Queen of Ambition (24 page)

What were the visions that obsessed them? In Jester’s case, it seemed to be his absent wife. But Woodforde’s obsession was presumably Lady Lennox. I could not see how that fitted in. Whatever it was, though, I was sure now that it had driven Woodforde beyond reason and that he would kill for it.

“What I want to know,” Jester was demanding angrily, “is how you think I can keep to the bargain if there’s no playlet.”

“There might be another chance,” said Woodforde. “Even if the queen’s party doesn’t stop in Jackman’s Lane, they may still ride through it.”

“Oh, I wish I knew what you were both talking about!” wailed Ambrosia. “And what about Ursula!” She clenched her hands and shook them in the air. “Oh, dear God, I only wanted to protect my own family; I didn’t want Ursula hurt, but she’s here and you’re talking in front of her and …”

“What about Ursula, you say? What about Sybil?” Jester hardly seemed to have heard. “What about my
Sybil
? I want her back, I tell you! I dream of her at night. I’ve dreamed of her just about every night since she ran off and left me. She belongs to me and sometimes I think if I got her back, I’d kill her and sometimes I think I’d throw myself at her feet—but dead or alive, I want her in my arms!” Although he was behind me, I sensed that he was glowering at his daughter. “You say
you don’t know where your mother’s living; that Barley only told you she was Mistress Smithson but not where Mistress Smithson’s to be found, and maybe that’s true and maybe it ain’t. Come to think of it, I reckon maybe it ain’t and though I know my dear brother won’t tell me, maybe I could beat it out of you if I tried …”

“You couldn’t!
I don’t know!
” Ambrosia said shrilly. “
And nor
,” she added for good measure, “
does Ursula!
”

For a fraction of a second, through the gloom, her eyes met mine with a look of appeal.
Don’t tell them! Don’t tell them!

I felt as though the words
Brent Hay
must be written across my forehead in letters of fire. In a shaky voice—which was no pretense—I said: “I don’t know where Mistress Smithson lives and you’d be wasting your time trying to make me tell you. I could have inquired but I didn’t. I was doing Ambrosia a favor—and a pity you weren’t more grateful, Ambrosia!—but I didn’t want to get too deeply entangled in what isn’t my business.”

“You were minding your own business? A spy who minds her own business. That’s a contradiction if ever I heard one,” Woodforde observed.

“If I thought either of you girls did know …” Jester began ominously.

“The wenches can be easy. I won’t let you beat them,” said Woodforde cynically. “I don’t want them telling you. They can rely on me.”

Jester’s grip on my arms hardened in fury, digging painfully in. “Damn your dark soul for all eternity, Giles.
I want my wife back
, and how can I have her if
she’s not brought into the shop, and you won’t tell me where she lives!”

“You help me,” said Woodforde, “and I’ll tell you where to find her. You don’t help me, and I won’t. It’s that simple.”

“You’ll get us both hanged!” Jester shouted. I thought he was the less obsessed of the two, but I doubted if that would help me much. Woodforde was too dominant. As for Ambrosia, she clearly didn’t know very much more than I did, but despite the muddle she was obviously in, she was loyal to her family. However, she did now make a protest on my behalf, with another wail of “Yes, but what
about
Ursula?”

Woodforde regarded me with an intense dislike and a terrifying kind of detachment, as though he didn’t recognize me as even being human. I might have been a spider or a cockroach. “Isn’t it obvious? She knew too much from the moment she saw this place. I could have told you then what was going to happen to Ursula. There’s only one answer. Ursula won’t be seen again. Just harden your heart, girl. Family comes first, just as you said. Do you want to see your father swinging from a rope?”

“But Cecil knows she’s here!”

“She won’t be found here. Anyone who asks can be told—probably by you, my wench—that she left here, that she went somewhere else and you don’t know where, and his men can search the place if they like. They won’t find her.”

“I don’t like it!” Jester spluttered. “Killing a woman isn’t …”

“You nearly killed my mother more than once!” said Ambrosia bitterly.

“That was in hot blood. Sybil could make me so wild,” Jester said. “But doin’it in cold blood …”

“She’s a spy. That means she doesn’t count as a woman,” Woodforde told him.

“Look, can’t we just think about this?” Jester pleaded.

“
Shush!
Listen.” Woodforde cocked his head. “Someone’s coming.”

We all listened. Outside in the attic study, footsteps were crossing the floor. I opened my mouth to shout for help but Jester’s hand came around and clamped over my mouth. Someone was moving books on the other side of the hidden door. Whoever it was knew how to work the hidden latch. The door swung open, letting in a welcome breath of fractionally cooler air. And then the way was blocked by, of all people, the large and pink-faced Wat.

“Whass goin’ on?” said Wat. I stared at him, trying with my eyes to signal
Run!
but the great booby merely ducked his head under the doorway, which was too low for him, and stepped inside. Light from the door behind him poured in, revealing the tableau within: Ambrosia looking terrified, Jester gripping my arms from behind, and Woodforde standing close by with an unsheathed dagger in his hand. Wat’s round blue eyes widened in amazement. “What’re you a-doin’ to Mistress Ursula? Master Woodforde, you put that dagger down!”

“One step closer and I use it!” snapped Woodforde. “Stand where you are!”

“Ah?” said Wat, bewildered, but did as he was told.

“Shut the door, Ambrosia!” said Jester.

Ambrosia hesitated.

“I’m your
father
. In God’s name, girl!”

Ambrosia let out a moan, but obeyed him. She
darted past Wat and shut the door, and then stood with her back to it, barring his way out, not that he showed any signs of wishing to retreat. He rubbed his head. “What’s all this, thass what I want to know. Whass all this about?”

“Now are you goin’ to say we’ve to finish them both off?” Jester demanded of his brother. “Be a bit much, in my opinion. I suppose we could say they’d run off together but who’s goin’ to believe it?”

Woodforde edged behind me and said: “Give her to me. That’s it.” I felt Jester’s hands drop away, but Woodforde took his place, pulling my head back, and once more gripping my chin. He once more put his blade against my throat turning it slightly, however, so that for the moment it would not cut my skin. “It seems I’ll have to talk you round,” he said to Jester. “I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about.”

Ambrosia moaned again and Jester made a gobbling noise. Then he burst out with a decidedly down-to-earth and practical objection: “Cut throats mean blood! It ’ud get all over us and it ’ud smell. And besides, in this weather, afore long,
they’d
smell.”

“We’ll sacrifice a couple of your nice new settles or something. They open, don’t they? Stuffed in settles and stowed in here, they wouldn’t stink much. Pity you broke the old settles up,” Woodforde said matterof factly.

“What’re they talkin’ about?” Wat asked me, understandably unable to grasp that his employer and his employer’s brother were discussing our murder, and more in terms of inconvenience than morality. They were reducing us to the level of two sackloads of
smelly rubbish. I didn’t answer because I had gone rigid with fright and didn’t think I could speak, even if moving my throat muscles hadn’t felt dangerous.

“We
can’t
!” Jester was saying.

“No, we can’t!” echoed Ambrosia, looking from her uncle to her father in terror. Even in the dimness I could see that she was white-faced and trembling.

“Oh, for the love of God!” said Woodforde, exasperated. “All right! We’ll talk about it.” He let out a disgusted snort. “Ugh! This room reeks anyway—I can hardly breathe. Cecil’s men have come and gone and we’ve got these two safely in here. If there’s no one else skulking round the premises, we can go into the outer room where there’s some air. We can leave this pretty pair here for the moment. I can hardly put up with the sight of them, I don’t mind telling you. We need rope. Ambrosia, you slip out and fetch some of that rope you hang out washing on. Oh, do as you’re told! And while you’re at it, make sure there
isn’t
anyone else on the prowl. Make sure that girl Phoebe hasn’t come back as well. Roland, where’s your own knife? Get round behind that great oaf there and keep him in order with it, same as I’m doing with Ursula here.”

Ambrosia gave me a desperate look. “They’re my family. I’ve got … I mean I can’t … Oh … hhh!”

She plunged out of the room, with a hand over her mouth, as though she were about to vomit. She just paused long enough to shut the door after her and then we heard her rushing away. I made an attempt to move in Woodforde’s grip but the feel of the steel against my skin stopped me. Jester pulled out his own
knife and stepped behind Wat, who exclaimed and would have resisted but was halted by a sharp command from Woodforde. “Do you want me to cut this woman’s throat in front of you? What brought you back here, anyhow? How did you know about this room? And have you told anyone else?
Answer me!
”

“I paid him off and sent him home,” Jester said. “He should have stayed there.”

“I didn’t want to go home,” said Wat sullenly. “That ’ud mean wildfowling with my old dad, that would, an’ I don’t like it, stumpin’ about in the mud on they old stilts. I’m too heavy. They break too easy. Dad don’t like me usin’ ’em either. But he wouldn’t have me slummocking round the house doin’ nothin’ so I’d have to go with him. An’ then I thought: well, all this is funny like; I wonder what’s goin’ on? An’ Mistress Ambrosia was there when you paid me off, Master Jester, an’ she looked that upset. I was sorry for her. I thought I’d best come back an’ see what the trouble was an’ ask if I could help. I went all over the rooms, lookin’ for someone an’ then I heard a lot of shouting from in here …”

My idea about raising my voice in the hope of summoning help had been essentially quite sound, I thought bitterly, if only it had produced a more promising rescuer than Wat.

“And how did you know about
this
place?” Jester shook poor Wat, and let the edge of his knife draw a thread of blood. Wat yelped.

“No, Maister, don’t do that! I didn’t know I was doin’ wrong! I
wasn’t
doin’ wrong! I only found out a week ago or thereabouts! I come up with a message for
Maister Jester and saw him carryin’ something into here. I thought to myself, thass funny, but I thought maybe he wouldn’t want me to see, so I crept away again and gave the message later. Only …”

“Yes? Only?” growled Jester.

“I come up again next day, just to see—I were curious, like. I didn’t mean any harm! Mistress Ursula, tell him I didn’t mean any harm! I remembered I’d seen him shove some books aside and push summat at the back of the shelf. So I had a look and there’s a knothole. So I put my thumb in it and it slid sideways an’ there’s a hole I could get my hand in, an’ a latch on the other side. The door swung open an’ I just walked in. But there was nothing in here to see, so I went away again. I haven’t told anyone! When I heard the noise in here just now, I used the knothole again and in I come! Oh, Maister Jester, do let me go and take that there knife away from my throat! You’re scarin’ me!”

“You’ll have to stay scared,” Jester informed him. “But maybe you won’t come to any harm if you behave. Now see here, Giles, we could at least wait until we know whether … well, until you’ve managed it or not. There’s no point in goin’ to extremes too soon.”

“Too soon? It’s too
late
. They know too much already. It’s nearly as bad as though they knew it all. I’m not even sure we can trust Ambrosia.”

“But we’ve told her nothing about your scheme!”

“Don’t be a fool, man! She’s guessed something big’s afoot, she said as much and God knows
we’ve
said as much in front of her not five minutes ago. I just hope she’s gone to fetch that rope and not gone running
for the Constable of Cambridge. She’s taking her time.”

“Now who’s the fool?” For once, Jester overrode his domineering brother. “She’s my daughter. She’s got family feeling and anyhow, women do as they’re told. And I tell you, I don’t believe Ursula there is any sort of official spy; who’d employ a woman for that?”

This time I achieved speech. “Cecil did. I assure you. If I vanish, the hue and cry will hunt you down.”

The bewildered Wat said: “Who’s this Cecil?” but no one took any notice of him.

“Bah!” Jester said to me. “Women don’t spy. They don’t act alone. They do what their menfolk tell them, as religion enjoins.”

“Sybil didn’t,” said Woodforde grimly. “Nor does Lady Lennox—or Queen Elizabeth.”

“Great ladies—they’re different,” Jester said dismissively. “They’ve got power, which they shouldn’t have, being nothing but men’s ribs, according to Holy Writ. Common women aren’t like that. Oh, you get the odd one tryin’ to be unnatural. That’s what Sybil did. But when I get her back, she’ll never do it again, I promise you.”

In Woodforde’s grip, I shivered, despite the sultry heat of the room. In that short exchange, I had seen, as it were, the underside of Jester’s mind. Very likely he did love Sybil in his fashion. Maybe he even loved her passionately. But he also despised women and held them light.

“Well, where has that girl got to?” Woodforde said sourly. “I tell you, if she’s betrayed us …”

“She’s comin’ now,” said Jester.

Ambrosia reappeared carrying a length of rope. From the greenish tinge of her pallid face, I thought she had been a long time because she had probably stopped to be sick. Following her uncle’s orders, she took away the little belt knives that Wat and I both carried, as most people do, for cutting their meat at table, and used one to cut the rope into lengths. Then Jester bound Wat’s hands behind him. Wat started to bluster, but Jester struck him on the side of the head, so hard that this time even the hefty Wat reeled. Before he had recovered, his hands were tied. After that, it was my turn.