The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) (40 page)

That could also be true of Elizabeth. Perhaps she could not otherwise be a Queen, and carry out a ruler’s work. Perhaps my work required it, too.

Matthew, my dear, my very dear, my lost one. If ever we meet again, will you recognise me? Or will this work of mine change me into something beyond your understanding?

I think it may well change me into something that no man, ever again, can truly love.

It
was
my work, though. It seemed to be part of my nature. I had only to think of Catherine Grey, of having a new task ahead of me, and at once my tired spirits lifted.

Yes, I was strong enough. I would go back to Hampton Court in the morning. And go about my business.

In the course of this book, I have stretched a few historical points, but not beyond the bounds of possibility.

Bishop de Quadra’s secretary Borghese really did betray his master. In 1562 (the year after the action of this book), he passed on to Cecil information about a very serious intrigue in which de Quadra was involved. For all we know, he may have been passing on smaller pieces of information earlier than that.

The musical box was not actually invented until the late eighteenth century and first appeared in Switzerland. It was developed from the watch mechanism, and to begin with consisted of a disc set with steel pins, which tapped against a fan of tuned teeth as the disc revolved. The cylinder type of box, in which the pins were set round a barrel and tapped against a comb of tuned teeth, was first invented in the early nineteenth century.

Nevertheless, clock mechanisms were quite well developed by the time of the first Elizabeth. A clock which chimed the quarter hours was built for Wells Cathedral in 1389; by 1488 pendant watches, which would strike the hours, had come into existence. On
New Year’s Day, 1571, the Earl of Leicester presented Queen Elizabeth with a ruby and diamond bracelet with a clock set in the clasp—in other words, a valuable wristwatch.

The Renaissance and Tudor periods were times of great intellectual expansion. New lands were discovered, new trade routes opened, new commodities imported. Along with all this, fresh ideas and inventions sprang up everywhere. The cylinder musical box is not essentially very complex, and it seemed to me not impossible that an Elizabethan inventor with a fertile imagination might, perhaps with the image of a spinet keyboard as a starting point, arrive at the concept without the intervening stages of the Swiss watch and the flat disc.

It also seemed quite conceivable that an Elizabethan inventor should experiment with a glider. The concept of flight had fascinated mankind for centuries. Leonardo da Vinci was much intrigued by it, although his ideas never developed very far, and someone might have been inspired by him into investigating further and carrying out a few experiments, even to the point of beginning to perceive, dimly, the principle of the airfoil section . . .

My imaginary inventor’s glider fails, of course, and his musical box is consigned to the dustbin of history as far as the Elizabethans are concerned, because it is tainted by association with treachery.

However, these inventions
could
have been conceived in the sixteenth century and after all, this
is
fiction. Let’s imagine what might have been. Let’s have fun!

Fiona Buckley

FIONA BUCKLEY
is the author of six previous novels in her critically acclaimed historical mystery series featuring Ursula Blanchard:
To Shield the Queen, The Doublet Affair, Queen’s Ransom, To Ruin a Queen, Queen of Ambition,
and
A Pawn for a Queen.
She lives in North Surrey, England.

ALSO BY FIONA BUCKLEY

A Pawn for a Queen

Queen of Ambition

To Ruin a Queen

Queen’s Ransom

The Doublet Affair

To Shield the Queen

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

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Copyright © 1998 by Fiona Buckley Originally published in Great Britain on 1998 by Orion Previously published in hardcover in 1998 by Simon & Schuster Inc.

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First Scribner printing December 1999

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Cover art by Harry F. Bliss