The Fugitive Queen (15 page)

“It was supposed to be confidential,” I said. I hesitated and then decided that it might be wiser after all to admit some of it and make light of it, rather than let Pen imagine all kinds of dramatic secret missions and thus create curiosity and an unhealthy excitement.

“Since I was coming north,” I said carefully, “both the queen and Cecil asked me to visit Mary Stuart and charged me with certain private messages for her. Not even Sir Francis is privy to them. He was asked to let me see Queen Mary, that's all. I've managed to deliver one but I still need to talk further to Mary. Sir Francis has only offered us lodgings for two nights, though, and I don't see how I can prolong it without making him wonder why. I may try to arrange a further visit later on.”

“May I come too?” Pen asked. “I won't speak of your business to anyone—here or anywhere else; I promise.”

“Do you want to visit Bolton again?”

“Oh yes, please!”

I think that at the time I wondered why she was so eager, but supposed that she found Bolton Castle and Mary interesting. I was quite sure that the attraction wasn't either of the Douglases.

The truth looks obvious now, by hindsight.

I had still not written to Hugh. I knew I must tell him of our safe arrival at Tyesdale, but what was I to say of Harry's loss and our own failure to do anything about it? Also, I was worried about sending any of our men away. I felt we needed them. At Bolton, however, I seized the opportunity of asking to borrow one of Knollys's couriers and sent off a short letter, saying that we had arrived, that there was a good deal of news, but that I would write in more detail later. For the moment, it was all I could bring myself to say.

We reached Tyesdale in time for dinner on Monday. Meg, who looked much more like her usual lively self, greeted us with an air of suppressed excitement, and Sybil said that as soon as we had eaten, they would have something to show us. The moment dinner was over, they led me up to my chamber. Once there, Meg at once ran to pull some sheets of paper from concealment under the coverlet. She brandished them at me eagerly.

“Mother, you will never guess what we've got here! I thought I would burst, waiting all through dinner, but Mistress Jester said you would be tired and hungry and we must wait to tell you. But look at these!”

Sybil placed a hand on Meg's shoulder. “Gently, now. Let us begin at the beginning. Mistress Stannard, while you were away, I gave Meg lessons in bookkeeping, as you asked, and used the
ledger that Master Whitely gave you. We remembered what you had said about looking out for anything amiss, but we couldn't find anything definite at first, though some of the figures seemed odd—too high or too low . . .”

I nodded. “Pen and I noticed that.”

“Yes. But with nothing to check them against, we couldn't be sure that anything was wrong with them. However, we were working in the parlor and it happened that I glanced out and saw those two Thwaites, father and son, riding in.”

“The Thwaites? Again?”

“Yes. Well, you were not here, but I had the feeling,” said Sybil, “that you and Pen didn't greatly care for them.”

“You were quite right. And so?” I said, wondering where all this was going.

“So I decided that Tyesdale should be, not inhospitable, but not effusively welcoming either,” said Sybil. “I took Meg up to her room and then went in search of Whitely to tell him that I was not available and that I wished him to look after the guests and make our apologies. I met him straightaway, coming out of his own room, and while I was explaining to him—well, I suppose it was the first time I had ever really looked at him—I noticed his clothes. They're in dull colors—brown and dun and black, but the materials are too rich for a steward in a place like this.”

“Ah. I've been thinking the same myself,” I said.

“His shirt was silk, and he had a gold chain,” said Sybil. “And his doublet was brown velvet—
silken
velvet. I know what it looks like. When I had sent him down to meet the Thwaites, I came back to Meg, and I spoke of it. And then Meg said . . . well, your turn has come, Meg. Tell your mother what you said. You spoke very intelligently.”

“Mother,” said Meg eagerly, still clutching the papers, “it just seemed to me to
prove
that Master Whitely was making extra money somewhere. I said to Mistress Jester, ‘If he is wearing silk and gold, how can he afford it? His salary is in the accounts and it surely wouldn't stretch so far.' ”

“I said that I agreed,” Sybil said, “but that we couldn't be sure
unless we could find other documents, bills, and receipts, to put against the figures in the ledger but then . . . go on, Meg.”

“I suddenly thought,” said my daughter, “that if I were falsifying accounts, I might still keep a note somewhere of the real figures in case I needed them. I might want to remind myself what was
really
paid for last year's wool clip, so that I could compare it with what I was offered this year. It would be easy to get muddled otherwise—and then people could cheat you. You might not be able to steal so much next time!”

“I've seen his office,” Sybil said to me. “I was with you when you went to collect the ledger we've been studying, if you recall. I couldn't see anywhere there to hide anything, but if he
has
kept a separate record anywhere, he would take good care to hide it, I fancy. I said as much to Meg, thinking aloud, and . . .”

Once more, she paused to let Meg speak and my daughter said: “Well, if I was him, I'd keep it in my room.” Her brown eyes, so luminous, so much the eyes of her father, my first husband, Gerald, were sparkling. “So,” she said simply, “I said to Mistress Jester: ‘He's downstairs talking to the Thwaites. I can hear him, and Mistress Appletree is offering meat pasties. They're busy. Why don't we look?' ”

“So I told Meg to keep guard at the top of the stairs,” said Sybil, “and I slipped into Whitely's room. I found what I wanted straightaway. He keeps a box under his bed. There's a lock but it wasn't fastened. Well, I don't suppose he expected us to search his room! Anyway, looking inside was easy. I found several bags of money and two bundles of papers. One seemed to be Tyesdale's copies of its invoices for last year's sales of wool and produce. The other bundle was receipted bills for things Tyesdale had bought.”

“You mean that Tyesdale really does make purchases now and then?” I asked dryly. “Judging by the state of the furnishings . . .”

“Condiments, candles, sewing thread for Agnes, the services of a smith to shoe Whitely's cob,” said Sybil briefly. “Even Whitely can't entirely avoid
some
household expenditures. I snatched up both bundles and ran back here with them and Meg
and I compared some of them with the figures in the ledger. We were nervous and in a hurry so we could only check a few but the documents were in date order so it wasn't hard to trace the matching ledger entries. We worked for about half an hour—with our ears cocked for what was happening downstairs—and we made notes. Those are what Meg is holding. When I thought we'd done enough, I put the documents back. The Thwaites were still here at that time, talking to Whitely. He and they seem very friendly. He has no idea that his box has been found. He may well have locked it again by now, of course.”

“I can open his lock if I need to,” I said. In the course of my strange career as one of Elizabeth's agents, I had at times had to open other people's document boxes. I possessed a set of pick-locks, knew how to use them, and had never lost the habit of carrying them about with me. I had brought them to Tyesdale. “Let me see those papers.”

Meg handed them to me. There were two sheets. Sybil came to my elbow to explain them. “This page has the income from some of the things Tyesdale has sold over the last two years, and for cottage rents; the other shows payments for things brought in. We've put the dates, and the amounts earned or spent according to the documents in Whitely's box, and according to the ledger. Most of the documents had some figures scribbled on the back. We didn't understand those at first, until Meg—Mistress Stannard, you really have a very bright-minded daughter.”

I looked at Meg questioningly and also lovingly. With every year that passed, I thought, her resemblance to her father Gerald increased. Gerald had been employed by Elizabeth's financier, Sir Thomas Gresham, in the Netherlands, and Sir Thomas had had a brief to raise money for Elizabeth's coffers, by whatever means he could, which—since the Netherlands were controlled by England's archenemy Spain—didn't necessarily mean legal ones.

Gerald's principal task had been to bribe, bully, or blackmail various hapless clerks and keepers into handing over valuable plate from the Spanish treasury and armor and weapons from the Spanish armory, and to smuggle them to England. He had been
very, very good at it and he had enjoyed it. In Meg's dancing eyes, he lived again.

“Mother, the scribbled figures are the difference between what Tyesdale really paid for the thing it bought or earned for something it sold and the figures in the ledger,” she said. “The ledger is wrong. It pretends we paid more for candles and so on than we did, and it pretends that we were paid less than we really were for wool and produce. Look at this! We copied it from a receipt from a prospector who was paid to look for coal on Tyesdale land. The corresponding entry in the ledger is twice what Whitely really paid! And all for nothing because there wasn't any coal! There's a note about that in the ledger and I suppose
that's
true, because if there were any mining here, we'd surely know about it.”

“I agree,” I said grimly. “But if there isn't any coal here, Whitely's created his own little gold mine, hasn't he? Silk shirts and gold chains! He took a risk in keeping those bills.”

“Not necessarily,” said Sybil. “If he can show you ledgers that seem to be in perfect order, well, you might disapprove because he hadn't kept the original receipts and invoices, but as I said, he wouldn't expect us to go rooting in his room and finding the box under his bed.”

“One of the things that made me suspicious,” I said, “apart from missing silver, battered furniture, and silk velvet doublets, is the unnatural perfection of his accounts. I didn't see a single corrected figure in that ledger. It didn't look real, somehow. Pen must see these notes.”

I folded the sheets thoughtfully. “Tyesdale belongs to her, after all,” I said. “We shall have to admit that we've seen the source documents and challenge him about them. I think we'll have to dismiss Whitely. We had better wait until we can find a replacement, though. We'll do that first. Meanwhile, all bills and invoices must be seen by Pen and myself, beginning at once. Dudley should be informed, too. After all, Whitely has been cheating him most of the time. As if I hadn't enough to do!” I groaned in exasperation. “I still have to find a possible husband for Pen!”

I had mentioned the matter to Sir Francis during the interview I had had with him, and he had said he would make inquiries but he had nothing to suggest immediately. I had left it there, thinking that it might provide an excuse to visit Bolton Castle again. But it would all occupy a lot of time. I could have done without this.

I could have done without a lot of things, including the grievous letter I must send south, to report the loss of Hobson.

Hobson, though, was a tragedy. Whitely was just a nuisance.

I had too many things on my mind. I hardly knew in which order to deal with them. I did know, however, that I must try once more to complete Cecil's errand, little as I liked it, and must therefore return to Bolton as soon as I could. I considered simply telling Cecil that it was impossible but my conscience wouldn't let me.

For the moment, I tackled the immediate problem of Whitely. I talked to Pen and found that although she was still unenthusiastic about Tyesdale, improved health and the visit to Bolton seemed to have taken the edge off her first dislike.

“We can't keep Whitely, can we?” she said. “But I don't like the idea of having him arrested. Mistress Stannard, everyone hereabouts seems to know everyone else. Look how people came visiting when we'd only been here five minutes. Whitely may have friends or relatives in the district—well, Mistress Jester says he and the Thwaites seemed friendly—and we're strangers. We don't want to make enemies.” She considered me with a serious expression. “If we are ever to find out what really happened to poor Harry Hobson, we'll need help from people roundabout. You're going to inquire into that, aren't you, Mistress Stannard?”

“If I can, though heaven knows where I'll start. Sir Francis convinced me that sending a complaint to York would probably be a waste of time. But as things are, I can't even tell his family where his grave is! No, I can't just leave the matter.”

“Then,” said Pen practically, “I think we should be very careful in our dealings with people here. We do have to get rid of Whitely, but I think we should leave it at that, and get a local man as a replacement, someone who knows the ways of the district.”

“You are quite right.” I looked at her thoughtfully. “You seem to have sensed the atmosphere of the north.”

“And I don't care for it much, Mistress Stannard. I don't think Meg does, either.”

“Hardly surprising! But I think she's getting over her fright,” I said. My daughter no longer needed to sleep in the same room with me and was now sharing with Pen as I had originally intended, while Sybil shared with me.

“She'll go home with you, though,” said Pen. “I want to go home, too. Can't I go back to the south but still have Tyesdale as my dowry?”