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

by Buckley, Fiona

  “Well,” I said now. “All right. We’re all agreed that neither I nor Brockley killed Rafe, but somebody did. He was found at the foot of a tower as though he’d fallen, but when we were hiding in Isabel’s Tower, Gladys found out that there were whispers saying I might have done it. Someone noticed that he—that Rafe—should have bled more if he’d been alive when he fell.”

  “The whispers obviously worried Lady Thomasine and her son,” Rob said. “They wanted to hide the fact that there’d been a murder at all. Think it out. The Mortimers wanted to make Rafe’s death look like suicide, and to pretend that you had simply left the castle in the normal way, if rather early in the morning. When the rumors started up, saying that you had murdered him, that can’t have suited them in the least! They wouldn’t want a hue and cry after you. You were on their consciences. So when they found that Gladys was within their reach, they decided to lance the gossip, like a boil. They would put the blame on Gladys and her witchcraft, and make a nice satisfying end of the business! Clever of them, really. They could put the lack of blood down to another of her magic spells. Silly, pointless spells if you stop to think about them but if you once get people worked up enough about witchcraft, they never do stop to think. They don’t ask sensible questions. They’ll believe anything.”

  “You don’t believe in witches either?” I asked.

  “I believe in very little, as a matter of fact,” said Rob. “I go to church because it’s the law. Still, there may be a God. Someone or something created the world and put people in it. But no, I can’t believe in witches. They seem quite absurd to me. The things they’re supposed to do are so ridiculous. Why in the world should Gladys decide to make Rafe jump off a tower? But, as I said, no one was likely to ask that. For the Mortimers, she was the perfect scapegoat.”

  “It’s strange that people saw the lack of blood but not the stab wound,” I said.

  “Not really.” Rob shook his head. “When you gave me that detailed report at the Feathers, didn’t you say that according to what Olwen told Gladys, he was found lying on his back?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “If he landed on his back, the damage might easily hide the mark. Now then. We know he was stabbed, and when and where. We are not perfectly sure by whom, but the chances are it was Mortimer. From what you told me in the Feathers, he had reasons, of more than one kind. Still, before I set about questioning him further, are there any other candidates?”

  Reluctantly, I said: “It could have been Lewis. The Mortimers might want to protect him, I suppose. He’s Sir Philip’s friend, after all, and Sir Philip wants the marriage with Alice to go ahead. There’s money in it for him. Lewis was getting round Alice very nicely, and her father and her uncle were both backing him up, but I suppose a quarrel could still have blown up between him and Rafe.”

  “Were Rafe and Alice actually lovers?” Rob asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “The first time I tried to get into the study, I found them asleep in each other’s arms, in front of the hearth. I don’t want to think it was Lewis,” I added. “Mortimer seems a much more likely killer to me, and he was up late that night. There was still a light in his window when we set out to get into the study.”

  Gladys, grumbling to herself, came back into the room. “Got any of that ale, still? They didn’t treat me proper, while they had me locked up. They gave me food and water but never enough.” Her glance fell on the dish of bacon in the middle of the table. “You goin’ to eat all that or could I have a bit more?”

  “When were you arrested?” I asked. “I thought you were going back to the mountains.”

  “So I was, but Blod let me down. I tried to see her again, to get a message to Hugh Cooper, but the silly girl took it into her daft head to get scared of meetin’ a witch in the woods. She ran off when I stepped out in front of her, and went and told Cooper I was creepin’ round the place. I never had time to give her a proper message from me to him, or talk to him myself, because he went to the castle and told Lady Thomasine. I think he didn’t want another scene with the villagers, so he decided to put it in the hands of the castle people. I was still in the woods, hopin’ to find someone else to take word to Hugh, and the next thing I know, there are great big men with swords all over the place, and I was found and haled off to the castle hall. Well, you heard Lady Thomasine. Whole castle was full of rumors and talk about Rafe, and did he fall or did someone shove him? Mortimer took one look at me and decided I was a gift from heaven. The perfect explanation, I was. Better than you, ’cause he’d got me there to throw to the sheriff. So he had me locked up till he could put on a formal inquiry as he called it.”

  I filled her beaker and handed her some bread and bacon. Brockley remarked that Rafe had not been dead long when we found him. “Mistress Blanchard pointed that out to me when we were talking it over in the dungeon. You said, madam, that a quarrel was unlikely because the Haggards were sleeping above the study. That makes Lewis less probable. I said at the time that it’s possible to quarrel quietly, and so it is, but it’s difficult. And if Lewis did it, I should think it would have been in anger. I don’t see Lewis lying in wait.”

  “So we’re back to Mortimer,” I said. “And he really is the likely one. He was heir to the manor of Rowans after Rafe, he needed money, and he had several reasons to be angry with Rafe—over Alice, and even, perhaps, because he felt that Rafe was too close to Lady Thomasine or else unfaithful to her. Either might be possible, with a man like Mortimer. His brother-in-law says he’s not a wicked man but I’d say there’s a good streak of sheer badness in him.” Mindful of Gladys’s presence, I watched my words, but I added: “His plans for getting money out of the queen prove that.”

  Gladys, in the act of leaving the room, stopped and turned back. “I bin thinkin’. It maybe wasn’t Mortimer as did for Rafe.”

  Rob looked affronted. Gladys had been right to eat apart from us. He was willing to champion her in the cause of justice, and to please his friend Ursula Blanchard, but to well-bred Rob Henderson, who wore velvet caps on his carefully barbered fair head and spent a small fortune on his shirts and doublets, Gladys was a lower form of life. Unlike Lady Thomasine, he wouldn’t actually call her a reeking old hag, but he probably thought it.

  Brockley, however, said: “Who else could it have been—assuming that it wasn’t Lewis?”

  “I said, I bin thinkin’,” Gladys repeated. “Not much else to do, locked up in a dungeon. How about this for an idea?”

  We listened to Gladys’s theory with incredulity at first. Rob said it was ridiculous and I found it simply bewildering.

  “I don’t see why,” I said. “Mortimer’s the one with the good reasons for getting rid of Rafe.”

  “Reasons he might have but when it comes to actually doin’ things, it’s another matter,” said Gladys, which gave me pause. I remembered doubting whether Mortimer would ever actually have tried to use his forged letters.

  Brockley, frowning, said: “It’s possible …”

  “I think about it and I don’t see him stabbin’ the boy,” Gladys said. “Not doin’ it, not even if he wanted to and who’s to say he wanted to anyhow? Never even thought of it, likely as not. Look at what he did with you! He could have had you done in and carted out in sacks, and dumped somewhere but no, you’re taken to the mountains and locked up instead and not a finger laid on you. All that was his notion, mark my words.”

  Rob said thoughtfully: “There was something that my wife said to me. It was the reason why she was so anxious to get Meg out of the castle. Yes, it could add up. Mattie said …”

  I was frowning as deeply as Brockley. Something was astir in my mind; a fugitive memory which kept slipping away before I could grasp it. Rob, while he was recounting what Mattie had told him, was also watching me. “What is it?” he asked.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t know. I just—somehow—think Gladys may be right. I can’t …” I put my hands to my temples, and felt them throb ominously with th
e strain of trying to remember. “There is something I ought to remember but it won’t come. I just think—that, yes, it could be. It’s as though it feels right. Yes …” The fugitive memory wouldn’t surface but one or two other things now did so. I spoke of them. Brockley, his brow clearing, bore me out.

  “But what can we do about it now?” I said. “It’s a matter of questioning, I suppose.”

  “Ye … es.” Rob sounded doubtful. “Hard questioning can achieve results but it has drawbacks. In the last few years, Cecil has sometimes employed me as an interrogator, and I’ve learned that people can be forced into confessing to things they didn’t do. I want to get this right and know for sure I’ve got it right. I would like to get my hands on some solid evidence, I must say. So far, all we have are hints and pointers. What I would like,” said Rob wistfully, “is blood on someone’s hands or an eyewitness or an unforced confession. Ursula, Brockley, think hard. Is there anything more that you noticed or heard that might show us a way forward or help us to find one?”

  For a moment, we were all silent. Then my mind, searching for inspiration, flickered over the events of the last few days and showed me a picture, of myself standing at night in Sir Philip’s study, with the incriminating letters in my hand, telling Brockley that we must get out of the castle quickly, and warning him on no account even to breathe on the lute he was carrying. “Brockley,” I said, “that lute we bought on the way back to Vetch—do you still have it with you or did you leave it in the Feathers?”

  “I still have it,” he said, puzzled. “I suppose so, at least. I never took it out of my shoulder pack so I suppose it came back here with me. But …”

  “I have an idea,” I said.

  It was not a kindly idea. Brockley was doubtful. “What if we’re wrong, madam?”

  “Then we’re wrong,” I said briefly. “But we could at least try.”

  “But what if we just wait all night and no one comes?”

  “That won’t happen. I’ll make it an order,” said Rob decisively. “I wish we had more time to lay our plans, though.”

  “I think,” I said, “that the foundations have been laid already. Quite unintentionally, Gladys did that for us. Maybe we could build on that, so to speak.”

  The May night was warm and there was no fire in the blue parlor. I had opened one of the windows a little. The room was well lit, however, for Rob, ruthlessly giving orders as though Vetch were his castle instead of Mortimer’s, had seen to it that there were four triple candlesticks, all provided with new candles. The ornamental clock said it was the hour of midnight. Outside, the sky was clear and pricked with stars, but there was no moon. The castle walls, the battlements and towers around the courtyard, were solid masses of blackness, barely discernible, and yet I could feel them there, looming over us, encircling us, watching what we did. As on the night when I had made my first attempt to get at the strongbox, I was acutely aware of the castle’s age and its past. The darkness seemed full of the shades of those who had lived and died at Vetch.

  We waited, watching the door to the tower parlor, four of us. Rob and I were the principals, and each of us had a supporter, Brockley for me, and Geoffrey Barker for Rob. Barker was interested by the scheme if not very sanguine about its outcome.

  “I’ve got my doubts, like Brockley here,” he said in a low voice, as we waited. “Orders must be obeyed, yes, but if games with that lute fool anyone, my name isn’t Barker.”

  “You haven’t lived all your life at Vetch,” I said, and then caught my breath. As well as watching the door, we had all been listening for footsteps. We hadn’t heard any. But the door was opening. My heart lurched. If Gladys was right, then Rafe’s murderer was about to come through it. I could see the glow of a candle, carried in the hand that in all probability had wielded the dagger. Then, quietly, her slippered feet making no sound, Lady Thomasine stepped forward into the brightly lit room.

  “Well, Master Henderson, Mistress Blanchard, I am here, as you see, and alone, as I was bidden.” She was perfectly self-possessed.

  “My maid could not have come, in any case,” she remarked. “Nan is a foolish woman, I fear, and lately she has not been doing her work well. First she was distracted like all the rest because of Rafe’s death and then, a few days ago, there was a great stir because some of the servants swore they had seen a face at a window in the haunted tower. Nan was one of them.

  “She was almost prostrate with shock that day, and this afternoon, believe it or not, it all happened again! She and Olwen and a couple of the menservants were gossiping in the courtyard and Olwen cried out that someone was looking out of the tower and then, of course, all the others imagined they could see it too. Nan came running to me in hysterics. I had to give her a soothing draft and put her to bed and then I had to wake her up to help me dress for this meeting—her hands were still so shaky that I needed to do half the work myself. Anyone would think she was the mistress and I the maid!”

  Despite Nan’s shaky hands, Lady Thomasine was as elegant as I had ever seen her. Although she lived on the borders of Wales and rarely left home as far as I knew, she still kept up with the latest fashions. She was wearing the newest kind of ruff, a little bigger than its predecessors and edged with lace, and her rose-colored overgown, embroidered with golden flowers, adorned with high shoulder puffs, and worn over a pale blue kirtle and undersleeves also sewn with golden flowers, could have appeared at any court function.

  She was wearing the slippers with the cerise roses, and she also wore a great deal of the pearl jewelry which Elizabeth had made so popular. Her hair, crimped in front of a pearl-edged cap, was noticeably faded at the temples, as though recent events had aged her. But her face was smoothly powdered and her lips carmined. She was dressed for battle, I thought, as a medieval knight might put on armor.

  “I hope Nan will be better tomorrow,” said Rob gravely. “But I think that in a moment, you will agree that it is best that you came alone. I apologize for keeping you from your sleep and for summoning you from your chamber. As a matter of delicacy, I did not wish to intrude on your private quarters; and by holding this interview at this late hour, we can avoid letting the rest of the household know that you have been questioned.”

  Lady Thomasine’s fine brows rose. “I have no need to fear your questions. It is a matter of indifference to me whether the household knows or not. You have come here with armed men and virtually taken charge of this castle. You have taken it upon yourself to give orders. I thought it best to comply with grace, that is all.”

  “Barker,” said Rob, taking no notice of this, “will you go into the tower parlor and make sure that no one comes through it? And, Brockley, will you guard the door into the courtyard, please? Go and stand just outside it.”

  They went out. I heard the courtyard door click as Brockley passed through. Rob invited Lady Thomasine to sit down.

  “Is it necessary,” she asked, as she arranged herself gracefully on a settle, ringed hands clasped in her lap, “for Mistress Blanchard to be here as well? I have not made public my accusation against her. She is a member of my family after all and I have been concerned from the start with my family honor. But why must I be troubled by her presence now?”

  “I am innocent of the charge, as well you know,” I said coldly.

  “I know nothing of the kind. Well, Master Henderson. You have questions for me, it seems. You may ask them. I am listening.”

  There was a short silence. The candle flames wavered in a draft from the open window. Lady Thomasine looked at us inquiringly, and as the silence lengthened, we saw her become nervous.

  Then, in a perfectly ordinary voice, as though he were merely wondering whether it would rain again soon, Rob said: “When you stabbed Rafe, was it in here or in the study where he was found?”

  Surprise tactics sometimes work but these failed dismally. “When I did what?” said Lady Thomasine disdainfully.

  “We know you killed Rafe,” I said. “Why else did you want
Brockley and me to disappear and die in that hut in the mountains? If we had come to trial, too much might have emerged. Master Henderson and his wife would certainly have attended the trial and Mistress Henderson knew that you and Rafe were lovers—or had been, till he turned away from you to a young girl.”

  “You are mad,” said Lady Thomasine coolly, and so convincingly that for one unpleasant moment, I almost wondered if we were wrong.

  Then I heard Gladys’s voice in my head, justifying her remarkable theory.

  “Told you, didn’t I, up at the hermitage, that she’d had Pugh and Evans in her time? Past taking lovers now, she is, I said to you, and I believed it then. I thought Rafe just flattered her and played music to her. Hardly more than a boy, he was, and she nigh to sixty. Didn’t think it could go further. You think I’m just an old woman with a mind as grimy as me shawl”—Rob at this point had turned an embarrassed crimson—“but I got my sense of decency. All the same, thinkin’ about it: she’s vain. A cock pigeon spreading his tail isn’t any vainer than Thomasine. She got rid of me from the castle because I was old age on feet and she’d look at me and think: Gladys today is Thomasine tomorrow. She couldn’t stand it, so she threw me out. If it did go further, between her and Rafe, how d’you think she’d feel when she found out he’d fallen for Alice?”

  Then, as we sat there talking it over among the supper things, and I tried to drag into the light a haunting memory that wouldn’t come (and still wouldn’t, although I was conscious of its shadow even now), I had recalled other things. I had remembered how very funereal Lady Thomasine’s mien had been the day that Rafe declared his love for Alice. Her mood hadn’t lightened, even though Owen Lewis was in a fair way to ousting Rafe from Alice’s affections, almost at once. And I had also recalled that Lady Thomasine had been surprisingly close at hand that night. “She and Mortimer came into the study together,” I had said, remembering. “Yes. If Mortimer did it, why was Lady Thomasine involved at all? What was she doing out of bed at such an hour?”