The Fugitive Queen (6 page)

“It's such an incredible thing for a husband and wife to quarrel
about
!” I wailed.

“You are an unusual woman, Ursula, and I, perhaps, am an unusual man. Most of the time, for instance, I'm unusually tolerant of other people's beliefs. But not when when they threaten the stability of the realm, and that could well be the case with this Mary Stuart. And when the realm needs to be protected, anyone who can help should do so. That is our duty.”

“My duty, you mean.”

“In this case, yes.”

“One of the reasons why I married you was to escape from being a pawn for Cecil and the queen, to escape from secret missions. Now you want to throw me back into the arena, into the teeth of danger!”

“What danger? Really, Ursula, don't be so dramatic! I'm not Nero, throwing Christians to lions. You're going to visit your ward's dowry lands and pay a gracious call or two on a . . . a royal lady in Bolton Castle. That's all!”

I stopped crying, but sat dejectedly on the bed, my gaze on the floor. He didn't understand, or wouldn't, and he wasn't going to give in. I knew it.

“Ursula . . .” I looked up. His eyes were kinder now, but there was no yielding in them. “You have to go,” said Hugh. “How can you refuse? Both of these errands need to be completed. Cecil is relying on you and so is Elizabeth. And she is your sister.”

It was true, though few people knew it. From the start of our marriage, however, I had wished to have no secrets from Hugh and had sought the queen's permission to tell him that my father, the lover my mother would not name, had been King Henry VIII.

When she knew she was pregnant, my mother had left her post as one of Queen Anne Boleyn's ladies. She kept the secret of my paternity, I think out of loyalty to her mistress and to the king, wishing not to hurt the one or to cause scandal about the other. She had been sheltered, grumblingly, by her parents and later (just as grumblingly) by her brother and his wife, in our family home, Faldene, in Sussex. I had been brought up there.

While she lived, my mother did her best for me. She somehow succeeded in insisting that I should share my cousins' tutor and therefore their education; she had taught me needlework and music herself. She died, though, while I was still a young girl. In the days before King Henry closed the abbeys, I would probably have been packed off to a convent, but as it was, I just stayed at Faldene on sufferance, used—as I had said to Pen—as a dogsbody, running errands for my aunt by marriage, doing accounts for my uncle.

Until my cousin Mary was betrothed to Gerald Blanchard, and I caught Gerald's eye instead. We fell in love and fled
together, to marry and to live in the Netherlands in the household of an English financier in the queen's employ, a man named Sir Thomas Gresham. When Gerald died, Gresham helped me to get a place at court.

I did not know for many years that my path to the queen's employment had been smoothed by something else as well—by the fact that although my mother had kept her secret, she had had a tirewoman who knew it too, and had made a memorandum that was found after her death many years later. Both the queen and Cecil knew what it contained. Eventually, when the time seemed right, they told me. I recognized at once that it was true. There had always been a curious rapport between myself and Elizabeth. I understood her, and now and then I caught myself behaving in ways that I had seen in her.

Such as, for instance, pacing up and down a room when I was in a temper, like an angry lioness in a cage.

The moment Hugh said
she is your sister,
I was defeated. That blood relationship made me the ideal choice to carry a message as private, as personal, as the one Elizabeth wished to pass to Mary. To Elizabeth, I owed the love of a sister as well as a subject. He was right. I would have to go to the north.

“Very well. I'll write to Pen's mother and tell her—well, that we're going to Yorkshire. She needn't know about Pen and Master Rowan! We'll pretend that we have provided the dowry. I think Ann will be pleased and I'm sure she won't object if I take Pen to see it. I'll carry out my errands,” I said grimly. “If by then I've found a likely match for Pen, we'll stay on to conclude it. If I haven't, I'll bring her back. We'll leave as soon as possible. Let's get this over.”

 • • • 

At least it promised to be an easier journey than the last northward ride I had undertaken, through the snow and fog of January. This was summer. The tracks were dry and fringed with cow parsley and meadowsweet, bramble and foxglove and wild dog roses. Bees murmured and grasshoppers creaked in the clover meadows, and the trees were heavy in leaf. Soft breezes whispered
through them, which kept the days from being uncomfortably hot. Traveling was pleasant, except for the flies.

We were quite a large party. When Cecil summoned me to give me final instructions, I asked for a good escort.

“The north is lawless compared to the south,” I said. “When I last went, Dale and I had only Brockley for escort and it was risky. I think we were lucky to get as far as Scotland unmolested! This time I have two young girls in my charge. Pen I have to take, but although I don't want to be parted from Meg, I'll leave her behind unless I'm sure we're well protected.”

Cecil understood and conferred with Hugh. Brockley went to Hawkswood to fetch Meg and came back with two young men from the estate, a young groom called Harry Hobson (his father was Hugh's falconer) and a lad named Tom Smith, the son of one of Hugh's tenants. Hobson was fair, placid, and burly, while Smith was a dark and gangling fellow with an eye for the wenches and a cheeky tongue, but both were sensible lads, who had been taught swordplay. Tom had a sword supplied by Hugh, but Harry brought one that his grandfather had owned, a rather splendid affair with an amethyst in the hilt, probably loot from some bygone battlefield.

In addition, Cecil contributed two of his own men, a fatherly individual called John Ryder and a sturdy, sandy man named Dick Dodd. I already knew them and had always liked them. Ryder was completely gray by now, but seemed as fit as ever and was pleased to meet Brockley again, for they were good friends. With these four men and Brockley, I reckoned that we had an adequate retinue.

“The queen wants secrecy,” said Cecil, “but that's a relative matter. Those in one's service have to be briefed to some extent. Ryder and Dodd are aware that you have a private errand to Mary Stuart, though they have no idea of its nature, nor will they seek to discover it. They are both trustworthy. I expect that you'll also tell Dale and Brockley a certain amount, though they should not know any details either. But avoid mentioning the errands to any of the others if you can.”

Our company therefore consisted of five men and five ladies,
the ladies being myself, Fran Dale, my good friend Mistress Sybil Jester, Pen, and Meg. We were all well mounted. Hugh and Cecil always made sure that their men had good horses. I had my own mare, a good-looking dapple gray called Roundel, a gift from Hugh. I had decided to breed from my former favorite, my pretty Bay Star. Her first foal, a charming filly, the image of her dam, was now a long-legged yearling and I hoped one day to present her to Meg, who was already a competent rider.

Meanwhile, Meg had her own pony, a new and bigger one, since she had just turned thirteen, and was growing. Pen, who also rode well, was on the black mare she had brought from Lockhill. Dale, however, disliked riding and these days was very wearied by it and was therefore traveling on Brockley's pillion.

Brockley's old cob, Speckle, was aging and was now keeping Bay Star company at grass. Speckle's replacement, Brown Berry, was heavily built and inconveniently hairy about the fetlocks (always a trouble to the grooms who have to keep their charges' feet clean), but more than equal to carrying double. Dick Dodd had a cob that was similarly strong, and since Sybil too was a poor rider, we put her up behind Dodd.

We also had Meg's merlin, Joy, full saddlebags, and two pack mules to carry everyone's belongings. I needed suitable wear for an audience with a queen, and since Pen might accompany me, I had provided the same for her. Also, in a fit of optimism, I had stowed Pen's very best blue velvet gown and a new lace-edged ruff in a separate hamper for use on her wedding day, if wedding day there should be. We were quite an impressive cavalcade, though hardly a speedy one, as Brockley remarked, just as we were starting.

“The village dominie who taught me my letters had traveled a bit when he was young, madam,” he said to me in his calm voice with its slight country accent, and with no expression at all on his immobile face. His high brow with its dusting of gold freckles was unwrinkled, though he was over fifty. “He talked about it sometimes. He called them the three Perfidious P's—pillions, pack animals, and pets.” There was just a trace of a smile
in his blue-gray eyes. “Then he'd say that he learned to take two useful P's as a guide.
Porta parvum,
he'd say.”

“Carry little? Did he teach you Latin, Brockley? I never knew that!”

“I don't know much, madam. Just a smattering. He did teach his class some dog Latin but I only had a year of it.”

“You're full of surprises,” I said, smiling. “Isn't he, Dale?” There had been a time when Brockley and I had had such a habit of exchanging expressionless pleasantries, that we had made Dale feel shut out and hurt her feelings. Nowadays, I tried to share the jokes with her. “I just wish,” I said, “that we hadn't got to find our way.”

Dudley had never visited his Yorkshire legacy and the agent he had sent to inspect it and make an inventory of its contents, six years ago when it first came into his hands, was now dead. Dudley still had the report and the inventory, however, and these he gave to me, along with a letter of introduction to the steward.

The name of the place was Tyesdale, in a parish called Fritton. It was the largest property in the parish. The adjoining estate, Fernthorpe, had once been bigger but the family had foolishly got into trouble back in the days of King Henry VIII and been involved in the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. None of them had been hanged, but they had been heavily fined—or had negotiated a deal—and had paid by surrendering some of their land to the crown. Tyesdale was now the larger by a considerable margin.

“And has the better house,” Dudley told me. “At some point, after the rising, the original house caught fire and the family couldn't afford to rebuild it properly. The replacement's not much better than a large hovel. Tyesdale, on the other hand, is said to have a good manor house. The steward there is called Magnus Whitely. By the way, the agent I sent didn't take to him. And so . . .” Dudley's smile was malicious “ . . . I shan't send a courier ahead to announce your impending arrival. You can take him by surprise, Mistress Stannard.”

To get to Tyesdale, our recommended route was north through the cities of Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, and Sheffield; then north-westward for about twenty miles to a place I had never heard of, called Glossop, and after that, to another place I hadn't heard of, a hamlet named Mossley. After Mossley, we must ask directions, for the way led across lonely moorland. We should try asking both for Fritton and for Tyesdale. In his report, the agent admitted to having got lost several times after Glossop, until at last he had hired a guide.

“On which I was reluctant to spend my master's money but it was better than wandering in the wilderness,” he had written piously. Our journey was clearly going to involve a marked element of exploration.

Still, we did have good traveling conditions and plenty of daylight. The fact that I detested the whole business only made me more determined to get on with it, so I urged an early start each morning. I allowed a rest at midday and then I made us ride on through the later afternoon and early evening. We made the best speed we could and reached Sheffield after six days. The next day was Sunday and we rested, horses and humans alike.

The humans attended church and I instructed Brockley to see if he could find us a guide to see us to Glossop. On Monday, with a local hired man to show us the way, we set off again. The road was a well-frequented track with quite a good surface. It was then, though, that we noticed how the land was changing.

Pen commented on it first, which was a relief because it was almost the first spontaneous remark she had made since we started out. Although she had had kind and encouraging letters from both her mother and her brother George, expressing pleasure at her new dowry and thanking Hugh and myself earnestly for our supposed generosity, my ward had started the journey in a fit of sulks.

Pen, of course, knew nothing of the ulterior motives behind the long ride north. As far as she was concerned, she was being dragged to Yorkshire because she was in disgrace. Until we left Sheffield, Pen spoke only when she was spoken to, and then replied in the fewest possible words. Meg chattered all the time,
agog with excitement, but even Meg could make no headway against Pen's obstinate silence.

What finally broke through to her, unexpectedly, was the way the land around us had risen into high moors and steep hillsides, growing wilder and lonelier, it seemed, with every mile we traveled.

“Are those mountains?” she asked suddenly, taking her left hand off her reins to point at a spectacular skyline. “And how can sheep graze on a slope like that? Do they have sticky pads on their feet?”

Everyone laughed. “Not they,” said Dick Dodd. “Just sure-footed, they are. My dad kept sheep, so I know.”

“But don't they stray and get lost? The shepherds can't be up there with them all the time!”

Harry Hobson was a quiet fellow, but he had a jolly laugh on occasion and we heard it now. Our guide chuckled, too. He was one of those very tough elderly men who look as though they have been pickled in brine and then hardened by time like the ships' timbers so often used in house construction. His wiry pony looked similarly tough.