A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court) (30 page)

After breakfast we packed our shoulder bags, stuffing
in the things from my saddlebags as best we could, and slung them on over our cloaks. I called for Dormbois and he came to escort us downstairs.

At the door, we were each given a basket containing food and a leather water flask. Dormbois walked with us across the courtyard and the grassy outer enclosure. Both the inner and the outer gates must have been barred the previous night, for they had to be unbolted and opened for us, by gatekeepers who seemed to be constantly on duty. Once the main gate was open, I kissed Dormbois good-bye. It seemed fair, and I was grateful to him for releasing me with such good grace. Together, Dale and I set off down the zigzag path toward the hovels in the valley.

At least the morning was fine, even warm. “We’d better go at a steady pace,” I said to Dale. “We’ll only tire ourselves if we try to hurry. Someone in those cottages may know how far it is to the next hamlet toward Stirling. I wish I’d thought to ask Dormbois. Dale? What is it?”

She had stopped and was looking over her shoulder. “I think, ma’am,” she said tightly, “that if you want to ask him anything, you’ll still have a chance. Look.”

I spun around. Half a dozen riders were spilling out of the gates of Roderix, and in the lead was Dormbois. I knew him by his steed, the silver-gray pony with the dark mane and tail. I looked desperately around for somewhere we could flee to, which would offer shelter, but there was nowhere. We did start to run, but the riders, regardless of the steep slope and the sharp bends of the zigzags, were galloping down the hill, and in a moment they had encircled us.

“What’s this?” I demanded, just as one of the riders leaned out of his saddle and seized hold of Dale. She shrieked and flailed at him with her basket, but just as when we were captured the first time, her captor hauled her up before his pommel as though she weighed nothing. “You promised!” I shouted furiously at Dormbois.

“I promised you should walk unmolested out of the gate of Roderix Fort,” Dormbois informed me coolly. “And so you did. I never promised not to come after you; I never promised not to bring you back. I’ve come to tak you home, my sweet.”

He reached down for me. I backed away but immediately bumped into the shoulder of another pony. Dormbois pushed his own mount up closer, dropped his reins, twitched my basket out of my hand, tossed it away with the remark that I wouldnae be needing that now; there was food aplenty in Roderix, and then caught me around the body with both hands and lifted. The strength of these men was terrifying. Like Dale, I was hoisted from the ground to the pony as though I were thistledown. Though I knew it to be useless, I still instinctively resisted, twisting around, pushing at his chest, trying to break his grip and slip off again.

He had not put on a cloak. On this warm spring morning, his doublet was enough. As I turned and thrust my hands against him, my nose was only an inch from the buttons down the front.

They were covered in black velvet and on each, a crisscross pattern had been worked, in tiny stitches of silver thread.

And one of them was missing.

The shock turned my muscles to water. I stopped struggling. I think my body instinctively adopted stillness as a protection, like a red deer calf in the long grass when a fox is prowling. I let myself be borne unresisting back up the hill and through the gates. Dormbois dismounted before the main steps and lifted me down, and I let him lead me in. Dale had given in, as well. Pale and wet-eyed, her pockmarks as visible as black spots on rose leaves, she walked silently at my side.

But when we had once more been taken up to the parlor and thrust inside, I found the courage to face Dormbois and say: “If you have any feeling for me at all, if your protestations of passion and your endearments in the night were anything more than empty words, then leave me in peace for a while. Dale will look after me.”

“If I strike you as rough or dishonorable, lassie,”
said Dormbois, “then you can take it that my protestations and endearments were a muckle more than empty words. What I feel for you is too strong for dainty wooing in a garden full o’ roses. I’ll leave you awhile, to think and calm your spirits. You’ll find occupation here; I had it put ready, since you asked for it yesterday and maybe it’s best you should have something to do to quiet yourselves. And in that chest there, you’ll find dresses and linen that belonged to Marguerite. Tak what you fancy. She and you weren’t much different in size and I daresay your woman here can tak in or let out as needed. I’ll leave you now and send wine.”

He bowed and I thought that I even glimpsed something hangdog about him. So did Dale, for as soon as he had gone, she said: “You’ve a hold over him, ma’am. I can see it. You might talk us out of this in the end. He’s got it bad. You’ve got that power over men. I think sometimes you don’t know it.” On the last two sentences, her voice dropped and she looked away, as though she were talking to herself rather than to me. I knew she was thinking of Brockley.

Quickly, I said: “Dale, where’s that button we found on the floor of my cousin’s room? Do we have it with us?”

“Yes, ma’am. I dropped it in among the medicines.”

“Bring it here.”

When she did so, I laid it in my palm and stared at it. There was no mistake. I looked at Dale. “When he seized me today, I had all too good a view of the buttons on Dormbois’s doublet. One is missing. This one.”

“What?” Dale’s blue eyes bulged. “But . . .”

“Yes. Which means,” I said, “that if Dormbois was
telling the truth when he said that Rob Henderson gave the order, it was Dormbois himself to whom the order was given! It was Dormbois who was in Edward’s room that night.”

Fuming, I began to pace around the room, further outrageous thoughts surfacing in my mind. “And what, I wonder, was it all about when he promised to find out more about Adam Ericks for me? A ploy to keep me thinking Ericks was guilty while dangling a bait to make me interested in himself? I think it was! He’s been playing me, Dale, like a fish on a line! My God!”

“Madam?”

“And I’ve just thought of something else!” I was frightened and raging, both at once. “When I first met him at Holyrood, Dormbois led me to believe he wasn’t in the city when Edward was . . . was killed. But he was! Do you remember what Jamie Fraser said? That Sir Brian came back from Edinburgh on purpose to see him—Hamish, that is—and was here the midday, after Hamish arrived. Hamish Fraser got to Roderix on the eve of Edward’s death, so Dormbois must have arrived the day after. Oh yes, he was in Edinburgh on that night . . . and I know what he was doing!”

I went on thinking aloud, still pacing. “No doubt either he or Henderson was the man who put the authorities on to Adam Ericks. I daresay that it was men in their employ who urged Ericks and Edward into quarreling in that tavern. They probably had Edward under surveillance and saw their chance of setting up a scapegoat for his murder.”

Unexpectedly, Dale said: “Were there any stains on the doublet with the missing button, ma’am?”

“It’s been cleaned—sponged, I expect. I noticed it at breakfast. I thought that food stains had been removed. But it needn’t,” I said grimly, “have been just food.”

“Oh, ma’am!”

“Quite. Oh, ma’am, indeed! And last night . . .”

The memory of the previous night poured over me in a flood. I swayed on my feet and sat down on the nearest settle. “Last night, I lay with that man. I . . . oh, God, Dale, what have I done?”

Dale, tearful Dale who tired so easily and hated riding and so often declared that she couldn’t abide this or that; Dale who grieved because sometimes her husband and I were closer friends than she could bear, had a core of strength and sheer common sense that showed itself at the most unexpected moments.

“What you’ve done, ma’am,” she said in a common-sense voice, “is to get part of the way to the truth. You know about Master Henderson’s part in it as well. So it didn’t go for nothing. You just put last night out of your mind, now. God willing, no harm will come of it. The vinegar always worked when you used it before.”

“Bless you, Dale,” I said. “I’ll try.”

“The thing is, ma’am,” said Dale, becoming positively brisk, “we’re prisoners here and we’ve got to get out. Well, I’m ready. Even if we do have to knot the sheets together and let us ourselves down from that lamp bracket out there.”

“Dale!” I got up again and hugged her. “My dear Fran. My very dear Fran. No one ever had such a good friend. But I shan’t ask you to climb down any knotted sheets. We’d probably both break our necks and anyway, we’d still have two walls and gates between us and freedom.
We could hardly try it in daylight and they bar the gates at night. But escape we must, somehow. You’re right there. Let me think.”

Dale said: “I wish they’d bring that wine. You could do with it, ma’am, and so could I.”

I looked listlessly around the room. It had been made ready for our return, the floor swept and a fire lit. It also contained a few things, including a backgammon set and a workbox, which hadn’t been there before. There was the chest that Dormbois had mentioned as well. I moved over to it and looked inside. Dresses and linen, as he had said, all of fine quality, and also some lengths of unused material. All were carefully folded and laid in dried lavender; Marguerite had no doubt had women attendants who had seen to that after she was gone. I pictured them, smoothing the lovely fabrics and maybe crying over them before they closed the chest. I hoped that Dormbois had let them take a few things for themselves, as mementos.

There was a jewel box in the chest as well, but I was in no mood to ooh and aah over jewelry. Closing the chest, I looked at the other things that had been provided for us. I wasn’t in the mood for backgammon, either, but I opened the workbox, which was made of sandalwood and was no doubt an import from some Far Eastern land. It contained needles, a little pair of shears, a good supply of silken and woolen thread in a choice of colors, and some folded papers, which when I opened them out turned out to be designs for embroidery.

“We certainly have occupation,” I said dryly. “We can amuse ourselves until tonight, but tonight . . .”

“You’re due, ma’am!” said Dale. “Tomorrow, for sure. Tell him it’s started. That’ll gain you some time. Oh, dear heaven, the linen squares were in my saddlebags that we’ve lost . . . oh, well, there’s linen in that chest. Let’s cut some of it up.”

We were engaged on this when at last the wine arrived, brought by Dormbois himself, who was not alone, but was accompanied by a short, dark-gowned man with a red face, whom I had seen before, although for a moment I couldn’t remember where. Dormbois, however, informed me.

“I’ve brought Father Bell to you,” he said in irritable tones. “He came to me and said he had heard there were ladies of his faith here in Roderix and should he no’ minister to them? Well, I said I’d not hinder you in matters of worship. Father Bell, this is Madame Ursula de la Roche.” He used my French title, ignoring my English one. “And this is her woman, of the same faith, nae doot. And here’s the wine I promised, ladies, to put some heart into you.”

He then sat down on a window seat and Father Bell regarded him with annoyance. “Sir, before I offer the consolations of the mass, which I wish to do, I must hear the confessions of these ladies.” Dale, who had a real loathing for what she called popish practices, bristled at my side, but I put a hand on her arm and gripped hard, keeping her quiet. From his voice, the priest wasn’t a Scot but more likely a well-educated Northumbrian. A man bred at Roderix Fort might have an unquestioning loyalty to Dormbois, but with luck, this man had not. “The confessional is secret,” he said to Dormbois. “I must ask you not to remain within hearing.”

“No, I cannot confess while Sir Brian can overhear,” I agreed smoothly. Dormbois stared at me, and I watched while it dawned on him just how embarrassing he would find such a confession.

“What are you about, cutting up that linen?” he demanded.

“Preparing to deal with the nature of women, Sir Brian. Forgive me for mentioning this before you, Father Bell. My nature, I’m afraid, has now manifested itself.”

Dormbois looked at me hard, as though trying to work out whether or not I was lying, but I simply stared back at him. “Don’t be too long over it,” he said to Father Bell, and withdrew. The priest watched him go and cocked his head to listen as Dormbois’s footsteps receded down the stairs.

Then, in a whisper, he said: “Madam. You have a manservant called Roger Brockley?”

“What? Yes, yes!”

“He’s my husband!” Dale gasped. “Is he all right?”

From within his robe, Bell drew out a small cylinder of paper and handed it to me. “This is from him. He needs your instructions. He is in my cottage. He turned to me as a man of God, hoping I wouldn’t fail him. He said that if I tried any double-dealing with him, he would kill me. He need not have worried. Sir Brian,” said the priest grimly, “is an apostate. I fear him, but I have little wish to help him in his present activities. Your man says that you ladies are prisoners against your will. He would be here himself, only he says Dormbois would recognize him. I supplied Master Brockley with writing materials.”

I unrolled the cylinder. Dale pressed close, to read it over my shoulder.

What a blessing, I thought, that Brockley was literate. He had learned his letters as a child and still wrote the hand he had been taught then, which was slow, simple, and legible.

And what it said was startling.

Mistress Blanchard:

I caught Fran’s horse and have your belongings safely. I rode the horse to Stirling but the queen and Darnley were away on a hunting trip and Master Henderson too and not expected back for three days. By chance, I met Adam Ericks at Stirling Castle. He is there with his master. He is very angry. He says he has recognized one of the men who urged him on to quarrel in the tavern and that this man serves Rene of Elbeouf and therefore is under the command of Sir Brian Dormbois.