I was hungry, and the food was welcome. Dale ate with us, and with some anxiety, I saw that she was too tired to do more than toy with her meal. But I ate well, happy because Bridget had brought Meg to supper, and I had her beside me. My little girl was shiny-faced with washing, freshly dressed in orange damask, sparkling with the excitement of having me there, and just a little reproachful because I had been absent so long.
“I had to stay in France, darling, and because there was a civil war going on, I couldn’t risk sending for you. When you’re older, I’ll be able to explain it all. But I can tell you that the war is over now, and when I go back to France, I shall take you with me. That is, if you want to come. I know that you have been happy at Thamesbank.”
Meg considered this, her eyes going to Mattie, who said: “Your mother’s home is now in France and if you would be with her, then to France you must go. Her new husband is there, and her place is with him. The queen has given her consent.”
I detected reservations in Mattie’s tone. She liked me, but in marrying Matthew, I had married an enemy of England. She regretted it and so did Rob.
“I think I want to be with my mother,” Meg said, though in little more than a whisper, since all the attention was making her shy. Mortimer heard, however, and laughed.
“Meg, my sweeting, you can make your home with us if you choose, with our right goodwill. You’ve won all our hearts. Has she not, Mother?”
“Indeed,” said Lady Thomasine.
Mattie, however, shook her head at them, much as she had done at me in the courtyard, and said: “Flattery is bad for children.”
“Oh, come. Who’s the worse for a little praise?” Mortimer nibbled the last vestige of meat off a chicken bone and then sucked the bone to make sure. “Meg won’t have her head turned so easily, will you, Meg?”
Meg looked bashfully down at her platter. I put my arm around her and gave her an understanding hug. Mortimer caught my eye. “In time to come,” he remarked, “Vetch Castle may well be a center for good society and noble company. If Meg were living here, she would in due course have an unrivaled chance to make a splendid marriage.”
He said it in a manner so extremely matter-of-fact that I almost missed it. Then I saw the alarm in Lady Thomasine’s face and understood. This was what she had meant. He was referring to his grandiose future plans, and his tone was one of absolute, calm certainty.
“Well,” I said tactfully. “We’ll see.” Meg looked up anxiously into my face and I breathed: “Don’t worry,” into her ear, before taking a little more chicken and beginning to talk about our journey. It was too soon to embark on any searching questions.
*
“The guest rooms are here,” said Lady Thomasine, leading the way into the curious keep with the timbered house on top. Mattie, who was already well acquainted with the guest rooms, was with us but our hostess was clearly determined to show us our quarters herself. “As you can see, my family built on to the old medieval keep—the last line of defense in more warlike days. It was disused for years and became ruinous in its upper portions. My husband had them removed and we kept the basement and ground floor for storage, until he had the happy thought of building new rooms on top where guests could have some privacy. My husband,” Lady Thomasine explained, “did not care about privacy for himself. He grew up in an old-fashioned home in Ireland and thought it just a modern English fad. ‘But if our guests want it, we’ll provide it,’ he said to me. ‘It’s part of good hospitality, these days.’”
“I’ve noticed that you still keep up the old tradition of hall life,” I remarked.
“Yes, indeed. Philip wishes it. He holds the same views as his father did, so we dine with the household, though I usually breakfast in my chamber, and the guards always eat separately. I see no need to share our mealtimes with soldiers. We scarcely need a castle guard these days, of course; there is no danger now of attack from Wales. But once again, it is a tradition here. Our men even patrol the walls at night. Memories are long on the Marches. Pugh’s first name is Harold—after King Harold who died at Hastings and before he was a king was Earl of Hereford. On the river Dore, to the west of here, there’s a place called Ewyas Harold. At least, I think it was named after the prior who founded a monastery there, but he must have been called after King Harold. However, as I was going to explain, in the keep—we still call it that—you can live much as you would at home. There are two servants’ bedchambers here on the ground floor—Mattie tells me that your Brockleys are a married couple, so they can share one of them. And in here”—she opened a door to show me—“there is a small kitchen. The main kitchens are only yards away and will send in anything you want so that you can eat in private whenever you like, but if you also wish your servants to cook special dishes for you, they can.
“And up here”—she picked up her skirts and skimmed up a flight of wide, shallow stairs, as nimble as a girl on her prettily slippered feet—“are the bedchambers and parlor which my husband added. I hope you will like them.”
The rooms were in excellent order—the furniture waxed, the beds curtained in velvet, the floors strewn with sweet herbs, and the walls adorned with pleasing tapestries. I expressed admiration and Lady Thomasine, pleased, said that she would leave us.
“Two of our own servants are seconded to the keep when we have guests,” she said. “Mattie will introduce you. They’re a couple like the Brockleys and they sleep in the other servants’ room. They’re English—Jack and Susanna Raghorn—so you won’t have them whispering to each other in Welsh. In the morning, though …” She paused and looked at me, with anxiety in her eyes. “In the morning, will you break your fast with me in my chamber? I will send someone at eight of the clock, if that pleases you, to bring you to me. Then we can talk.”
When she had gone, I kissed Meg, told Bridget to see her into bed, promised to come soon to say goodnight, bade Dale find the Raghorns and see if we could all have some mulled wine to help us sleep, and asked Rob to excuse me, as I wanted to talk to Mattie alone. Then I led Mattie into my bedchamber and shut the door after us.
“How could you?” I said. “How could you?”
Mattie sat down slowly on the edge of my bed. She did not waste time in asking me what I meant. Her round face still had that unfamiliar expression of seriousness.
“Ursula, my dear, what choice had we? We were under Cecil’s orders. Meg has enjoyed it all; the journey and the stay in a castle.”
“You talk as if Cecil were God.”
“He is in Elizabeth’s service,” said Mattie.
“Elizabeth isn’t God, either.”
“No. She’s the queen of England,” said Mattie.
“I know,” I said, collapsing onto a settle. “I know. I understand that. But all the same … I thought Meg had been stolen away. I was terrified. And you knew I would be, and so did Rob, and the queen, and Cecil. They gambled on it.”
“Ursula, there was no help for it. I did my best to see that Meg was happy and safe. I insisted on coming with her for that very reason. And now,” said Mattie, “I’m going to urge something else on you. I know that you haven’t seen Meg for so long that you’re parched for her company …”
“Yes, I am.”
“But you’re hoping to take her back to France, are you not?”
“Yes. You have cared for her wonderfully well and she has been happy with you, but she wants to be with me and I want that too. Will you mind very much?”
“Rob and I will both mind but we have been prepared for it for a long time. But listen. If she goes with you to France, you can look forward to spending any amount of time together. Will it matter all that much if she isn’t here for the two weeks or so that you’ve agreed to spend in Vetch?”
“Not here? But she is here.”
“Quite. But I don’t think she ought to be,” said Mattie. “I don’t think this castle is a good place for her. You would do better to say that you wish me to buy her new clothes for her journey to France,
and send her off with Rob and myself while you continue with your visit. Say that we are going to London. We wouldn’t really, of course. We wouldn’t want to leave you here without support. We might go back to the Woodwards’ in Tewkesbury, and wait there for you. You could get word to us in a day if you needed us. I’ve already made opportunity to speak to Rob, and he agrees.”
“But … what do you mean? What is it that’s wrong here? You’d better tell me, Mattie. It might have a bearing on the mystery I’ve come to solve.”
“I don’t think so. And it’s difficult to discuss. You’ll see for yourself presently. Let me put it this way. Our home at Thamesbank is very orderly, as you know. There’s no laxness among our servants. I may sometimes giggle like a girl,” said Mattie, “but I know right from wrong and how to run a household. If I were running this one, there would be some drastic changes. Sooner or later, Meg will have to learn about the world but as yet she’s too young. Now that you’ve come …”
“Now that the donkey has caught up with the carrot, yes. Mattie, what on earth are you talking about?”
“I’m simply saying,” Mattie informed me, “that I want to take Meg away from here as soon as I possibly can.”
5
Lady Thomasine
At eight o’clock next morning, a handsome and well-dressed youth, with smoothly combed dark hair, presented himself at the guest lodgings and inquired for me.
“Lady Thomasine asked me to show you the way to her room, Mistress Blanchard.” His bow was most courtly. “The castle is confusing until you know it. You are breaking your fast with her this morning, I believe.”
“Yes, that’s so.” I had dressed in readiness, complete with a fresh ruff and a farthingale, and had been waiting for a servant to collect me. This young man, though, did not give the impression of being a servant. His full brown eyes were too direct, his voice too frank, and his clothes too good. He wasn’t Welsh, either, and most of the castle servants were, except for the Raghorns, whom I had now met (and didn’t much like, as they were dour, middle-aged, and far from clean).
In the days when Wales was a likely source of attack, I wondered if the border castellans had had to forbid the Welsh language in their castles. How undignified it would be to learn, too late, that the serving men you thought were just gossiping in their own speech were blandly discussing, in your presence and in your hearing, how best to take your fortress.
“And your name is … ?” I said to the young man as we set off across the courtyard.
“I’m Rafe Northcote, Sir Philip’s ward. Until next year, when I shall be twenty-one, that is. My father and Sir Philip were good friends. Father died a couple of years ago and left me a manor in Shropshire, but he took the view that a young man should not have to shoulder full responsibility for an estate until he had turned twenty-one. He himself inherited at nineteen, and found it difficult. For myself,” Rafe confided, “I wish things were otherwise. I am not even allowed to live there until I take over though I know Rowans is being well administered by its present steward. Sir Philip takes me there often and we look into everything.”
“I didn’t see you yesterday,” I observed.
“No. I was out moving sheep.”
“Ah, sheep. The wealth of the Marches?”
“Well, so they are,” said Rafe. “And I need to learn to manage them. Yesterday, I was helping to shift the Vetch flock to higher ground in case we had more rain.”
“Tewkesbury was full of sheep when we came through it,” I said, interested. “They were being moved off the river meadows in case the Severn flooded.”
Rafe glanced up at the sky. The sun was out, but wisps of cloud were blowing from the west. “It well may. It often does. There’s more rain on the way, the shepherds say.”
“Tell me about the castle,” I said. “Where are Lady Thomasine’s rooms—where we’re going now?”
“All the family’s bedchambers are in the Mortimer Tower.” He pointed to where the battlements of the tower in the northeast corner of the courtyard were just visible above the red-brick building. “The servants mostly live in the northwest tower behind the kitchen, and the retainers—I mean the guard—in the gatehouse tower.”
“What about that one?” Pausing, I pointed back toward the tower in the southwest corner, which he hadn’t mentioned. It was the only one that didn’t have another building in front of it, but it had an oddly deserted air and its door was solidly shut, with no key in its stout iron lock.
“Oh, that.” Rafe was amused. He gave me a sidelong grin, which undid the impression of courtliness and made him look mischievous. “That’s the haunted tower. Every castle worth its salt has a haunted tower, you know.”
Hampton Court was said to be haunted, in particular by the shade of King Henry’s fifth wife, Kate Howard, who was arrested there before she was taken to the tower and then beheaded at Henry’s orders. Elizabeth didn’t stay there often but occasionally she did and once, when I was still serving as one of her ladies, I had found myself alone, at dusk, in the gallery where Kate’s screams were still said to echo. I had heard nothing, seen nothing, but I had been uneasy, as though I were being watched from the shadows. I was not as inclined as Rafe to laugh at such things.
“What kind of ghost is it?” I asked.
“There are two. They’re supposed to be the phantoms of a medieval castellan’s lady and the minstrel she fell in love with. The husband caught them, and he shut them in the tower and left them to die for lack of food and drink. Not a pleasant end. Imagine it,” said Rafe, and to my surprise gave me another sidelong glance, as if to see if my efforts at imagining it would produce some tenderhearted feminine vapors.
“Nasty,” I said coolly.
“It’s said,” Rafe informed me, “that sometimes you can see their faces at the window and that if you go inside, even in daylight, you may hear them moaning, or hear the sound of the minstrel’s harp. The place is disused now but Sir Philip has it swept out once or twice a year and the servants who do the sweeping go in all together and look over their shoulders all the time. I went in last time it was cleaned and nothing happened, but I admit,” said Rafe more seriously, “that I wouldn’t care to spend a night there.”
“Has anyone, ever?”
“Not that I know of. It’s kept locked most of the time. It’s virtually empty, except for a few bits of furniture that no one wants. If you will come this way …”
It was a polite reminder that Lady Thomasine was waiting. The way to her apparently led through the modern red-brick house. “This is called the Aragon Wing, or sometimes just Aragon,” Rafe said. “Lady Thomasine’s father, Sir Thomas Vetch, had it built. He liked modern building styles—not like the Mortimers. They prefer things to be ancient and hallowed. Lady Thomasine says that Aragon was completed on the very day when King Henry married his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. A great party was held in the wing, as a housewarming and to celebrate the royal marriage, both at once. Careful as we go in; the entrance is rather dark and there’s a step.”
Courteously, he offered me a hand, and steered me over the threshold with a firm grip. We passed through a shadowy little entrance lobby and then through an inner door into a pleasant parlor with windows overlooking the courtyard on one side, and the tiltyard on the other. A staircase at one side led to the floor above and an ornamental clock, with a pale blue enamel surround rimmed in turn by gilt sun-flames, hung on one wall. The wall tapestries and the cushions on the settles were all in shades of blue.
“The blue parlor, for obvious reasons,” Rafe said, leading the way through to where the parlor abruptly narrowed, because a corner had been walled off to make another room. “That’s Sir Philip’s study. It looks out onto the courtyard, so that he can keep an eye on the life of the castle. The stairs lead up to a music room. I enjoy music. I sometimes play my lute for Lady Thomasine.”
“I hope I shall hear you play during my stay,” I said civilly.
Beyond the blue parlor was anoth
er room of similar size but more masculine, with a bigger hearth and a lot of antlers on the wall. Still trying to map the castle in my head, I worked out that the door to the left must lead into the great hall. But Rafe, explaining that this was called the tower parlor, because it was at the foot of the Mortimer Tower, made for a spiral stone staircase in one corner. “This leads up into Mortimer. The steps are narrow, but there’s a handrail.”
He offered me his hand again but I declined it. The wedge-shaped steps were not unduly steep. After two flights, we came to a door on which he tapped. Lady Thomasine called to us to enter.
“I’ve brought Mistress Blanchard,” said Rafe, opening the door and then flattening himself against it to let me go in first. I had to turn sideways to get my farthingale past him and as I did so, I had momentarily to press against him. It occurred to me, uncomfortably, that he had placed himself against the door for that very purpose. I could still feel in my right palm the pressure of his thumb when he took my hand at the door of Aragon. I caught his eye with a reproving frown, and was answered by an amused and knowing glint. Drawing my stomach muscles in, I eased myself and my farthingale safely by and turned my back on him.
“Here I am, Lady Thomasine. Good morning.”
“Good morning, Mistress Blanchard.” Lady Thomasine was sitting at a toilet table, examining her face in an antique silver hand mirror while her pale-faced maid put finishing touches to her mistress’s hair.
“Very well, Nan. That will do.” Lady Thomasine held up the mirror, sighed, and regretfully fingered the very faint lines at the corners of her eyes. “If only I could pull these out, or dye them, as I do with gray hairs. Thank you for bringing Mistress Blanchard across, Rafe. I’ll see you later. Nan, go and tell Olwen to bring breakfast.” Rising, she moved over to a window seat. “Come and sit beside me, Mistress Blanchard. We have much to talk about.”
To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court Page 6
