To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court

by Buckley, Fiona

  “Let us cast away formality,” Elizabeth said. “Supper is to be served here; we will all sit down and behave as friends. I am happy to see you, Ursula. Is the supper ready, Master Henderson?”

  They did not keep me waiting long for an explanation, however. Once the supper dishes had been brought in and the servants had withdrawn, Elizabeth said: “Cecil and I have a story to tell you, Ursula. It is the reason why we have lured you here. I suppose you would put it that way.” I did open my mouth to speak at that point, but she raised a hand to silence me. “I will begin and Cecil shall continue.” True to her wish for informality, she was not using the royal plural. “I can only hope, Ursula, that we can make you understand. As a child, did you study history at all?”

  “Yes, ma’am. I shared my cousins’ tutor and he was fond of the subject.”

  “Good. Tell me, did he ever mention a family called Mortimer?”

  I had come to learn why my daughter had been whisked away to Herefordshire and what the queen had to do with it. I hadn’t expected to be examined on my knowledge of English history. But the queen was conducting the examination and I could do nothing but reply.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said, although I knew my puzzlement was in my voice. “At least, that was the name of a powerful family who lived on the Welsh border in bygone times. Are those the Mortimers you mean?”

  “They are. Continue.”

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to remember. “They were barons on the Welsh Marches, very powerful indeed, with huge estates. In the fourteenth century—I think—Edward II’s queen had a liaison with one of them—Roger Mortimer. In the end, he was executed for his part in the murder of the king.”

  “All correct,” said Elizabeth. “Go on.”

  “It didn’t extinguish the family,” I said. My cousins’ tutor had been a highly moral man and he had felt strongly that such behavior ought to have reduced the Mortimers to penury and obscurity. He had described their subsequent career in tones which were quite resentful. “I think they lost most of their honors and estates when Roger Mortimer was executed, but it was all given back a few generations later. In the end, they married themselves legally into the royal line. One of Roger’s descendants married a granddaughter of King Edward III.”

  I stopped once more, and Elizabeth took up the story. “Yes. Those two had a son, another Roger, who held the title of the Earl of March. His daughter, Anne Mortimer, married the Earl of Cambridge. They were the grandparents of King Edward IV, and, therefore, are among my own forebears.” Elizabeth had her family tree at her fingertips. “But Anne Mortimer,” she said, “had a brother, Edmund. He fell out with King Henry VI and was banished to Ireland, where he died young. He is generally thought to have left no descendants. I have recently learned, however, that Edmund did apparently marry in Ireland the year before his death. His wife was Irish, a member of the McCormick clan. Now you can go on, Cecil. You may be interested to know though, Ursula, that by marriage you are a connection of the Mortimer family.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes, you are,” said Cecil. “Edmund Mortimer and his Irish wife, Deirdre, had a son, born after Edmund’s death. He was apparently reared as an Irishman and either didn’t realize that he could have come home and challenged Anne Mortimer’s descendants for the title of Earl of March; or else was discouraged from doing so. Anne married into a family quite as powerful and ambitious as the Mortimers. If they knew of her Irish nephew, they may well have taken steps to persuade him to stay in Ireland. At any rate, that is what he did. He lived and died in peaceful obscurity as did his son after him. But when his grandson, Edward Mortimer, was a young man, an Englishman called Sir Thomas Vetch …”

  “Vetch?” I said.

  “Vetch,” Cecil agreed. “Of Vetch Castle in Herefordshire. Sir Thomas paid a visit to Ireland—to buy horses, I believe.”

  “They breed good horses in Ireland,” Elizabeth said. “I have a number in my stables. Sir Thomas presumably appreciated Irish horses too. He went over there to purchase some, and he took his daughter, Lady Thomasine, with him.”

  “But she didn’t return to England with him,” Cecil said. “Edward Mortimer met her and they fell in love. They were married in Dublin and they stayed in Ireland for a year or so. Then Sir Thomas died. His daughter was his sole heiress and therefore inherited Vetch Castle. She came back to England and Edward accompanied her. He wasn’t the only descendant of the Irish Mortimers, as it happened. He had an orphaned first cousin called Mary Donnelly, and they brought her along as well, as companion to Thomasine.

  “It seems that Lady Thomasine was worried because more than a year after her wedding, there was still no sign of a child, and so one of the first things she did in England was to make a pilgrimage to Canterbury to pray for fruitfulness. This was in the days of the old religion, of course, when King Henry was still married to his Spanish queen, Katherine of Aragon. On the journey, they met another family who were also on pilgrimage to Canterbury. A family called Blanchard. One of them was named Luke.”

  “They met Luke Blanchard?” I sat up. “Gerald’s father?”

  Cecil smiled. “Mary Donnelly eventually became Gerald’s mother. Soon after the two families returned from Canterbury, Luke Blanchard asked for her hand and they were married later that same year. You never knew Mary Donnelly, or not to remember. Your family and Gerald’s are neighbors, of course, but you could only have been about three when Mary died. All the same, Mary was your mother-in-law and Meg is her granddaughter. The Blanchards keep up a correspondence with the Mortimers of Vetch Castle, and it is Mortimers in the plural, because Lady Thomasine did have children. She had a daughter the year after the pilgrimage and a son, Philip, two years after that. And, yes, it was the same Lady Thomasine who was a guest here at Thamesbank only recently. And do you know why she was here?”

  “Why she was here?” I repeated bemusedly.

  “She had heard of you,” said Elizabeth. “Your work has always been kept secret, but these things do get out. Luke Blanchard has never been officially told about it, but he knows, all the same. He has mentioned you to Lady Thomasine in letters. She did not know you were in France, though. She came here to seek an audience with Cecil and ask if he would let you help her.”

  I nearly said: “Help her?” and then realized that I was constantly repeating their words, as though I were an echo. Restraining myself, I put on an expression of polite inquiry.

  Cecil said quietly: “When I had heard her story, I confided in Her Majesty. We at once began to consider how we might tempt you home again. Then I heard that Brockley was over here, inquiring after Meg. I admit that it gave me an idea. In fact, it seemed providential.”

  I opened my mouth to say: “Providential?” but once again stopped myself, this time for fear of sounding sarcastic.

  “Lady Thomasine,” said Elizabeth, “is worried about her son. I know very little of Sir Philip Mortimer beyond the fact that he is now in his thirties and still unmarried. Lady Mortimer told me that. He was at court for a short time during my sister’s reign. He left under some sort of cloud. I can tell you nothing of the circumstances for I have no memory of him. It seems, however, that when his father Edward came to live in Vetch Castle, on the Welsh borders, he became interested in the past of the Mortimers and took to studying it. Edward seems, sensibly enough, to have assumed that the lands and titles had long since passed out of his reach. But he was still proud of them and taught his son Philip to be proud of them too. Unfortunately.” Elizabeth’s tone was dry. “Because according to Lady Mortimer, Philip does want to restore his family’s fortunes, and has wasted a great deal of money on lawyers in trying.”

  “The Mortimer landholdings, of course, were all split up long since and have been in the hands of others for generations,” said Cecil. “There were castles in North Wales, Wigmore Castle in Herefordshire, manors scattered through a dozen counties. Sir Philip may very well be a genuine descendant of the Mortimers, but too much time has gone by fo
r him to stand a chance of getting back the lands or even the titles. He can’t, for one thing, actually prove that the Edmund Mortimer who died young, was really married to Deirdre McCormick. And that ought to be that, except …”

  “That according to his mother,” said Elizabeth, “he has boasted to her that he intends to get back the family wealth all the same, if not by acquiring the same lands and titles that his ancestors had, then by acquiring others of the same value, or at least their equivalents in money. He proposes to do this, apparently, by simply asking me. He told his mother that I would certainly say yes. He said,” said Elizabeth expressionlessly, “that he had means to compel me to say yes.”

  “To … ?” I said, and then stopped. There was a silence. I was shaken. I had come back to England simply and solely to find Meg, but in spite of myself, I had grown interested in this story, and now I was shocked by the denouement. So, by their faces, were Cecil and Elizabeth.

  “Lady Mortimer can’t get out of him exactly how he intends to bring off this remarkable scheme,” Cecil said. “But it frightens her. She seems to think that it implies some kind of threat to the queen—of pressure being brought to bear on her.”

  “It must do,” Elizabeth said. “What he is asking is impossible, unless he has a lever.”

  “But what kind of lever?” I said. “What kind of pressure could he possibly have the power to apply?”

  “That,” said Cecil, “is what worries his mother and worries us, too. Lady Mortimer is desperately anxious, I may say, not to harm her son. What she wishes to do is to prevent him from harming himself by pursuing foolish schemes. That is why she wants someone like you, Ursula, to visit Vetch Castle and try, discreetly, to find out what his plans are. The fact that you are a family connection makes it simpler. Meg is already at Vetch on what she—and Philip Mortimer—take to be a family visit, at Lady Thomasine’s invitation. Now her mother will join her. What could be more natural?”

  Before I could stop myself, I had said: “Do we really know nothing at all of the scandal which made Mortimer leave the court?”

  Cecil shook his head. “It was ten years ago. You are thinking that if we knew what had happened then, we might understand better how Mortimer’s mind works—what he is likely to do now?”

  “Something like that, yes. But I don’t think I want to …”

  Cecil cut me short. “We need to find out, quietly, what Mortimer is about. If it involves anything that might injure the queen’s credit, then we can perhaps secretly frighten him into good behavior.”

  “I have never done anything,” said Elizabeth in a cold voice, “which could harm my right to the throne. But lies can be told and much made of little. I have had some experience of that.”

  I knew what she meant. She had suffered much from the scandalous gossip when the wife of Robin Dudley, Master of the Queen’s Horse, had died mysteriously, for most of England believed that the queen was in love with Dudley. Even now, though she had shown no sign of marrying Dudley, and I had heard that she had actually offered him as a husband for Mary Stuart (though that came to nothing), the scandal was not quite dead. But Mortimer could hardly hope to use that against the queen, not after all this time.

  “When we know what Mortimer’s scheme is,” Cecil said, “we will know how best to evade or destroy it. But we need to begin discreetly. With you, Ursula.”

  I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to be a secret agent or a spy again. I wanted to find Meg and take her home to France. Surely, I protested, they could arrest Sir Philip and make him tell them his plans. (I knew perfectly well that they had their methods. A day or two in the bowels of the Tower of London, and most men would tell anybody anything.) “You don’t need me,” I pleaded.

  I might have been talking to myself. “We don’t want to arrest him until we understand what we’re arresting him for. Haven’t I just explained that?” said Cecil.

  “But …”

  “You have our permission,” said Elizabeth graciously, “to collect your daughter, and take her home to your château. But you will have to go to Vetch Castle to get her.”

  “I will do so, ma’am. But I am most unwilling to … to search Sir Philip’s study while I’m there or in any other way pry into his affairs. I never want to be involved in such work again. Surely, surely, you could find somebody else.”

  “Would you be so determined,” inquired Elizabeth kindly, “if I offered you a valuable fee?”

  “Ma’am, my husband is a man of means. I have all I need.” I looked her in the eyes. “When I began to work as a secret agent, I was short of money. I needed it, to clothe and house and educate Meg. All that is changed now.”

  “My dearest Ursula. I know. Nevertheless, would you not like to have, shall we say, a foothold in England? Life is full of unhappy chances. You have been widowed once; what if it happened again? What if—for any reason—you wished to come home? It would be easier for you if you had a home here already. When your husband left England as a wanted man,” said the queen, “the house and land he had in Sussex were sequestered. What if I gave them back?”

  I stared at her and the golden-brown eyes smiled into mine. “What if I returned Withysham to you?” she said. “Or you could have some other house, if you think Withysham unsuitable. It hardly matters. The point is that here in England you would have a place to call your own. To obtain it, you need only agree to stay for a certain modest length of time at Vetch Castle—two weeks, perhaps? Surely that isn’t too long?—and do your best while you are there to learn the details of Mortimer’s extraordinary plans to extract a fortune from me?”

  “Do you blame me for this?” Rob asked, when Cecil and the queen had taken their leave and been rowed away up the darkening Thames, leaving me to “think it over,” as they put it. “I’m sorry if so. But you are needed, Ursula. You are valued.”

  After seeing our august visitors depart we had returned to the study. The supper had been cleared away, and the candles were burning down. I was very tired. I gazed at Rob with weary defiance. “I know how I am valued,” I said. “Have you forgotten the way I was once used to bait a trap for my own husband?”

  “It was for Elizabeth’s safety, and that means the safety of England. You know that.” He looked at me steadily, dispassionately. Rob was an attractive man but there was never any magnetism between us. He always talked to me as though I were another man, and I found this natural. “Cecil said that he brought Lady Mortimer here because he had heard that Dale and Brockley were visiting me. It was I who told Cecil about that. When you settled in France, Cecil asked me to let him know whenever you communicated with me, and what the latest news of you was. I do as Cecil says, as well you know. Well, when Brockley and Dale arrived, inquiring after Meg’s welfare, I naturally informed him. He and Lady Thomasine arrived almost at once. Were Brockley and Dale intending, at the end of their visit, to take her back to France, by the way?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so. So did Mattie. I let Cecil know as much.”

  “And when Cecil heard that I was pining for my daughter,” I said, “he rubbed his hands together, thinking how convenient; getting Ursula back to England will be easy. All I would need was just a little push—or little pull.” I knew I sounded bitter. “So he arranged for Meg to disappear. And now I’m here and I am to follow her to Vetch Castle. As a hawk follows the lure, or a donkey follows a carrot.”

  “Yes. But you are bound to follow the carrot, are you not? You want to fetch Meg. Well, Ursula, what will you do when you find her? Will you leave at once—or stay two weeks as you’ve been asked, and look about you—and win a home in England?” He scanned my face. “Or will you refuse both the task and the payment, because Matthew might object?”

  I sighed, rubbing my forehead, hoping that my head was not going to start aching again. “I shall accept,” I said. “I shall write to Matthew and tell him what I’ve been asked to do and what the reward will be, and say that I intend to stay at Vetch for the two w
eeks that will earn it. I shall also say that I will, if he so wishes, ask for a different estate, not Withysham. Withysham was taken from him because he had plotted against Elizabeth. I would be getting it back as a reward for services rendered to Elizabeth. He might well find that—well …”

  “Tasteless,” Rob agreed. “Yes. That crossed my mind, too. But you are willing in principle to accept property in England?”

  “Yes,” I said. To forgo Withysham was one thing. To forgo the reward altogether was quite another and from the moment Elizabeth mentioned it, I knew I could not bear to do that. “After all,” I pointed out, “why should I refuse payment for services honestly rendered? I shall say to Matthew that I look on it as an increase in our wealth.”

  “And trust that he will see it in that light?”

  “Yes. The queen spoke the truth. I do need somewhere in England to come back to—just in case. I know how fragile life can be.” Gerald had gone from full health to a hideously disfigured death in a matter of days.

  I also knew now, though it troubled me to realize it, how homesick I had been at Blanchepierre; how much and how deeply I had missed England. It would ease my heart to know that I could come here at will, and find a place to call my own.

  “I feel sure you’ll manage Matthew,” Rob said with a smile. “You’ll go to Vetch and earn your pay. You’ll do it for pay. But not for Elizabeth?”

  “Would you expect that—now?”

  “She is not just a woman called Elizabeth Tudor. She is England too,” said Rob.

  Again, I remembered my homesickness in France and how glad I had been to hear the English tongue when I disembarked at Southampton. I remembered the green of the woods and the sound of the birdsong, so familiar and beloved, so subtly different from their counterparts in France. Elizabeth was their representative, and the two were one and indivisible. Elizabeth the woman had once betrayed me, but Elizabeth of England could ask of me whatever she wished and I could not refuse her. I sighed again, giving in. “I know,” I said.