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

by Buckley, Fiona

  I could think of no new theories about Rafe’s murder. Brockley and I, in our dungeon, had thought of every possibility and found proof of none. The possible threat to Elizabeth offered more chances for speculation. Elizabeth was vulnerable to scandal, as she had already learned, when the wife of her favorite, Dudley, had died in mysterious circumstances. Could there be another scandal concerning her, going back ten years? Could Mortimer’s abrupt departure from court a decade ago have something to do with it after all? Lady Mortimer had said he was involved in a duel over a woman, and had claimed not to know any details. But what if Elizabeth had been the woman? Perhaps Mortimer had fought a duel against someone who was spreading scandal about her, or had evidence of scandal …

  I pulled myself up sharply. I didn’t like that train of thought and didn’t propose to mention it aloud. I wished I knew the truth about that duel. It was possible that Mortimer might have fought on Elizabeth’s behalf ten years ago, but kept in mind what he had learned and was now proposing to use his knowledge for purposes of blackmail. One thing was certain: if scandal against Elizabeth was involved in any way, then she and Cecil certainly ought to be warned and the investigation, equally certainly, should be discreet. We must be very, very careful not to get caught.

  Brockley and Griff were almost here. I went to meet them. “You’ve got some ponies, then. They look sturdy.”

  “They’ll do,” said Brockley. “They’d better. The lies I’ve had to tell! Griff here introduced me to the landlord he works for, and I told him I was buying on behalf of a wool merchant who wants pack animals that can be ridden as well. I said I was on foot just now because my mare went lame a few miles back and I had to leave her.”

  I had decided to adopt a tone of casual cheerfulness with Brockley. “You’re a plausible rogue, once you set your mind to it,” I said.

  “I suppose I’m to blame for this insane scheme,” he said. “It’s on my conscience, madam, and I wish you’d give the idea up. But if you won’t, I must do my best for you.”

  He had bought some secondhand saddlery as well—a couple of well-worn saddles with saddlebags, and basic bridles with snaffle bits and no nosebands. “We could set out at once,” I said.

  “Got to let the bread bake first,” said Gladys, who had come out to look at the ponies. “First light tomorrow, when we’re fresh; that’s best. I got a ham we can take along and some goat’s cheese. Griff’ll have to milk the goat and feed the chickens while I’m gone.”

  “I bought some flasks for water, too,” Brockley said. “We can carry them in the saddlebags. We may want some during the night in the tower. And Griff’s found a bit of rope for bundling stuff up so as we can carry it. It looks like his mother’s washing line but as I can’t speak Welsh and he’s hardly got any English, I couldn’t ask, though we’ve managed well on the whole, with sign language.” He grinned and I saw in him the adventurous gleam which had in the past made him such a blessing. He always counseled caution and urged more ladylike behavior on me, but when it came to the point, he was the best comrade in the world.

  We started out at dawn the next morning, Brockley on one pony with Dale perched uncomfortably behind him; me on the other with Gladys as my pillion rider. Gladys had supplied a salve and some linen wrappings for my sore calves, and I was grateful, but I wished she wasn’t riding with me, for she smelled terrible. Brockley said she would be a nuisance and shouldn’t come at all, but she was determined and we dared not leave her behind in case she somehow told on us after all. Despite the debt she owed us, I think we were all rather afraid of her.

  We carried blankets by using them as saddlecloths, which was more comfortable for the pillion riders, who had to do without saddles and would otherwise have been jolting about on the ponies’ spines. Each of us had a bag of food rolled up in a fleece and tied to our backs with lengths of what Gladys had confirmed was Griff’s mother’s washing line. “Well, her spare. Careful, Bronwen is. Always keeps spares of everything.”

  With the ponies carrying double, our journey was slow, but our tough little mounts served us well. I did not think my mare Bay Star could have coped with the double weight. I was very fond of Bay Star though, and wondered what had happened to her and to Speckle, and whether I would ever get them back.

  It took two days to get back to the castle. The weather was overcast but fortunately dry. We lodged overnight in a farmstead near Ewyas Harold and made a few extra purchases in the little town, including some stouter footwear (we had left our riding boots in the keep guest quarters and my shoes were now letting in water), candles, a couple of lanterns, and a lute. The lute was Gladys’s idea and neither Brockley nor I approved of it. “We’re not really going to pretend to be ghosts,” I complained. “We’re just going to be as invisible as ghosts, that’s all.”

  “A few twang-twangs in the night might keep nosey folk away,” said Gladys. “You thought of that?”

  “No,” I said. “Besides, Rhodri’s shade is supposed to play a harp. We can’t afford a harp and anyone with an ear for music would know the difference. The minstrel, Gareth, for instance! It might just fetch people out to see who was playing games. The castle can’t be entirely populated by timid mice! I don’t see Pugh or Evans being frightened of a few twanging noises.”

  “Quite right, madam.” Like me, Brockley had adopted a brisk tone when we talked together. “We could draw trouble on us rather than keep it away.”

  “You have the lute now, all the same,” said Gladys. “There’s useful it might be, after all. Or can’t any of you play it?”

  “I can,” I said. “But I’m not going to.”

  “I can’t,” said Dale sadly. “It’s a skill I never learned. But Roger plays.”

  “Just about,” Brockley said. “Not that I’m in practice but I could manage a tune or two if need be, though I don’t see the need of it now. Oh, very well. We’ll take the lute, but in my opinion we’d be fools to use it.”

  The farmstead had been comfortable, and while there, I managed to have a thorough wash. But a long ride and a night in Isabel’s Tower now lay ahead, a prospect so depressing that before we got there, I was regretting the whole enterprise. We could have reached the castle well before the end of the second day, but we did not want to enter the tower until darkness had fallen, so we waited in a small wood, moving off the track and out of sight of it. We had a piece of luck in that we found a spring, so that we could drink freely from the flasks we had filled at the farm, and then fill the flasks up again.

  While we waited, we talked our plans over once more. Gladys was disappointed that we only intended to search Mortimer’s study. “What about Rafe?” she said. “You fall over him lying dead on the floor and don’t want to know for sure who killed him? Aren’t you goin’ to try and find out?”

  “We can’t,” I said. “Of course we’d like to know who did it, but …”

  “I’d reckon it was Mortimer,” Brockley said. “It could have been Owen Lewis, but Mortimer’s most likely, judging by the lengths his mother went to, to hide the fact that there’d been a murder at all.”

  “I agree,” I said. “We don’t know why but I can think of reasons. Perhaps Rafe and Lady Thomasine were lovers and Mortimer resented it.”

  “He never resented Pugh or Evans,” snorted Gladys. “Why Rafe?”

  “Maybe it was the other way about,” said Dale unexpectedly. We looked at her questioningly. “I mean,” said Dale, “that perhaps that’s why he was so very angry with Rafe for making advances to Alice. Maybe he felt that Rafe was betraying Lady Thomasine!”

  “It all sounds quite unreasonable to me,” I said irritably, “but then, the Mortimers seem to be unreasonable altogether. I can’t unravel them! But of course we shall report Rafe’s death to Master Henderson, and he can decide what to do. One thing’s certain—we can’t go round the castle waking people up and questioning them. We’re ghosts—remember?”

  “So’s Rafe. They say murdered men walk,” said Gladys horribly. />
  “That’ll do, Gladys,” said Brockley. “Mistress Blanchard is right. No doubt we’d all like to go into this business of who killed Rafe. It could even be mixed up somehow with Mortimer’s plans for getting his hands on a fortune. I can’t see how, but when you’ve got two mysteries close together, it seems natural to wonder if they’re parts of just one mystery. But we can’t do it ourselves. We have to leave it to Master Henderson. And trying to scare us with talk of Rafe walking won’t help.”

  “He won’t walk,” I said. “If everyone who died by violence walked afterward, the world would be full of wandering spirits.”

  “And who’s to say it ain’t?” said Gladys. “Maybe we can’t all see the spirits, but they might be there.”

  “Gladys,” I said. “Just be quiet!”

  Secretly, I was becoming afraid of lurking in a haunted tower, and creeping back in the dark to the room where I had all but trodden on Rafe’s body. I was thankful that I need not do it alone.

  When night fell, we emerged stealthily from the wood. We couldn’t simply ride to the foot of Isabel’s Tower because the moat was in the way: we had to find the place where we had met our escort when we were brought out of our dungeon. We had to go slowly, for the night was very dark indeed. The cloudy sky had grown very heavy as evening fell and it looked as though more rain was on the way.

  When we had forded the stream which fed the moat and found the foot of the path up to the castle walls, we dismounted. The hardy ponies could be left out, but Brockley, who had paid more attention to the castle’s surroundings than I had, took them to a stretch of pasture with an elm copse in it, which would give them some shelter if the rain grew heavy. He hobbled their front feet, so that they could wander slowly and graze, but would be easy to catch in the morning. With luck, he said, we would be away at dawn and no one would ever know they’d been there.

  I hoped so. I also hoped very much that Bay Star was not shivering out of doors in this unseasonably chilly weather. She had Arab blood and she felt the cold.

  While turning the ponies loose, Brockley discovered that one of the elms was hollow. We bundled the saddles and bridles inside, where they were out of the weather and well hidden, too. Then burdened with our fleeces and blankets, food bags and water flasks, we set off to climb the path on foot.

  A watchtower loomed above us and halfway up I brought us all sharply to a halt because I had glimpsed, between the battlements, the lantern carried by one of Mortimer’s unnecessary traditional sentries. We remained quite still, waiting, and were glad now of the darkness. We were not likely to be detected while we stayed silent and motionless.

  Presently, the lantern went away and we could move on again. Gladys and Dale both puffed and panted on the slope and I muttered at them to be quiet. To save their breath, we slowed down, which stretched my nerves to breaking point. It felt as though we were to spend forever creeping up toward that wretched tower.

  Once we were up, we turned right and stole along the narrow way between the west wall and the moat, leaving the tower behind. Here we got along much more quickly, which was just as well, for the threatened rain had begun, in big, cold drops. As we reached Isabel’s Tower, we heard a distant rumble of thunder and I had no difficulty in putting my lock picks into the keyhole, for a flash of lightning obligingly showed it to me. I was glad the lightning had held off until now. Earlier, it might have revealed us to the sentry on the watchtower.

  Opening the lock proved absurdly easy. I did it in less than a minute. We took our loads inside. Brockley lit a candle and with its help we found our way through to the room on the courtyard side of the tower. Brockley set it down in a corner well away from the windows. Its small circle of light showed us a patch of bare stone wall and a stretch of dusty floor. There was nothing alarming to be seen but Dale at once said, uneasily: “There’s such a feeling about this place, ma’am. I don’t like it.”

  I agreed with her. When I came through the tower with Brockley and Lady Thomasine, there had been no time to notice it, but in the dead of night, it was there and inescapable. Darkness is always frightening, but here it seemed tangible. Beyond the circle of the candlelight, it hung like a heavy curtain, which seemed to stir whenever a draft moved, as though disturbed by unseen presences. The gooseflesh rose on my skin and I found myself straining my ears for stealthy sounds beyond the light.

  Brockley’s voice, however, steadied me. “There’s nothing to fear. We’re all here together. Are we leaving our bedding here, or going up a floor, madam? Going up might be safer, though we’ll have to be careful that candle doesn’t show. We’ll have to find the stairway and …”

  Another flash of lightning came and obligingly if briefly displayed the entire room around us: the courtyard door, the door to the dungeon steps, and a round archway beyond which I glimpsed a steep spiral stair leading upward. The arch was like a dark mouth. I had been on the point of agreeing with Brockley that we should go up one storey, but I changed my mind. A massive crash of thunder followed the flash. As it died away, I said as brightly as I could: “We got into shelter just in time, I think. With luck the storm will be over by daylight. I think it will be all right to rest here, when we get back from Aragon, Brockley. Let’s get straight on to search that study. The courtyard door is over there. I saw it just now. I’m sure that’s the one. If we …”

  Lightning came again, showing me the faces of my companions. Dale’s was tired and strained, Gladys’s was witchlike, and Brockley’s appeared to be listening. “Brockley?” I said. “What is it?”

  Another growl of thunder came and went. Then Brockley said: “It’s raining.”

  “I know. It was raining when we got here. It usually rains during a thunderstorm.”

  “Listen!” said Brockley.

  I listened. But I still didn’t take it in. I had laid such careful plans. It was not possible that a mere rainstorm could overset them. Brockley, however, took up the candle again and led the way back to the outer room and the door by which we had entered. It was still unlocked and he pushed it open. “Madam—come and see.”

  I went to his side. “Just try to step out into that,” Brockley whispered.

  I had no need to step out. The lightning flickered again and showed me all too clearly what he meant: the glittering rods of the most torrential downpour I had ever seen. It barred our way out as effectively as any bolts or bars.

  “That would soak even our thick cloaks through in a moment,” said Brockley. “We should be wet to the skin before we’d gone two yards and we have no change of clothes.” He looked down at his feet. “These shoes that we got in Ewyas Harold are a lot better than the ones we had before, but I wish we could have found some real boots there. These would never keep out rain like this! We’ll have to wait until it stops. If it does stop,” he added ominously.

  I understood what he meant. That rain was not only heavy but relentlessly steady. It wasn’t going to slacken for a long time yet. We were not going to spend a day in Isabel’s Tower, I had said. But I had not taken mountain weather into account.

  “Even if we did brave it,” Brockley said, closing the door, “we can’t leave the castle until it stops. Fran can’t ride through such weather and neither can you, madam. I’d as soon not venture it myself. So why risk getting drenched now?”

  “But if we can’t move from here until it stops and we can’t move in daylight either—and we can’t—then we might be here all through tomorrow!”

  “Quite,” said Brockley.

  “It may stop at any moment,” I said hopefully.

  “Not it. All my bones are aching and they don’t lie. Set in, that is, till dawn,” said Gladys, almost smugly. “Told you we ought to be ready,” she added. “Now do you see why I said bring plenty of food? I knew something ’ud go wrong. I knew that in my bones, as well. I said, they don’t lie.”

  I had a repulsive vision of Gladys consulting her own skeleton, muttering spells and conjuring up a vision of the thing. I shuddered and tri
ed to pull myself together. “Oh, this is ridiculous! The study’s in Aragon, only just across the courtyard. Just because it’s raining …”

  “You’ve seen for yourself what kind of rain,” said Brockley.

  We made our way back to the inner room, where our bedding lay on the floor where we had dumped it. Dale sank onto it. “Oh, ma’am, I’m so tired.”

  I was deathly tired too, but I kept on protesting. “I didn’t bargain for having to hide here for two nights. It’s too risky.”

  “We’ve no choice,” said Brockley. “Just listen to it!”

  We did wait a little while longer, hoping that the rain would ease and give us a chance to cross the courtyard, but its steady sound did not change and when I went back to peer once more from the outer door, the wind sent it splashing in on me like a sea breaker. Grumblingly, disbelievingly, I gave in. We were all exhausted by that time. We must sleep as best we could and hope for a better opportunity tomorrow night instead. We settled down to rest, absurdly, within yards of an objective which I knew we dared not try to reach. We might well become ill, and it had occurred to me also that we might leave dangerous traces of our dripping persons. We would not want a hue and cry after us.

  We made ourselves as comfortable as possible. We each had a fleece, a blanket, and a cloak, and we made pillows by stuffing most of the food into one bag and rolling up the others. We lay pressed together for warmth. Dale slept in the curve of Brockley’s chest; I lay against his back and Gladys lay against me.

  Brockley’s nearness was a blessing. Gladys stank.

  Outside, the rain went on and on.

  15

  Faces at the Window