The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) (35 page)

“Yes, Rob.” They weren’t going to kill him. It would be all right. In a moment, I would be away with Matthew. I’d have to put up with Wilkins as well, but go to France with Matthew I
would.
“Rob, thank you for coming—God bless you for coming—but I must go with Matthew. He
is
my husband. My place is with him. I’m going to France. I’m sorry. You’ve got the others. Make sure you look in the basement. The door to it is in the office . . .”

“You can’t do this, Ursula!” Rob shouted. “Are you out of your wits? You can’t go with him! These men are traitors!”

“Quiet, you!” said Wilkins, jerking a knot tight.

“Open this door!” Someone outside, not Brockley, was demanding entry. “Open, I say!”

“In here, hurry, hurry!” Rob yelled.

“I said, be quiet!” Wilkins snarled, and gave Rob an open-handed blow on the side of the head. I caught at Wilkins’ wrist, shouting at him again to leave Rob alone, but he shook me off. “Mind your own business! Must she come with us, Matthew? If ever this were proof that women are a snare and a temptation to men . . .”

“
Ursula!
” Rob raged. “You can’t go with them!
Think!
”

“I already have,” I said, wondering how, feeling as I did, I would even get out of the window and reach the horses in their shed across the alley, let alone climb into a saddle and ride for my life. I wanted to lie down and die.

Outside the door, Brockley was shouting my name again and somebody else was threatening to break the
door down. I shouted once more that I was safe, let me be!

Matthew said, “There’s no time to lose. Come on, Ursula. Come on, Ignatius!”

“What about your daughter?” Rob demanded from the floor. “What about Meg? I won’t let her go, Ursula! Nor will the Queen! You can’t take her to live with enemies of the realm!”

“We’ll see about that,” said Matthew to me. “We’ll find a way. I promise. I
promise!
Come
on!
”

Something crashed into the door. Wilkins had tightened the last knot on Rob’s bonds and was already at the window, with a knee on the sill. Matthew caught my hand and pulled me towards the window too.

I meant to go with him, I swear it. What happened next is a mystery. Did God command me, or something deep in my own mind? I do not know. Most people believe in God—after all, who or what made the world?—but sometimes I have wondered. We are taught to pray and told that our prayers are heard, but are they?

When Gerald fell ill with smallpox, I prayed for his life, and so did he, but what did it avail us? Afterwards, when Sir Thomas Gresham’s chaplain came to offer me spiritual comfort, I asked what sort of deity had let my husband die like that, while he was still young and Meg and I needed him? The chaplain had said that there must be a purpose and I must have faith. I would have preferred an explanation. We are given no reasons for our suffering, but still we suffer. So, when later on I described what happened next to a vicar—Dr. Forrest, as a matter of fact—and he said that God must have
moved me, I had my doubts. I have them still, but the mystery remains.

As Matthew pulled me across the room, I stumbled on a rucked-up rug, and with my free hand I caught for support at the shelf which held the second triple candlestick, knocking the candlestick to the floor. As it fell, the flame caught the edge of the one cheap wallhanging, and a line of red licked up. Snatching my hand away from Matthew, I clapped the smouldering edge between my palms.

Why did I do such a thing? At my feet lay the rug which had tripped me. I could have caught that up to muffle the fire. I did not need to use my bare hands. They put out the little flame at once, but my palms were seared as they did so, and I jumped back, crying out in fright and pain.

For a few seconds, everything stopped. In those seconds, the door was attacked once more with some kind of ram, and once more I shouted to the men out there to stop. In those seconds, too, I looked at Ignatius Wilkins, half in and half out of the window, struggling with his gown, which had caught on something, and I thought of the weaver and his daughter: their faces, which Rob had seen through the smoke, and their screams, which had pursued him as he tried to get away. I remembered, yet again, the ghastly description of a burning, to which Uncle Herbert and Aunt Tabitha had made me listen.

Such thoughts, such memories, reduced even my feelings for Matthew to the trivial. If he were prepared to bring
that
back, to consign not traitors or murderers, but honest men and women to death by flame,
simply because they would not believe what he believed, then . . .

“I can’t go!” I gasped to Matthew. “I can’t, I can’t. Don’t ask me! Go on your own! Save yourself! Quickly, quickly! I can’t come to France, I’m sorry but I can’t.”

“What? Ursula? But . . . ?”

“You’re
her
man!” I wailed. “That damned Stuart woman! If she ever comes here as queen, people would die at the stake again and you know it.” I pointed at Wilkins. “And
he’d
send them there! Go, Matthew, go!”

Outside the door, there had been one brief pause, but now the battering ram had begun again. There was no more time.

“God damn you,” said Matthew. He spoke quietly, but his voice shook with anger. “You’ve betrayed me twice!”

“No, I haven’t.” The tears were pouring down my face. “I want to save you. You know that. You
know
that. Go!
Go!
”

He turned away, heaved Wilkins unceremoniously over the sill into the garden, and scrambled out after him. The garden, misty and silvered with ground frost, was mercifully still empty. No one had thought to go round again and guard the way out through the parlour window. Few people are completely efficient in moments of great excitement, and Rob and his men, thank goodness, were among the majority.

I watched Matthew and Wilkins run down the garden; saw them struggle briefly with the bolts of the gate and then disappear through it. He was gone. My
husband was gone. I would not see him again—of that I could be sure. I had made my choice.

I gave him what chance I could. Once more I cried out to my would-be rescuers that I was all right and they were not to break down the door. I prevented Rob from contradicting me by putting my hand over his mouth. But my voice was full of tears, from grief and the pain of my hands, and Brockley, hearing it, demanded to know what was the matter. Somebody else shouted, “For God’s sake, let’s get in and find out!” and with that, the ramming grew heavier.

The parlour door was stout, but no door could have withstood such an attack for long. When it gave way under the onslaught from what turned out to be a kitchen bench, I was kneeling at Rob’s side, pulling his bonds loose, not very skilfully because I was weeping too much to see what I was doing.

I remember thinking, absurdly, that it was frosty outside and hoping that Matthew’s doublet would keep him warm enough. He had no cloak.

Not until Brockley took hold of me and lifted me to my feet did I realise that my headache had suddenly, miraculously gone.

A
fter that, came all the explanations and the business of coping with the aftermath of violence. Two of Rob’s men had been killed, as well as Wylie, and others were hurt. A neighbour had called the parish constable, who arrived in haste to find out what the affray was about. He was astounded to find himself in a clockmaker’s shop which looked as though it had been sacked by Attila the Hun in person, and had a basement full of counterfeit coinage.

The constable and Rob knew each other, however, for as a friend of the Cecils, Rob had been to civic functions at Windsor Castle and the two of them had met before. They co-operated well. Too well for my peace of mind, in fact, for despite my pleas, Rob told him to start a hue and cry after Matthew and Wilkins.

“I shouldn’t worry,” said Brockley comfortingly. He had held me against his shoulder while I cried myself out, and he was now dressing my seared palms with butter and bandages made of torn-up sheeting from one of the bedchambers. “Your husband’ll be well away by now, and that mist out there is turning
into a proper thick river fog. I doubt they’ll even be sighted, let alone caught.”

Meanwhile, the spotty apprentice Timothy and the maidservant, who both apparently lived out, had presented themselves for work, bewildered to find a crowd in the street outside. They were nearly arrested, except that Rob could see that they were scarcely out of childhood and quite innocent. He wouldn’t allow it, though he said they must hold themselves ready for questioning.

The house was put under guard, the bodies removed, the injured men taken to the castle to be doctored. Ale and food were found in the kitchen so that we could have breakfast of a sort. Someone had discovered a silver music box under the shop counter, and brought it into the kitchen for us to see. It was in good working order.

“I want to speak to Mew,” I said.

Mew had been bound and dumped on the floor of the shop. He was able to use his bound hands to hold food and a beaker, and someone had given him something to eat and drink, but he hadn’t taken much of it. His small, compressed features were dirty and very pale, and there were tears in his eyes as he looked up at me.

“That silver musical box?” he said, resentfully. “I was making that for myself. Well, I shan’t want it now. Take it! Why not? It’s about the only thing in the shop that hasn’t been broken. All my lovely clocks, all my handiwork. It’s not right.”

My palms still hurt badly and this did my temper no good. “I didn’t think an arrow out of the undergrowth was altogether right, either,” I said. “Nor a poisoned
bedtime drink. I’ll take the musical box, but as I’m honest, I’ll pay for it. I’ll leave the money in your office. It will be good coin and the shop will be under guard. Your heirs will get the money in the end, or else the crown treasury.”

It was a savage thing to say, but I felt savage. I had lost Matthew now, for ever. I was like someone who has had a poisoned limb amputated. The pain, the loss, the sense of being crippled, must still be endured. Mew turned his head away and I saw his tears seeping down on to the floor, but my heart remained hard.

I went to the counter and found the musical box. I took it, and left the money as I had said. Meg should have her plaything.

• • •

Brockley’s helmet and breastplate and the sword he had started out with had been taken away and his clothes were dirty and bloodstained, but in a room upstairs he found some garments, probably Wylie’s, which fitted him. He made himself look respectable and went off to fetch Bay Star and the chestnut—which was indeed the Lockhill horse Blade—from the Antelope. I gave him money with which to pay the bill at the inn. He was back very quickly, and we were ready to set off at last.

Our destination was Lockhill and we were taking Mew with us. He was to be brought face to face with his probable fellow conspirators Mason and Crichton. “And we’ll see if anything interesting transpires,” Rob said grimly.

The mist was dispersing. We rode briskly, but it was an uneasy journey. For one thing, I had followed an
interrupted night by another night with no sleep at all, and I was so tired that my eyes felt as though they were full of grit. Riding with bandaged hands was awkward, and light-hearted, gallant Rob, who had his ruthless side, was angry with me because I had wanted to go with Matthew, and attempted to delay the hue and cry. I found his company uncomfortable and edged Bay Star away from him, only to find myself close to Mew.

I discovered that, after all, I pitied Mew. His horse was being led by one of Rob’s retainers, because Mew’s hands were bound to his pommel and his feet to the stirrups. His eyes seemed to be staring at some dreadful private vision. Once, in a voice still slightly hoarse, he asked what was going to happen to him, and one of Rob’s men obliged him with an answer.

“You’ll be tried for treason, fellow. And after that . . .” Graphically, the retainer made a glugging noise, let his head flop to one side and his tongue loll out, and then, grinning, drew a forefinger slowly and evily down the length of his own stomach from ribcage to crotch. Another of the retainers laughed. Mew whimpered like a hurt child.

I shivered, turning my head away, imagining the horrors which lay ahead for this terrified man riding so near to me. It was being borne in on me that we were riding to Lockhill not only to confront Mason and Crichton with Mew, but also, whatever happened, to bring them in for questioning. We were on our way to arrest Ann Mason’s husband.

• • •

In Maidenhead, the retainers bought bread and cheese and ale, and we pulled up to make a meal, but
made it quick. We clattered into Lockhill village that afternoon, and Dr. Forrest rushed out to meet us, puffing with exertion. “Mrs. Blanchard! Mr. Brockley! And would this be Mr. Henderson?”

“It would,” said Rob. “And you, sir?”

“Dr. Forrest, sir, at your service. I did right, then, to send for you? I was in two minds what to do. Your pardon, Mistress Blanchard, but yours was a strange note to receive from a young gentlewoman.”

“You did quite right,” said Rob. “And now there is more to do, up at Lockhill. You should know . . .”

He explained, while Dr. Forrest listened, his round face growing more and more shocked. While Rob was talking, Dale came running from the vicarage, and Brockley trotted to meet her and lift her up behind Blade’s saddle.

“Dale!” I said, as Brockley brought her back to us. “How are you?”

“Oh, ma’am! I’m well enough now, but I’ve been that worried. It took me a good while to persuade Dr. Forrest! And then he only had his servant to send, on a pony. The man had to go to Maidenhead to get a fast horse from the Greyhound. I’ve fretted myself to a shadow.”

While I was assuring Dale that she had done well and I would not forget it, Dr. Forrest begged our indulgence while he saddled his mount. He scurried off, and five minutes later he reappeared astride a placid brown mare with the bulging sides of age and idleness. We rode on, up the lane between the fields of Lockhill, towards the manor house.