The Tudor Vendetta

by C. W. Gortner

  I let a few moments pass so he could compose himself. Once I felt he had, I said, “Tell me why your wife and Lady Parry disliked each other.”

  “I have. I told you, they argued over Henry and—”

  “No,” I interrupted. “Such enmity cannot happen overnight, that Lady Parry would ride off against all advice to the contrary. In times of crisis, women set pettiness aside, particularly when a child’s life is at stake. Something other than a disagreement over Henry must have caused this rift between them. What was it?”

  He looked haggard now, twice his age. I had finally fit the key into the lock but I did not enjoy turning it. Then he whispered, “It was because of … her.”

  My heart clenched in my chest. “Who?”

  “Our new queen.” He paused. “Philippa despised Lady Parry’s devotion to her. Philippa and her family, you see, they are…”

  “I know. You are all papists.”

  He nodded. “Philippa’s father and brother participated in the Pilgrimage of Grace. Indeed, Lord Hussey and his son so ardently upheld the rebellion to stop the king from tearing down the monasteries that they died in York by royal command—hung, disemboweled, and quartered like criminals. Lady Hussey eventually perished of grief, while Philippa and her three sisters lost everything, their family’s estate forfeited by attainder of treason. That is why Philippa accepted my proposal. She had no choice. One of her sisters, Lady Browne, had been attempting to arrange a minor post for Philippa in the household of Lady Mary, who later became our queen. I knew Lady Browne’s husband from my own infrequent travels to London—he, too, is a cloth merchant—and he arranged my meeting with Philippa.”

  Philippa’s sister had tried to find a post in Mary’s household; Lady Vaughan’s family had known our late queen, like Sybilla Darrier.…

  Trepidation filled me as he went on. “You must understand, all of us who revere the true faith dwelled in terror. The king had destroyed everything sacrosanct to us; it was as if a curse had befallen the realm. Philippa was nineteen when we wed, but she never forgave what her family had suffered nor that because of it she was left impoverished, without a place at court. Even though she did not love me, I was willing to marry her. I always lived a quiet life; I am of good but not noble birth. My kin are not court people. My great-grandfather was born here in Yorkshire; he became a landowner after establishing himself in wool trade and acquiring Vaughan Hall. To Philippa, I was little more than a commoner. Looking back now, I fear she was right. The enclosure of monastic lands decimated me; my holdings could not compete.”

  “Does your wife—did she ever mention a family called Darrier?” I had to pull the words out of my throat. “In specific, a woman named Sybilla Darrier who served Queen Mary and whose father and brothers also died in the Pilgrimage of Grace? Has anyone in your household, including this Master Godwin, ever mentioned her?”

  He frowned. To my frustration, I could tell at once he had never heard the name before.

  “Certainly not Master Godwin,” he said. “Philippa might, but she never talks of the past. After her sister failed to secure her a post at court, she urged Philippa to accept my proposal but Philippa herself—she acts as though her father and brother never existed, though I know she carries them in her heart. What I know of her trials, I learned because her sister’s husband told me.”

  Yet it was entirely possible that Lady Browne had in fact known Sybilla. I recalled Sybilla telling me about her own father and brother’s death, which had precipitated her, her mother’s, and her sisters’ escape to Brussels, where they met Renard, the scheming Imperial ambassador. He had placed Sybilla as his spy in Mary’s service. It was an undeniable connection that I would be a fool to ignore.

  Was this stranger I sought part of a circle of secret papists, bent of vengeance because of Elizabeth’s accession?

  “Here.” Lord Vaughan reined to a halt. We had reached a crossroads of sorts, the road dividing into the main one leading to the City of York and the other toward the west. It was a bleak place, windswept and rugged, scattered with jagged boulders. “We found her horse here. It was in a sorry state. I had to put it down later, as it had gone lame.”

  I looked about, holding down my cap with one hand as Cinnabar took advantage of our inactivity to munch on a dry patch of grass. The wind was rising, flecked with snow, the sky blackening at its edges. A storm approached. We had to return to the hall soon.

  “I don’t know where the actual incident took place,” said Lord Vaughan sadly. “The horse could have wandered from the site. It was in a pitiful state after being outside all night.”

  “But we know Lady Parry never reached York,” I said. “Nor did she arrive in London with Master Godwin, whose horse, unlike hers, was never found.” I did not add that I was beginning to harbor dark suspicion of this mysterious tutor sent at Lady Browne’s recommendation. There were no bodies. Was Godwin involved in the abduction, despite his outward appearance of gentility? Was he the stranger?

  Thunder rumbled overhead. Bardolf lifted his hind leg to urinate on a rock. Nothing I saw gave any indication of what Lady Parry and the tutor had encountered, other than the fact that the very isolation had ensured there would be no witnesses. If there had been a struggle, it might have been visible, the land being as parched as it was, but miles stretched between here and York where a corpse might be dumped to rot.

  My heart sank. The only benefit I had reaped from the excursion was the information imparted by Lord Vaughan, which in no manner provided any reassurance.

  I was as far as I could be from the protection of Elizabeth and the court, and even as I stumbled around in search of clues, the stranger stalking me could be preparing his next move.

  * * *

  As soon as we returned to the manor, I led Cinnabar into the stables to unsaddle and rub him down. I found Shelton nursing his headache but otherwise looking better than when I left him. He had been offered food, which he declined, he told me, because his stomach felt like “the very pits of hell.” Gomfrey had also done his stiff best to appear both concerned and solicitous.

  “That steward doesn’t care if I live or die,” Shelton remarked, with a spark of his old spirit that gave me comfort. “He makes my own time as the Dudley steward look like a bleeding saint’s. Nothing worse than a man who thinks he’s better than his position in life.”

  “True,” I said, and I told him what I had learned, admitting in frustration that I was no closer to finding Lady Parry. “But I’m going to do everything I can. That wench Agnes told me last night that no one here could be trusted, so I will question her first. What about Raff?”

  Shelton eyed me. “No sight of him. And you’ll have a time questioning the wench, as well. It seems she too has disappeared. Gomfrey told me she vanished in the night.”

  Throwing my horse brush aside, I whirled about and strode to the manor.

  * * *

  The kitchens were in an uproar, Mistress Harper with her head in her hands weeping as Gomfrey issued a stern barrage of orders. He glanced up coldly as I barged in. “Master Prescott, his lordship is with her ladyship in the solar. You can wait in the hall. We’ve had a most distressing morning and—”

  “Where is Agnes?” I demanded, cutting him off. “I am told she has vanished.”

  Gomfrey blinked. “I would not say that. But she has apparently absconded. It is hardly your concern. Mistress Harper and I will contend with it.”

  “First Lady Parry and the tutor disappear, then Raff, and now Agnes?” I retorted. “You have not made much of an example of contending with anything thus far.”

  Gomfrey said tightly, “Begging your pardon, Master Prescott, but Raff has not disappeared. The boy has a habit of running off. He can be gone for hours, days, even. He is wild as a beast and about as unreliable. Had you inquired, I would have told you as much. I am quite certain he is somewhere about the manor and will appear in due time, as he always does.”

  Mistress Harper moaned, looking ready to col
lapse as she wrung her apron between her hands. “All this work: whatever shall I do? Agnes knew how much I needed her; I don’t understand how she could do this, leave without a word or even her wages.”

  “She left without pay?” I said. “In the middle of the night, with her fear of sprites and the roke outside? Impossible.”

  “I can assure you,” Gomfrey replied, “it is not. Agnes was born in Withernsea. She knows the path home very well indeed, as she went there often to visit her mother and—”

  “I saw her last night,” I said. His entire being stiffened, even as Mistress Harper gave a small gasp of dismay. “She came into my chamber to bring candles and a pitcher of water for the morning. We spoke briefly before she heard Mistress Harper call for her. I can assure you, Master Gomfrey, she showed me no inclination of leaving this manor.”

  “Is this true?” Gomfrey directed his question at the housekeeper, to my disbelief.

  “Do you doubt my word?” I demanded, enraged; but Mistress Harper nodded. “Yes, it’s true. I did call for Agnes. The fire needed kindling, and my hands are not what they were after a long day of cooking. I found her upstairs; she told me herself she was tending to Master Prescott. She came back to the kitchens with me, stoked the fire, and then, we … we said our goodnight.” Her voice quavered with shame, as well it should have. If the housekeeper drank herself to sleep every night, she would have no idea if Agnes had tiptoed home or fallen off the cliff.

  “You should not have withheld this from me,” scolded Gomfrey. “I am the head steward: Every incident in the household, no matter how trivial, must be reported to me. Nevertheless, regardless of where she was before she left, the fact remains that Agnes is no longer here and now it is incumbent upon me to find a suitable replacement from the village.” He turned to me. “Master Prescott,” he said icily, “if you please? Mistress Harper has a great deal of work to attend to, if you wish to dine tonight.”

  I looked again at Mistress Harper, who was dabbing her apron at her eyes and avoiding my gaze as she shuffled to her kitchen block.

  Reluctantly, I followed Gomfrey. The instant we were in the inner quadrangle, I said to him, “You will not question my honor again. It seems you need reminding of who I am.”

  “Oh, I know who you are.” His tone adopted a contemptuous edge. “You have made your importance quite clear to everyone, but that does not mean I need oblige you. Lest you need reminding, Master Prescott, you are not my lord.” He inclined his head. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must make my way to the village. We cannot be without a maidservant.”

  As he moved to the hall, I called out, “Who is Hugh?”

  He paused, just as Agnes had done when I asked her. Then he said, “I have no idea whom you refer to. By your leave, Master Prescott, I bid you a good afternoon.”

  I returned to the kitchens. Mistress Harper gave me a weary look. “I cannot hear more questions,” she said. “I have so much to do with Agnes gone. You heard what Gomfrey said.”

  I echoed the steward’s words to me: “Gomfrey is not your lord.”

  She sighed. “But he is. He answers to her ladyship and oversees my charge. We are—or we were—but three servants, with poor Raff tending to the stables and gates. My lady allows Gomfrey full rein over this house. I am not surprised Agnes left, to tell the truth. Gomfrey was always chastising her for her laziness, and after that situation with the tutor—” She ran her hand over her face. “There I go again, saying things I shouldn’t. I beg you, do not press me anymore.”

  “What situation with the tutor?” I moved closer, lowering my voice. “Mistress Harper, I know something happened in this house to send Lady Parry fleeing from it. No one is telling me the truth but I will find it anyway. Now, what is this about Agnes and Master Godwin?”

  If possible, she appeared even more distressed. After gnawing at her lower lip for several moments, she finally said, “Agnes … she was never content. Were it not so difficult to find help in these parts, what with our distance from any city and their lordship’s impoverishment, she would already have lost her post. When Master Godwin arrived, she…”

  “Made advances to him?” I suggested.

  Mistress Harper did not appear surprised at my assumption. “Yes. She said she would make him fall in love with her, because he was crippled, and who else would deign to look at him? Oh, she thought herself so sly. And Master Godwin—well, bad leg or not, he’s still a man, is he not, and he reacted to her as such, or thus she claimed. She talked about him all the time, about how they would marry and move to London, where he’d find himself a position teaching a nobleman’s brood and she would serve a true lady in style.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Full of fancies Agnes was, as if she were born to velvet. I did not believe a word of it; I rather thought he would eventually ruin her in the way men do and she’d end up with nothing for her troubles but a belly and scolding from her ladyship. Another bastard in the house would not be to my lady’s liking, not after Raff.”

  “And then what happened?”

  “The fever.” She sighed. “Master Henry and her ladyship fell ill. After that, every one of us was up at all hours of the day and night, tending to them. Then Lady Parry came. We’d had no advance word of her arrival, but she put the nail in Agnes’s hope. When Master Godwin offered to escort Lady Parry, Agnes was fit to be tied, though Lady Parry is a matron of a certain age—oh, it was horrid to hear, the way Agnes carried on. She cared nothing that Lady Parry vanished or Master Henry died; she ranted that Master Godwin had gone and forsaken her, and now what was she to do, left here to scrub her fingers raw until the end of her days? As I said, she never was content. The more she thought she could get, the more she wanted.”

  I felt a surge of triumph. Finally, I had something: Agnes and Godwin had been involved. While it did not clarify much, it did thicken the stew, as my Alice would have said.

  “Did the tutor love her? Do you think he’d have done as she claimed if he had returned?”

  “I surely could not say. Agnes lied about everything, from how much work she did to whether the sun was out. It was her way. I doubt he saw her as more than a pastime. He was educated, a man of letters from London. Agnes could barely spell her own name. What can two such persons possibly have in common, I ask you, save for a romp in the hayloft on Saturday?”

  I found myself smiling. She did indeed remind me of Alice.

  “Mistress Harper, does the name Hugh mean anything to you?”

  Her brow creased. Then, to my disappointment, she said, “I can’t say that it does.”

  “Thank you for obliging me,” I said. “I will not trouble you further.”

  As I turned to depart, she added suddenly, “I thought Agnes tried the same with you. From the moment you set foot in this house, she was aflutter. She must have thought, here you were, another man from London, and from court no less: her second chance. When she told me she was in your chamber last night, I assumed … That is why I did not tell Gomfrey. None of my business what people do after the candles are snuffed.”

  “I appreciate your discretion but I assure you, nothing untoward happened between Agnes and me. As you can imagine, we have nothing in common.”

  Except, I thought as I left the housekeeper to her work, the fact that three persons had disappeared from Vaughan Hall—and Agnes was now one of them.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I went upstairs to my chamber to inspect my saddlebag. My coin pouch was gone. It had not contained enough to forge a new life, especially if one hankered for London, but perhaps it seemed so to Agnes. Or perhaps she had been so frightened by my questions that she decided to take what she could and leave rather than be exposed, lest her liaison with Godwin came to light.

  Whichever the case, I had been robbed and after only two days here, it felt as if I’d been immured in Vaughan Hall for a hundred years. I longed for this thankless errand to end; I had to stop myself from marching to Lady Vaughan’s chamber to question her. She had eyes and ears
; she ruled the house with an iron gauntlet, and Godwin had been educating her children. I found it almost impossible to believe she had not at least suspected her maidservant was a slattern who had cast eyes at Godwin, given her sensitivity toward her own husband’s indiscretion. But I would see her that night in the hall, no doubt, and ask her then. I also planned to question her about her argument with Lady Parry.

  Outside, virulent storm clouds piled on the horizon. The wind moaned and rattled something, a loose weathervane or chimney cap. As I paced the narrow confine of my chamber, hearing the occasional spatter of rain mixed with sleet striking the high windowpane, I decided I should check on Shelton before it grew too inclement to venture outdoors. While I was at it, I would pass by the family cemetery to determine if one of the headstones contained the name Hugh, though I was beginning to question my own obsession. Raff had probably said a name that meant nothing. Still, I could not get it out of my head as I made my way back down the staircase, through the desolate hall and empty passageway to the postern door to the garden.

  The wind assaulted me. I walked toward the cemetery with my face down and cloak flapping. Only when I was among the somewhat sheltered gnarled copse of trees did I notice a little figure huddled by the mausoleum. Slowing my approach to avoid frightening her, I heard her gasp when a sudden gust tore her snood from her head and little Abigail Vaughan leapt up to bound after it as it reeled and somersaulted, buoyed by the wind, toward the cliff edge.

  I dashed after her, catching her in mid-stride. Her fair hair whipped about her face; turning mournful eyes that seemed to me much older than her mere six years, she said, “Oh, no. It is lost. My snood is gone. Just like my brother.”

  “There, now.” I took her in my arms away from the cliff. “It’s but a snood.”

  “But my lady mother will be angry,” she said. “She told me I must be very careful with my things because she can’t afford to replace them whenever I lose or soil them.”