To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (36 page)

“In sunlight, perhaps,” I said.

“Yes, very likely. A cunning knave.”

Rob said: “There’s more. We haven’t yet told you about Rafe and Lady Thomasine.”

We shared the telling as we recounted the sorry tale of murder and attempted murder, of suicide pretended and real. Elizabeth listened with a cold countenance. At the end, she said: “Well, this Mortimer has played into our hands, it seems. Not content with plotting treason, he has soiled his soul with murder. We understand that it may be best if he is not brought to trial on a charge of forging these letters. But we could perhaps charge him with murdering Rafe. It would appear that Rafe took advantage of Sir Philip’s mother. That is right, is it not? Most juries would think he had a good motive. It is a stronger charge than that of simply concealing the murder to help his mother. It would be,” said Elizabeth, her lioness’s claws unsheathed and glinting, “a surer way of stretching his neck. Lady Thomasine cannot now protest and if Mortimer did not actually stab his ward, he concealed the murder and connived at trying to kill Mistress Blanchard and her servants.”

There was a silence.

“He has deserved the gallows,” said Elizabeth. “Does it matter what the charge is?”

“Ma’am,” said Rob, “how I would like to agree with you. Believe me, I would!” His tone was heartfelt. Blithe, insouciant Rob Henderson, who had occasional cracks in his efficiency, also had a very ruthless streak. He was shaking his head now but with infinite regret.

“What is the objection?” inquired Elizabeth, her thin eyebrows raised.

Rob sighed. “When I questioned Mortimer before we left the castle, I deliberately set out to frighten him. But I may have overdone it. He is not a fool, even when terrified. He well understands the harm those letters could do—obviously he does! That potential harm was the foundation of his plot. He harbors the hope that he will not be tried for forging them for that very reason. Without making promises, I encouraged that hope in order to encourage him to talk. But when he had talked enough, I pointed out that there was still the matter of Rafe’s death. He might well hang for that, I told him. I even hinted that perhaps he might be charged with the murder outright. That occurred to me too. His answer was to look at me in a knowing fashion and say that if he were brought to trial for that, it would only be because we were afraid to charge him with forging the letters. ‘What if I say as much in open court?’ he asked me.”

Cecil, who had made his way back to his seat and put his painful foot up again with obvious relief, said testily: “The man must be mad! He would be risking the knife instead of the rope!”

“I told him that! But I think,” said Rob glumly, “that to quite an extent, he actually is mad. He says he will fight for his life by claiming that any charge connected with Rafe’s death was trumped up because we fear to accuse him of something else. He said to me that he would throw himself on the mercy of the court and declare the existence of the letters and swear that he believed them to be genuine and also that he never meant to show them to anyone.”

“He would never get away with it. He must know that! He’d never take such a wild chance!” I spoke with
conviction and a sound knowledge of the way Mortimer’s mind worked. “Any more than he would ever, I think, have really used the letters. Or stabbed Rafe, or killed us outright, either.”

“I told him that I knew he’d never do it,” said Rob. “I laughed at him. I left him thinking that I was not impressed. But can we be quite sure?”

“What does all this matter?” Elizabeth demanded. “Let him twist and turn and say what he likes! Bring him to trial for murdering his ward! We have proved that the letters are forgeries. We have no need of his confession. There is no doubt.”

There was a silence. It went on for a long time. “Well?” Elizabeth demanded at last. “What is it? What are you all afraid to say to me?”

“Ma’am,” said Cecil at last, looking intently toward her, “mud sticks.”

They had a curious, complementary partnership, those two. Cecil, the middle-aged family man; Elizabeth, still comparatively young, who had never really been part of a family. His levelheadedness; her stormy, mercurial Tudor temper. Cecil’s core of warmth; Elizabeth’s core of ice.

But both were logical, both knew the value of caution; they understood each other. She knew when to listen to him. The lioness now paused and with narrowed eyes considered the adhesive properties of mud.

“If we conceal the fact of the letters,” she said slowly, “but try Mortimer for something else, he may blurt their existence out. And then the world will think Elizabeth was so afraid of them that perhaps there is truth in them. Is that it? We must arrest him now for
forging them, or else not arrest him at all, for anything?”

“Exactly,” Cecil said. “I think I understand now. It would seem that no one can be sure what a man like Mortimer is capable of doing, especially under the fear of death! My advice is that the best means of avoiding scandal is total silence. Let Mortimer—and his brother-in-law William Haggard—be terrified into lifelong discretion. Let them know that they will both find themselves in the depths of the Tower if ever they whisper one word of those letters, but let them be reassured that silence means safety. Let all events at Vetch be lost in oblivion; that is safest for us and above all for you. Rafe’s murderess is dead; there is no point in raking the muck heap. Let the lad Rafe lie in his suicide’s grave. He merits nothing better, after all. Let Lady Thomasine’s inquest declare that she killed herself out of grief for the sudden death of her son’s ward. Let it be said that she thought of him as an adopted grandson. Let it be said that as sometimes happens to women in later years, her mind was disturbed. Can you arrange that, Master Henderson?”

Rob raged all the way back to Ledbury. “‘Can you arrange that, Master Henderson?’ Just stand on this beach like bloody Canute and tell the tide to go back! Just point at the sun and tell it to stop at noon! Just do a bloody miracle! How many people in the castle already know too much? I wonder.”

“Probably not that many,” I said soothingly. “Not about the letters, anyway. I’m sure we can frighten Mortimer and Haggard into keeping quiet. As for Rafe’s murder, I think Pugh and Evans are the only ones in the
castle who know, apart from Mortimer and ourselves. I don’t think they’ll have talked. Lady Thomasine wanted Rafe’s death to look like suicide and those two always accepted her orders. I have reason to know it.”

“So all I have to do is make sure they go on not talking, and say whatever they’re told to say at the inquest. What I’ve got to do is conceal two completely different crimes. And paint Vetch Castle pure white from turrets to dungeons, while I’m about it, I suppose! Well, there’s one good thing. The letters no longer exist.”

Elizabeth had burnt them. We had ourselves been witnesses as she cut them up, and ordered a brazier to be brought, and threw the pieces into it. I think I was as glad to see them vanish as Elizabeth was.

On the way back, we did stop in Tewkesbury, but the Woodwards told us that Mattie had gone to Ledbury, taking Meg with her. There had been an urgent message from the Feathers, they said. We took some food with the Woodwards, but then rode on in haste to arrive at the Feathers late in the evening. Mattie and Meg were there to greet us, but even as I joyfully hugged my daughter, Mattie told me why they were there, instead of in Tewkesbury.

“It’s Dale. She took a bad turn just after you left and Brockley sent for me. He needed help. Joan and Bridget are with us and we’ve been looking after her as best we can. Joan’s with her now and Bridget’s asleep. I’m thankful you’re here. Ursula, she’s very ill indeed.”

I refused to go on to Vetch Castle. “I must stay here with Dale,” I said. “You don’t need me at the inquest anyway. I can’t leave Dale and I won’t.”

Rob was huffy, but Mattie backed me up. “I know you must go to Vetch,” she said to him, “but Ursula’s duty is here now.”

“Very well,” said Rob at last. “I’ll go and produce this … this masque on my own! Wish me luck!”

He went. I forgot him before he was out of sight. Indeed, throughout the next few days, I never gave events at Vetch Castle a single thought. I concerned myself only with the fight for Dale’s life, and so did Brockley.

The hardships of our adventure had nearly destroyed her. She had endured rain and cold, long weary hours in the saddle, the terror of the shepherd’s hut, the squalor of the hermitage, and the bare, chilly misery of Isabel’s Tower and it had all been far too much. Her cold had gone to her lungs and at any moment, her fight for breath might cease.

We all took turns, Gladys included. Mattie had made her clean herself up and borrowed some more of Joan’s spare clothes for her, turning her into a moderately respectable, if homely, woman servant. Meg helped too, running errands.

We sent for a physician, but he could suggest only that we go on with the things we were already doing. It was day and night work, an endless business of clean sheets, damp cloths to wipe Dale’s sweating forehead, drinks of water, hot milk, warmed wine, herbal possets—the landlord’s wife had some recipes she swore by—inhalations of steam, reassurance, and desperate prayer. Two of us at least were always on duty at Dale’s bedside.

On the fourth night, I found myself keeping watch
with Brockley. Dale lay propped up to help her breathe better. She was unconscious—in the candlelight a thin glint of eyeball was visible, below half-closed lids. Her mouth was open and her waxen cheeks had fallen in. Except for the rasp and bubble of those difficult breaths, she might have been already dead.

Earlier, we had been busy. We had had to clean her, while she groaned and murmured, only dimly aware of what we were doing; and then support her so that she could inhale steam, before somehow coaxing a posset into her. Now she was quiet, and it was deep in the night, when the sick are most at risk. I sat on one side of her, and Brockley on the other. I noticed that several times he looked at me across the bed and seemed about to speak but then appeared to change his mind. At last, he spoke my name. “Mistress Blanchard …”

“Brockley?”

“She’s weaker.” He spoke very softly, perhaps afraid that Dale might hear him and understand. “She can’t go on much longer like this. What will I do if I don’t have Fran?”

I had no answer. I moved the candle, which was on a table near me, so that I could look at her more closely. He was right. Her breathing was harsher now and when I took her hand, it almost burned me. Brockley had taken her other hand but it lay flaccid in his, although when he first arrived at the inn, she had known him, and been able to grip his fingers and smile at him.

Someone tapped on the door. I called a low “Come in,” and Gladys entered, with a brimming goblet of something that steamed.

“What’s this?” I asked tiredly. “Another of our hostess’s possets? She means well but none of them seem to do any good.”

“Not hers. This is a potion of mine, indeed.” Gladys’s Welsh voice was soft and persuasive. “Give it a try for her. Been out all evening, I have, looking for what’s to go in it, and up all night since, brewing it. See if it does any good.”

“But what is in it?” I demanded. I took the goblet, sniffed at it and recoiled. It both looked and smelled horrible.

Gladys gave one of her dreadful cackles. “You don’t want to know. But try it. What have you got to lose?”

“Dale’s life,” I said frankly. “She’s too weak already.”

But Brockley had come to my side. “Let me look. Dear God, it reeks of Lord knows what. Of course Fran can’t touch that. Except that …” His voice was harsh with worry. He took the goblet and gingerly sipped it himself. “Gladys, promise me that whatever is in this, it isn’t poisonous.”

“It ain’t poisonous. What do you take me for? It’ll do no harm if it does no good, but it might do good. I’ve known it work for others. I’m not a witch, whatever those fools of villagers think, and I don’t poison folk, neither!”

“We’ve tried everything else,” Brockley said to me. “Can you think of anything we haven’t tried?” He straightened his shoulders. “I’d ask her if she were conscious but since she isn’t and can’t speak for herself, I have to speak for her. I’m her husband. All right. We’ll see. Come and help me.”

I was hesitant, but he and Gladys supported Dale between them and Brockley poured the concoction down her throat. She choked and retched as well she might but she swallowed most of it. Then they laid her down again.

“Let her be, now,” I said. I meant, let her rest in peace. There comes a point when it seems no longer decent to harry the dying, even with cures, not unless there is some hope that they may actually work.

Gladys gave me a hurt look. “I said, it’ll do no harm even if it don’t save her. I’m for my bed now. If she gets better or worse, you just call me.”

She went away. Brockley sat down again and stared miserably at his wife. “It was a last hope,” he said. “I don’t really expect it to work. I think we’re losing her.”

Unable to bear the wretchedness in his face, I rose and went to him. I patted him awkwardly on the shoulder. Abruptly, he let go of Dale and turned to me, putting his arms around me and burying his face against me, like a child in need of comfort. I stroked his hair, but it was not a sensual thing. He might have been Meg, with a grazed knee.

After a moment, he drew back his head and looked up at me as I stood beside him. “This reminds me of that dungeon,” he said in a quiet voice. “But it isn’t the same, is it?”

“No,” I said. “It isn’t. I am glad you were wise then.” I paused and then said: “I am not very wise but I have some common sense, I hope. I would not cling where I have no right.”

“You are blessedly unlike Lady Thomasine, madam,” Brockley said. “May you never change.”

“I am luckier than she was,” I said. “I have Matthew. But I hope that I never come to resemble Thomasine.” Drawing myself gently away from him, I went back to my stool on the other side of the bed. I gazed sadly at Dale, and to ease the strain of anxiety, went on talking about myself and Lady Thomasine.

“I think,” I said, “that I should take up some kind of study. Lady Thomasine disapproved of education for girls but she might have been happier if she had had things of the mind to turn to. The queen likes to read history and study languages. I learned Latin as a girl. I might study that. I might even start Greek. Then, one day, I can amuse myself by doing translations. Or reading poetry in Latin and Greek. Anything to have an occupation so that when I grow older, I won’t pine for my lost youth as Lady Thomasine did.”