Queen Without a Crown

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘Moon-mad, both of you,’ I said to Gerald afterwards. ‘We only have four glass goblets left now, and you’ve cracked the leg of the table!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Gerald unrepentantly, ‘but it’s a kind of ritual we’ve invented for dealing with our little arguments. You don’t understand men, sweetheart.’

  ‘I understand broken glass and cracked table-legs,’ I said.

  ‘We’re not paupers. I’ll buy you some new goblets and another table if you’re going to be as pernickety as that!’

  The greeting between Brockley and Trelawny, I thought, was a ritual of the same mysterious masculine kind. Sir William Cecil and Hugh, who had clearly understood it at once, were both laughing. Mildred Cecil was shaking her head, but she looked amused too. I allowed myself to be introduced to Brockley’s old friend. So this, I thought, was the fellow with the original ideas about pea-stick twine and other men’s shirts. A useful individual in a crisis, no doubt, and it was plain that he, Ryder and Brockley were three of a kind and pleased with each other’s company.

  Trumpets sounded, and those of us still in the gallery made haste to go into the dining chamber before the queen, preceded by her heralds and followed by her day’s selection of courtiers, ladies and maids of honour, swept in to take her place. I was able to remain with my family, for I was not on duty at the queen’s side that day, although I would have to be there at tomorrow’s Christmas feast. This time, standing behind my seat, I had only to sink into the formal curtsey as her majesty entered the chamber.

  The feast began, a merry affair, made all the merrier by the brilliant colours worn by the diners, by jokes and laughter, excellent food and fine wine and tuneful music. It went on unabated for two hours, until a small swirl of disturbance broke out among the maids of honour.

  The mistress of the maids was no longer Kat Ashley, the queen’s friend from childhood, whom I had once known well, for Kat had died over four years ago. Her replacement – whom I scarcely knew but who had the watchful and harried air common to all duennas with lively charges – was leaning over the table and, to judge from her expression, speaking sharply to the girl opposite. I watched with only mild interest, until I saw the girl turn ashen pale, close her eyes and slide from her seat in a faint.

  In the midst of all the rejoicing, it was just a minor awkwardness. The mistress of the maids joined two other girls who had slipped to their knees beside the sufferer. She came round, and after a few moments they helped her up and steered her out of the room. There was a mild buzz of conversation about it, and then the next course was served and we all forgot her.

  The feast was followed by a masque and dancing in another room, and it was late that day before Hugh and I returned to our suite. To be greeted by a Gladys all agog.

  Gladys, it appeared, had not after all stayed in the suite. Growing bored, she had plodded off down the tower stairs and, at the foot of them, encountered a party of ladies half-carrying a sick girl along. ‘Deathly white, she were, indeed to goodness,’ Gladys said.

  Gladys had a vague reputation in the castle for being clever at potions of one sort and another. One of the ladies had asked her to come with them and give her advice.

  ‘Not that it was any use,’ Gladys said. ‘They got her to her quarters – maid of honour, she is, or was . . .’

  ‘Was?’ I said. ‘Do you mean . . . is she . . .?’

  ‘Aye.’ Gladys nodded. ‘There weren’t nothing I could do for her, nor any other mortal being. These girls are so silly, look you. They get into trouble and kill themselves trying to get out of it, when if they’d asked me in the first place I’d have told them how not to land in trouble.’

  ‘She was miscarrying?’ I asked with sympathy, having been through that myself in my time. ‘Because she’d taken something?’

  ‘Aye. It was that lass I saw playing the fool with a young fellow in the garden, the day you first took Meg to see that artist. She’d taken something all right – some sort of yew-tree brew, from what she said. I asked her. It was when we first got her on to the bed – before we knew it was too late. Then the mistress of the maids said to her: where did you get it? The law will have something to say about this. The girl wouldn’t tell her, except that right at the end she didn’t know what she was saying and muttered something about a woman with a house on the edge of the town. Then . . . you never saw aught like it. All the blood in her body came out of her, I’d reckon, and a poor sad thing like a big dark-red tadpole . . .’

  ‘All right, Gladys,’ said Hugh. ‘There’s no need to go on.’

  ‘I hate seeing it,’ Gladys said, a little unexpectedly, for there was little sentiment in our Gladys. ‘It never happened to me, God be thanked. To see a poor thing cast out into the world long before its time, when it ought to be safe and warm inside, in the dark. Silly, silly girl, to let it start and then to go taking potions. A merry Yuletide her parents are going to have, when they hear. Mistress . . .’

  ‘Yes, Gladys?’

  ‘You’ve been wanting to know who really poisoned a man called Hoxton in this castle, many years ago. You ever thought that whoever did it maybe got advice, or ingredients, from someone else? What if that someone else, and this woman that girl that died today went to, were one and the same?’

  I wanted to say: ‘Oh no, it’s no use, let’s not go hunting up yet another dead-end alleyway to bang our noses on yet another stone wall, please.’ But I didn’t speak, and Sybil said: ‘But wasn’t it just a matter of nightshade berries in a pie? Everyone knows that nightshade berries can kill.’

  ‘Everyone don’t know how to find them, or what they look like,’ Gladys said. ‘And ain’t it supposed to be a man that put the pie on the tray? Most men couldn’t cook a pie, not unless cooking’s their trade.’

  ‘I could,’ said Hugh. ‘But I wouldn’t know how to find nightshade berries. Who would we ask if we wanted to find out? A physician, a gardener, a wise woman?’ He frowned, obviously thinking it over. ‘If our poisoner pumped a wise woman for information she might remember and be able to describe him – that is, if she can remember anything at all about a man who called on her twenty-odd years ago and perhaps asked some strange questions.’

  ‘Or said he wanted to poison rats,’ suggested practical Sybil. ‘But it’s possible,’ she added. ‘A woman who’s old now would have been only middle-aged then. If he were a stranger to her, he’d probably feel safe enough. A plain woman, not living near the castle, would very likely never hear about Hoxton.’

  Half against my will, I found myself being drawn in. The huntress in me was awake again. ‘The girl said something about a woman in a house on the edge of the town,’ I said thoughtfully. ‘We could at least try to find her.’

  ‘Best be careful what you say to her if you do,’ Gladys said. ‘Or she’ll take fright. Whoever gave that girl a yew-tree brew is dabbling too deep and asking to be called a witch by them as doesn’t know any better.’ Her tone was heartfelt. We said nothing, remembering how nearly the rope had had her on that very charge. ‘Best ask around among the women,’ Gladys said. ‘Or ask the Windsor apothecaries and physicians. They might know a name, even if they’re pure as snow themselves. If the woman’s got a reputation, someone will have heard of her.’

  ‘How would one recognize nightshade?’ I asked.

  ‘Green leaves, longer than they’re broad, pointed at the ends. Purple flowers round about June or July; then the berries come. They ripen to black, same size as cherries, more or less. Bigger and darker than bilberries, but stewing would break ’em down, I suppose. Said to be bitter – I wouldn’t know. I’ve never tried them!’ Gladys eyed me, her black eyes glinting with malicious amusement. ‘I expect sugar or honey would hide the taste.’

  ‘You know your plants,’ said Hugh admiringly. ‘And you’ve given us a new idea to pursue. Thank you!’

  ‘Folk always undervalue poor old Gladys,’ said my aged hanger-on, in a whining voice. ‘But old Gladys has her uses, indeed to goodness she
has.’

  ‘She’ll crow over us for days,’ Hugh said to me later. ‘We’ll just have to put up with it!’

  ELEVEN

  The Last Hope

  So, the hunt was on again.

  There was, of course, only the slenderest chance that the woman who had so lethally advised the hapless maid of honour had also, almost a quarter of a century ago, been approached by Hoxton’s killer. I doubted very much that the killer, whoever he might be, had approached anyone. If I were proposing to poison someone, I said to myself, the last thing I would do was leave a trail by making enquiries about venomous plants.

  In fact, I considered the idea so weak that I wouldn’t have pursued it, except for Hugh. I kept thinking that if only his unhappiness about Hawkswood could be removed, his health might improve. I feared that distress was making him worse. Though up and about, he was very breathless, especially when he climbed our tower stairs. I tried to get us moved to a lower floor, but could not because the castle was so full.

  I knew that my feelings verged on the superstitious, but I couldn’t help it. I kept thinking: save Hawkswood – save Hugh. Yet I didn’t wish to raise his hopes by telling him I was looking for the wise-woman. If the trail led nowhere, disappointment might do him harm. So I hesitated until the mistress of the maids came to see me. She was very angry about the death of the girl in her charge.

  ‘I have no time to go after whoever it was who gave her that medicine. I have enough to do, trying to make sure that none of the other girls get into similar trouble. Young gallants have no morals these days, it seems to me, and young girls have never had any sense. A pretty compliment or two and their heads turn like weathercocks in a high wind. But you, dear Mistress Stannard, have something of a reputation . . .’

  I was supposed to be a secret agent. I didn’t seem to be half as secret as I should.

  ‘Do you think you could try to find out who it was – before another poor wench gets killed!’

  So, after all, I followed that tiny, slender lead. Not that I expected it to prove useful. I didn’t. And it wasn’t.

  I will not describe in detail the efforts I made, assisted by the Brockleys, to trace a dubious wise woman with a little house on the edge of Windsor. None of the women I questioned had ever heard of such a person. Nor were the apothecaries and physicians to whom we spoke very helpful.

  One physician said that during the three years he had been working in Windsor he had four or five times been called to women who were having miscarriages which might have been induced, though he couldn’t be sure. If the women had used potions, and where they had obtained them if so, he had no idea. Those who had been capable of speech when he arrived had denied it. ‘They always do,’ he told us.

  The nearest we came to a candidate was a name which was mentioned by two apothecaries and one physician, although none of them suggested that Mistress Catherine Mildmay, widow, of Moor Street in the Parish of Windsor, was the person we sought. On the contrary, they were quite sure she wasn’t. Yes, she had lived in Windsor for many years, but she was well known and infinitely respectable. She had a herb-growing business and supplied ingredients for accredited medicines, as well as selling culinary herbs to local innkeepers and a few private customers. No one had ever suggested that she helped girls who had got into trouble – or even sold poisons to get rid of rats.

  I called on her, though, accompanied by the Brockleys, since Hugh wanted to rest. We were frank about our enquiry. We promised that we didn’t wish to make trouble for her, but wished to know if, many years ago she had given information about nightshade or supplied its berries to anyone for any purpose. Perhaps for making bait for vermin.

  She had been described as infinitely respectable, and her appearance bore this out: from the starched white cap to the tightly drawn-back, pale-brown hair beneath it, which looked as if it would have liked to curl but wasn’t allowed to; from the pale, humourless eyes to the prim little mouth; from the reddened, work-calloused hands to the decent dark wool gown. Not to mention her outraged expression when she understood what we were asking.

  We were challenging her good reputation, and she sprang to its defence like a wildcat whose kittens have been threatened. She had never been asked for nightshade, let alone supplied it. ‘I grow only the most wholesome plants, and if I saw such a thing in my garden, and praise God, I never have, it would be uprooted and burnt within the hour.’

  Since we were also supposed to be trying to trace the source of a potion that had killed one of the queen’s maids of honour, Fran Dale at this point mentioned girls who got into trouble. ‘I believe there’s a brew that can be made from the yew tree. Have you ever—?’

  Whereupon, Mistress Mildmay’s wrath became equal to that of two wildcats. ‘YEW? NIGHTSHADE?’ She repeated the names with such indignant emphasis that I could see them written inside my head, in very black letters a yard high.

  Had anyone ever asked for such things, she said wrathfully, she would have chased them away at the end of a broom! Her garden, she informed us, contained everything any respectable cook or physician was likely to need and nothing else. Yes, it was true she had been in business for a good twenty-six years, ever since her husband died when they’d only been wed for a year and she’d had to support herself. She’d not wished to remarry. But she’d been honest, and if anyone had been saying different, we’d better send them to her and she’d pack them off with their ears ringing!

  We had dropped no hints about supplying lethal pies. Just as well, I thought.

  ‘I feel, madam,’ said Brockley as we apologized and retreated, ‘as though I’d just been clouted round the head with a very heavy hand and now my ears are ringing.’

  ‘I do just wonder if she’s as virtuous as she says she is,’ said Dale.

  ‘I agree,’ I said. ‘But how do we find out? I didn’t see anything in her garden that I could recognize as poisonous, but I suppose there’s a yew tree in every churchyard and nightshade grows wild. She wouldn’t need to plant them herself.’

  Meanwhile, Christmas was over and the maid of honour had been quietly buried, with as little scandal as possible, by the queen’s own order. The young gallant who had been her lover had confessed and, to do him justice, seemed truly grief-stricken. He came to the funeral, but left the court immediately afterwards. Officially, the girl had had a fatal miscarriage. And that was that.

  At court, her memory passed into oblivion and we returned to our own concerns. We had not found her wise-woman, let alone discovered whether she or anyone like her had supplied poison to Hoxton’s killer. Once again, as I had feared, we had met an impassable barrier.

  ‘But a reply to your letter to the Masons at Lockhill is overdue,’ Hugh said to me. ‘You put the matter very persuasively. If only, when it comes, it proves to be the right answer.’

  If it did, then Mark could claim his bride after all. Mark had said he would honour our contract if the Masons changed their minds, which meant that he would pay us. Save Hawkswood – cure Hugh. The words repeated themselves, over and over, inside my head.

  Mark reappeared at court shortly after Christmas, but went straight to the queen’s presence and spoke with us only briefly. He said he had brought a sealed letter from Sussex, but that as far as he knew the rebellion was finished. The insurgent earls had fled into Scotland, but at least they were gone, and their warlike spouses with them.

  Elizabeth – reacting, I thought, to her fear when we were half-expecting enemy forces to descend on Windsor – was preparing to order savage reprisals against their supporters, especially those who could not buy their way out. Lord Sussex, I heard, disagreed with this policy, and I think Cecil, who was still at Windsor, tried to soften her attitude but failed. I myself feared Elizabeth in this tempestuous mood, and I didn’t argue with her. I did her bidding and held my tongue.

  Since Cecil was in the castle, so were John Ryder and Carew Trelawny. When off duty, they and Brockley often made a threesome, playing cards together, practisi
ng archery and sometimes swordplay in the lower bailey. When they did this, they were excellent distraction for troubled minds, because any sporting or military exercise involving Carew Trelawny turned into a cross between farce and fury.

  He and Brockley were the worst combination. Ryder would just smile benignly when Trelawny hurled insults at him, but my usually imperturbable Brockley revealed a new side of himself, becoming hilarious and excitable. At times, the pair of them exchanged such outrageous aspersions on each other’s ancestry, abilities and social status that the riveted onlookers half-expected and probably hoped for genuine murder to be done.

  Hugh had decided that a daily walk would relieve his breathlessness and build up his strength. Accompanied by Meg, we were strolling across the bailey together on the last day of December when we came upon Brockley and Trelawny once more ringed by onlookers and performing – there is no other word for it – like paid entertainers, prowling menacingly round each other, swords in hand, exchanging rude remarks while their audience egged them on. Ryder, out of breath from a recent bout, was there but standing aside, leaning on his blade and grinning.

  Just as we arrived, Brockley was taunting Trelawny with being too timid to attack. After which, he turned his back, said: ‘This is you, my lad,’ and minced away in ladylike fashion, glancing over his shoulder to see the effect on his opponent.

  ‘I wish they wouldn’t,’ I said to Hugh. ‘Brockley hasn’t practised swordsmanship seriously in years; he always says he’s not skilled at it, and look at him – he’s as out of breath as Ryder is. I’m afraid one of them will get hurt. They’re neither of them young!’

  ‘They would like to believe they were, though,’ Hugh said. Brockley spun round, and the sword blades clashed. ‘They’re trying to hold off the years. Dear, dear. Tut tut!’