trying to read your soul.

  Not that there was much conversation over dinner, which was shared by the three children of the house, a boy of perhaps fifteen and two girls, somewhat younger. They, like their elders, were very quiet. The person most in evidence was the chaplain the steward had mentioned, though he wasn’t dining with us. Instead, he stood at a small lectern in a corner of the hall, from which, before the meal began, he recited a lengthy grace, which included a prayer for Mary Stuart of Scotland—“the poor beleaguered lassie, harassed by that devil’s emissary John Knox and his noble followers, who style themselves the Lords of the Congregation and should know better and will rue their evil-doing for all eternity when they come at last to the fires of hell.”

  I had heard of John Knox from Cecil, and I was aware that he was more or less the founder of the Protestant movement in Scotland and was famous for being a fanatic. It was disturbing, though, to hear the hatred in the chaplain’s voice and the fervent way in which Master and Mistress Bycroft said amen.

  After this inflammatory grace, we were able to sit down to our meal, but conversation still didn’t flourish, for the chaplain read to us throughout most of dinner, from the works of St. Augustine, and even when he stopped, shortly before the end, the only conversation consisted of Mistress Bycroft catechizing her son and daughters to make sure they had paid attention to the chaplain.

  When dinner was over, I sent Dale, who though not really hurt had received some bruising when she fell and was in any case obviously worn-out, to rest. Meanwhile, I allowed Mistress Bycroft to take me to her parlor, where I seized the chance to explain that I was anxious to resume my journey because we were trying to catch up with my cousin Edward and recall him to Sussex. “Has he been here, by any chance?”

  “Why, yes,” said my hostess. “He slept here the night before last and left early yesterday morning. He was going on to the Thursbys.”

  So we were now only a day and a half behind him. “We wanted to go straight on to the Thursbys in the hope of finding him there,” I said, “but one of our horses has gone lame.” I had been thinking. “I would like to see my manservant,” I said. “He’s looking after it.”

  Brockley, duly summoned to speak to me, said that the horse was improving. “There is a cut but not, I think, a wrench. I’ve dressed it and I fancy that we’ll be able to continue tomorrow.”

  “I’d like to see for myself,” I said, staring hard at Brockley to indicate that I meant I wanted a little private conversation.

  “Of course, madam.” Brockley picked up the signal. “If you will come with me to the stable . . .”

  Presently, stooping over the gelding’s foreleg in the stall, I said: “There’s no chance that we could get on our way to the Thursbys this afternoon, is there, Brockley? If Dale rests for an hour . . .”

  “Dale needs longer than that, madam, and so does this horse. Besides, dark would come down on us before we could get so far. It’s nine miles or thereabout, or so you told me.”

  “I know. But we’re close behind Edward now and I don’t want him to get to Scotland ahead of us after all. And this place! I’m afraid all the time that either Dale or I will say the wrong thing and give ourselves away. This house isn’t just pious, it’s . . . it’s . . .”

  I could hardly find the words to express it. I did not myself know how genuinely I believed in God. He was supposed to be a God of love but I had seen too many horrors to be convinced of that. When not traveling or otherwise prevented, I attended church once a week, as most people did, and in times of trouble, as Dale knew, I might say a private prayer or two. Mostly, though, I left religion out of my thoughts and conversation alike. The Bycroft obsession with it seemed to me like a distortion of the mind, and the savage attitude of the chaplain was frightening.

  “I didn’t see you at dinner,” I said to Brockley. “I hope you’ve eaten. But if you’d been there, you would have heard the chaplain more or less damning the Protestant leader in Scotland to hellfire!”

  “I daresay,” said Brockley, and as he replaced the dressing on the gelding’s fetlock, he gave his rare chuckle. “I’ve been hearing from the other grooms how the lady of the house goes down into Grimstone with comforts for the poor and to help the wives with their lyings-in and instructs them in the true religion practically without stopping. Some of them tell lies about when their babies are expected, so as to get it all over before she arrives to harangue them when they’ve other things to think about! But I think we’ll have to put up with it until tomorrow.”

  There was nothing for it. “Very well,” I said, and went back to Mistress Bycroft, who sympathized with my anxiety to find my cousin and took me to her own room, so that we could both kneel down by her priedieu and offer prayers for a happy conclusion to my errand. The process, believe it or not, lasted three quarters of an hour.

  • • •

  We got away from Bycroft the next morning without anyone saying anything disastrous, and for a change, the weather was kind to us. The ride to the Thursbys at St. Margaret’s took us through some wild and barren hill country, but it went smoothly. Dale’s gelding was walking sound again, Dale was rested, and I felt hopeful. According to Helene, Edward knew the Thursbys well. He must have reached them the day before yesterday, but if he made a stay of any length anywhere, it would be with them. Once again, I was full of hope.

  However, by the time we reached St. Margaret’s, just before noon, Dale was drooping again and her horse was once more showing signs of lameness. I was relieved that our ride was over. Like Bycroft, St. Margaret’s was defended, with an encircling moat and a curtain wall topped by battlements. It was a further reminder that the Scottish border was close. The Scots had a wild reputation. Cecil had once traveled to Edinburgh and he had told me something of the north. Their border had always been liable to trouble; it was a state of affairs that went back for centuries. Raiders still from time to time swooped across into England to seize sheep or cattle. The English pastures, on the whole, were lusher than the Scottish ones and the stock correspondingly fatter.

  Once past the gatehouse and the frowning wall we discovered that St. Margaret’s, though it didn’t greatly resemble Withysham, was obviously a former abbey. I supposed that this explained its name. It was built around three sides of a cloistered courtyard, and adjacent to it was a chapel nearly as big as the house. I wondered gloomily whether the Thursbys were as pious as the Bycrofts.

  But they were not. Euphemia and John Thursby turned out to be older than the Bycrofts but much sprightlier. They were a pair of small, jolly, rotund peopl
e, red-cheeked and bright-eyed, Robin and Robina Goodfellow in the flesh. (Aunt Tabitha did not believe in such things and once beat me for even mentioning them, but at Faldene, the servants had believed in Robin Goodfellow, the mischievous fairy who could either wreak havoc or confer blessings. They regularly placated him by leaving dishes of milk out for him at night, which the cats usually drank.)

  The Thursbys were amazingly alike, even to the point that when they smiled, each revealed a gap to the left of their upper front teeth. I was not surprised to learn when, after washing and changing I rejoined them in the parlor, that they were second cousins and had had to get a dispensation to marry.

  They chatted merrily about themselves and seemed to enjoy their resemblance to each other, for it even extended to their clothes. His doublet and her gown were made of the same deep green velvet with yellow flowers embroidered on it.

  Their home was a delight, its stern outer walls a complete contradiction to the comfort within. I had been shown at once to a bedchamber, as though it were taken for granted that I would stay the night, and it was a delightful room, the walls elegantly paneled and hung with pleasing tapestries, and gracious mullioned windows overlooking the cloisters and the knot garden. All the hearths that I saw looked as though they had been enlarged to accommodate welcoming fires instead of the meager affairs that were in keeping with vows of poverty. The knot garden was exquisitely laid out with low box hedges to outline the beds, and even the stableyard had a couple of apple trees.

  “The horses eat the windfalls,” Mistress Thursby said. “And so do the stableboys, and why not?”

  They obviously loved their house and enjoyed showing it off to guests. They were apologetic even over a mild delay in serving dinner. “Our steward is not here just now. He is a Scotsman with family over the border—as indeed we ourselves have—and went off yesterday, to see a kinsman who’s been ill or had an accident or some such thing,” Mistress Thursby said. “Our household isn’t being overseen as well as it is when Hamish is here. He’ll be back soon, of course, but he’s missed, I assure you! He is so attentive to detail. We have a fair amount of company, even in this lonely place. We breed horses and people come to buy our stock at times, and now and then, of course, groups of traveling players come by, or a stray peddler or merchant. I am expecting an uncle of mine soon—he comes each year to stay for a few weeks. And of course, we often see our neighbors the Bycrofts. Although to tell you the truth, the Bycrofts . . .”