The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) (11 page)

Penelope had let out a shriek and punched Philip, who was sitting next to her. I gazed at them in bemusement.

“He kicked me!” Penelope said. “Philip kicked me!”

“I am thinking,” said Leonard Mason coldly, “of finding a school for you two boys. Dr. Crichton can continue to teach your sisters but I think it’s time that you boys were taught away from home, where, although I regret it, you may find yourselves subject to a harsher regime than I have ever let Crichton impose on you. Intelligent conversation, indeed! How can one have any conversation at all, if it is to be punctuated by this sort of thing?”

Rob Henderson, however, had a decidedly mischievous streak in his nature. “Did you kick your sister?” he enquired of Philip. “If so, why?”

Philip sulkily applied a spoon-edge to a dumpling and refused to answer.

Penelope did it for him. “He doesn’t think there’s any point in girls listening to intelligent conversation so as to learn how to do it themselves, because he thinks we aren’t capable of it. He kicked me to remind me that he’d said that.”

George emitted a snort of mirth, and Jane and Cathy giggled.

Repressively, I said. “The Queen of England would not agree with Philip. Queen Elizabeth has the keenest wit I have ever come across and can follow every twist and turn of a debate between scholars.”

“And I’m quite sure,” said Ann, “that Queen Elizabeth would not kick or punch anyone. Is that not so, Mrs. Blanchard?”

“Certainly,” I said, with doubtful truth. Admittedly, I had never actually seen Elizabeth launch a kick or a punch, but she sometimes slapped her maids of honour, and I had once seen her snatch off a shoe and throw it at Lady Katherine Knollys, for venturing to remark that, considering his clouded reputation, Robert Dudley was being allowed into the Queen’s private rooms too often. Elizabeth was less of an example than one could wish, but I didn’t propose to say so.

Penelope was impressed by this talk of the Queen. “Have you seen Queen Elizabeth, then, Mrs. Blanchard?” she asked.

“Now, Penelope. You know that I explained to you all that Mrs. Blanchard is one of the Queen’s ladies, although she is taking a brief rest from the court and has come to help me meanwhile,” said Ann reprovingly. “Tell us something of court life, Mrs. Blanchard.
You must meet many well-known people there. How did you come to join the court?”

Therefore, while Redman served the chickens and we began to eat them, I talked of my past life in Antwerp, and my present post with the Queen, and how Rob Henderson and his wife were fostering my little daughter and educating her so that one day she too might come to court. Rob occasionally put in a remark. I knew I should be effacing myself and listening to the Masons’ conversation, in case it contained any of the clues I sought. I also badly wanted a closer look at those tapestries. However, even though neither Mason nor Crichton had addressed a word to me since I came to the table, these people were my hosts and sheer good manners required me to be agreeable. If I were asked to talk, I had better do so.

The Mason children now listened attentively and caused no more disturbance. Indeed, Penelope, possibly bent on refuting Philip’s rude dismissal of female intelligence, took to asking searching questions.

“Can ordinary people see the Queen, Mrs. Blanchard—have audiences with her, I mean, not just watch her go by in her coach? Are they allowed?”

“Oh yes, sometimes. Not long before I came here, a quite ordinary clockmaker was granted an audience so that he could present her with a gift. I was there at the time.”

“What was it?” George asked with interest. “A golden clock, all set with jewels?”

“Well, it had a gilded case, but it was actually a—”

Penelope’s manners hadn’t become perfect on the
instant, and she interrupted impatiently. “Of course it was jewelled. It must have been studded with gems! Would you dare to offer a queen anything that wasn’t?”

“Yes,” said George. “I wouldn’t offer her a gemstudded saddle. She wouldn’t be able to sit on it!”

“Now, now,” said Crichton, but Penelope plunged eagerly on.

“Does the Queen live in great luxury, Mrs. Blanchard? Does she eat off gold dishes every day?”

I looked carefully at Penelope, thinking that although she would never be a beauty, not with that bulging forehead and square jaw, her zest for life conferred its own attractiveness. I liked her. I gave her a smile.

“The Queen lives with proper dignity,” I said. “When she holds state banquets, then there are gold dishes and napkins with gold embroidery, and yes, she often wears dresses sewn with jewels—she is particularly fond of pearls. But she is well aware of the need to curb extravagance. She has to strike a balance between impressing dignitaries and avoiding waste. In private, she wears simpler gowns and she dines from gilt dishes, not gold. She is herself abstemious in food and drink.”

“One hears rumours,” said Crichton, addressing me at last, “of much extravagance at court—in dress and furnishings, and behaviour, too.”

I shook my head. “The court is well conducted, and if the furnishings are fine, most of them were there before the Queen came to the throne, or have come to her in the form of gifts. She is careful with the
realm’s money. She spends much less than Queen Mary did.”

“Ah. Poor Queen Mary.” Dr. Crichton sighed. “She made many mistakes, but she was a sick and disappointed woman.”

“She was also a very extravagant one,” I said. If there were people here who wanted to bring back the past, then let them be reminded of the truth about that past. “Queen Elizabeth makes a point of nurturing the economy. One of the first things she did when she came to the throne was to improve the coinage.” Cecil had enlarged on this subject before I left the court. “None of her gold money is less than twenty-two carat,” I said, “and her sovereigns and angels are above twenty-three.”

Mason, interested, also at last embarked on a conversation with me. “It is true that prices aren’t rising as fast as they were. I have said it before, at this very table: a realm, like a household, must live within its means. A ruler who forgets that courts disaster, and Queen Mary’s reign was indeed flawed in that respect.”

“Queen Elizabeth understands the subject very well,” I agreed. “She has made a thorough study of such things. I wonder,” I added casually, “if young Mary Stuart over in France has used her spare time as wisely.”

“Excuse me,” said Dr. Crichton, “but is this style of conversation wise? In my experience, political matters are better not discussed too openly. Men have found themselves in the Tower for words said, perhaps not very seriously, at their own dinner tables.”

“But no one has spoken against the Queen!” said Ann.

“And who would report it if they did?” asked mischievous Rob. “Redman, are you a spy in the pay of Her Majesty, reporting everything we say to a contact at court?”

Redman, who was arranging syllabubs in a row on the side table, turned round with a horrified expression on his face. “No, sir! Certainly not, sir!”

Everyone laughed, but privately I was annoyed. I did not want Henderson, or anyone else, to put the idea of spies into Leonard Mason’s mind. Least of all one minute after I had trailed the name of Mary Stuart across the conversation.

But Mason had already changed the subject, and Ann was asking Redman to bring the syllabubs to the table. I leant aside to get out of Redman’s way as he came to serve us, and carelessly knocked an empty goblet to the floor. He made to pick it up for me, but I slid quickly from my seat and retrieved it myself. I rose to my feet again, facing away from the table.

Every tapestry workshop has its own dyemaster; everyone knows that. I had always had a good eye for colour and could design my own embroidery patterns. I had known at once that I had seen
that
tender blue,
that
subtly softened crimson, somewhere before, and recently. The pale highlights on the red robe of the prodigal son’s father, and on the blue gown of his mother, were so familiar. Facing the tapestry, even for a moment, gave me a chance to confirm what I had guessed.

I had guessed right.

• • •

Rob Henderson and his men left not long after dinner. I spent most of the afternoon discussing study times with Ann and Dr. Crichton. It was a stilted and tiresome conversation, as Crichton had resumed his unbending manner. Soon after that it was time for supper. Then the winter dusk descended and we all retired to bed. I lay in my bed, hands behind my head, gazing into the darkness.

I had much to think about.

For one thing, I had come across another oddity, something more subtle, and in a way more curious than Mason’s unlikely experiments with gliding engines.

For reasons unknown, either Mason or Crichton was lying like a son of Belial about those tapestries on the dining-room wall. When I picked up the fallen goblet and rose to my feet facing the wallhanging behind me, I had not only seen the gleam of silk in the distinctive highlights: I had seen the monogram of the Giorgio Vasari workshop in Florence, where Cecil’s copy of
The Unicorn Hunt
had been woven, and the initials HH, for Hans van Hoorn, in the lower right-hand corner.

Crichton’s uncle might have left him the tapestries, but he certainly hadn’t had them for years. Van Hoorn had only been with that workshop for a year, at most. The uncle might be the one who was lying, of course, though I couldn’t think why he should. But then, why should Mason or Crichton want to lie, either?

It was puzzling. Was there a parallel between Cecil’s report of a Dr. Wilkins who had bought a carpet with
money he couldn’t possibly possess, and Leonard Mason whose dining-room walls were adorned with tapestries he couldn’t afford? Maybe, but it seemed so thin; it made no sense. Nothing made sense! I thought irritably.

Something in me, though, some instinct, some antenna with which I had been born, had been alerted. Earlier that day, Dale and I had laughed over the idea of plots at Lockhill, but now I no longer believed the place was as innocent as I had hoped. And if it were not, then I had to know why. Cecil’s voice spent in my head again, telling me of a weaver and his young daughter, whose terrified and bewildered faces Rob Henderson had seen through the smoke of their pyre. Brockley and Dale thought I was foolish to come to Lockhill, but I was not. I had done right.

I had writing things with me, and before Rob left for home, I had given him a sealed letter for Cecil. In it, I said that my reception at Lockhill had been oddly chilly in some respects and I was wondering if there had been an indiscretion somewhere at court or in Cecil’s household. Would it be possible to look into it?

I fell asleep after a while and dreamed of being back in that boathouse, alone and cold and listening to the slop of the river outside. I awoke with my heart pounding. In my dream, the slopping noise had been oddly regular, and now I realised that I could still hear it. Someone in floppy slippers was walking past my door.

I started up, wondering bemusedly if I should follow, until somewhere I heard another door open and
shut and then all was silent again. What had I heard? Mr. Mason going to his study? Or a conspirator going to a meeting? My dream had left me shaky and the darkness pressed on me. I couldn’t bring myself to get up and give chase.

Lying there, I became deeply aware that Lockhill was a strange place, not my home; that I had no home and that I longed for one. The month of May seemed far distant.

I turned over on to my face. Into my pillow, softly, so that Dale couldn’t hear, I whispered, “
Matthew.
”

“I
have agreed to tolerate my offspring at dinner and supper,” Leonard Mason said at breakfast the next morning, “but they take their breakfast separately. I insist that we have
one
civilised meal during the day. Crichton is with them. It is a thousand pities he can’t regulate their behaviour better.”

I had asked where the children were, as much as anything in order to relieve the stiffness in the atmosphere. Ann was chattering brightly of this and that, but Leonard Mason’s silence towards me was noticeable. There was no doubt at all, I thought, with a twinge of panic in my guts, that he disliked me, was for some reason suspicious of me. But he had shown no sign of this when I visited Lockhill last year: something had to be wrong in this household.

“Crichton isn’t a natural tutor,” Ann said. “His real business is that of being a priest.” Her husband gave her a sharp glance and she added, “Well, Mrs. Blanchard knows that. When she visited us before, she heard mass with us. Would you wish to do so again, Mrs. Blanchard? You were born a Faldene, and so . . .”

“I am also one of the Queen’s ladies,” I said politely. “To hear mass on one isolated occasion perhaps didn’t matter, but I think it best not to do so habitually. If you don’t mind too much.”

“Not at all,” said Mason, with unmistakable frostiness.

“We mean no harm by hearing mass,” Ann said earnestly. “We are a harmless family, God knows, and loyal to the Queen.”

“We are a respectable family in all ways,” said Mason, regarding me coolly. “Even though it is true that our children are somewhat wild and the girls certainly require more training in feminine skills. My wife was most insistent that you should come, Mrs. Blanchard. You are welcome, whether or not you join us at mass, provided that you conduct yourself at all times as a lady should.”

That sounded like a speech he had prepared in advance. Ann looked away and I wondered what Mason thought I was likely to do that was unbecoming to a lady—poke my nose into things he wanted kept private, probably. I would do well to take care.

Mason was enlarging on the religious observances at Lockhill. “Most of my servants and some of the villagers attend mass, but they all go to the Anglican service at their church each Sunday, as well. Our vicar Dr. Forrest presides. The Church authorities know well enough that mass is said here, but they wink at it.”

I said I was glad that such a wise accommodation had been reached.

A chorus of youthful shouts and yells suddenly broke out in the distance, and Ann said with a sigh that
Crichton might have less trouble with the children if he looked more impressive. “Why must he dress like a scarecrow? Leonard, can’t you persuade him to dress better?”