The Reluctant Assassin

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  When the door opened to admit the freckled Walter and Bess, smiling at me, said: ‘Ah, here is our collation,’ I managed to smile back and say: ‘How pleasant.’

  But Walter was not carrying a tray. He made a brief obeisance to Bess but then said: ‘Mistress Stannard, I have a message for you. Your man Roger Brockley is here and wishes urgently to have speech with you.’

  ‘Brockley!’ I turned to Bess. ‘My lady, I must go to him, if you will excuse me.’ I swung round again, to Walter. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘He has been taken to my lord of Shrewsbury, who has sent me to fetch you.’ His cheerful freckled face was alight with interest. ‘I heard Master Brockley say it was about your son. Perhaps he has been found!’

  ‘Walter!’ Bess was outraged. ‘What is this?’

  Walter looked alarmed. ‘I … I am sorry. Have I spoken out of turn? My parents live in Woking, and in their last letter to me, they mentioned a rumour in the district that Mistress Stannard’s son had run away from home. If I shouldn’t have said anything, I beg your pardon, Your Grace. I …’

  ‘You have been warned before about gossiping,’ said Bess. Her voice shook with anger. ‘Unless you take heed and learn to watch your tongue, I will have you whipped.’

  Walter went white and after what I had just witnessed, I could understand why. I was also embarrassed, because I had myself been encouraging Walter to gossip, though I certainly didn’t want him spreading rumours about Harry.

  Nervously, I smiled at both Walter and Bess. ‘It’s quite all right.’ Better to assuage curiosity than to feed it. I did not know for sure, but I didn’t think that either of the Talbots knew of Harry’s disappearance. Walsingham had most likely just told them that I was to spy on Mary, and nothing else. ‘Walter, my son has been – er – has been – away from home, but some things are private. I don’t want it talked about. Please respect that. Please ask no questions and do not, please, discuss the matter with anyone else. My lady …’

  ‘Yes, yes, you must go to your servant. I will not ask questions, either,’ said Bess. ‘Walter, show Mistress Stannard the way. And remember what I have said!’

  I made for the door and Walter, visibly trembling, his usual blithe insouciance quite gone, led me away. I was thinking that this business of keeping Harry’s disappearance a secret was more difficult than I had realized. I couldn’t of course have hoped that no word of it would get round our district. Harry had made friends with other boys of his age, sons of various people in our locality, including youthful relatives of our servants, who must have enquired after him. The news was bound to get out. I had been slow. I should have thought of some convincing lie. Perhaps I could do so even now, and send word home that this or that story was to be put about. I had now told Walter that Harry was away from home – which wasn’t the same thing as missing. I could enlarge on that, say that Harry had gone on a visit, perhaps …

  Or perhaps … a most unpleasant thought had entered my mind. I had been trying to find out who might be watching me on behalf of Harry’s captors. Could that someone be Walter? He had obviously managed to take charge of Brockley and talk to him. Could nice, naive freckle-faced gossipy Walter be one of their minions?

  I didn’t want to think so but once the idea had entered my head, it wouldn’t disappear. It was possible. I must be careful. Very careful. I had better stop gossiping with Walter.

  While I was thinking about all this, Walter was guiding me through the castle, to the study where I had first met George Talbot. He was not there now, but Brockley was standing by the window. I walked in ahead of Walter and as Brockley started towards me, I put a finger to my lips and then turned to wave the page away. ‘Close the door after you,’ I said sternly. He did so. And then I forgot about imaginary visits, forgot everything except that here was Brockley, with news, which I instantly demanded.

  Brockley’s grave face broke into a smile. ‘Madam, I have had a message from Harry! Your son, for all he’s only nine, is growing already into a most resourceful lad! Here!’

  He held out a little roll of paper, which I fairly snatched from him. On the outside was my name and a direction to Hawkswood; on the inside, when I unrolled it, was a letter. The writing was Harry’s; I knew it at once.

  I am imprisoned in a big house. Don’t know where. It took three days to get here. It’s grey stone with a slate roof and ivy on the walls. There’s a wall round the house and garden, and there’s a front courtyard. It’s lonely. I can look out of windows and see over the wall but I can’t see any other houses. The people who hold me are those players who called at our home. I am in health and treated quite well but I know they want you to do something and what will happen if you don’t. There is a man with a soft voice who has threatened to hurt me if I try to escape. Try to find me, I beg you. I will try to slip this into the gear of a man who has called to mend the roof. I hope he will pass it on. I send my love – Harry.

  Then, evidently as an afterthought: There are dogs.

  ‘He may be only nine years old but he has plenty of good sense,’ Brockley said. ‘He knows what details we need to know.’

  ‘Yes. Between us, we have taught him well,’ I said. I was hurting inside, moved beyond bearing by the courage and the resourcefulness that had enabled Harry to get his message to us. And I was shuddering at the thought that he had been threatened by the man with that soft, cruel voice and the Arctic eyes. Please God, let us find Harry and save him before anything more befalls him!

  ‘The man who presumably repaired the roof did send it on to Hawkswood,’ Brockley said. ‘He hired a courier. The courier came from Stratford, well north of London. He hadn’t met his client before – said the man gave his name as Master Ashley. The courier rode off; I spent the rest of the day thinking things out and then started for Stratford the next morning. When I got there I couldn’t hear anything of anyone called Ashley living there. I heard of two roof menders in the town but neither was an Ashley or had employed a courier recently – or ever, in one case. Who’d I be writing to, away from here? All my folk are here and always have been and I can’t write, anyhow, he said to me. Nor could I hear of a house matching Harry’s description. I tried the vicarage and I tried the landlords of the inns.’ I nodded.

  ‘But it’s the first lead and the only one we’ve got,’ Brockley said. ‘Madam, I spent a day at Stratford and then came straight on here, as fast as I could. Stratford’s over eighty miles from here – nearer ninety. I left Firefly after the first stage when I left Hawkswood, and then used hirelings. Rotten slugs some of them were, too. I rode all day yesterday and finished the journey this morning. I did my best.’

  ‘We’re all doing our best, Brockley.’ The worry I had felt when Walter Meredith revealed how widely the news of Harry’s disappearance had spread suddenly reasserted itself. ‘I have a new anxiety,’ I said, and explained it. ‘We ought to have put out a story of some kind,’ I told him. ‘I must think of one and write to Sybil …’

  ‘Oh, that!’ Brockley laughed. ‘Madam, it has already been seen to. Mistress Jester and my son Philip both thought of it independently and came to me, Mistress Jester first, and Philip two hours later. We have already told the household that they are to spread the news that Harry has gone on a visit to his married sister, Mistress Margaret Hill, your daughter, in Buckinghamshire. That rumour should already be flourishing, and Mistress Jester wrote to Mistress Hill in case any hint of it should reach her. Arthur Watts took the letter. It’s all been attended to.’

  ‘I’m well served!’ I said appreciatively.

  ‘It’s difficult to quash rumours,’ Brockley said, ‘unless there’s something to replace them with but I think we’ve done it. It’s hard to think of everything at once. I was going to tell you but somehow, telling you about Harry’s letter came first.’

  He yawned suddenly and swayed a little and I saw with compunction how very tired he was. He was no longer young. ‘You need to rest,’ I said. ‘Dale is in my chamber, seeing to some sewi
ng. I will take you there. She will look after you. And I’ll send for some food and wine for you. But when you have rested, we must confer. The first thing to do is to find that house! It is surely not far from Stratford.’

  ‘I didn’t bring Wilder. He didn’t feel able to travel so far on horseback or at the speed I meant to go,’ Brockley said. ‘Philip’s better now and he wanted to come with me, but I sent him to Guildford to try, once more, if he could trace Laurence Miller’s movements there. He was quite cross about it, but I think it’s important. Miller’s a valuable man, but I am very suspicious of him.’

  ‘Brockley, I know you’re doing your best. Come with me now, and we’ll find Dale.’

  The next part of the story belongs to Harry. I will let him tell it, as eventually, when we were at last reunited, he told it to me.

  FOURTEEN

  Harry’s Tale

  We heard his tale, of course, a great deal later, when much had happened and he had been rescued. Yet it seems natural to repeat it here.

  ‘I was out riding, just out riding,’ Harry said. ‘And they jumped out at me when I was going through the wood. They were horrible, all wearing ugly masks, with devils’ faces and clowns’ faces, but cruel clowns, nasty ones. I struggled all I could – I really did …’

  He sounded almost fearful, as though he thought he would be accused of not trying to resist. ‘We know you would have struggled,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry about that. Just go on. What happened next?’

  What happened next, it seemed, was exactly what had happened to me. He was trussed, wrapped in a carpet and trundled for a long time on a handcart, and finally unloaded in a house which from his description was the one where I had been taken. He was given food and drink and allowed to relieve himself and he was able to look at his captors, who had removed their masks.

  ‘They were the players who came to our home,’ he said. ‘All seven of them, except that there were others as well – nine or ten altogether, all men except for the woman with the red hair.’

  Then he was told why he had been seized.

  ‘They wanted me to write a letter to you, Mother, saying what would happen to me if you didn’t do what they asked. I was t … terrified!’

  Brockley and Dale were among those present. ‘We can well understand that,’ Brockley told him.

  His lips were quivering. I held him firmly. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right, Harry. I’m here and you’re here. You never wrote that letter, it seems.’

  ‘No, I said I wouldn’t.’ His lip still trembled. ‘But they said they could make me, and I knew they could, if they really wanted to. I was so frightened. The man I remembered as the player with the very soft voice – his name was Lucas and he was the villain in the play – he looked as if he did want to. Well …’

  ‘It’s all right now,’ Brockley said. ‘You need not talk about him or remember him. Don’t think of him at all.’ He spoke in the deep, calm voice that I had so often heard him use when quieting a nervous horse. It seemed to steady Harry as well.

  ‘So why was the letter not written?’ I asked.

  ‘They weren’t all in agreement about it. It sounded as though they had been arguing already – Lucas said to one of them, Oh, you keep on saying that but we have to make contact with Mistress Stannard somehow! But the man who was the leader – he was the one who did card tricks at Hawkswood – said that in his opinion it could be too dangerous. Someone would have to deliver the letter. A courier would be needed. Yes, and he said, I keep on repeating this, so they must have been arguing beforehand. It seemed that none of them wanted to be the messenger. It would be so risky for whoever it was. Lucas said messengers could be hired, who need not know what the message was, but the woman said that hired couriers could be traced and questioned.’

  ‘They sound like a muddleheaded set of conspirators,’ Dale remarked.

  ‘Conspirators often are,’ Brockley told her. ‘All full of exalted ideas and not much common sense.’

  Harry said: ‘Next, they talked about just leaving a letter where the Hawkswood people would be sure to find it, but well, once more, no one wanted to do that in case they were caught. I think some of them were afraid of what they were doing! They argued and argued, but in the end, they decided to keep to another plan, what they called their alternative. That meant …’

  ‘Snatching me instead,’ I said. ‘Yes. That’s what they did.’

  ‘Mother, I can’t bear to think of you …’

  ‘It’s all right, Harry. It’s over. I’m safe and so are you. Go on. What happened next?’

  ‘I spent the night there but next day I was trussed up again and blindfolded this time, and then wrapped in that beastly carpet, and put on a cart of some sort, only horse-drawn this time, and taken away. It was a long journey – we were two nights on the road. There were breaks in lonely places where I was allowed to get out and walk about, to ease my aches, but I was kept blindfolded.’

  ‘How dreadful!’ Dale was appalled.

  ‘It was horrid,’ Harry said. ‘I don’t know where we spent the nights. Once was in some sort of hut, I think; it smelt of fodder and I had to sleep on a pile of hay. I could hear wind in trees and bird calls close by. The next night, I think we were in a ruined building. I could hear how voices echoed, and the sound of wind whining in a chimney. But in the end, we got to the house where you found me, and they freed me and took off the blindfold. There were two men, and neither of them were from the group of players. They weren’t masked. Why did the players bother with masks? It doesn’t make sense.’

  Brockley said: ‘They couldn’t have been sure of catching you alone. They must have been lying in wait, ready to seize any chance of snatching you, but if you had had a companion who got away, they wouldn’t want anyone to recognize them who might set a pursuit on their trail very quickly. Once they were a good distance from Hawkswood, it wouldn’t matter so much.’

  ‘I see. I suppose that would be right.’ Harry agreed, and then burst out: ‘Those masks were so horrible! It was like being with demons! Things from hell!’

  Brockley and I calmed him again and he said: ‘The two men weren’t bad. They made me fairly comfortable, with a room, and quite good food, but they were very watchful, and …’ He shivered. ‘They said I’d regret it if I tried what they called any funny business, but I was too frightened to try anything. The players joined them later.’

  ‘Having stayed behind to kidnap me,’ I said grimly.

  ‘Yes. Once they’d come back, the first two went away. The players guarded me instead.’ Again, he shivered, his memories still bearing hard on him.

  ‘It was all horrible,’ he said. ‘They told me they wished me no harm, but that some matters of state were more important than my life or freedom. They made me feel as if I was nothing – just a pawn on a chessboard. That was one of the most horrible things. It made me feel ashamed, somehow. They said that as your son, I ought to understand that because they were sure you did.’

  ‘I do,’ I said, with feeling. I had often been sent into danger by Cecil or Walsingham on behalf of the queen, because they held the same belief.

  Harry said: ‘I tried to take note of them. There was Lucas, for one. I hated him. He had such a soft, cruel voice. There was the leader; he did his card tricks to amuse me. There was the big fat man, who sang for us at Hawkswood – he was called John – and one, his name was Jeff, who was a tumbler and a juggler. I remember him doing tumbler’s tricks at Hawkswood and once, from a window, I saw him practising in the garden. There was the woman, who was called Eva. And two others of the seven who weren’t special, somehow, except that one spoke like a man from the north country. I can’t remember what the two were like who guarded me while the rest were away. I never heard their names.’

  ‘They will be found,’ I said, and once more heard how grim I sounded.

  ‘They let me out into the open air each day,’ Harry said, ‘though always with someone to guard me. I was allowed to help weed the garde
n at the back, and to play with a ball in the front courtyard. I played with the dogs sometimes. I made friends with them. But I never had a chance to escape. I did begin to think about it after a day or two. I was frightened – so frightened – but I was more afraid of what might happen to me if I didn’t escape than what they might do to me if I tried and failed!’

  ‘You were brave,’ Brockley told him.

  ‘The wall was high,’ Harry said, ‘and there were only two gates, one in front and one at the back, at the end of the garden, and they were always padlocked except when a cart was coming in or out – fetching supplies, usually. There was a stable yard beside the courtyard, with an archway in between, but I was never allowed near that.

  ‘I tried, though, to see how the days went, who came and went and so on. To see if I could make a plan.’ I saw now that he was remembering that he had tried to plan, that he was remembering the things that didn’t make him feel ashamed, and his voice had steadied. I looked at my son with both admiration and astonishment, for he sounded older than nine; already, a man was beginning to take shape within the boy.

  ‘Go on,’ I said, since he had paused, collecting his thoughts.

  ‘There never seemed to be any outsiders,’ he said at length. ‘Once there were some repairs done to a drain, but the people who were in charge of me saw to that themselves. I never saw the back gate unlocked and the front one was only unlocked to let carts in and out, as I said. If a cart arrived and wanted to come in, the driver would blow a horn. If I was outside at those times, I was called in. My bedchamber had a view – I think I said something about that in my letter, didn’t I? – but I couldn’t see any other house or any smoke from a village though there must have been a village or a town somewhere because the supplies must have come from somewhere.’