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

  “Just like that?” I had wondered a good deal about the motives of the Bycrofts. “But—they’re so pious!”

  “They overdo it,” Rob said. I knew from the glint of humor in his voice and eyes that he was trying to win me back as a friend, but I couldn’t respond. “They are so very anxious to appear committed to the Catholic religion,” he said. “There are many others. If their names were ever to reach Mary Stuart or her lords, our network would be lost.”

  “And Edward found out,” said Cecil. “Though it isn’t clear how.”

  “We have spies in his home at Faldene,” said Rob quietly. “Perhaps other places too harbor servants who listen at doors and read their masters’ letters. Bycroft and St. Margaret’s, for instance.”

  John Thursby’s voice spoke in my mind. Hamish Fraser watches over every detail of our household. We have a little joke that if anyone in it were to lock themselves into a room at the far end of the house from Hamish, and cough, the moment they came out, they would meet the maidservant he had sent to them with a licorice and horehound cough mixture. I had been relieved to know Hamish Fraser innocent of murder. But perhaps he was guilty of other things instead.

  “I know nothing of the other households concerned,” I said, “but if you don’t want Mary to learn that the Bycrofts and the Thursbys have changed their allegiance, I recommend a sharp look at the Thursby steward, Hamish Fraser. I can’t be sure, but he could be the source of Edward’s information.”

  “Thank you, Ursula. We shall investigate,” Cecil said. “We shall make a point of it.”

  “And another point that must be made,” said Rob Henderson, “is that Edward Faldene assuredly carried most of those names in his head. We could have stolen the list—Dormbois did—but silencing Edward Faldene was essential as well. And as I said, it was surer, from our point of view, and kinder from his, simply to kill him.”

  “Do you understand?” asked Cecil.

  “Yes. I understand.” Without warning, I was close to tears. “I understand completely and it only makes it worse. You have to protect Elizabeth . . .”

  “Yes.” Henderson was nodding.

  “. . . you do have to protect Elizabeth. She is England. Yet it seems that everyone else is turned into nothing; people are bought, or threatened, or killed . . . we’re all nothing but pawns on her chessboard and all as expendable as Edward, if it came to the point.”

  “Not you,” said Rob. “You are no traitor. Listen, Ursula. You think we are ruthless? What of yourself? You encompassed Dormbois’s death, did you not? I know all that happened in Roderix Fort, my dear. I arrived there less than two hours after you left it, dispatched by Queen Mary with an armed escort to demand your release and bring you back to Stirling. When Brockley went back to Roderix with Ericks, he had the good sense to leave word for the queen. He left it with one of her Maries. Dormbois is dead now, but he was still alive when I got there and he regained his senses for a while. He told me everything. He realized that he couldn’t live long. He had nothing to lose. He had a conscience of a sort, you know.”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Yes. Really. He let you buy my name from him and it was on his mind. At the time he didn’t think it mattered. You were his prisoner in Roderix and he didn’t anticipate that you’d ever escape him and talk. He didn’t know you! He was mad for you, you know. I stayed with him till he died, five days later, and he said as much to me, over and over. Frankly, Ursula, you are a menace, unattached as you are, riding round the countryside and making men like Dormbois fall in love with you. I wish you would marry and settle down!”

  “I agree, though I wouldn’t put it quite so roughly,” Cecil remarked.

  “Dormbois,” said Rob, “also told me that he believed you had somehow tricked him into drinking drugged wine and watched him fight and lose. He said he didn’t blame Adam Ericks. He reckoned it was a fair duel as far as Ericks was concerned, but he was as sure as he could be that somehow or other, you had cheated.”

  “Of course I cheated,” I said. “I had to escape marriage to Dormbois so I had to make sure that Ericks won, even if it wasn’t in a fair fight. I probably helped to save Ericks’s neck—if he was in any real danger of arrest for murdering Edward. Was he?”

  “Not after John Knox stood up at that inquiry and spoke for him! Any real chance of making him a scapegoat vanished at that moment and that, by the way, was no scheme of mine. Dormbois’s men saw a chance of finding someone to take the blame and seized it, and when they told him what they’d done, Dormbois was more than happy to go along with them. I knew nothing of it until I read the report of the inquiry. Even those of my men who were in Furness’s tavern didn’t quite grasp why Dormbois’s men were so eager to encourage the fight. I got an admission out of Dormbois while I was with him in Roderix.”

  “So it was Dormbois who told the authorities about the quarrel in the tavern? That was the substance of Ericks’s challenge to him.”

  “I know. And Ericks was quite right. Oh, he didn’t issue that challenge out of pure chivalry! He really was outraged by the smear on his name. Your Brockley just worked on that.” Rob grinned. “I feel sorry for Ericks, I really do. First a false accusation and then an assisted victory against a drugged opponent! But I did make sure that the accusation wouldn’t rise up against him at some later date. Once Dormbois was dead and beyond the reach of any law, I let it be known that there was no case against Ericks. The mystery remains officially unsolved.”

  There was a silence. Then, with dignity, I said: “I understand everything you have told me, Rob. I understand why you—did what you did, to Edward. But I can’t forgive it. I hope you in turn can understand that. I am sorry. Mattie will mind it, I think.”

  “I am sorry, too,” Rob said. “Believe me, should we in the future need to work together again, what you have said will make no difference.”

  “I hope it won’t arise,” I told him. I looked at Cecil. “I want no more secret missions,” I said. “Now . . . may I see the queen? Or am I in the outer darkness as far as she is concerned?”

  “No,” said Cecil. “She wishes to see you, as it happens. She asked me to bring you to her when we had talked. If you are ready, we can go now.”

  26

  Ancient Truths

  “You have been very foolish, Ursula,” said Queen Elizabeth. “What have you to say for yourself?”

  She must have been waiting for me, for Cecil took me to her without any delay at all, passing straight through an anteroom crowded with courtiers and ladies. I recognized most of them but no one greeted me. My unlawful expedition to Scotland was evidently known, and they probably all expected that my interview with Elizabeth would end with me being marched off to the Tower under guard.

  She was alone, however, with no guards to be seen. She was seated regally, ruffed and bejeweled, in a gilded chair, embroidered skirts spread wide, very much the queen receiving an erring underling, and her first words were ominous, yet her voice was kind.

  Cecil bowed and stood back. I knelt. “Ma’am. I am sorry. I did not want to displease you. My family begged me for my help and all I wished to do was bring my cousin back to them safely, and bring him back also to a sense of his loyalty and his duty to yourself.”

  “Well said. I will forgive you, Ursula. Just this once.”

  There was a pause.

  Elizabeth looked much as she had done when I last saw her. She was no longer a young girl. She was over thirty now, and the first trace of hardening was there in the pale triangular face. The armor of jewelry and embroidered satins, dramatic ruff, and spreading farthingale no longer protected a timid young girl but a seasoned ruler. Yet just now, she was for some reason uncertain. She was looking at me as though she wasn’t sure what to say next. I looked back at her questioningly.

  “What are you thinking, Ursula?” she asked abruptly. “You have seen my cousin Mary Stuart now. How does she compare with me?”

  “She is beautiful and accomplished, ma’am, but
. . .”

  “But?”

  Elizabeth used people as pawns. But she had done that to me before and it had made no difference then. She was England, and our safety and prosperity depended on her. Besides, although she was as powerful as her father had been, she was also a woman, and therefore vulnerable in ways that he never was. When I answered her, I spoke from the heart, to a degree that surprised me. “But no more so than you, ma’am, and my loyalty, my love, are for you.”

  Elizabeth’s face did not change. “And what of Henry Lord Darnley? Did you see them together?”

  “Yes. I understand that Master Henderson was in Scotland firstly to encourage a match, but I am not sure that there was a strong attraction on either side.”

  “Are you not? Well, news has reached us that is later than yours. It seems that Darnley has fallen ill with measles—so childish, and how typical of him!” said Elizabeth with a sudden snort—“and that Mary is personally nursing him, and all is now enchantment on both sides. I fancy they’ll marry.”

  “You wish for the marriage, ma’am?”

  “On balance, yes,” said Elizabeth. “At the moment.”

  I asked no more questions. Darnley, I supposed, was another pawn on Elizabeth’s chessboard and perhaps she hadn’t quite decided what use she ought to make of him.

  Her attention came back to me. “You declare your love and loyalty and yet you still broke my laws and went to Scotland without my consent. Oh, no need to repeat that it was a family matter.” She raised a hand to make sure I didn’t. “I understand family matters. Now. I want to hear from you the whole story—or as much of it as you can tell me without indelicacy.”

  She listened attentively to my careful and embarrassed account. She showed particular interest in my description of how I had taken command in the hall at Roderix Fort and presided over the drinking of the drugged toast and asked me to go through it a second time.

  “I understand how you felt,” she said. “I too felt it, at the beginning, when I was still at heart the Princess Elizabeth, Queen Mary’s prisoner. You had to overcome not only that hall full of men, but yourself, did you not? You had to find strength where you did not think it existed; cease to be a woman and become simply a mind implanted in a body, and take command of the other minds in the room. I am right, am I not?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Yes. That is just what it was like.”

  “Well, well. Continue.”

  I did as she asked. At the end, there was a pause.

  It was a long pause, during which she did not look at me, but at Cecil, and they gazed at each other, long and hard, as though exchanging a wordless message. The atmosphere in the room altered. It grew tense, as though that silent message were on the verge of being spoken aloud, but was being held back. And then, curiously, it grew warm, almost intimate. At last, Elizabeth spoke.

  “Well, Cecil. Do you agree?” she said. “Is it time to tell her?”

  “I think so, ma’am. I think that Ursula’s loyalty is unquestionable now. It has been amply demonstrated time and again, and since Matthew de la Roche is dead . . .”

  “Yes, quite. Nothing could be said while he was alive.”

  My astonished gaze went from one of them to the other. I had no idea what they were talking about.

  “This matter was under discussion between us as soon as we heard the news of your husband’s death,” Elizabeth said. “A grief to you, Ursula, but it left me with a freedom I had not had before. However, Cecil and I thought it best to wait until you had got over your first mourning. And then, just as the time had almost arrived, you were off to Scotland! I wish now that I had spoken sooner.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Of course you don’t,” said Elizabeth. “But let me tell you that you dispelled my last doubts just now, when you talked of that moment when you entered the hall at Roderix Fort and took control. It was as though I were listening to myself describing how I took control at my first council meeting. I shall never forget it. Ursula, your mother . . . served at court . . . before, and for a while after, my own birth. That is so, is it not?”

  “Yes, ma’am.” My mother had in fact served Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s own mother. I never knew Elizabeth to speak of her own mother but once, although I had reason to believe that she thought of her often.

  “And then,” said Elizabeth, “she was sent home, in disgrace, with child by a court gallant she would not name. She said he was married.”

  “That is true, ma’am.”

  “Not entirely,” Elizabeth said. “Your father was a married man, yes. But your mother was not sent away. She asked permission to leave the court, admitting her condition and saying that she was not willing to cause trouble, and that her family would care for her. She had a personal maid, however, who did not leave the court, but found employment with another lady-in-waiting. The maid knew who your father was. Cecil?”

  “She kept her mouth shut,” said Cecil, “and she went on working at court as a tirewoman for more than a quarter of a century, until she died, about a year before you came to court, Ursula. You were in Antwerp then, with Gerald Blanchard. After her death, a memorandum was found among her things.”

  “She had held her tongue,” said Elizabeth, “but she wrote her knowledge down. Perhaps she had a muddled idea that one day it might matter; or perhaps the burden of the secret was simply too great. We do not know.”

  “The memorandum was discovered by the lady-in-waiting who then employed her,” Cecil said, “and, wisely, she brought it to me. She too is dead now, and she was always discreet. No one knows of this but the queen and myself. I have never even told my wife.”

  “But . . .” I was beginning, with amazement, to understand.

  “You must often have wondered who your father was,” Cecil said to me. “Have you not?”

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Even more, lately—my daughter so much resembles her own father that at times I have wondered if I in any way resemble mine. But . . .”

  “I think you do,” said Elizabeth with a smile. “We couldn’t of course be sure at first that the memorandum was anything more than a flight of imagination. But it was one reason why you were accepted as one of my ladies. Then you came to court. And after that . . . time and again . . . I saw. It was there. A turn of the head. A way of standing, of speaking, a nuance in the voice. I had almost made up my mind to tell you, when you became entangled with Matthew de la Roche, who was a Catholic and supported Mary Stuart. We—Cecil and I—decided that we couldn’t tell you then. But now, we can.”

  “Ma’am?”

  “What you did in that hall at Roderix Fort,” said Elizabeth, “was very difficult. I know! Oh, how well I know! I fancy that you only achieved what you did at Roderix because you have inherited in your bloodstream the ability to do it. Just as I have. Your father, Ursula, was also my father. You are the natural daughter of King Henry the Eighth, and therefore, half sister to me. Which means,” said Queen Elizabeth briskly, while I still stood in front her, blinking and trying to think of something to say, “that in future, when it is a question of family matters, remember that your nearest adult relative, my dear Ursula, is myself.”

  I found my tongue. I had after all had a reason for asking to see Elizabeth, and I had not yet raised it.

  “Ma’am,” I said, “I asked to see you before I knew that you had already requested this meeting. Now, I know that it is doubly important. If I am really your half sister . . .”

  “You are. There can be no doubt of it.”

  “Then I will say at once that I realize and accept that I have no dynastic significance. I also promise, before you ask me, never to trade on this; never, in fact, to tell anyone. But sometimes, such things do become known, or are guessed at, and in that case, I might be courted, as someone who . . . who matters to you . . . to whom you might listen . . .”

  “What are you trying to say, Ursula?” asked Cecil, the line between his eyes deepening.

  “I wish to stop being an agen
t,” I said. “I wish to give up this life of adventure and danger. I would like to leave the court altogether and withdraw into private life. May I do so?”

  “I am heartily of the opinion that you should. I always have been,” said Cecil. “I have used you—as a pawn, as you would no doubt say—but always I . . .”

  “We,” said Elizabeth.

  “. . . always we have had a conscience about it. It would be best if you could marry.”

  “I have thought of that,” I said. “And several people apart from yourself have advised me to do precisely that. They are probably right. If I have doubts, they are because, dearly as I love my daughter Meg, her birth cost me dear, and when I tried to bring Matthew’s child into the world, the child was born dead and I nearly lost my own life. For me, marriage has its perils.”

  “These things are in God’s hands,” said Cecil.

  “That’s what you have on occasion told me,” said Elizabeth. “I don’t agree with you. I prefer to keep them in mine. I understand how Ursula feels.”

  Cecil shook his head disapprovingly. “I still think that Ursula should have a husband. She has an estate. For a woman, that is a heavy responsibility without a man, and besides, Ursula, you will be troubled by suitors. Haven’t your recent experiences taught you that?”

  “They have,” I said. “And I have in fact made my decision.”

  I had made it between the Midlands and Thamesbank, at the moment when Brockley himself said that I should marry again. It only remained to see if the man in question would respond.

  “I have a man in mind,” I said, “if you will give your consent, ma’am. If so, perhaps Sir William would make the approach on my behalf. I think the gentleman in question may be willing but I am not sure.”

  “Who is he?” Elizabeth asked.

  • • •

  I stayed at Hampton Court for a fortnight, during which time it was made clear to the court at large that I was no longer out of favor. It was a pleasant time, or would have been, except that I was longing so much for Meg and for my home. Brockley and Dale were thankful that I was not in the serious trouble they had feared. They were less thankful, though, when I told them that the queen and Cecil were interesting themselves in my marital future and that Cecil had actually written a letter on my behalf.