A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court) (24 page)

“What on earth are you babbling about?” Again, Stannard sounded irritable. “Murder, indeed! If you won’t talk to me, then I’ll talk to you. From your choice of gambits over supper and after, I had the impression that you were wondering whether John and Euphemia had informed on those unlucky messengers your husband
sent through England—the tooth-drawer and the peddler. At least, you brought them and the fact that they had been arrested into the conversation and you talked very earnestly about being willing to do almost anything to protect your ownership of your own home, as though you wondered whether my niece and her husband might feel the same about theirs.”

“It had crossed my mind,” I said. “But if so, then they are on Elizabeth’s side, and as you seem to realize, so am I.”

“But why do you want to know?”

Why indeed? Because I wondered if here was a motive for the murder of my cousin. Decidedly not something to be suggested to Euphemia Thursby’s loving uncle. I checked for a few seconds while my mind scurried around possible answers like a mouse that has smelled a cat, and then said, as steadily as I could: “I can’t give you a clear-cut answer. Habit, I think. Once an agent, always an agent. It is necessary for Cecil to know as much as he can about who he can and can’t trust and how far. That’s all.”

“Ah. Habit. Always a weak point. I’ve been a soldier in my day and it’s useful to learn the enemy’s habits. If the man you wish to capture always takes
that
route on a certain journey; if the enemy commander relies on a certain tactic . . . so agents form habits as well, do they? Well, well.”

“I think we understand each other now,” I said. “And I would like to return to my own room. My woman is waiting up for me.”

He rose and opened the door for me. “I love Euphemia,” he said as I went out. “She is a dear, sweet,
innocent
woman. She has never harmed a soul. I will not tell the Thursbys who you are—or that you are not a Catholic—if I can help it. But if necessary, I will fight for Euphemia. Remember that.”

“I don’t want the innocent harmed, either,” I said. I looked into those steady blue eyes. “Believe me, Master Stannard.”

I had spoken to Stannard with as much cool authority as I could muster but I went to my room in a chastened mood. I had not been as clever as I thought and it looked as though too many people knew too much about me. The Thursbys and Bycrofts had perhaps been deceived, but I had underestimated Hugh Stannard completely. He had seen straight through my casual conversation to the purpose behind it and I could only hope that he would keep his knowledge to himself.

I would have felt better about it if my efforts had met with more success, but what had I learned, after all? The peddler might have stayed at St. Margaret’s; the tooth-drawer had probably stayed with the Bycrofts. The Thursbys might have known about it if he had, but I had watched their faces and I had seen nothing to suggest that talk of peddlers and tooth-drawers had any guilty significance for them. I was no further on.

I slept poorly, and in the morning I found that I had underestimated someone else besides Uncle Hugh, and that was the priest, Father Ninian. Before breakfast, I attended the mass (I met Uncle Hugh as I was going along the passage on my way there and ignored his knowing smile with difficulty) but afterward, as we were about to leave the chapel, the priest came up to me and asked if he could have a word. Surprised, I agreed.

The chapel, though small, was well appointed. There were painted and gilded statues in niches, some beautiful medieval stained glass, a richly embroidered altar cloth on which devout ladies had once expended much time and silken thread, and some benches, too, for the comfort of worshipers. We sat down on one of them, and the priest came straight to the point.

“Madame de la Roche, from the tenor of your talk yesterday, at supper and after, I think you are suffering from a troubled spirit. You spoke of owing loyalty to Queen Elizabeth because you had served her, and also because she is queen of your country. It sounded as if your sense of human honor and loyalty has come into conflict with your sense of your duty to God. Am I right?”

Keeping up my deception, I said: “Yes, Father. I suppose you could say that.”

“I understand.” He had a south of England accent, and although his hair was dark and his shapely face was browned by riding in the wind, his eyes were light. Calling him
Father
made me uncomfortable; he was too young for that. “It does you credit, my daughter,” he said. “It is not wrong to feel that if you have worked for
someone and taken their wages—eaten their salt, as the saying used to be—then you owe them something. And naturally, subjects do owe loyalty to their sovereign. These, I think, are the things you were trying to say last night?”

“Yes, Father. And there was more I could have said.”

“Indeed? And what was that?”

“There are many people who would fight for Elizabeth and for the Reformed religion. Any attempt to change either the queen or the religion could lead England into civil war. How can that be justified, even for the sake of bringing England back to the fold of the true Church?”

“My daughter, this is where you are confused. I sense that to you such an attempt would be an attack on your true queen, your accredited sovereign. But Mistress Bycroft put her finger on the principal point. Your confusion lies in the fact that although Elizabeth sits on the throne and wears the crown, although she has been anointed as queen, she is not your rightful ruler. Her presence on the throne is an attack on the true queen! It is indeed the duty of true subjects to resist it—by placing their loyalty behind Queen Mary Stuart, who will reign with the blessing and approval of the Church.”

“But . . . I have met Queen Mary,” I said. “She is gentle and kind. Would she truly want to reign over England—once she understood that it really would mean war?”

“She will listen to her spiritual advisers. I think Mistress Catherine Bycroft put it very well yesterday
evening, when she said one must do what is right and leave the rest to God.”

“Even if it means—a battlefield?”

“If that is God’s will.”

I was angry. To hide it from him, I lowered my eyes. I said in a trembling voice: “When I was a young girl, when Queen Mary Tudor ruled, she . . . she began to root out heresy.”

“Yes, I remember. I was only a child at the time but yes, I recall those days.”

“I never saw a burning but my uncle and aunt did and they . . . they described it to me. It horrified me! If such things were to happen in England again . . .”

“Mary Stuart is not willing that they should. She believes that the flock should be led, not driven,” said Father Ninian calmly. “But if the Church were to insist . . . you speak of being horrified, my child, but the pains of hell would be ten thousand times more horrible. Those who died at the stake were saved from it. They are now in heaven, their souls purged by fire of the errors they committed on earth, and if you could ask them, they would say now that they are grateful.”

I sat still, not letting my hands, lying in my lap, clench as they wanted to do, keeping my eyes downcast, concealing with all my might the cold sickness with which his words had filled me.

“Be at peace,” he said soothingly. “There is no need to torment yourself. Put your faith in God and His Church; follow where they lead you; do not rack your brain with questions. It is a mistake to question, a mistake to think too much.”

I said: “You spoke just now of what Queen Mary believes. Have you met her?”

“Yes indeed, my daughter.”

“I know that she has priests and other people in her employ who travel through England bearing her goodwill to those who support her, and seeking out those who will offer practical help when the time comes. You must be one of them.”

He didn’t reply. I took a deep breath. “What can I do,” I said, forcing myself to look up and smile into his eyes, “but wish you well and pray for you? Thank you for talking to me, Father. You have cleared my mind. I think I understand now. I have a little money with me, in my room. May I give you a donation for your cause? It will be modest, I’m afraid—but even modest donations add up, I suppose?”

Money is one of the great solvents. One of the things it dissolves, sometimes quite magically, is suspicion. If you are willing to give money to a cause, then your credentials as a supporter are assured.

“I would be most grateful, daughter. Be sure that the money will be well used. I do gather donations, and I keep the most careful account of them. They are wisely invested on the Continent. Your husband used to see to it for us at one time. Now—we have found someone else.”

He didn’t entirely trust me and my promised donation clearly hadn’t dissolved
all
his doubts. I had better keep my word and let him have one, I supposed. Promises ought to be kept. One donation was neither here nor there; it wouldn’t alter the outcome of any future war.

I knelt for his blessing and went away, in turmoil of mind, caught between the millstones of a piety too blind to recoil from starting a war, and a love of one’s home, which I understood but which might have led to murder in the night. I found them both unbearable. I wanted to leave it all and go back to Withysham.

But I couldn’t. I had seen Edward’s deathbed.

• • •

After dinner, Hugh Stannard, who had been seated some way from me, came to my side and said quietly: “We had an unhappy conversation yesterday evening, but I think at the end of it, you understood me. Yesterday, when we first met, we had a pleasanter talk together. Could we renew that, do you think? Will you have a game of chess or backgammon and talk to me . . . Mistress Blanchard?”

I wasn’t certain what he meant by this, but agreed, and it turned out that he meant exactly what he said. We sat in the parlor and played a game of chess, found out that although I could play, I was nowhere near a good enough opponent for Stannard, and turned to backgammon instead.

While we played, we conversed. We talked, again, of gardens. I described the herb garden that I had restored at Withysham and had also done much to enhance at Blanchepierre, in the Loire Valley, during the brief time I spent there with Matthew. Stannard spoke of new varieties of roses that he had cultivated. He became animated, even merry, as he told me about attempts that had gone sadly wrong.

“If there were such a thing as an ugly rose, that
would have been it! And the other experiment I made that year was charming to look at but had no scent.” He laughed freely and could afford to do so because he had lost few teeth and those that remained were still white. Yesterday’s talk of tooth-drawers had made me very conscious of such things.

Our talk drifted on to literature, to poetry, and to the Latin I was studying with my daughter and the Greek I hoped we would both learn in due course. At the end, he said suddenly: “You enjoy speaking of these subjects, do you not? How in the world did you get into your extraordinary line of business, mistress?”

“Money,” I said succinctly. “I needed it to clothe myself suitably for my place at court, and to support my daughter. It happened, almost by chance, that Sir William Cecil offered me a way to earn it.”

“I see. But are you still in need of it? Surely not.”

“No. But . . .”

“Quite. Habit,” said Stannard. “But you could form other habits—as a student of Latin and Greek and a lover of herb and knot gardens, perhaps?”

“I was trying to do that when my family summoned me and sent me after Edward.”

“So although I suspect that your family have not always been kind to you, you were willing to help them? Now of that, I approve. That was good-hearted of you. Evidently you did not make this journey altogether of your own free will. I hope you will soon reach your home again and resume your own private life. You will be happier.” He smiled. “You are good company, and very pleasant to behold, and if you have no known father, you are none the worse for it. It would make a
difference to some men but not to me. If I were not so much older than you, and if I didn’t know myself unable to give a woman children, which is after all what most women desire, I would offer you my hand.”

I blinked at him.

“Oh yes,” he said. “But as things are—I wish you well. And I urge you simply to leave all these secrets and all this probing, to let others protect the interests of the queen and Cecil, and to settle into the peace of private life. Your cousin’s wife, in Sussex, will be awaiting your return, will she not? She will want to know all you can tell her of her husband’s death and his burial. Unhappy news, but still, she will want it.”

“I have written, in some detail.”

“But nevertheless, she will need you.”

“I will go home,” I said, “as soon as I can.”

• • •

Which might as well be tomorrow, I thought, as I prepared for bed that night. I had learned nothing. I had a theory; I had suspicions; I could not see how to confirm any of them. I was so uncertain that I didn’t even want to put my ideas into writing and send them to Rob Henderson. He had authority, which I had not, and might be able to launch an investigation, but I did not want to turn such heavy cannon onto people who might indeed be as innocent as Hugh Stannard evidently believed.

Well, innocent of murdering Edward, anyway. They had probably harbored traitorous messengers, but then so had the Faldenes, my own family, and the messengers had been sent out originally by my own husband!
Though the Thursbys might have betrayed the said messengers. The sides in this secret war were becoming appallingly muddled.

As I got into bed, I felt another warning twinge of pain above my left eye. I wanted no more of this, I said to myself. I would go home, as Hugh Stannard had advised, give what comfort I could to my aunt and uncle and Helene (since they didn’t like me, I wouldn’t be able to do much for them but at least I could try), and leave the moral muddles, the deceptions, and the betrayals to others.

The hovering headache faded after I had lain quietly for a while with closed eyes. I had slept so ill the night before that this time, once I was asleep, I went deep. I dreamed vividly, and not of Edward, but of Withysham, of walking through the herb garden and breathing the scent of mint and lemon balm. When someone shook my shoulder and began calling urgently to me to wake up, I didn’t want to and resisted. The sun was just coming out from behind a cloud, and the downland near my home was splendid in the green and gold of grass and buttercup. Then my eyes opened and the sunlight, after all, was a candle, held by Dale, who was shaking me with her other hand. She had pulled back the bed curtains and I could see that the room was still dark.