To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (6 page)

“Do you blame me for this?” Rob asked, when Cecil and the queen had taken their leave and been rowed away up the darkening Thames, leaving me to “think it over,” as they put it. “I’m sorry if so. But you are needed, Ursula. You are valued.”

After seeing our august visitors depart we had returned to the study. The supper had been cleared away, and the candles were burning down. I was very tired. I gazed at Rob with weary defiance. “I know how I am valued,” I said. “Have you forgotten the way I was once used to bait a trap for my own husband?”

“It was for Elizabeth’s safety, and that means the safety of England. You know that.” He looked at me steadily, dispassionately. Rob was an attractive man but there was never any magnetism between us. He always talked to me as though I were another man, and I found this natural. “Cecil said that he brought Lady Mortimer
here because he had heard that Dale and Brockley were visiting me. It was I who told Cecil about that. When you settled in France, Cecil asked me to let him know whenever you communicated with me, and what the latest news of you was. I do as Cecil says, as well you know. Well, when Brockley and Dale arrived, inquiring after Meg’s welfare, I naturally informed him. He and Lady Thomasine arrived almost at once. Were Brockley and Dale intending, at the end of their visit, to take her back to France, by the way?”

“Yes.”

“I thought so. So did Mattie. I let Cecil know as much.”

“And when Cecil heard that I was pining for my daughter,” I said, “he rubbed his hands together, thinking how convenient; getting Ursula back to England will be easy. All I would need was just a little push—or little pull.” I knew I sounded bitter. “So he arranged for Meg to disappear. And now I’m here and I am to follow her to Vetch Castle. As a hawk follows the lure, or a donkey follows a carrot.”

“Yes. But you are bound to follow the carrot, are you not? You want to fetch Meg. Well, Ursula, what will you do when you find her? Will you leave at once—or stay two weeks as you’ve been asked, and look about you—and win a home in England?” He scanned my face. “Or will you refuse both the task and the payment, because Matthew might object?”

I sighed, rubbing my forehead, hoping that my head was not going to start aching again. “I shall accept,” I said. “I shall write to Matthew and tell him what I’ve been asked to do and what the reward will be,
and say that I intend to stay at Vetch for the two weeks that will earn it. I shall also say that I will, if he so wishes, ask for a different estate, not Withysham. Withysham was taken from him because he had plotted against Elizabeth. I would be getting it back as a reward for services rendered to Elizabeth. He might well find that—well …”

“Tasteless,” Rob agreed. “Yes. That crossed my mind, too. But you are willing in principle to accept property in England?”

“Yes,” I said. To forgo Withysham was one thing. To forgo the reward altogether was quite another and from the moment Elizabeth mentioned it, I knew I could not bear to do that. “After all,” I pointed out, “why should I refuse payment for services honestly rendered? I shall say to Matthew that I look on it as an increase in our wealth.”

“And trust that he will see it in that light?”

“Yes. The queen spoke the truth. I do need somewhere in England to come back to—just in case. I know how fragile life can be.” Gerald had gone from full health to a hideously disfigured death in a matter of days.

I also knew now, though it troubled me to realize it, how homesick I had been at Blanchepierre; how much and how deeply I had missed England. It would ease my heart to know that I could come here at will, and find a place to call my own.

“I feel sure you’ll manage Matthew,” Rob said with a smile. “You’ll go to Vetch and earn your pay. You’ll do it for pay. But not for Elizabeth?”

“Would you expect that—now?”

“She is not just a woman called Elizabeth Tudor. She is England too,” said Rob.

Again, I remembered my homesickness in France and how glad I had been to hear the English tongue when I disembarked at Southampton. I remembered the green of the woods and the sound of the birdsong, so familiar and beloved, so subtly different from their counterparts in France. Elizabeth was their representative, and the two were one and indivisible. Elizabeth the woman had once betrayed me, but Elizabeth of England could ask of me whatever she wished and I could not refuse her. I sighed again, giving in. “I know,” I said.

It was really most aggravating of Rob, at this point, to add: “I’m sure you’ll enjoy yourself when you get there.”

Cecil, in a final briefing before I set out, told me that according to Lady Mortimer, Sir Philip intended to approach the queen later in the year. “He’s heard that Her Majesty is to make a Progress to Cambridge toward the end of the summer. He studied at Cambridge University and has friends in the town with whom he proposes to stay. Then he will try to find a way of presenting himself to the queen.”

“Does he really think … ?”

“I doubt very much,” said Cecil, “if one could call it thinking. Whatever it is, it’s a delusion. But Lady Thomasine thinks he is hanging his crazy ambition on some kind of solid peg.” He considered me thoughtfully and made an ominous joke. “He could hang himself instead of his ambitions if he isn’t careful. That’s what she fears, and I use the word
fear
very deliberately. She’s very frightened—brittle with it, if you understand
what I mean. She will be glad to see you at Vetch, and I am glad you’re going.”

I left for Vetch the next morning.

It was difficult to travel swiftly. For one thing, I had baggage and for another, Dale had never really got over that dreadful experience in a French dungeon, two years before. She was in her midforties now, and feeling her years. The rough sea voyage and the fast ride from Southampton had tired her out. I had few secrets from either her or Brockley and they understood our errand and my wish for haste. But nevertheless, for Dale’s sake alone, we would have to journey at a moderate pace.

At least this enabled us to take our own mounts all the way. When I went to France, I had left two horses in Rob Henderson’s stables, telling him to use them until I returned. He still had them. I was glad to be back in my own familiar saddle and riding my pretty mare, Bay Star, once again. Brockley was equally glad to be again riding Speckle, the flea-bitten gray cob I kept for him. Dale traveled on his pillion, happy just to perch behind her husband on the long road to Herefordshire.

Rob provided us with packhorses and an escort, including himself. “I’m coming along to join my wife; it will seem quite normal,” he said. “Besides, I think I should be at hand, just in case.”

The journey in the end took five slow days, mostly in wet weather. We spent the final night of it in the cathedral town of Tewkesbury, beside the rich river meadows of the Severn, where sheep grow fat. The Hendersons had friends in Tewkesbury, a prosperous wool merchant and
his wife, who lived in one of the smart new timbered houses which were being built in the town. The Woodwards would gladly accommodate us, Rob said. However, we had some trouble in actually reaching them for we had to wait half an hour on the outskirts of the town, in heavy rain, until a bleating, woolly river of sheep had finished pouring through the main street.

“What in the world is going on?” Dale asked wearily, from the depths of her soaked hood, as we crowded into such shelter as a wide oak tree could give us. “Where are they taking all those sheep to? There are thousands of them.”

When, dripping and cross, we eventually reached the Woodwards’ house, our host explained. “The pastures to the west of the town often flood in wet weather. The Severn runs beside them and it can overflow. The sheep are being moved as a precaution. You can see from the upstairs windows how lowlying the meadows are.”

When we were shown up to our chambers, we all looked out of the windows at the flat green river meadows and understood what he meant. Already there were many silvered pools of rainwater on the grass. Beyond the pastures I could see a line of hills, which Rob, looking over my shoulder, said were the Malvern Hills. “They’re maybe ten or twelve miles away and Vetch Castle is seventeen miles or so beyond, lying to the south of Hereford. We could be there by tomorrow, though, if we start early.”

I looked worriedly at the pastures and wished for wings, so that I could fly across them, floods or no floods, and be with Meg. She was there, beyond the misty blue line of the Malverns. I could feel her. “If we
get this far and then we’re held back by a few falls of rain …” I said.

“They move the sheep in good time,” Rob said reassuringly. “The local folk are used to the way the Severn behaves. You’ll be with Meg tomorrow. And then,” he added slyly, “you can begin on your real task in Vetch Castle.”

“Fetching Meg is my real task.”

“Of course,” said Rob Henderson annoyingly, sweet and smooth as cream custard.

The following day, it stopped raining and there was wind enough to dry the tracks. The Severn was certainly flowing high; when we crossed it on a bridge, we could see its waters swirling only just below the level of its banks. However, nothing actually hindered us. By midday, we had passed through the hills at the southern end of the Malverns and reached a market town called Ledbury, where we paused at an inn for a brief meal. Then we rode on and at last, as the sun was dropping westward, we emerged from a belt of woodland that had cut off the view for some time, and there in front of us, on a solitary hill, was Vetch Castle.

It was Norman, of course, one of the string of fortresses that the Norman kings had founded all along the borders of Wales, to keep the Welsh from making incursions into England. The eastern walls, facing us across a valley, were built above a steep, rocky drop and looked as though they were growing up from it. But the evening sun lay kindly on the pale gray stone of the castle, and all around it were rolling hills, rich with
woodlands and sloping pastures, where flocks of sheep were grazing. In fact, despite its solid round towers, its stout buttressed walls, and its battlements, Vetch looked at first sight quite hospitable.

Later, it occurred to me that one could say the same of the cheese in a mousetrap.

There was a moat below part of the castle, though not where the steep drop made it unnecessary. The approach road curved around to the south, however, and crossed the moat on a drawbridge, which looked as though it still worked. At the gatehouse, a porter came out to greet us, accompanied by a big red-complexioned man who remarked in a bass Welsh accent that he’d just been having a gossip with his friend the porter here, and would show us the way inside.

The porter was neatly dressed but his friend was scruffy. His old-fashioned green jacket and hose had seen much wear, his plain linen shirt collar was frayed at the neckline, and all his garments were marked by white streaks, which looked like bird droppings. He seemed to have authority, however. As he led us in, he shouted in a commanding fashion, and at once, a couple of young fellows appeared at a run, and said that if we would dismount, they would take the horses to the stable.

We did as requested, although Brockley, who never really trusted anyone else to see to our mounts properly or unload our luggage without pilfering it, determinedly went with the horses, and Rob instructed his men to do likewise. Dale, Rob, and I, however, followed
the big man on foot through a wide outer bailey, part of which was arranged as a tiltyard, and through an arch into a cobbled inner courtyard.

The courtyard had a well in the middle, a rather charming affair with a high coping and a little sheltering roof, neatly thatched and supported on three stone pillars entwined with honeysuckle. It was clear, indeed, that since the harsh medieval days when the castle was first built, efforts had been made to soften its martial air. It had battlemented towers on the outer walls and also at each corner of the courtyard but only one of the courtyard towers was plainly visible, because the lower storeys of the others were obscured by a very fine hall, surely no more than a hundred years old, and a number of other buildings, some of which were more recent still.

One, a small house in itself, built of warm red brick in the style of King Henry’s times, stood to the right of the archway. Opposite this was a most extraordinary affair, which looked like the bottom level of a Norman keep, with a modern house, plastered in white and patterned with black timbers, perched on top and overhanging the stone walls beneath. I took all this in with one interested glance and then forgot it just as quickly because suddenly a door opened in the base of the keep and out ran a leggy little girl perhaps eight or nine years old.

“Meg!” After one breathless moment of uncertainty, I knew my daughter, though she was inches taller than when I last saw her and her red woolen dress was too short for her. I ran to meet her, leaving the others behind. At the same moment, Mattie Henderson hurried from the keep with Meg’s nurse, Bridget Lemmon, following.
Mattie was exclaiming: “Meg, mind your manners! Make your curtsy.” Meg stopped and tried to do as she was bid, but I had reached her already and caught her up in my arms.

“Meg, oh, Meg! Oh, how you’ve grown. And how well you look. It’s been too long. I’m so sorry!” I clutched her, kissed her, and then, because over the top of her head I could see Mattie smiling but also shaking her head, and Bridget looking quite put out, I set her back from me and said: “Now let me see how beautifully you curtsy.”

“My lady mother.” She did a most exquisite curtsy for me. I saw that she had changed a little; her face had lengthened, becoming more triangular than square, more like my face than Gerald’s. But her brown eyes would always be his. She had not inherited my hazel ones, or my particular kind of dark hair, either. Mine had brown gleams in it but Meg’s, now escaping from its little embroidered linen cap, was the true raven black of the Blanchards.

“We saw you approaching,” Mattie said. “Meg has had her nose to the window this past half hour and when you came through the archway, there was no holding her. Meg, you are so impatient.”