The Fugitive Queen (27 page)

I believe, so hushed was the night, that I heard the snap as Ryder broke his neck. I saw Johnnie Grimsdale's body sag. I heard myself gasp. Ryder lowered him to the ground and crouched beside him, pressing his fingers into his victim's neck and then laying a palm on his chest.

“Dead,” he said calmly. Then he heaved the body up, settling it across his shoulders, and walked away toward the cliff edge.

It happened so quickly that there was no time to protest. After my first appalled indrawing of breath, I sat on my horse, paralyzed with horror, and watched while Ryder dropped his
load on the brink, crouched, and pushed. I heard a series of thuds and the rattle of small stones as the body fell over the cliff. Faintly, from below, there came a splash.

As Ryder came back, I said: “You
killed
him!” My voice had gone high-pitched with shock.

“There was nothing else to do,” Ryder said coolly. “We couldn't let him go. If we could have marched him to Bolton with us and had him put in a castle dungeon, I'd have done that, but he was a strong lad and what if he got loose? Where would we be then? He'd report that we'd left Tyesdale. The conspirators could have got away, maybe to conspire again one day—and what of Mistress Pen? As it is, he'll be found in the stream and it'll look like an accident. He was out on the moors at night and maybe lost his way in mist . . .”

“There isn't any mist.”

“There will be. Can't you smell it? He lost his way and his footing. He'll have a broken neck and the fall will account for that. There'll be no fingers pointing at Tyesdale. All we have to do is not to mention him to anyone, ever. He didn't suffer. He didn't know it was happening until it already had.”

“But . . .!”

“Mistress,” said John Ryder quietly, “there's more at stake than Mistress Pen. There's a foreign queen with a delusion that she ought to be Queen of England and a desire to bring a French army into Scotland. Sir William Cecil put it to me and to Dodd before we left the south. Queen Elizabeth doesn't care to admit it, but we're at war.”

“But—just to kill him—just like that . . .! We
should
have taken him to Bolton as a prisoner. We could have done it.”

“He'd have been a danger to us. Master Ryder's in the right of it,” said Clem. “Whitely and his friends, they mustn't be warned.”

“Mistress Stannard,” said Ryder. “I know, from Sir William, how you got yourself out of Scotland three years ago. Can you say that you have never guided the scythe-hand of Death?”

I said: “It still gives me nightmares.”

“Soldiers learn not to have them,” said Ryder briefly.

 • • • 

His horse, which was indeed very well trained, was waiting patiently for him. He remounted and Clem, without further comment, once more led us on our way. The cliff edge seemed to veer southward, away from us, but we continued in a straight line and began to go downhill. On the skyline to the right, against the pallidly luminous sky, we glimpsed another lone tree, which Clem said was the one beside the pool. The downhill slope grew steeper, difficult to cope with, for the moon had become hazy once more.

And then, at last, there came the expected mist, ghostly wisps of it, drifting around us. Soon it was thick enough to slow us down, and when we reached the streamlet that ran from the pool, we didn't see it until the horses almost walked into it. We pulled up short.

It was not wide, but the banks were very steep and we had to ride downstream for some way to find a ford. The silvered vapors were thicker still near the water and gathered close about us as we left the ford behind. We journeyed through the fog like ghosts and once again I was thankful for Clem's guidance, for he knew his way. After a time, as he had promised, we struck the drovers' track. The mist began to lift. As the first grayness was beginning in the east, we reached the gate of Bolton Castle.

The night watch were yawning at their posts and quite glad to have visitors. I was recognized and we were let in. Ryder and Clem went to see to the horses and someone made haste to tell Sir Francis that Mistress Stannard had arrived with urgent news. It was so early that even the kitchens were not yet astir, but one of the guards fetched us some food from them.

Sir Francis, with a brocade robe pulled on over his night gear, broke his fast along with me in his study. Our cold pork chops, small ale, yesterday's bread, and dishes of butter and honey shared his desk with his writing set and document boxes, while I told him of the scheme to get his prisoner-cum-guest out of his hands and en route to France.

I also told him that we had made our escape from Tyesdale
and the journey to Bolton without incident. As far as anyone ever knew, Johnnie Grimsdale went out that night onto the moors, and there in the shifting mists and unreliable moonlight, lost his life in an accidental fall.

Ryder had done right according to his own set of rules. I understood them. But the call of the wild geese had faded away. Yet again, I longed with all my heart for Hugh, for Hawkswood and Withysham and home.

“An interesting story,” Sir Francis said.

I applied butter and honey to a piece of bread and said: “I only hope you believe me!”

“Oh yes. It explains a great deal. For one thing, I now know why Lady Mary has spent the last few days alternately lying on her bed and sighing, and flinging herself about her rooms in tears, exclaiming that she feels ill and will never be well until she has more freedom and that her glimpse of the outside world when she went hawking was as good as any physic. She cries out to do that again. She longs for the simple pleasure, denied only to her among all the people of England, to ride out and visit a friend. Can she not visit dear Ursula Stannard? Surely Mistress Stannard is above suspicion? She can return the same day, but such a simple, ordinary thing would give her light and air and exercise and a sense of being, once again, a simple, ordinary woman . . .”

“She's never been that in her life,” I said.

“I agree. But you should hear her. On and on; and yes, I have pitied her, though in the light of what you are telling me now—I fear I have become sarcastic. I dislike sarcasm, but really! All the same, I think that she really is unwell, though I don't know what the trouble is. It worries me because I
am
responsible for her health.”

“She says she wants to visit me, and that she could return to Bolton the same day,” I said thoughtfully. “But I've been told to prepare to put her up overnight and put her in a particular room.”

“I fancy that the idea is for her to use an attack of illness to ensure that she stays overnight, I should think. Then something will happen. Rescuers will try to remove her.”

“Yes, I see that. I was thinking of something else.”

“Which is?”

“All they want me to do is make her welcome for one night and put her in a specified room. It hardly seems worthwhile to force me into it. I would hardly refuse to shelter her if she were unwell and Mary Stuart would only have to ask to have a certain bedchamber because she liked the view from the window and I don't suppose I'd refuse that either. I think,” I said, “that in all this there is a good deal of Magnus Whitely taking revenge on me.”

“I daresay, but what of it? For whatever reason, you
have
been asked to perform this service. Let us consider what it means. You've been asked to give her a particular room. Where is it, precisely?”

“At the back of the house. Quite high up. The moat is just below.”

Sir Francis opened a box, brought out a sheet of paper, and pushed his writing set toward me. “Can you draw a plan of the house for me?”

“Sir Francis . . .”

“Yes?”

I said slowly: “I don't quite know what's in your mind—but wouldn't the best thing, now that I've succeeded in reaching you, be to send a squad of men to Fernthorpe and wait for the conspirators to bring Pen there? If Mary doesn't go to Tyesdale and therefore can't be rescued, I suppose Whitely and Littleton will carry out their threat. We'd catch them and save Pen at one and the same time.”

“We might,” Knollys agreed. “But in that case, what could we arrest them for? Any charges would rest only on your word and
that of your manservant Brockley—who had his ear to the door. Pretty behavior in a servant, and anyway, he's been your trusted helper for years, has he not? No doubt he would say whatever you asked him to say.”

“But . . .” I stopped, speechless.

“You and Whitely,” said Sir Francis, “are in dispute. What if he complains that your talk of plots is only a fabrication made out of spite against him?”

“Sir Francis!”

“I didn't say I believed that. I don't. But
he
might say it. After all, the only thing he would be caught doing would be bringing a bride to Fernthorpe. An unwilling bride, perhaps, but in fact the Thwaites are of good blood and the marriage is reasonable by many people's standards. It may sound harsh to you, but Penelope Mason is not my responsibility. My task is to keep Mary Stuart in English hands and bring to book anyone who tries to get her out of them. I want these conspirators caught in the act. Now, if you please, Mistress Stannard, would you make the sketch?”

Silently, my hand shaking a little, I did as I was told, making separate sketches for each floor and then doing a plan of the house, moat, and courtyard. He examined the result thoughtfully. “There's no outer wall at the back, then. Beyond the moat is open ground?”

“Yes. There are some sheep pens there, and a little path in between, leading out to a pasture.”

“I see. So the house could be easily approached from the rear—especially at night?”

“I would think so.” I tried not to speak sullenly. “You can see the laborers' cottages—where our two maidservants live—from those back bedchambers, but they're not directly to the rear or very near. They're a good distance off to the right and there's a wide meadow and a stone wall or two in between. After dark, no one in the cottages would notice anything. But no one could get in or out from the back of Tyesdale, Sir Francis. The wall goes sheer down from the bedchamber windows to the moat. And the windows really are high off the ground.”

“So the only way out is through the house?”

“Yes, through an upper passage and then down the stairs and through the main hall. There's a front door with steps leading down to the courtyard . . .” I pointed to where I had marked these things on my plan “ . . . and a kitchen door with a few narrow steps, round at the side.”

“If she did stay a night with you, there would be guards posted in the hall and the courtyard and at both the main and the kitchen doors,” said Knollys. “But at the rear . . . how wide is the moat?”

I tried to thrust away the thought of Pen, alone and afraid and wondering what I was doing to save her and attempted to visualize the moat. “Twenty feet, perhaps. With a steep drop from the edge to the water level.”

“And the house wall at the back really goes straight down into it?”

“I believe there's a very narrow ledge. Yes, there is. We saw a couple of ducks squatting on it only the other day.”

“How big is the window of the bedchamber?”

“The windows on that floor are mullions, modern ones. I think I could squeeze through them,” I said. “If so, Mary Stuart could, too.”

“We're guessing,” Sir Francis said. “But you have been told that Mary Stuart may make an overnight stay with you, and that she is to have that bedchamber. I would make sure that she couldn't escape through the door and our schemers would surely foresee that. If they think otherwise, their brains have gone begging. But if she had outside help, the window sounds possible. Our plotters will be gambling on the assumption that you will be too frightened for Mistress Mason's sake to betray them, and that we won't therefore be expecting an attempt at rescuing Lady Mary. So we may not do much about patrolling the back of the house. If we did, they'd no doubt start some sort of diversion in the front. But I fancy they'll expect us to look on the moat as an adequate obstacle.”

Toothpicks had been provided with breakfast. He took one from its pot and absentmindedly prodded at his front teeth.
“Without outside help,” he said, “the moat would indeed be a difficult obstacle. But
with
help—that's different. They'd only need a light boat and a rope ladder.”

“How would they get the ladder up to her?”

“That's easy. Any soldier knows that one. You fasten a length of thin, strong twine to the end of your rope and a more slender thread still to the end of that, and fix the other end of the thread to a blunt arrow, and shoot the arrow through the window. Whoever is in the room just hauls everything in. I'm assuming a rope ladder. She's quite athletic enough to manage one, and since they'll presumably arrive on horseback, a real ladder will be difficult to carry.”

“
Will
be?” I queried.

“Ah. You are sharp, mistress. Yes. Will be.” Sir Francis sprang up and began to walk about the room. “I've let her beguile me; I know I have, but it's over now. Well, there's no harm done. You realize what I want, I think? We should let the plot proceed and catch them red-handed. I don't care for the idea that there are people at large in Her Majesty's realm who are willing to act against her in this fashion. If Mary Stuart once gets to France, she will certainly find sympathetic kinfolk there, by blood and by marriage. Before we know it, she'll be back in Scotland and . . .”

He threw himself back into his chair and stared at me. “You think that I am indifferent to the fate of your ward, Mistress Mason. It isn't that. But they aren't proposing to murder her. Just to marry her off. And here in the north . . .”