“Was it Geoffrey who let the bones be removed in the end?” I said. “Did he soften in his old age?”
“His kind don’t soften,” said Gladys with a snort. “But the old castle chaplain, who was scared out of his wits of Geoffrey, died and a new man came who was bolder and threatened him with hellfire if he didn’t give Isabel and Rhodri Christian burial. So Geoffrey let the bones be brought out, though they say he had a door made, leadin’ out of the castle, to take them out through because he wouldn’t have his wife or her lover come back inside his castle ever again, even just as bones.”
“That must have been the door we came out by,” I said. “I wondered why it was there.”
“Yes, so did I. Every door into a castle makes it more vulnerable,” Brockley agreed. “Though that one’s right above the moat, I grant you. An enemy who got that far would be halfway in already. But all the same, it wasn’t a likely thing to do while the castle was still meant to hold out against sieges.”
“No, it wasn’t.” I thought about it. “That gate into the stable yard,” I said, “where Mistress Henderson and I brought you and Gladys back into the castle; that was made by Lady Thomasine’s father, for bringing in fodder. Lady Thomasine said so. It’s quite a recent addition. In Geoffrey’s time Vetch Castle was still very much a fortress. He really must have hated Rhodri and Isabel. He put the castle at risk out of sheer vindictiveness.”
“Maybe.” Gladys wasn’t interested in such military matters. “Well, there it is. It’s said that people sometimes see the faces of Isabel and Rhodri in the windows of the tower and that Rhodri’s ghost plays the harp there. They even say the ghosts sometimes come out of their tower into the rest of the castle, and that Rhodri’s harp has been heard in the courtyard and the hall, now and then, and that something terrible always happens afterward.”
“What a hideous tale … I wonder,” said Dale in a horrified whisper, “how long they’d have left our bodies in that hut?”
“Not long,” said Gladys, in comforting tones. “They’d have had to shift you out quite soon. The shepherds use the place in high summer.”
“What I can’t make out,” I said, hurriedly changing the subject, “is what the point of it all was. After all, we’d been arrested. Why take this sort of revenge on us?”
“And how did Lady Thomasine get Evans and Pugh to help?” said Brockley.
“Yes. Such wickedness. And they just did as they were told!” Dale said, appalled and bewildered.
“Oh, that’s nothing. Pugh’s from Vetch stock himself,” Gladys said. “He’s her first cousin—a by-blow, of course. Her father’s younger brother made love to all the castle women under forty and a few who were over it. To him, she’s both liege lady and kinswoman. As for Evans, his family have been at the castle since they first built the mound. She’s his liege lady too. And more.”
She gave her ghastly cackle again and Dale, looking shocked, said, “Surely you don’t mean … ?”
“Course I do. She’s slept with them both in her time, and others, like as not. She likes to be worshiped, that one. Reckon she’s past taking lovers now, but she’s always got a page boy or a minstrel—Rafe Northcote it’s been lately—trotting after her like a little dog. There was talk about her when she was young, before she went to Ireland and married, and after she came back, too—well, Bess is her husband’s child, I daresay, but I wouldn’t put money on Sir Philip being a real Mortimer. He takes after her, so who’s to guess who his father was?”
I remembered the laughter among the Vetch villagers when Brockley and I were rescuing Gladys from them. To them, no doubt, Lady Thomasine was a figure of fun.
“Sir Philip thinks he’s a Mortimer,” I said, “but possibly isn’t?”
“I daresay. It’s a great name. He’d rather be a Mortimer than a mistake. Who wouldn’t?”
“Well,” Brockley said at length. “You’ve told us a tale, Gladys, and we’ve told you ours. But”—he turned to me—“what now? I think, madam, that we’d better get back to Tewkesbury. You should tell Master Henderson what has happened. He will speak for you to the sheriff of Hereford. The sheriff must take control of the search for Rafe’s killer. He can search Mortimer’s document chest as well while he’s about it.”
I looked into the fire. “Madam?” said Brockley.
It had been Lady Thomasine who first wanted me to look into her son’s affairs, wanting discretion, for his sake. I no longer cared about her wishes, or his neck. But the desire for discretion had not been Lady Thomasine’s alone.
“The queen and Cecil wanted secrecy,” I said. “At least until they knew what Mortimer was really up to. We can put Rafe’s death in the hands of the authorities—with Rob Henderson to back me, I’d risk that—but not Mortimer’s schemes against the queen, if he really has any. If we do that, the secrecy is gone. I wish I could have just one more try at Sir Philip’s study.”
“But you can’t go back to the castle now, ma’am!” cried Dale. “It’s a mercy that you got your daughter out of it.”
“Yes, it is. But I hate to leave a task unfinished.”
“I can’t see what choice you have, madam,” Brockley said.
“No, indeed,” declared Dale with vigor.
Brockley’s inexpressive features were very misleading, and he knew it too. He really did enjoy making jokes with a perfectly blank face. He saw that I was still hesitating, and chose this moment to indulge his little quirk.
“Madam, you can hardly hide in the castle and creep out at night to search the study. Not unless you skulk in Isabel’s Tower like one of the ghosts.”
The scheme I wanted came into my head then, all complete. Brockley, watching my face, said with sudden misgiving: “No, madam! No, Mistress Blanchard, it isn’t to be thought of.”
“We can get into the castle and into that study by night, quite easily,” I said. “Through Isabel’s Tower. Why not? As you say, Brockley; every door into a castle makes it more vulnerable. We go in by the entrance that Geoffrey de Vetch so obligingly made—the way Lady Thomasine brought us out. Then we walk through the tower and out by the door into the courtyard. Both those doors have ordinary locks. I expect I can open them. We can go straight across to Aragon, carry out our task, and then leave again. If we need to rest, we can shelter in the tower itself until daybreak, and be away before it’s fully light.”
“Sleep in a haunted tower?” said Dale in a hushed voice.
“Well, yes.” I was thinking while I talked. “There wouldn’t be anywhere else. We can’t sleep in the open; it isn’t warm enough. There isn’t any other shelter nearby except maybe for barns belonging to the village and we might be caught if we went near the village. But we need only stay in the tower for a few hours. No one goes there; it should be quite safe.”
“Madam, no!” Brockley was horrified. But I refused to heed him.
“Tell me, Brockley, are you carrying any money? You usually have your purse on you. Was it on your belt when we started from the keep last night?”
“Well, yes, madam, it was, but …”
“Is there enough to buy a couple of horses? We’ll need horses, to get back to the castle on.”
“Ponies,” said Gladys. “Good strong hill ponies. The man Griff works for, a landowner he is, he keeps a few pony mares as well as his sheep. He’s generally got something for sale, and with sweet tempers and good mouths. He breaks them in himself and makes a good job of it.” She looked at us wickedly, head on one side. “I’ve a fancy to come back to Vetch with you.”
“There’s no need for that,” I said, but Gladys overrode me as I had just overridden Brockley.
“Like to see Mortimer and his lady mother get their comeuppance, I would. Yes, both of them. I’d wager it wasn’t all her. You think he doesn’t know you were brought up here? Probably it was all his idea. I wouldn’t know why he killed Rafe, but I’d wager he did, and he’s scared out of his wits that you’ll say so to the sheriff if you ever get to see him. Hah! I want to k
now what happens, and who’s to bring me word if I ain’t there with you? And it ain’t just curiosity. You stopped me being stoned and then Mortimer and Lady Thomasine tried to kill you. I’ll not forgive them for that. Maybe I might even help in some way. I know Vetch well. I ought to. Forty-six years I spent there. I won’t be a trouble to you. I’ll get back here on my own. When you’re on your way again, Hugh Cooper’ll help me. He’s reasonable enough when he hasn’t got a pack of villagers all round him. I’ll tell him I came back because I was homesick but I’ve seen it was a mistake and decided I’ll settle for the hermitage after all.”
She looked around at us and something in the air of the hermitage changed.
On the face of it, we were four most unimpressive people. Gladys was an aging and unlovely crone. I had once been a lady-in-waiting to a queen and wife of a well-to-do Frenchman, but just then, with my dirty gown and tangled hair, I more closely resembled a beggar woman. Dale and Brockley were no better, and as for the hermitage, our refuge, it was a grubby, squalid cell.
Yet something came into it then which was not grubby, not squalid, not commonplace. Rafe, only a day or two ago, had sung a ballad about a knight who, in a dark and filthy cave, saw the gleam of gold and gems and found a beautiful sword with a golden scabbard and a jeweled hilt. I had a good memory—that tutor had set store by training our memories—and I could recall some of the words. Rafe had used that last, risqué verse to embarrass me, but it was an earlier verse which I now remembered. The ruby shone amid the mire, with pure and undiminished fire; the gold all damascened remained amid the murk, unharmed, unstained.
My fealty to Elizabeth remained too, unstained either by our grimy condition now, or by the way Elizabeth had once used me. She might have betrayed me, but she had done it for love of her realm. As I had realized, back in Thamesbank, she and it were facets of the same thing and anyone who loved England must perforce keep faith with her queen. Which meant that I must keep faith with her. I would make my future home in France but nothing would ever change my feeling for the land where I was born.
Within my mind, all these things welded themselves together into a single shining shape like a sword. Almost, I could see the golden scabbard; I could draw the blade and behold the blue-white edge of the steel—feel the hard, cool jewels of the hilt against my palm.
And the others sensed the change. I saw it in their eyes, that they too had glimpsed the gold and ruby gleaming through the dirt.
“Brockley,” I said, “and Dale, and Gladys. It may be that Mortimer is laying a scheme which in some way threatens Elizabeth. I hope it is not so, but it is my duty to find out if I can. I think I should try again. It could be done.”
Brockley made a last-ditch objection. “I’ve explored the castle, maybe more than you have, madam. There are doors from the upper floors of that tower out onto the west wall and the south wall. Those doors have bolts on the outside. Now, are you sure the door into the courtyard has an ordinary lock and not a bolt? You can’t pick a bolt.”
“I’m quite sure,” I said, once more blessing my tutor’s training. He had taught us not only to memorize poetry, but to look at things when we were out walking and remember what we had seen. “And,” I added triumphantly, “I still have the key to Aragon that Lady Thomasine gave me. What with finding Rafe dead, and bundling us into that dungeon and then sending us off to die on the—Mynydd Llyr, you call it, don’t you, Gladys?—she never took it back.” I felt in my hidden pocket, found the key and brought it out. I held it up. “Here it is. We can walk straight in.”
Brockley met my eyes and then nodded slowly. Dale bit her lip and put her hand on his arm, but he took her hand and held it firmly and she too met my eyes and gave me, if unwillingly, her nod.
“And God be with us all,” said Gladys.
14
Isabel’s Tower
“That Lady Thomasine must be out of her mind,” Dale said. “And if that son of hers did know all about it, and I wouldn’t be surprised, then he’s out of his mind too! Shutting us up in that hut like that! Didn’t they think anyone would come asking after us? Master Henderson would.”
“I know,” I said thoughtfully. “It’s very strange. Lady Thomasine implied that they were somehow going to hide the fact that Rafe was murdered. He’ll have disappeared, though—that’s for sure—and I think we were meant to disappear as well. But—four people, just vanishing into thin air? Yes, I do wonder how the Mortimers meant to explain it.”
We were in the hermitage, pounding dough to make a supply of rye bread to take with us. We meant to carry a fair amount of food. “You don’t know what might go wrong,” Gladys had said in sibylline tones. “You might not find what you want straightaway like, and need to hide in the tower for a day and try again the next night. Best be ready.”
“We are not going to spend a day in Isabel’s Tower,” I protested. “We’ll search the study for … the evidence I’ve orders to find … and be away as fast as we can.”
“I’d say we should be off without even stopping to rest,” said Brockley, “except that we’ll all very likely be frazzled and in need of some sleep. I don’t want Fran getting ill. She’s been through enough as it is. And the mistress is right; the tower’s the only shelter.”
“No harm in being ready,” Gladys insisted, and set about making rye bread regardless. Dale and I were now helping her. We could hardly start out that day, after all. We needed to get hold of some ponies first.
Brockley, who had turned out to be carrying a fair amount of money on him, had set out to find mounts for us. Griff had taken him to the village which lay at the foot of the mountain, below the woods. I thumped the dough irritably, due to impatience at the delay, and Dale said again that the Mortimers must be crazed.
Gladys snorted. “They’re neither of them quite right in the head if you ask me. But they’re crafty enough in some ways. They wouldn’t have wanted your bodies anywhere near the castle, in case anyone did ask questions. They asked Evans’s advice, I expect, about somewhere to put you. Evans’s ma came from the same village that I do and he’d know about that hut. It’s empty most of the year because the sheep only go up to the Mynydd Llyr for July and August. They’d all reckon you wouldn’t be found in time to save your lives.”
“Why on earth didn’t they kill us outright, I wonder, and take us away in sacks?”
“Maybe Mortimer didn’t much like killing Rafe,” said Gladys shrewdly. “Killing’s easy to say and nasty to do. Likely enough, he found that out. Evans and Pugh felt the same, I daresay. Three of you, as well! Be like a massacre. Shutting you up like Isabel and Rhodri were, that’ud be easier. They’d have had your bodies out of the hut afore anyone could find them, I expect. As for explaining it all away, clever folk can always invent a story. You could invent one yourself if you tried. In their place, what would you do?”
“I can’t imagine what story they’re going to tell about Rafe,” I said. “As for us—well, they could pretend that we’d left the castle in the normal way and claim that they’d no idea what had happened to us after that. They’d have to get rid of our horses but I suppose they could turn them loose somewhere well away from the castle. Mortimer could have done that at daybreak.”
“See?” The hermitage had a bread oven, at one side of its hearth. Gladys pushed the first of the shaped loaves into it. “You’re thinking up ideas already.”
“They could just pretend that Rafe had been sent away.” Dale straightened up from tending the fire, a thoughtful frown on her forehead. As always when she was upset or anxious, her pockmarks stood out more than usual. “They could say he’d been sent abroad because he behaved so badly with that girl Alice. Packed off to Venice or the Netherlands or somewhere. Later, they could say they’d heard news that he was dead of some fever or other. That would smooth everything over, at Vetch and at his home, too, the place he was going to inherit. And they could say that we’d just left, gone back toward Tewkesbury and if we hadn’t got there, we must have b
een robbed and murdered on the road. At Vetch Castle, they’d be all shocked and horrified.”
“There you are,” said Gladys, with one of her diabolical cackles. “Oh, they’d think they could get away with it, all right. Your bodies would have gone down a ravine somewhere. Plenty of those hereabouts.”
She cackled again. Repelled, I left off thumping dough and went to the door. Looking down the hill I saw two riders just emerging from the woods. Even from this distance, I recognized Brockley. The other one must be Griff, and they were bringing us a couple of ponies.
I was disconcertingly glad to see Brockley. This wouldn’t do, I thought. It was only because I was deprived of Matthew. I needed Matthew. I needed his companionship and his physical presence. Come to think of it, I had been much too impressed by Owen Lewis. Without my husband, I was becoming susceptible to male charms in general. Well, it must stop.
Once back at Blanchepierre with Meg, I said to myself, I would adapt to the formality of Blanchepierre; I would stop pining for England. The longer Elizabeth held her throne, the more secure she would become. Perhaps Matthew would eventually desist from conspiring against her. I would settle down to domestic life and maybe, I thought optimistically, once my mind was at ease, my body would become cooperative enough to bear another child in safety.
I would waste no time at Vetch Castle, I decided. If I could not examine the strongbox at once or found nothing in it, then I would give up. I would rejoin Meg as quickly as I could, and go back to report failure to Cecil. At least I would be able to say that I had tried.
There. I had come to a sensible decision. Meanwhile, I would stop worrying at the mystery of what was going on at Vetch. I then found that my mind refused to do any such thing but on the contrary continued, obstinately, to gnaw at the puzzle. Who had killed Rafe and why? And if Mortimer’s plans really did include some kind of threat to the queen, what manner of threat might it be?
To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court Page 16
