‘You can drop the respectful Master,’ remarked Brockley. ‘He isn’t worth it.’
‘Well, neither of them answered at first, but they started to talk about an abandoned cottage. They sounded as if they’d talked of it before, as if it was a plan they already had. Only, Woodley said, since you were certainly going to attack, you’d probably find out about it; you’d frighten someone into talking. Then Lucas said he knew of a deserted charcoal-burner’s hut. No one would find us there. It was all by itself in a wood, well beyond the cottage. I was so frightened, and angry. I’d realized that rescue must be on its way but I wouldn’t be there to be rescued and I wanted to be sick …’
He stopped, and drank a little more. Then he said: ‘I felt frantic. It seemed someone was coming to rescue me but they wouldn’t be able to find me! I was terrified. We seemed to be riding for ever, galloping when the light and the ground allowed it, and Lucas was gripping me so hard, so hard and I hated him, hated him … and then I heard Woodley say we’re getting on, we’re near the abandoned cottage and the charcoal-burner’s hut isn’t so very much further, and suddenly it seemed to be now or never. Lucas had sheathed his dagger, the way I said. His arm was round both of mine at first but I’d managed to wriggle a little bit loose. Somehow I jerked my right hand free, snatched at the dagger hilt, got it out and just … just thrust it into him. Into his body. All very quickly.’
He had begun to shake. ‘Steady,’ said Brockley.
‘He just fell,’ said Harry. ‘Lucas just fell, toppled out of the saddle. I somehow got myself into it, heaved myself backwards over the pommel.’ He looked at Brockley and for the first time managed a faint smile. ‘Like the horseback games you’ve taught me. You always say they’ll help me to feel at home on a horse. I knew how to get myself back over the pommel and properly into the saddle. I turned the horse and started back, flat out. I thought I’d better come here; I didn’t know where else to go, and if rescue had been coming, I thought well, it’s surely there by now. I couldn’t think what else to do. As I started off, I saw Woodley’s horse bucking.’
‘It would have sensed violence. Horses do,’ said Brockley.
‘Well, I rode like fury. Clinging on. I couldn’t get my feet into the stirrups, the leathers were too long for my legs. I just gripped!’
‘I’ve not only taught him horseback games, I’ve also made him practise riding bareback,’ remarked Brockley. ‘It’s a good way to make sure a boy has a strong seat.’
‘I heard hoofbeats behind me,’ said Harry. ‘I thought – that man Woodley! But then I found you.’ A great weariness settled over him. ‘Mother … I want to sleep.’
‘We’ll find your room,’ I said. ‘You can go back to bed. I will find another bed and bring it in, and stay with you tonight.’
On the way up the stairs, Harry said: ‘Mother, when I’m in bed, will you fetch Brockley? There’s something I have to tell you, and him.’
I did as he asked. When he was settled, and Brockley had searched for and found a truckle bed that I could use, Harry said wanly: ‘Please close the door. No one else must hear.’
‘Now, what’s all this?’ Brockley sat down on the window seat and I sank onto my truckle.
‘It’s something I couldn’t tell anyone … not Sir Ambrose or Sir George Talbot. Not until I’d told you. So that you could decide.’
His voice was low, but calm. My son, I thought, my dear, dear son. You look so like your father Matthew but you will be a finer man than he was. You are already brave and resourceful beyond your years.
‘Tell us, Harry,’ I said.
‘They – the Players as they call themselves – already knew that rescue might be coming for me, before Woodley got here. They knew I’d got a message out. One wet day when I was reading in my room – they let me have books – I heard a messenger arrive. I looked out of the window and saw him being let in. Lucas went out to meet him and he gave Lucas a letter. They came inside with it and then uproar broke out. I went to my door and looked down the stairwell and saw Lucas running across the vestibule and heard him shouting that the brat – that was me!’ said Harry, with sudden resentment, ‘that the brat had somehow got a message to Hawkswood, and thank God someone had been there to let us know, only he didn’t actually say someone. He said a name. He shouted it!’
‘Foolish of him,’ observed Brockley.
‘Lucas was nasty,’ said Harry. ‘But not very clever, I think.’
‘Well, what was the name?’ I asked. ‘Was it Miller?’
‘Miller? No.’ Harry’s face was unhappy, almost gaunt. He looked far older than nine.
He dropped his voice. That what he said sounded like a thunderclap has nothing to do with the level of sound.
‘He shouted, Thank God Sandley was there!’ said Harry.
We stared at him, shocked into silence. Harry said: ‘The day I was seized, it was Master Sandley who told me which way to ride – he said where a path crosses the one towards White Towers, go to the left because it leads out of the wood on to that sunny heath where I can have a gallop if I like. I think he must have helped to plan it all. There was a terrible fuss when they found out about my message and I was beaten again.’ He shuddered. ‘I know they talked of moving me but they had nowhere safe to move me to – at least nowhere where I could be kept for long. It seemed that they only had Ivy House and the place where I was taken when I was first seized. But someone thought of the ruin, which would do for a while if necessary. They were all ready to whisk me off to it, anyway.’
I said: ‘Philip Sandley told us he had recommended you to take the path to the right. He led me that way when I was taken.’
Harry blinked. ‘When you were … Mother?’
‘There is much we have to say to each other,’ I said. ‘But after you have slept.’
Brockley was staring into space, his face blank with shock. ‘My son,’ said Brockley blankly. ‘He told them about Harry’s letter. Because of him, that poor fellow Daniel Ashley was killed, his children left without a father, his wife a widow. My son is responsible. My son!’
TWENTY-THREE
Face to Face
Sir Ambrose and Sir George took charge of the situation. We returned to Warwick Castle the next day, and it was there that Harry told us the earlier part of his story, of his capture and of his short stay in what must have been Heath House, before the decision was taken to capture me as well, and Harry was taken away to Ivy House, so that he would not be at hand when I was brought in.
For the time being, most of us stayed on at Warwick Castle. Dale duly arrived with the baggage waggons, and I sent word back to Sheffield that Eddie was to collect our horses and our coach and join us. Meanwhile, Sir Ambrose and Sir George had exchanges with Sir Francis Walsingham at court and from him, they received instructions. So did I.
There was an inquest into the death of the man Lucas, whose full name, apparently, was Lucas Dean, but it was brief, simple and discreet. Harry Stannard, a young boy, had been abducted for the purposes of ransom, with the threat of selling him into slavery if the law was put on their trail. His family had sought to find him, trying to keep their efforts secret, and had virtually succeeded when his captors tried to get him away. He struggled and managed to escape and had stabbed Lucas in the process. No one blamed him. It was self-defence and justifiable.
He was indeed commended for his bravery (remarkable in one so young, said the coroner), and for his cleverness in getting a message to us. No mention was made of the fact that someone at Hawkswood had told Harry’s captors about the said message.
It was over. The prisoners we had taken at Ivy House had been induced – I preferred not to ask how – to name the rest of the conspirators, who had also been arrested. They were a small group; only a dozen all told.
They claimed, as I already knew, to be a group of honest patriots who wanted the best for England and the queen and felt that the demise of Mary Stuart would be the best. They were warned not to make that claim when th
ey were tried. They would be charged with abduction with intent to extort a ransom. No mention would be made of the queen or the Duke of Alençon and Anjou or Mary Stuart, and if the conspirators were foolish enough to do so, they would make their fate harder than it would be anyway.
At both the inquest and the trial, I gave evidence which had been carefully edited by Walsingham. Many people knew of my abduction; that could not well be concealed. But Walsingham’s instructions to me told me to state that I had been seized only for purposes of negotiating the ransom. There is no need to be explicit about the currency in which you were to pay it, said Walsingham’s letter to me dryly. It also said under no circumstances must the names of the queen or the Duke of Alençon be mentioned.
It was left up to me to decide on the size of the ransom that I should say had been demanded. I was to say that I had been released to raise it, but had also set about trying to find Harry and rescue him. Harry, after he too had been instructed to pretend that he had only been taken for ransom, told his amended story at both the inquest and the trial very convincingly. I was proud of him.
The trial was finally held at Warwick, in the second week of June. The ringleader, who was not called William Corby but was in private life a Sheffield innkeeper called Simeon Wilmot, was executed and so was Russell Woodley, whose guilt was compounded by his final betrayal of the woman he had professed to love, and of his employer, Sir George Talbot. I tried to plead for him – since his proposal to me had apparently been sincere if horribly muddleheaded – but failed. I was congratulated on my womanly goodheartedness, but told that the processes of the law could not be altered by such a thing.
The others – except of course for Lucas, who was dead – were imprisoned at the queen’s pleasure and heavily fined. That probably bore harder on some than on others, for the Players were a mixed set of people. The seven principals, the ones who had actually seen to the capture of Harry and me, were the innkeeper Wilmot, his wife Eva, a gamekeeper (Lucas Dean), a real-life tumbler and three people who had held good positions in big houses.
The others had been peripheral players, who had provided money and advice and aid of various kinds. They included Russell Woodley and a prosperous cloth merchant from London, a pickpocket from Stratford (for whom the authorities had been looking for a long time) and a tailor, a very dull sort of man, who gave the impression, at the trial, of having been treated as negligible all his life, and having longed for adventure and to have all eyes upon him. He had got what he wanted, and lost his business, since it must now be sold to raise the money for his fine. He and the pickpocket were the two men who took Harry to Ivy House and guarded him while the seven players stayed near Hawkswood to kidnap me.
The peripheral players also, of course, included Philip Sandley but he was not mentioned at the trial. I think Brockley had something to do with that. I know he managed to have speech with the prisoners before they were taken away from Ivy House and I suspect he offered inducements of some kind, perhaps assistance with fines, if they would keep silent about Philip. Brockley was a provident man and no doubt had savings. I had never enquired and now, I asked no questions. Brockley asked me and Harry not to mention Philip, and we did as he wished.
So it was over. It had been a curious, ramshackle conspiracy and yet it might have worked, if I had been a different kind of woman. In the darkness, night after night, I wondered what I would have done if I had really been forced to the wall, if it had been a straight choice between betraying Harry or committing murder. I didn’t know the answer and felt guilty about it, as though I should have known. Only years later did I find an answer of a sort and that was because I had told Harry, who was a grown man by then, and he looked at me in amazement and said: ‘But Mother, of course you couldn’t assassinate anyone! I’m glad you couldn’t! Brockley once told me how he sent you out of the Ivy House kitchen in case he had to use force to make my captors say where I had been taken; he didn’t want you to be corrupted, as he put it. I wouldn’t want it, either, even if I had ended up as a slave in Turkey. After all, there was always the chance that I would escape!’
My guilt died then, but it was a death long in coming.
As it was, the conspiracy was over and when the trial finally finished, we could go home. Before we went, though, I found a silk merchant in Warwick, bought a charming shawl of blue silk, embroidered with silver stars, and sent it to Lady Alice Hammond as a farewell present. I hoped she would like it and she need not know that it was in truth an apology for the unfounded suspicions I had had of her.
I asked Sir George Talbot to make my farewells to Mary Stuart. I couldn’t ask Bess because she didn’t intend to return to Sheffield, but to her beloved other home, Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. She had had it built for her and said it was a much pleasanter place than Sheffield Castle.
‘I have no wish to see Her Grace again,’ she said to me, though privately, for it wasn’t the kind of thing she would have said in public.
‘I always thought you didn’t like her very much,’ I said.
‘Like her? She’s easily the silliest woman I’ve ever met,’ said Bess with vigour. ‘She has an ambition to die as a Catholic martyr – did you know?’
‘I know she admires them.’
‘She probably will die on the block,’ Bess said coolly (and prophetically, as it turned out), ‘and she’ll try to pretend she’s dying for her faith, when really it will just mean that the queen is tired of being plotted against by Catholics and has given way to Sir Francis Walsingham, who has been longing for years to chop Mary’s head off. Mary encourages plots, you know. Every chance she can manage.’
‘I know,’ I said, thinking that Bess, like the queen, wouldn’t have felt too upset if I had forced myself to lace Mary’s wine with hemlock. I did not pursue the conversation.
Brockley meanwhile was being rueful about Laurence Miller, just as I was about Alice Hammond. ‘I shall have to apologize to Miller,’ he said. ‘For the unfounded suspicions I have had of him!’
We set off for home at last. It was well into June by then and sunny and we rode through a world where the trees were laden with leaf and the roadsides with cow parsley and meadowsweet, dog-roses and clover, tall feathery grasses and golden dandelions and we did most of our travelling in the morning and evening, because the middle of the day was hot and fly-ridden. Our arrival was expected; we had written ahead to Adam Wilder to let him know that we were on our way, and someone had been watching for us. Freya and Prince came bouncing vociferously out to greet us, which almost brought tears to my eyes as I remembered Goldie and Remus and how much I had missed their noisy canine welcomes. Home felt and sounded normal once again. Indeed nearly all the human members of the household were out in the yard to meet us when we rode in.
Sybil and Gladys were both tearful with relief at the sight of Harry. Others present were Laurence Miller, and Philip Sandley, who beamed as broadly as though the sight of Harry were truly welcome to him and hurried forward to hug the lad as he dismounted. Harry would have resisted, I think, but I caught his eye and he accepted the embrace, coolly, but it seemed no more than a matter of a boy on his dignity. I had of course written to Sybil about the progress of the inquest and the trial and Philip must have feared for himself but then become easy in his mind as no one arrived to arrest him. As yet, he did not know he had been identified.
It was dinner time and food was ready. John Hawthorn had been making preparations all morning. We changed out of our travelling clothes, and dined. I shared the table with Dale and Brockley, Sybil, Gladys and Philip and, of course, Harry. Brockley had little to say to Philip and Harry had nothing at all but I had foreseen this and made sure it wasn’t too noticeable, by seating them well apart from him. Harry was between me and Brockley at the far end of the table, and we talked animatedly together all through the meal.
When it was over, Dale and Sybil went upstairs, saying that they would look through my luggage and see how much damage had come to my dresses after so much tra
velling. Brockley looked at me and said: ‘Madam, it is time,’ and I nodded.
‘What first?’ I asked.
‘First, let’s get the business of Laurence Miller out of the way.’
Brockley fetched him from his quarters at the stud and brought him to the big east parlour, which clearly surprised him. He had probably expected us, if we wished to talk to him, to see him in the hall or the study. His air was as dour as it usually was as he enquired if we wanted a report on the work of the stud.
‘Things have gone well,’ he said. ‘All the mares have foaled now; we lost only one foal. The others seem to be thriving. But I have doubts about the stallion. He is too temperamental and temperament can be inherited as well as long legs or a deep chest. I think …’
‘We’ll discuss all that later,’ I said. ‘Brockley has something to say to you.’
‘I wish to apologize for unworthy suspicions,’ said Brockley. ‘We had wondered if you were in some way connected with the abductions. When Harry got his message to Hawkswood, someone here let his captors know. They were ready with their plans when we found out where they were and took a rescue party there. We feared that you were their informant …’
‘Me?’ Miller actually gaped, in an astonishment that could not possibly be faked.
‘You went to Guildford and didn’t come back when you were expected, and although Brockley and then Philip Sandley both tried to discover where you had been, they couldn’t. You told us you had visited your mother but that turned out to be not true, and there was mention of some mysterious woman but we couldn’t trace her, either.’
‘She exists, though,’ said Laurence, and for the first time ever, I saw him look amused. ‘Though if any of you had found her, you might have been surprised.’
The Reluctant Assassin Page 22
