It was the same honor then, coupled with her determination to make Castle Thorncombe the site of her wedding and her future home, that made urgent an explanation of her uncles drowning. To that end she had appealed to the Queen. The Queen had listened sympathetically and had agreed as to the dubiousness of the facts in the case, which hardly had the color of an accident.
Lifting her head to take the comely young woman in, the Queen had inquired, “Yet, pray, who would want such a man as your uncle was, dead before his time, save his Irish enemies?”
The young woman had reminded her royal mistress of her late uncles proclivity for Irish refugees as servants. By report, the castle was full of them, beneficiaries of Sir John’s charitable impulses. Was it not conceivable that one of them had taken a long-waited revenge? “Certain,” Mistress Frances said, “my uncle had one enemy at least—he who killed him. No man falls into water, drowns, and then climbs into his boat again for appearances sake.”
Faced with such cogent reasoning, the Queen had promised to do something. But since the promise nearly a year had passed, Mistress Frances’ nuptials approached apace, and the mystery had not been solved. Sir John lay in his tomb unavenged—his suspicious death a blot upon the Challoner escutcheon.
The bride-to-be paused for a moment in the center of the garden, her noisy companions now beyond earshot and offense. She rested near a pool, whose pale, clear water was as smooth as a swath of French silk. Beneath the surface she saw the golden carp, moving furtively in circles. And she thought of the lake in which her uncle had drowned. How and why?
Her meditation was interrupted by a new sense that she was being observed. She looked around her and saw, in a window far above, a woman of pleasant and intent expression. For a moment their eyes met, then the woman in the window disappeared and Mistress Frances moved on. It was late afternoon now. The pale October sun seemed as remote in the heavens as the prospect of happiness.
Aileen Mogaill, the youngest of the Irish maids of Thorn-combe, stopped to catch her breath. She had been lugging two full buckets of water from the wellhouse to the castle kitchen, and her arms and shoulders had begun to protest the burden. She sat the buckets down, thinking her rest much deserved, and wiped her brow with her neckcloth. She had been at these labors for the better part of an hour by her reckoning, without so much as a pause to scratch. Besides, she had seen nothing of the hatchet-faced housekeeper who monitored these duties all the afternoon, and she supposed the old woman had gone off to nap in one of the bedchambers, or to growl at her husband. Gray-eyed, ruddy-cheeked, and eminently nubile, Aileen Mogaill looked with dismay at her reflection in one of the buckets. Beneath her white cap, her hair was a fright, tumbling in undisciplined dark curls around her ears. Her small face, distorted in the water, stared back like a gnome’s face, mockingly. She looked up at the gloomy pile of the castle itself and felt a sudden chill of apprehension.
The cause of this chill was not her usual complaint, that as the daughter of a prosperous Irish farmer she should be better than a maid, or her general dislike of the castle and of England, or hatred of the housekeeper and the steward, her husband. These were small matters now, matters that had given place to a greater concern. For she had during the past year embarked on a dangerous course; just how dangerous, she had only recently come to understand.
She picked up the buckets and continued toward the castle, still thinking of what she had done. How she had seen on the very afternoon of her late master’s death something the full significance of which had only become apparent later, when backstairs gossip had confirmed her suspicions.
And what she had seen was this: her master and another engaged in a furious quarrel while the rain fell, not twenty feet or more from where she stood before hurrying out of the rain into the warmth and dryness of the kitchen. Then she had thought nothing about it. It had been a quarrel that had not concerned her. And later no one asked her what she had seen or heard, nor was she disposed to volunteer information.
But time had taught her worldly wisdom—or so she had thought when she had concluded that her knowledge might be turned to gain, and she had spoken thereafter by cunning indirection and subtle hint to that person her knowledge most touched; been understood, and come to terms: her continued silence for a modest supplement to her scanty income.
By such small means Aileen Mogaill had hoped to save enough to secure her freedom and return to Ireland.
But lately she had begun to doubt the wisdom of her bargain. Would not, after all, one who had murdered a knight hesitate for long to murder his maid if it appeared to present advantage?
It was a question well to be asked.
It was a question urgently to be answered.
Aileen had seen lights, heard footfalls, glimpsed shadows in the castle where none should have been at such hours and places. She thought she was being watched, followed. A menace she had felt, a chill to the bone, a premonition of evil, and her prayers and devotions, practiced in the still privacy of her quarters, were insufficient to allay her fear.
How else could these things be explained, she decided, except by her own rash action?
He who sups with the devil must use a long spoon!
She had supped with the devil. She had been foolish. And now God only knew what price she must pay for it.
An unprepossessing pair of birds indeed, these Stocks, thought the Queen of England when she first saw them.
It was still early in the morning and chilly in the Presence Chamber despite the great number of attendants, lords temporal and spiritual, and higher gentry gathered there to gape or petition or advise England’s Majesty, and whose whisperings had now ceased out of curiosity to learn just who these lesser lights of creation might be who had the honor of presentation before them. Cecil was giving an account of the Stocks’ heroism at Bartholomew Fair—not for the Queen’s sake, who remembered it well, but for the audience. Eloquently he described the danger to the Queen from the moon-mad, bloody-minded, Bible-thumping Puritan, Gabriel Stubbs—at large and menacing among the stalls and stench of Smithfield.
Had it not been for Matthew and Joan Stock, an enormity of earth-shaking proportions would have befallen.
Cecil finished his narrative and there was a sprinkling of applause, muted by the inevitable envy felt toward ones who had found themselves in the right place at the right time and now were to be rewarded for their good fortune.
The Queen had greeted the Stocks in that ingratiating way she had with the common folk, addressing them as countrymen and friends. They had kissed her bejeweled hand, been favored with the
royal smile, and her sour old-womans breath. Now she commanded them to rise.
“So it is to you that we owe our life,” she said. “We are truly grateful.”
“England most of all,” Cecil added politicly.
The Chelmsford constables response did not displease her, although it was very brief and made no effort to flatter. “Such is the subjects privilege if the occasion presents itself.”
“The occasion did present itself,” the Queen replied. “Yet only you—and your good wife—stepped forward to seize it by the forelock.”
To this conversation the constable’s wife contributed little, and that pleased the Queen well, for she had no patience with garrulous females, especially at court, which she generally kept clear of wives on principle. Joan Stock, however, had a pleasant, honest face and modest regard. She was well-dressed but not above her station. When she had been bidden to rise, she stood without fidgeting. Unlike her husband, whose nervousness was manifest in his sweating face and trembling hands, the wife seemed marvelously composed. And that spoke well for her, too, for although the Queen could not abide presumption or arrogance in a subject, she was ever an admirer of courage and it was this quality of which the simple countrywoman seemed possessed.
“The full extent of our gratitude we have yet to consider,” the Queen said. “As for now, another matter of business is at hand in which both of y
ou may be of service.”
The Queen paused, and with a little flick of her wrist she beckoned to a slender young woman with pale, serious face, who now came forward from among the Maids of Honor and stood at the Queens right hand. “This is Mistress Frances Challoner, niece of the late Sir John Challoner of Derbyshire, knight and baronet. Mistress Frances believes her uncle's recent death was foul play, and to our mind such a supposition is not beyond the realm of possibility, despite her good uncle’s well-allowed reputation as a soldier. Sir Robert had told 11s that your endeavors in our behalf are not the first instance of such service; that you are skillful bonesetters to join each part of a mystery and make it whole and plain.”
“Your Majesty will find no more diligent servant in such a cause than Matthew Stock,” Cecil added.
“More than diligence is wanted,” the Queen said. “Intelligence, cunning, the skill to ferret out that which others would fain keep concealed. The world knows how curious we are to be informed when any of our subjects is slain. How much more a knight of the realm, lest the blood of the dead man cry out for vengeance.”
Fixing her eye on Matthew the Queen dropped her voice to a husky whisper. “Sir Robert will later acquaint you with the more particular parts of Sir John s death, if he has not already done so. The sum is that we wish to send you both to Derbyshire. Not as open officers but as lawful spies. You will give out among the servants that you are sent by Mistress Frances to act as steward and housekeeper, respectively. And she will write to the present occupiers of those posts to alert them of your coming.”
“The present steward is aged and infirm—and I think not competent in his duties,” the young heiress added by way of elaboration.
“These servants are ever a closemouthed lot,” the Queen said. “To each other belowstairs, they will speak volumes and hand about the private vices of small and great like unwashed linen, but to those in authority they act with vexing discretion. They will need the spur rather than the bridle—and we are averse to torture. Therefore you must find a middle way to the same end. If your spying proves Sir John drowned, as the coroner’s jury said, so be it. If otherwise, you will hie yourselves to London again and report the fact and the factor, if possible. Meanwhile, keep Sir Robert informed by letters. He is our agent in this business. But you must act with dispatch. Already we fear the trails cold, Sir John having been dead all this year.
Matthew Stock said that he would do as was commanded and with a will.
“Your sojourn may last several weeks, perhaps a month,” said the Queen.
“If it is a year, Your Majesty, it will be well so it were done to serve,” Matthew replied with a bow.
“Excellent. When can you leave for Derbyshire?”
Matthew looked at his wife and she back at him. “Forthwith,” he said.
“Good. That pleases us well. Let us then make quick end of a slow proceeding. A month we give you, no more. Now, Sir Robert will instruct you as to your journey north. He will also see that your expenses are taken care of. Your mission accomplished, we will once again consider your reward for Smithfield. As for now, take this purse along with our gratitude for your pains. And may God cover you both with His softest wings."
Matthew and Joan followed Cecil out of the Presence Chamber. They passed the solemn watch of the Gentleman of the Black Rod, the official whose duty it was to allow no one to pass the threshold without permission, made their way through a host of important-looking persons waiting their turn for an audience, and then down the grand staircase. When they were at a relatively private corner of the palace, Joan told Matthew that it was Mistress Frances Challoner she had observed the day before standing alone in the garden. “Just as I supposed in my heart, although how I concluded it was she, I cannot say/’
Cecil gave Matthew instructions as to when and how they were to travel and under what guise. By coach as far as Buxton, then by horse and cart to Thorncombe so as to dispel any impression that the Stocks were more than they seemed. Mistress Frances' letter of introduction to the household servants was to be sent ahead by post. Matthew and Joan were to carry additional documents verifying them to be husband and wife, steward and housekeeper. Even as they spoke, their personal belongings were being prepared for the journey, for Cecil had never doubted that Matthew and Joan would accept the assignment.
Cecil now shook their hands warmly and bid them Godspeed. But with his valediction went a solemn warning. He did hope they understood the mission involved some risk. “If there’s a murderer at Thorncombe Castle, he’ll not gladly welcome you within the park pale. Be discreet, therefore. You will be steward and housekeeper. Say nothing, do nothing, that will allow it to be thought you are otherwise. And trust no one. If trouble falls in your way, there's precious little I can do at such a remove.”
“We are prepared for anything,” Matthew said confidently.
“I don't doubt it in the least,” Cecil said, smiling broadly. “Again, Godspeed you both and so farewell.”
“It was like a dream, the whole of it,” Joan exclaimed when they were in their chamber again and waiting for the last of their gear to be removed.
“A dream?”
“The audience with the Queen, goose! Who would have thought that I, Joan Stock of Chelmsford, whose father was a baker and he the noblest of his line, would someday kiss the hand of England's Queen and have her thanks as well!”
“Or such a princely gift,” Matthew said, thinking of the purse they had been given. It was made of fine silk, and the contents were enough to keep a gentleman in clean linen for a year or more. If the Queen intended greater rewards, Matthew was confounded to know what they might be. Were they thus to be made rich for doing no more than an honest subjects duty? As grateful as he was for the gift, he was not sure he liked being paid for such service.
“And did you see the gown she wore!” Joan continued in her ecstasy. “How splendid it was! And the emeralds on her bosom!”
“Am I no clothier that I should overlook such treasures,” Matthew replied, “or fail to appreciate their cost? It's said the Queen loves emeralds.”
“Derbyshire?” Joan inquired suddenly, remembering that they were about to embark for the place. “That is near Scotland, isn't it?”
“Almost, I think,” replied her better-traveled husband, although his own knowledge of geography was sketchy.
“It will surely be cold then—and wild.”
“It will be cold. A hard, inhospitable country, full of moors, hills, ravines.”
“And perhaps a murderer,” she mused darkly, as the glory of Elizabeth's court faded trom her mind and was replaced by more threatening images of desert wastes, solitary keeps, and the stolid, sullen folk who inhabited them.
It had been a long morning for the near-seventy-year-old woman, even if she was Queen. Besides the Chelmsford constable and his wife, she had granted audiences to three peers of the realm, the Lord Bishop of London, a contingent of merchants from Amsterdam, and received the tearful petition of the wife of a man
recently drawn and quartered for treason, that the malefactors bodily parts be removed from the spikes on London Bridge and decently buried and that his estate not fall by way of escheatment to the Crown. She had granted the request. She had gossiped for a half hour with the Spanish ambassador, had a vigorous debate with one of the Privy counselors over a new law then being considered in Parliament. She had chastized one of her ladies in waiting for the low cut of her bodice (why, one could see flesh to the navel and below!), which globular spectacle had so entranced the good aforementioned bishop that he was undoubtedly at home this instant composing sonnets in homage to those twin peaks of mammary perfection.
She was so weary she felt surely God must have added another decade or two to her years. The rheumatism in her right arm plagued her mercilessly. The senseless chatter of her women gave her a headache. Dismissing the women, she told her bodyguard to stand at a distance, and motioned to Cecil to come forward.
“Were th
e constable and his wife not everything I said?” Cecil asked.
“The man seemed frightened out of his wits,” she replied crankily. “That constable of yours stuttered when he spoke. And the woman, she’s not dumb, is she?”
Cecil laughed. “Hardly. Joan Stock can talk up a storm when she wills. I’ve heard her myself. They were nervous. What can Your Majesty expect? But believe me, there are good heads on those shoulders. And honest hearts within.”
“I’ll take your word, Robin.” Yet she was skeptical and made a face to show it. “Words are leaves, the substance consists of deeds— the true fruits of a good tree.”
“Pray, give them the month. You’ll see.”
“The month. I’ll give them that, and their expenses, too. Pray I have not given them rope to hang themselves. Who would not stint to murder a knight would hardly spare a country constable with a long nose. I very much fear he is a knight in shabby armor we have conjured up to be Mistress Frances’ champion.”
“Perhaps,” said Cecil. “Yet he may prove like the Knight of the Red Cross in Master Spenser’s poem you so much regard. That is, an unlikely fellow who proves a true champion when tested.”
She considered this, then said, “Well, I am heartily glad I did not make Matthew Stock a knight for his trouble at Smithfield.” “Saving your life isn’t worth a knighthood?”
“His wife saved my life. Get your facts straight, Robin. She was not dumb that day, I’ll tell you, but gave full voice in my danger.” “And a very good thing too, for which Matthew Stock deserves a knighthood. His actions at Bartholomew Fair were more than yeoman service.”
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