Queen Without a Crown

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  He was improving by evening, but Gladys, who said she had seen such illnesses before, insisted that he should remain abed.

  ‘And you’re not to visit Bowman without me,’ Hugh said. ‘Send Brockley! He can ask a simple question, can’t he? We only want to know if Easton was left or right-handed.’

  I sent Brockley. He was back within an hour, looking put out. ‘Bowman, madam, was as useful as a cooking pot made of butter.’

  ‘He can’t remember?’

  ‘No, he can’t. He has not the least idea. Neither, by the way, has Sterry. I went to the kitchen to see him, too. Oh, I brought you this, madam.’ He was carrying a package, wrapped in thin paper, and held it out to me. ‘It’s a gift from Master Bowman.’

  ‘A gift?’ I looked at the package in surprise, while Hugh sat up sharply against his pillows. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Gloves, madam. He said he noted the size of your hands during your visit to him and hoped you would like these.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I took the little parcel from Brockley and began to undo the cord, but Hugh said: ‘Give that here!’ and when I went to hand it to him, fairly snatched it out of my hands. ‘You don’t accept gifts from Bowman.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, startled. ‘But . . . can’t I even look at them?’

  ‘No,’ said Hugh. ‘Brockley! Take this package and burn it. Then leave us.’

  Obediently, Brockley put the package in the fire and left the room. I stood by the bed, gazing at Hugh in amazement. ‘I’ve never known you jealous before,’ I said.

  ‘I love you! And I’m not young and I don’t know how long I will still be here to go on loving you. But while I’m here,’ said Hugh, ‘I’ll have no nonsense from the Bowmans of this world.’

  I could hardly believe my ears. Hugh was aware of the secret link between Brockley and myself and had never shown the slightest anxiety about it. The only time he had ever worried about my faithfulness had been the previous summer, when, quite by chance, we had learned that my second husband Matthew, who was supposed to have died of plague while I was visiting England a few years ago, hadn’t died at all. The queen and Cecil had deceived me because they wished to keep me in England.

  Understandably, Hugh had wondered then if I would stay with him or try to return to Matthew. Elizabeth, as head of the Anglican church, had declared my second marriage void, because it had been forced on me, and the ceremony was conducted by an unlicensed priest. Also, since Matthew had been similarly told that I was dead, he had, I had learned, married again and had a son. But the bond between us had been passionate. Hugh had not been sure.

  I was sure, though. Passion or no, I had had no peace with Matthew. He was for ever scheming against Elizabeth and on behalf of Mary Stuart. I told Hugh that I wished to remain Mistress Stannard, that I valued the life we had built together and that I wouldn’t dream, anyway, of intruding like a ghost into Matthew’s new marriage.

  The link between myself and Brockley, though quite different in its nature from the union of myself and Matthew, was the stronger of the two, had Hugh only known it. Not that it mattered, for neither Matthew nor Brockley were any threat to him. My husband and the safe marriage he had given me were precious, and I would never let them be imperilled. I had believed that Hugh was now certain of this. Apparently, he was not.

  ‘How could you possibly think I would be even remotely interested in Jonathan Bowman?’ I said indignantly.

  ‘I don’t,’ said Hugh. ‘But I’m ailing and it makes me feel – lessened. I feel as though I am imprisoned in a failing body, while you are still young and men can be drawn to you. Please try to understand.’

  ‘You have nothing to fear,’ I said gently. ‘You know that.’

  ‘I think I do. But,’ said Hugh, ‘just keep away from that man. That’s all.’

  The following day was a Sunday. There was a long chapel service and then I had to ride in the park with the queen and accompany her to an archery competition in the afternoon. Lately, Cecil’s man John Ryder, Brockley’s friend and mine, had joined his employer at the castle. He and Brockley both won prizes at the contest, which gave me pleasure.

  I had told Lambert that on Monday he need not come to teach Meg until after dinner, because she had a sitting with Arbuckle in the morning. That morning, for once, I had some time off. ‘Today,’ I said to Sybil, ‘I’ll take her.’

  Master Arbuckle was as scruffy and paint-splattered as before, but still exuded the force of character which his unkempt appearance should have wrecked, but didn’t. The picture was advancing well. The screen had been folded away, and he seated Meg at a table near the street window, with books and a sheet of paper in front of her, and a pen in her hand. The painting was up on the easel. Arbuckle gave me a seat where I wouldn’t get in his way, and the day’s work commenced.

  For the moment, he had apparently completed Meg’s face and was concentrating on her headdress and the upper part of her clothing. He had mixed a range of tints for her gown: hot orange-tawny where the folds were in the light; darker shades for the shadows in between. He was now putting the last touches to these and with a fine brush was dealing with her little white ruff. The lower part of the picture was a matter of faint pencil lines, which I could hardly make out. I was interested, though, in the part which he had virtually finished: the detail of her face.

  Detailed it certainly was, down to the tiny shadows under her cheekbones and nostrils and the moulding of her ears and mouth. There was something else, too. It was as though Arbuckle had seen things in Meg which I had not. The face on the canvas was not quite the Meg I knew, but the difference was so subtle that I could not define it. I thought he had made her look a little remote, as though she were thinking thoughts which she would not share with others.

  I remembered him saying that some of his clients had resented his work because he had seen things they would rather he had not. When my brush is in my hand, I cannot lie. What had he seen in Meg which had found its way out through his brush-hand? Her future maturity, her womanhood, beginning now to surface?

  I sat watching with interest, while Meg, with great patience, posed for him. He chatted to her, very pleasantly, about her studies and about hawking, which was a sport she enjoyed. They seemed to be the best of friends.

  I sat on my stool, letting my mind drift, until, unexpectedly, something in the style of Arbuckle’s work, and the memory of something that Hugh had said, prompted me to ask a question.

  ‘Master Arbuckle,’ I said, ‘may I ask – was it by any chance you, a long time ago, that painted a miniature of a lady called Judith Easton? It would be over twenty years ago now. My husband told me that the portrait you did recently of one of the ladies at the castle reminded him of that miniature. Judith Easton was very beautiful.’

  ‘She was indeed,’ said Arbuckle, delicately placing what looked like a brush-load of bronze into his rendering of Meg’s dark hair. I looked at the canvas intently, and then at Meg, and saw that he was right; the sunlight on her hair did create that bronze streak. It is the kind of thing that artists see but other people easily miss. ‘Yes, I was the painter,’ he said. ‘She had a face like a star. Sparkling, bright. Her husband had the miniature made. I wasn’t as expensive then as I am now, but he had a job to pay me, I remember. His payment came in bits and pieces, and some of it was in cabbages.’

  ‘Cabbages?’

  ‘He worked in the royal kitchens. Gervase Easton, that was his name. He had perks, and he took them in cabbages that time, for my benefit. I painted him as well, a little later. He didn’t pay for that – he had a brother who made a journey to see him now and then. The brother saw the miniature of Mistress Easton and hired me to do a portrait of her husband – a proper portrait, not a miniature. There was trouble in their family, I think, but the brother wanted to keep friends with Gervase and wanted a picture of him. I heard roundabout that Gervase was accused of some sort of crime later and took his own life. You know something of these people? What be
came of his wife?’

  ‘She remarried, but she died too, soon after that.’

  ‘I am sorry. Very sorry.’

  ‘Master Arbuckle,’ I said, ‘the son of Gervase and Judith has lately been trying to clear his father’s name. It seems that it may be important whether he was right or left-handed. Can you remember?’

  ‘I can’t say I ever thought about it.’ Arbuckle, intent on his work, showed little interest. I sighed disappointedly, however, and he paused to please me by considering the matter. ‘I can’t remember, but the portrait showed him as a clerk, with a pen in his hand,’ he said. ‘That’s why pictures are precious; they preserve times gone by, people who are dead, or have changed. That’s why your mother is having you painted,’ he added to Meg. ‘So as to keep the memory of you as you are now.’ He turned back to me. ‘Every portrait becomes a picture of the past. That would give you the answer. The brother may have the picture still.’

  Mark would know, I thought. Mark had taken over his uncle’s house now; very likely the portrait was still in it! I must ask Mark. I thanked Arbuckle and once again let my mind drift.

  This time, it glided towards Bowman and the threats he said he had heard Gervase Easton make against Hoxton. Ancient threats; words thrown off in temper when a man was in his cups and had been provoked – and the enemy wasn’t actually there. How much did such things mean?

  And how very odd of Hugh to be so jealous.

  At this point, a chill unhappiness settled within me. Hugh was not in good health and kept saying disquieting things, such as I don’t know how long I will still be here to go on loving you and I feel as though I am imprisoned in a failing body.

  Was he really ill? He was almost twenty years older than I was, after all.

  I don’t remember much more of that sitting. I was overwhelmed, once more, with homesickness. I wanted to get out of Windsor and take Hugh to Hawkswood to enjoy whatever time he could still spend there.

  I should have known. Sometimes I think it’s a kind of precognition in reverse, so to speak. Whenever I am away from home and longing desperately to get back, I am liable to find myself being sent further away from it than ever.

  TEN

  Merry Yuletide

  ‘A portrait of my father?’ Mark said, when Brockley sought him out for me and brought him to our quarters. ‘And Uncle Robert may have had it? Well, I lived with Uncle Robert from the age of five, but I never saw it. I wish I had. I’ve never known what my father looked like.’

  Mark himself looked harassed. Since his reappearance at Windsor we gathered that he had been kept continually busy, being questioned in detail about events in the north and the movements of troops, ours and theirs. Now he was preparing to leave for York yet again, with letters from the queen and Cecil for Lord Sussex.

  ‘I have a great aunt on my father’s side,’ he said, ‘living up in the north-west. Great Aunt Bess, her name is. My Aunt Kate told me once that after her marriage to my uncle she was taken to see Bess and given a lecture on the Easton family history that lasted two and a half hours. If the portrait still exists, she might know where it is. It’s the sort of thing to interest her, by all accounts. She might even have it! I’ll send word to her as soon as I can. I can’t go to see her – she lives in Westmorland, far away from York and in the heart of enemy territory, too. Her home is somewhere called Kendal, near a great lake.’

  ‘Have you met her?’ I asked.

  ‘Yes, as a small boy. I remember we rode through a town – Kendal, I suppose – and came to the lake. My great aunt’s manor house was beside it. I can’t remember its name, but her husband’s name was Edmund Tracy and he owned a lot of land. The rising won’t concern her, though. She’s a respectable well-off widow now with far too much sense to get involved in any rebellions. If a single one of her tenants has gone to join Westmorland’s army, I’ll be surprised.’

  ‘She sounds as though she has a strong character,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sure she has. According to my uncle, Great Aunt Bess’s tenants do what she tells them, and always did, even when her husband was alive. If they don’t, she eats them grilled for breakfast. My uncle’s own words!’ He laughed, lightening his handsome face into something quite delightful. However in love with Jane Mason he was, I thought that she was probably even more in love with him.

  Mark, however, was still thinking about his great aunt. ‘Uncle said her three daughters always did exactly what mamma told them to do and married the men she chose for them, and she did the choosing, not their father. She’s still alive, or was a few months ago. My uncle had a letter from her last spring, and she told him she was in good health then.’

  Mark left for York the next morning. He was back a fortnight later. The news he brought was a blank as far as the portrait was concerned. He had been unable to communicate with his great aunt, since no one could be spared to take a private message across the snowbound moors to Westmorland.

  But he brought good news about the war. The insurgents were in retreat, stumbling northwards through blizzard and snowdrift, towards the sanctuary of Scotland. Lord Sussex’s forces were in pursuit, unable to overtake their prey because they, too, were delayed by the weather, but on the spoor of the quarry nevertheless, baying like a hound-pack. If they didn’t catch the retreating earls before they crossed the Scottish border, Sussex would make sure that they’d never dare to put their noses back over it again.

  ‘Ursula,’ said the queen, having summoned me to hear the good tidings, ‘the danger is past, I think, but you and Master Stannard will stay here for the Christmas celebrations, will you not?’

  We more or less had to stay, in any case. Meg’s portrait was not yet finished, and Hugh, though now much better, was still not quite well, and the weather was very cold for travelling, even for a fit man. ‘We’ll spend Christmas here,’ he said. ‘But in the new year, Ursula, we’ll go home.’

  Only a few weeks before, Windsor had been tense and nervous, provisioning itself against catastrophe. Now, the extra supplies formed the wherewithal for feasts of unusual splendour, even at a royal Christmas. The queen’s ladies and the maids of honour spent hours preparing new clothes and practising new dances. Masques were being created and rehearsed. Passageways through which armaments had been carried were now infested by people carrying musical instruments, clutching scripts and muttering their lines and, sometimes, wearing extraordinary costumes.

  In the kitchens, cooks experimented with fantastic new dishes, throwing dramatic tantrums when the said dishes went wrong, trying to blame inefficient underlings for these disasters and on occasion flinging the dishes at the heads of the said underlings.

  Mark Easton, weather notwithstanding, set valiantly off to York, with a further letter to Sussex from the queen – this time full of congratulations on his deft handling of the crisis – and a personal gift. The castle hummed and throbbed with excitement and laughter and music.

  ‘I suppose it’s relief,’ Hugh said to me as we made our way towards dinner on Christmas Eve. ‘I think everyone was afraid, whether or not they said so out loud.’

  ‘It was an ugly thought,’ I said. ‘The idea of armies riding towards us with murderous intent! Mary Stuart is the greatest nuisance God ever made.’

  The Christmas Eve dinner was to be a special affair. A whole crowd was converging on the anteroom where we would wait for the meal to be announced. In a wide gallery we came across Sir William Cecil, back at court after a brief visit to his home. He was evidently being troubled, as he so often was, by gout and was walking slowly, accompanied by his wife Mildred, their entourage following. We exchanged greetings. We, too, had our people with us, except for Gladys, who preferred to stay (‘Skulk,’ said Dale) in our rooms and have her food there. Brockley, seeing John Ryder in the Cecils’ party, turned aside to speak to him.

  As he did so, another man in the Cecils’ group suddenly looked at Brockley and grinned. He was a short, bearded fellow, with a snub nose, slate-coloured eyes and dark
hair silvering at the temples. He was not young, but he moved with the fluid stealth of a cat stalking a blackbird, and to our astonishment, as soon as he saw Brockley, he edged sideways to get behind him, using Cecil as a shield. He appeared to have cast my manservant in the role of the blackbird.

  Brockley must have been aware of him, but for some reason ignored him, until the stalk turned to a pounce, as the stranger sprang forward, seized Brockley’s left arm from behind and jerked it up my manservant’s back in a way that looked anything but friendly.

  Beside me, Meg let out a squeak, Dale clicked her tongue and Sybil Jester went round-eyed.

  ‘Greetings, Roger,’ said the stranger softly, in a marked west country accent. ‘How many years is it since we met?’

  ‘Oh, I should have said at once,’ remarked Ryder. ‘Our old friend Carew Trelawny has joined Sir William’s service. You surely remember Carew, don’t you, Brockley?’ He caught my eye, and added: ‘It’s all right, Mistress Stannard. Carew Trelawny always greets old friends like that. When he encounters old enemies, we usually have to bury them.’

  ‘Some people,’ said Brockley calmly, ‘prefer not to associate with him at all. Personally, though, I’m always happy to see my friends, and if you’d let me turn round, Trelawny, I might actually be able to see you.’

  He then disengaged himself by applying his right elbow to his assailant’s ribs in a manner quite as aggressive as Trelawny’s assault on him, swung round and embraced him. They were both chuckling. It had all happened so swiftly and quietly that hardly anyone else in the crowded gallery had noticed it.

  A memory suddenly returned to me: of my first husband, Gerald, back in the days when we were a young couple in Antwerp, in the service of one of the queen’s financiers. Gerald had made friends with a colleague of his own age, and I could recall a wet afternoon when we were all together in our lodgings. In the midst of a good-natured argument – I could no longer remember what it was about – the two of them swooped on each other and rolled round the floor, wrestling and pummelling in a manner only just short of genuine violence, so that I had to get out of the way in a hurry and a small table was knocked over, sending a glass goblet on to the floor, where it broke.