Queen Without a Crown

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  We had waited until the meeting below was over, and then crept back through the long gallery, densely dark now that the moon had gone. We held a brief council in my room, but there was little to decide. Our course of action was obvious. The search for the portrait and our errand for the queen had both ended here in Ramsfold, and the presence of Anne of Northumberland must be reported as soon as possible. We must reach Carlisle, inform whoever was in charge there, ask where to find Lord Sussex and then bear the news to him in person. We had no time to lose.

  This morning, from the look of that snowfall, I feared that this might be difficult.

  All the same, somebody had ridden out. There were hoof marks in the courtyard, and it looked as if the messengers had left as planned. If they proposed to struggle to Scotland in these conditions, one could only pity them. And hope that they would be delayed so long that our news would reach its destination before their messages could be delivered.

  Annet appeared at that moment, and I let her help me dress. Brockley and Trelawny came tapping at my door almost as soon as I was ready, and I determined on a firm line. ‘I want to talk to my companions,’ I said to Annet. ‘We wish to take our leave, but I must ask them what they think of this weather. We are accustomed to talk in privacy.’

  She looked a little confused, but she could hardly refuse to obey a direct order. She left the room. Having made sure that she wasn’t listening at the door, Brockley said: ‘I see that someone has braved the snow, but I don’t advise it, personally. It doesn’t matter if the messengers to Scotland never get there, but when we set off for Carlisle, and probably for York after that, we must get there. We’d best be careful.’

  ‘I agree,’ Trelawny said, soberly for once. ‘Conditions aren’t impossible, but things may be worse in other places. I don’t think we should leave today. You can’t report anything if you’re lost in a blizzard or confronted by a snowdrift taller than you are. Let us hope that that is just what happens to those messengers, and meanwhile, can we make use of the time? To find out more?’

  Brockley said thoughtfully: ‘There was that odd reference to the Pope last night. Something about a Bull – a statement – which he intends to issue.’ He looked at me. A faint, wry smile appeared on his face. He said: ‘Madam, there’s a task you much dislike, and to be honest, I dislike it on your behalf. It always scares us both half to death. But if Anne of Northumberland has been corresponding with His Holiness—’

  ‘His Unholiness,’ growled Trelawny, interrupting him.

  ‘If,’ said Brockley, interrupting back, ‘that terrifying woman has been in touch with Rome, we might find proof of that in her private correspondence. If we could get at it.’

  ‘Well, we can’t,’ I said, in what I knew were thankful tones. I knew what Brockley had meant the moment he spoke of a task that both of us disliked and feared. One of the duties which an agent has to perform, all too often, is reading other people’s papers. This usually means intruding into their private rooms and opening their private document boxes. One is always afraid of being caught.

  And rightly. No matter how careful you are, there is always the risk that the owners of the documents will come back unheralded from their dinner invitation, their marketing, their hunting, masque or day’s work. They have felt unwell or bored; or it has started to rain. So far I had never been caught, although it had been a near thing once or twice. The fear was always present.

  ‘True,’ Brockley said, frowning. ‘We heard Lady Anne say last night that she was tired of being forced to keep to her chambers – I fancy they’re in that locked tower at the south-east corner. If that’s where her papers are, and I expect it is, then she’ll be there with them. I suppose getting at them won’t be possible.’

  ‘It’s clearly a problem. Unless,’ said Trelawny in helpful tones, ‘we create a diversion.’

  We looked at him, in my case with annoyance. In my view, the fact that the papers were out of reach was a blessing, not a problem, or if it was a problem, I didn’t want it solved.

  ‘What kind of diversion?’ Brockley asked.

  Trelawny gave us his most wicked smile. His eyes were dancing. ‘Something to draw her out of the tower, or wherever she is. Suppose,’ he suggested sweetly, ‘we started a fire?’

  I had a sudden vision – which, from what I knew of Trelawny, seemed entirely possible – of Brockley’s old comrade, with the best of intentions, blithely burning Ramsfold to the ground. And any incriminating correspondence along with it, too. ‘No. Blanche wouldn’t like it,’ I said repressively.

  Brockley cleared his throat, and I let a small sigh escape me. Brockley was for ever finding subtle ways to make me understand that he considered it most unsuitable for a gentlewoman such as myself to keep on getting entangled in plots and counterplots and the ferreting out of secrets. Yet, when we were on the hunt, some instinct for following a quarry to the final end always overtook him. Once his blood was up, he would follow the scent with more determination even than I did, even if it meant thrusting me forward into the very tasks that in the normal way he considered so undesirable for a lady.

  ‘Could we not tempt her out of her tower in a less dangerous fashion?’ he said. ‘If she is bored, confined to her rooms, I wonder what she would do if she heard something very intriguing going on in the hall? Sound would carry from the hall to the tower, I fancy, especially if we opened a window and made plenty of noise.’

  ‘What sort of noise?’ I asked.

  ‘Well,’ said Brockley, ‘Carew and I could practise swordplay. You’ve watched us doing that before, madam. You know that when we get together with blades in our hands, we tend not to be exactly quiet.’

  I said: ‘But if she doesn’t want to be seen, she’ll probably still resist temptation.’

  ‘She might do what we did – go to the minstrels’ balcony and stand in the shadows,’ said Trelawny.

  Before I could stop myself, I said: ‘Before you came up last night, I think someone passed my door, coming from the south-east tower – from that locked door we couldn’t get through. Perhaps that was Lady Anne, going to the hall by way of the gallery and the minstrels’ balcony. It would be a reasonable route for her to take, if she didn’t want to cross the courtyard. In such cold weather, she probably wouldn’t.’

  ‘Very likely,’ said Trelawny. ‘Now, if we tempt her out, she may lock the tower door behind her, but Brockley tells me that you can pick a lock.’

  ‘You have your lockpicks with you, madam?’ said Brockley, sounding quite proud of me.

  ‘Yes,’ I said briefly and gloomily.

  ‘If you find people there,’ said Trelawny, ‘insist that the door wasn’t locked and say you were just roaming about to pass the time. Then leave. But if we do our part properly, we may draw everyone out, Lady Anne and any servants she has with her, and give you a clear field. You’d better breakfast with Mistress Winthorpe, and then make an excuse to come back here. Then we’ll set to.’

  ‘I could kill you both,’ I said candidly. ‘It’s a most promising idea.’

  To begin with, however, I thought it was going to fail, even though the din which Trelawny and Brockley created in the hall was magnificent. The shouted insults, the clashing of blades and the laughter of onlookers poured across the courtyard from the hall windows. No one in the whole house could have missed them. No one apparently did. From my own window I saw servants appearing from various doors and grooms from the stable and watched them run across the snowy court to find out what was happening.

  But for some time, it seemed, Lady Northumberland defied her natural curiosity and stayed put. I alternated between watching from my window and listening at my door for footsteps coming from her tower. Nothing happened, and I began to give up hope. Anxious, though, in case the noise my friends were making had prevented me from hearing her, I finally peered into the passage. I looked towards the tower, and at that very moment its door began to open. I withdrew my head quickly, but a few seconds later, I peered out on
ce more. Three female figures were receding towards the door to the gallery. They all had headdresses on, but I saw the tallest one turn a little to speak to one of the others and glimpsed her profile. I also caught a glint of gold embroidery on her skirt hem. She was assuredly Anne of Northumberland. The other two were probably her maids.

  I hadn’t heard any sound of her tower door being locked after her. As soon as she and her entourage were out of sight, I went to try it. It was open. I entered Lady Anne’s quarters without the aid of picklocks.

  I found myself in a first-floor parlour twice the size of the one occupied by Blanche, elegantly panelled and tapestried, with dried rosemary in the rushes underfoot and a bright fire in the hearth. It looked far more like a private parlour for the lady of the house than the one in the suite which Blanche now occupied. Very likely, this tower was hers, ruthlessly requisitioned by Lady Anne. It would be in character, I thought.

  At this stage, I could still claim that I was wandering about, curing the tedium of being mewed up due to bad weather by exploring Ramsfold House. If challenged, I could say: ‘I’m sorry; I’ve lost my bearings and lost my way. Where in the world am I? I’m so sorry if these are someone’s private rooms.’

  The tower, however, seemed to be empty. Everyone must have gone across to the hall. In one corner of the parlour there were steps, leading both up and down. Swiftly, I established that the floor below contained storerooms and that on the floor above the parlour there were two good bedchambers with velvet-hung four-posters. Seizing my chance, and with my heart thumping as it always did when I carried out this sort of task, I moved quickly about from place to place, seeking a document box. I examined clothes presses and cupboards, settles and window seats and peered under the beds.

  I eventually found what I sought, beneath the lift-up seat of a small chest-settle in one of the bedchambers. The box was also in the form of a chest, a small one, but iron-bound and fastened with a padlock. I shook it and heard the rustle of paper within. I took it to the bed, and now, at last, my lockpicks had work to do.

  It was a long time since I had used this delicate skill, and I was nervous, listening intently all the time for returning footsteps. How long could Brockley and Trelawny keep up that performance in the hall? I really did regard this sort of thing as the most hateful task that my curious profession ever required of me. If I were found now, I could make no excuses. I had made the crossing between innocence and guilt. My hands shook as I got out my set of thin steel rods with the hooks on the end, and the first ones I tried were wrong for the lock I was trying to coax. It was several minutes before I found the right ones and the old trick of seeing with my fingers came back to me.

  The padlock clicked open at last. I lifted it clear, threw back the lid of the chest and there indeed were Lady Anne’s private papers.

  They didn’t at first seem to amount to anything useful. Most of them were charters and correspondence to do with land, sheep, produce, rents, the sort of thing any landowner would have. I pawed through one document after another, in vain. By the time I reached the very bottom of the pile, I felt that I had spent hours over the business.

  But there, at the very bottom, I found it. From the date on the document, which was more recent than those on the letters above it, I thought that it had been put beneath them to keep it as secret as possible.

  It was on beautiful vellum, a lovely example of the calligrapher’s art. It came from Rome, from the Vatican, thanking my lord and lady of Northumberland for their most pious and generous contribution to the cause of combating the rise of heresy. It assured them that if the restoration of Mary of Scotland did not soon take place, and if she was not made officially the heir of Elizabeth Tudor, then a Bull would be issued freeing all English Catholics from their duty to obey the Crown. Elizabeth would be formally deposed by the one true Church. It would be enjoined upon all true believers in England that they should not obey her or any of her laws, and that excommunication should fall on the heads of those who did so. No Catholics should regard themselves as Elizabeth’s subjects.

  The Northumberlands (and the Westmorlands, most likely) had been bribing the Vatican.

  I held the vellum, so physically beautiful and so spiritually horrible, in a shaking hand. Just a letter, exquisitely penned on a lovely material, but as dangerous as a cartload of gunpowder and monstrously cruel. I knew there were numerous decent Catholics in England who did not consider that their faith obliged them to be disloyal to their anointed queen – honest people who only wanted to worship in the way that they were used to, to hold the rituals they loved and which reassured them in this dangerous world. They wanted to invoke the protection of the saints against fevers and plagues; the deaths of children and the perils of childbirth; the degenerations of age; the miseries of hunger when the crops were bad.

  They did not want to be told that they must choose between these reassurances and their duty as citizens. They did not want to be told that they must be prepared to become traitors if they wished for spiritual comfort on earth and peace in heaven.

  They were going to be told. The aim of this Bull was to turn hundreds of decent English men and women into potential assassins. And threaten them with damnation if they refused.

  The letter did not actually state in so many words that it would then become the duty of the faithful to murder Elizabeth if the opportunity arose or could be made. But the underlying meaning was there.

  Someone must warn Elizabeth. Just what she could do, I couldn’t imagine, but to be forewarned was to have a chance of taking steps; of preparing an answer to steady the nerves of her people; of arranging protection for herself; of mobilizing her defences.

  Still trembling, I reread the letter, memorizing it. Then I put it back in the bottom of the chest, shut it and replaced the padlock, pushing it home until it clicked. I picked up the chest to return it to its hiding place.

  In my horror, I had forgotten to listen for footsteps. As I lifted the lid of the window seat, the door of the bedchamber opened and there on the threshold were Lady Anne and the butler Ulverdale.

  I had at least not been caught reading the letter. I was only holding the locked chest and standing with the raised window seat in my hand. My lockpicks I had already put away in their hidden pouch. No one could have told whether I was returning the chest or had just taken it out, or guessed that I could open the lock. But it was bad enough. I stared back at them across my indefensible burden, as trapped as a murderer who has been discovered standing over a victim with a gory knife.

  ‘I guessed it,’ said Ulverdale, addressing Lady Anne. ‘The minute I saw you, my lady, come on to the minstrels’ balcony and noticed that Mistress Stannard had not, I thought: this is a ploy. A ploy to create a diversion – to divert whom? Who else but my lady? She has been tempted out of her quarters. Why?’

  ‘You were perfectly right,’ said Lady Anne harshly. Standing there, tall and angry, her hood thrown back and her pale gold head high, she was an intimidating sight. ‘You did well to fetch me so quickly. Well, well. When Ulverdale told me that a Mistress Stannard had arrived, I wondered where I had heard the name before. I have remembered now. You used to be Mistress Blanchard, and you did secret work for that red vixen you call the queen – except that in time it ceased to be much of a secret. I suppose something has woken her suspicions of this house and she sent you here to poke and pry. Give me that!’

  She strode forward and seized the chest, examining it keenly. ‘You are a fool. I would never leave my private papers anywhere but in a locked container. I doubt if you would find it very easy to open this padlock. Have you tried?’

  Evidently, some of the details of my secret career still remained secret. ‘I’ve only just found it,’ I said in a sullen voice. I looked down at the padlock. ‘No, Lady Anne, I don’t think I could get through that.’

  ‘You know who I am?’

  ‘I’ve visited the north before. You were pointed out to me once,’ I said untruthfully. On no account
must she know of our eavesdropping the previous night.

  ‘I see. You don’t deny that you were prying in my rooms.’

  ‘Are they yours? Mistress Blanche Winthorpe is the lady of this house. Everyone thinks you are in Scotland.’

  ‘Lady Westmorland has fled north with her husband, but I remained behind,’ said Anne of Northumberland, ‘to salvage what I could of our unhappy situation. I am in this house because my own husband is the landlord. Blanche is merely a tenant.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, wondering what Brockley and Trelawny were doing and whether they knew I was in danger, ‘what now?’

  ‘I think that she and her henchmen had better disappear,’ said Ulverdale grimly. ‘It’s the best thing, though disagreeable. You need not be concerned, my lady. I will take this impertinent intruder away and deal with her and her companions.’

  ‘You mean murder them?’ said Lady Anne, though not at all as though the idea scandalized her. She sounded as though she were merely considering alternative methods of cooking a chicken (would a fricassée be best?) or deciding on the most convenient route to a friend’s distant home (there is a short cut, but only in dry weather).

  ‘What else can we do with them?’ said Ulverdale reasonably.

  ‘I think,’ said Lady Anne, considering me with dislike but also with assessment, ‘that we would do better to keep them close for a while. You may not know it, Ulverdale, but now that I realize who this lady is, I can tell you that she is something more than a rather too loyal servant of her majesty Queen Elizabeth. She is also her half-sister.’

  ‘Half-sister!’

  ‘Bastard half-sister,’ said Lady Anne calmly. She gave me a grim smile. ‘Yes, my dear, that too is now quite widely known. The queen has an affection for you. You would make quite a useful hostage, I think, and the same could even apply to your friends. The queen might well wish to protect them for your sake. No killing yet, Ulverdale.’

  ‘My lady, I feel sure that—’

  ‘Don’t argue with me!’ It came out like the crack of a musket. ‘Shut Mistress Stannard in her room for the time being. I’ll order Hankin and the other men to disarm those two lunatics in the hall and similarly lock them into theirs. Then I will consider how best to make use of them. It may be,’ said Lady Anne, once again with that grim smile, ‘that we have a very pretty hand of cards to play with now.’