Lady Thomasine and I suggested, between us, various alternatives. He kept on showing us his wretched thumb and it nearly put me off my food. Mortimer went on talking about hawks. I was glad when supper was finished and I could go back to my quarters and set about planning the night’s excursion.
It was midnight when, reluctantly, and in a mood of let’s get this over, I left the shelter of the guest rooms in the keep, accompanied by Dale and Brockley. As we stepped into the courtyard, Brockley whispered that it was quite like old times and I whispered back that I thought so too, and sincerely wished it wasn’t. I looked up at the sky. There had been heavy rain earlier in the evening, but now the clouds were broken, giving glimpses of a waxing moon and patches of starry sky. I wondered if Matthew was looking out at the same moon and stars, and wished fiercely that I were free of this place and this task; that I could simply collect Meg and go home to Blanchepierre. I did not want to be a huntress.
The courtyard was silent and empty, but not wholly dark. I was carrying a candle-lantern, and the occasional moonlight helped. As we moved quietly across the cobbles, I was very much aware of the age of the castle; of the myriad lives which had been lived here and the violent acts which must have taken place within these walls. That was not a pleasant story, that tale of the lovers who had been shut in the southwest tower and left to perish of hunger and thirst. The castellan must have been a cruel man; it was little wonder that his wife had turned to someone who perhaps was kinder.
I wondered if at the end she and her minstrel had still loved each other, or if they had blamed each other for their misery; if love had turned to hate before they died. Involuntarily, I looked at the tower, and for one nerve-wrenching moment, as the moon came out from behind a cloud, I thought I saw a pale ghost face at one of the windows. Dale saw it too, and squeaked in fright. Then I glimpsed it again, against the sky at the corner of the tower and at the same moment heard a faint tu-whoo.
“Don’t be silly, Dale. It’s a barn owl. I expect they’ve got into the tower and I daresay that’s the truth behind those stories of ghostly faces peering out.”
“Even in daylight, ma’am? Olwen was telling me she once saw someone peering out at noonday.”
“Barn owls sometimes hunt by day,” Brockley whispered. “Keep your voices down. Have you got the key, madam?”
Lady Thomasine had supplied me with one, as I asked. I unlocked the outer door of Aragon, and we crept in. We left the door ajar and Brockley placed himself just inside it, ready to warn me if anyone approached from the courtyard. Dale and I tiptoed through the porch and into the blue parlor. The fire had died down but it still cast light enough for us to see our way to the door of the study.
This might be locked too, Lady Thomasine had said, but the key would be on the lintel over the door. I reached up and found it at once, but before using it, I gently pushed the door and it yielded. Putting the key back, I nodded to Dale, who moved to the stairs and positioned herself there to listen for any sound of movement in the rooms above.
Wary of making any accidental creak, very conscious of the people sleeping overhead, I inched the study door carefully open and stepped inside.
Then I stopped short. Sir Philip must have used his study earlier, for here too, a fire had been lit. The day had been chilly and he would have needed warmth. The glow of the embers and the lantern between them showed me the room quite clearly. There was a big desk with an inkpot and sander, both of brass; a tall candlestick to match; a small dagger with an ornate golden hilt, for opening sealed documents. There was another little knife for sharpening quills, and a supply of quills in a carved ivory holder.
The room also held a chair and a polished settle, and the wooden floor was strewn with rugs and not with rushes. There were shelves of books and boxes and the strongbox which I had come to inspect was on the floor by the window. I saw it at once. But there was no question of searching it tonight, for the study was occupied.
The firelight and the lantern revealed more than just the furniture. They also showed me the two people who lay fast asleep in each other’s arms in front of the fire, on a pile of cushions borrowed perhaps from the settle.
Whether this was or was not the sleep that follows love, I couldn’t tell. They were both fully dressed. They looked endearing, he with one arm cast protectively over his companion; she with her head resting trustfully in the hollow of his shoulder.
Rafe and Alice.
I edged out backward, closing the door with infinite care behind me.
I would have to try again tomorrow.
9
The Fearless Suitor
In contrast to dinner, breakfast at Vetch was positively haphazard. Food was set out in the hall for the household in general to take, but those who wished could breakfast in their own rooms. Lady Thomasine nearly always did. The morning after my failed attempt on Sir Philip’s strongbox, the Brockleys and I breakfasted in the guest rooms and, over the food, we discussed the previous night’s adventure.
“It’s always like this,” I said, dredging up exasperating memories. “Whenever I want to search a room, I find ridiculous obstacles in the way. A servant appears to light a fire, or someone decides to work in his study at three in the morning or comes in to fetch something, and I end up hiding in a cupboard.” All these things had happened to me in the past. “Now it’s a pair of lovers asleep right in my path. I feel sometimes that I’m being watched over by the opposite of a guardian angel.”
“You’ve never been caught, madam,” said Brockley blandly. “Perhaps your guardian angel was working harder than you thought.”
I tried to look annoyed but found myself regarding him with affection—spruce in his brown working doublet and hose, his high forehead gleaming from the recent application of soap and water, his wiry hair, brown except for the silver at the temples, neatly combed. Breaking bread with his shapely horseman’s hands, he was a thoroughly wholesome and reassuring sight. His face was as usual quite expressionless, but there was a smile in the depths of his blue-gray eyes.
“You’ll manage it in the end, madam,” he said, and his pleasant voice, with its slightly rustic accent, was calmly confident. “You always do.”
“Thank you, Brockley. I hope you’re right.”
Dale said: “Ma’am, will Lady Thomasine not want to know how you got on? What will you tell her?”
“That I had to give up the attempt last night, because someone was moving about upstairs and I feared I might be discovered. I shall tell her I mean to try again tonight. I shan’t mention Rafe or Alice. Their love affair is none of my business.”
From where Dale was sitting, she could see out of the window and across the courtyard to the great hall. “Lady Thomasine is in the hall now, ma’am,” she remarked. “She has just passed across a window.”
“I’ll go across, then. I’ve finished eating.” I drank down the last of the ale in my beaker and stood up. “Let us hope,” I said, “for better luck tonight.”
“Best put a shawl over your head, ma’am,” said Dale. “It’s raining again.”
The previous night, Brockley had prophesied a family quarrel among the Mortimers and the Haggards. The moment I set foot in the hall, I realized that the quarrel was in full and acrimonious flower. Lady Thomasine was certainly there, but so also were Sir Philip, the three Haggards, and Rafe Northcote, who stood side by side and hand in hand with Alice, at bay against a tapestried wall. Their elders seemed all to be shouting at them at once. I came a few steps into the hall, pulling off my damp shawl, and then halted. My report on the previous night’s excursion was the last thing on Lady Thomasine’s mind just now.
“… such ingratitude!” William Haggard was purple with fury. “Nothing but a serpent’s tooth. Your uncle and I have worked for you, given thought and time and effort to making the best possible plans for your future …”
“And for your happiness!” cried Bess, her eyes brimming.
“I have never been so offended.” That
was Sir Philip. “Owen Lewis is my friend—a very good friend. Ten years ago, at the court of Queen Mary, I was caught up in a scandal through no fault of my own, and obliged to leave the court and come home. Owen wouldn’t let his father forbid him to visit me. He stood up to his father and stood by me. He will be here this very day, expecting to find a smiling bride-to-be and you choose this very morning to announce …”
“We could leave it no later, sir.” Rafe’s chin was up. “Alice cannot go through with the betrothal …”
“Alice will most certainly go through with the betrothal. A pretty return for Owen’s loyalty if he comes here to find her trying to avoid it.” If fury had turned Haggard purple, it had turned Sir Philip Mortimer white. “He will be here before noon and …”
“If only you had listened to us at Christmas!” wailed Alice.
“Listen to the babblings of a silly girl and boy who have exchanged a kiss under the mistletoe and think they’ve plighted their troth for life?” Lady Thomasine was shrill with indignation. Abruptly, she turned on Bess. “I believe you have taken great pains with your daughter’s education, my girl, and had her instructed in Latin and Greek but she doesn’t seem to have learned anything of importance. I have never approved of intellectual education for girls. It seems to addle their common sense.”
“The queen studies Latin and Greek, or so I’ve heard.” Bess, staggered by this attack, tried feebly to defend herself, and catching sight of me, turned to me for support. “Mistress Blanchard knows her. Mistress Blanchard, isn’t it true that the queen loves her studies?”
“I daresay she does!” snapped Lady Thomasine, before I could frame an answer. “And look at her! Unmarried still at thirty. And here is Alice, with a head full of education and no sense of any kind, or filial obedience either. In love with Rafe? What nonsense!”
“It isn’t nonsense! Rafe loves me. He’s written a song for me!” Alice cried. “He has told me the words. It’s about a beautiful sword that was found in a dark cave, and he likened me to the sword …”
“You silly girl. Rafe wrote that song more than a year ago and it is not a proper song to dedicate to a young girl in any case. If you were older and wiser, you would know that. Young men will be young men, but oh, Rafe, how could you mislead poor Alice so? Listen to me!” My hostess was exquisitely dressed and shod as usual but outrage had put new lines on her face. She looked as though she had been eating a plum and bitten a wasp. “There is no question of a marriage between you and Alice, no question whatsoever. You are my son’s ward and cannot marry without his consent, which you most certainly will not get. How could you behave so deceitfully? After all we have done for you …”
“But why can’t I marry Rafe?” Alice demanded. She moved nearer to him, holding his hand more tightly. “We love each other. Why is it wrong? He’s suitable. He has an estate. He’s told me all about it—there’s a flock of a hundred sheep and deposits of copper …”
It was a pathetic plea, a sop to what she saw as adult obsessions, far removed from the all-engrossing matter of mutual desire. From the sound of it, she and Rafe had not been caught last night, but had whistled up this morning’s storm themselves, by defiantly announcing their intentions.
“It’s wrong because we have made other and better plans for you!” shouted Haggard. “Lewis is wealthy, far wealthier than this young puppy. You will have …”
“I don’t want to marry an old man! Not even if he owns every single one of the Brecon hills!”
“Oh, Alice, how can you, how can you?” The tears were now pouring down Bess Haggard’s face.
“You’ll do as you’re told, my girl, and one day you’ll thank me,” bellowed Haggard, and striding forward, he seized his daughter’s arm and wrenched her forcibly away from Rafe. “If he’s had you, God help him—and we’ll get the truth out of her, don’t you doubt it!” he added, rounding on Rafe. “You take heed, boy. You may not be my son or my ward, but you’d best get out of my sight before I knock you flat. How dare you trifle with my daughter?”
“You can knock him flat if you like, brother-in-law, but I’d rather do it myself. Oh, what is the point of all this talk? There’s nothing to talk about. Rafe, get yourself to your chamber and stay there until I come.” Mortimer’s voice was grim.
“What about Alice?” I considered Rafe to be oversexed and unreliable but to his credit he now displayed a decent anxiety for his beloved’s welfare.
“Alice is none of your business. I am utterly ashamed of you. Your father,” said Mortimer furiously, “was also my friend, as good a friend as Owen Lewis. It is a shocking thing, to see my two best friends betrayed at the same moment. I still miss John Northcote, as much as if he died yesterday and not two years ago. We met when I was sent as a boy to learn courtesy in your grandfather’s household. I was eleven years old then, and John was sixteen, and I looked up to him.”
For a moment, Mortimer seemed almost overcome by his memories. Then he said: “Your family has a tendency to weak lungs, as well you know. You are fortunate, for your chest seems sound, but your grandfather and your father both died young. Your father was married early, at your grandfather’s wish, for the sake of ensuring an heir, and your mother, poor lass, was little more than a child herself, still only fifteen when you were born, and she died bearing you. Later, when your father became ill, he asked me to be your guardian if he died. He had no other living relatives except you yourself, and although I was only a friend and not a relation, he trusted me.
“He inherited Rowans,” Mortimer said, “before he was twenty and he didn’t find it easy. The first thing he had to deal with was a dishonest steward who was falsifying the proceeds from the wool sales, and pocketing the difference. I was fourteen then, but bright enough at figures to help John with his accounts, and I was the one who found the discrepancies in the records—and the places where the steward had altered them. He threw the man out and got someone more reliable and he was grateful to me for my help. By then, he was almost looking up to me.
“And so he chose me to watch over you, and in return for his trust, I have tried to do as much for you as he could have done. And how have you repaid me? I ask myself: what would John say if he could see you now?”
“I hope he would have been on my side,” Rafe said bleakly. He looked vulnerable now. “He wouldn’t have scorned me like this.”
“I advise you,” said Haggard, still gripping his daughter’s arm, “to do as your guardian has bidden you, and go before I beat you to jelly here and now.”
“Quite right. I’ve said enough for the moment,” Mortimer snapped. “Away to your chamber, Rafe, and wait for me there.”
“No!” screamed Alice. “Don’t hurt Rafe!”
“To your chamber!” thundered Sir Philip, and advanced on his ward with clenched fists.
“I’ll go, I’ll go. But don’t hurt Alice! Please don’t hurt Alice!”
“Leave Alice to us!” Haggard shouted.
“On the whole,” said a quite new voice from the porch door, “it might be wiser to leave her to me. I may succeed better than any of you, if I have a fair chance.”
We all spun around. The man in the doorway had been brought in by Pugh, but as so often at Vetch, the unfortunate butler hadn’t been able to perform his office. The uproar must have drowned his first effort, and finally, the new arrival had got in ahead of him.
The newcomer removed a dashing blue velvet cap, darkened by rain but brightly adorned with a golden brooch, and made us all a most courteous bow. “I am Owen Lewis of Nant-y-gwyn in the Brecons. Nant-y-gwyn means the White Stream,” he added to Alice, speaking directly to her as though they were alone together, and the scene into which he had walked had no existence. “There is a waterfall near my house, which pours down the hillside in a streak of white foam. But it’s not the only cascade in my valley. There are four more. Beautiful, the place is, as you will one day see for yourself.”
“Owen! You’re here already! We expected you today, but yo
u are so early!” said Mortimer in confusion.
“I could get no farther last night than Ewyas Harold, on the Dore, but I pressed on this morning, anxious to make my bride’s acquaintance. My man is unsaddling my horse. Will someone be kind enough, perhaps, to welcome me in?” said Owen Lewis mildly. “It’s raining and I’m wet, and your butler and I have been standing here unheeded for several minutes.”
There was a moment in which we all gazed at him in silence. I was still close to the door and he was quite near me. I remember very well the powerful impression he made on me. It was so powerful that I stepped back, reminding myself that he had come to meet Alice; that I was merely a guest, and a married woman at that. In truth, if I had met him before I met Matthew, and if he had shown the slightest interest in me, I think Matthew would have been lost in his shadow.
Owen Lewis was by no means an old man. He was certainly older than Alice, but at most he was in his thirties. He was dark, which I suppose is my preference, for Gerald had been dark, and so was Matthew. Owen was shorter than Matthew and a little more heavily built than Gerald, and as he now removed his damp cloak and resigned it to Pugh, who looked relieved to have something useful to do, I saw that his costly blue doublet was cut to accentuate a broad chest and shoulders. His square, symmetrical features were not only strong but staggeringly handsome, and his deep-set dark eyes were vividly alive. His voice was deep and steady. But most impressive of all was his air of assurance. It emanated from him like a vigorous wind or the scent of the sea. We could all sense it.
The pause lasted for an appreciable time. Then Rafe, not looking at anyone, walked to the far door of the hall, which led to the tower parlor, and went out.
Alice was gazing at Lewis in silence. I looked at her and I actually saw it, the moment when her cosmos changed and the foundations of her world shifted under her feet. Then her father pushed her forward and because she had been well brought up, she automatically did the proper thing—which was to curtsy to Master Lewis. He lifted her to her feet and gave her a kiss, but a very restrained one, before handing her back, not to her father, but to her mother, apparently not noticing Bess’s tearstained face.
To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court Page 11
