To Shield the Queen (10 page)
Read To Shield the Queen Online
Authors: Fiona Buckley
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective
“She is jealous?”
“Not because of you! She thinks I’m a danger to Lady Dudley or possibly a rival for Lady Dudley’s affections. She might well be glad if I went away with you,” I said. “When I go back into the house, I don’t want her hinting that I’m no better than I ought to be.”
“As I said, she is jealous. She envies you your youth, the doors that are open for you and not for her. Be careful, Ursula. I mean it.” He was serious. “If you don’t remarry, you could turn into another Pinto.
Au revoir,”
said Matthew, “and beware!” He rode away, leaving that ominous warning to echo in my ears.
Feeling in need of steadying company, I snatched a few minutes to go through to the stableyard and say hallo to John Wilton. He spent most of his time with the horses, and since my arrival I had seen little of him. He told me that all was well with him and asked if I had any errands or commissions. “Not just now, John,” I said, looking with affection at his spiky hair and remembering how he and I and Gerald had ridden through the night to Guildford, the night I ran away from Faldene. “But I’m glad to know you’re here,” I said earnestly.
I went indoors and back to Amy. Yesterday evening, she had asked if I had “settled anything” with Mr. de la Roche, and when I said no, that I was not yet ready for such a step, she had said, “Do think about it, Ursula,” and then added, “but I’m glad you’re staying for the time being.”
Now I saw all too well how much she needed help and company. The effort of bearing up during the dinner party had exhausted her. She was tearful and
in pain. We fetched soothing possets for her, helped her to her prie-dieu to pray and Pinto played draughts with her for a while until Amy said she wanted to go back to her room and have her dinner in bed, on a tray.
After Amy had had her meal, tasted as usual by me, she decided to sit in the parlour and do some embroidery, but she soon felt too tired to go on with it and asked me to read to her instead.
Although Pinto was of gentle origin and had had a little education and could play the lute and sing—to tell the truth, quite as well as I could—she hadn’t come from a background which valued intellect in women. Her literacy level was no better than that of Meg’s nurse Bridget. Pinto could sign her name and she could write a label for a bottle of ointment or rosewater or preserved plums, but she could only do it slowly, and reading, for her, was a matter of picking out one letter after another and doubtfully stringing the sounds together. She couldn’t read aloud to entertain her mistress, and she didn’t like hearing me do it.
When I read to Amy, Pinto would sit and listen with her mouth primmed up, and if she could find something in the choice of material to object to, object she would. I used to try and persuade Amy to choose, because then Pinto would keep quiet, but today Amy, as she often did, said, “Oh, I’m too tired to decide. Pick something for me, Ursula.”
So I searched among her books and found some verses by a poet called William Dunbar, and read her a poem in praise of the City of London, and Pinto said when I finished that it was dull. So I tried another poet, by the name of Skelton, who wrote verses in praise of various ladies, and Pinto said he sounded like a philanderer and she was surprised that I thought his work suitable for her mistress. Not greatly to my surprise, Amy then said she was weary and
asked us to help her back to bed. After we had done so, Pinto made a few edged remarks, suggesting that my poor choice of literature had bored or irritated Lady Dudley. I finished the day feeling literally as though I had spent it banging my head against a stone wall. A headache was looming.
I went to bed early and the headache subsided, but I couldn’t sleep. Matthew had unsettled me. Suddenly it seemed hateful to exist like this, fending off Pinto’s resentment and tasting Amy’s meals for fear of poison.
Dale had once remarked that it wasn’t her place to say so but she didn’t like to see me acting as taster; it wasn’t nice. I now realised that I heartily agreed with her. The simple normality of the dinner party had shown up, by sheer contrast, the unpleasant nature of everyday life at Cumnor. What a way to live, I thought. What a
horrible
way to live.
And suppose, said a nasty little voice inside my head, just suppose Amy is right? Just suppose there was poison in that broth you tasted today?
I was quite sure there wasn’t, as apart from my fading headaches, I felt perfectly well, but it seemed to me quite possible that an attempt had been made on her life earlier, and that Dr. Bayly had frightened the culprit off. If so, what if the attempt were later resumed? I might hope that Amy’s earlier attacks of nausea, and her present fears, were only her sick fancies, but what if they were not? How was I to tell?
As I lay there, I was conscious of the age of the walls around me. Pictures drifted through my mind, of processions of cowled monks, carrying candles, making their way through the house to their devotions in the nearby church. In my imagination, the cowls had something threatening about them, as though they hid faces one would rather not behold.
The night was warm and I had looped back the
bedcurtains. By the moonlight slanting through the window, I could see Dale as she slept on the truckle bed against the wall. I could hear her breathing, too. She was a comforting human presence and I was glad of her.
I could also see the door of the room, the gleam of the iron hinges and the push-down handle. I was actually looking in that direction when the handle moved.
I sat up, heart pounding wildly. The door was opening. A figure, carrying a candle like one of the monks in my reverie, entered softly and closed the door after it. I made a strangled sound of terror and the figure turned quickly towards me, holding the candle up so as to cast light on my face.
“Hush. It’s all right. Don’t be afraid,” said the voice of Arthur Robsart.
“Master Robsart?” My panic subsided, leaving bewilderment. “What on earth . . . ?”
“Shh.” He came silently across to me and placed the candle on a small table beside the bed. He was wearing some kind of loose dressing robe, much embroidered and tied with a silken cord which gleamed in the candlelight.
He then sat down on the edge of the bed and, to my rage and disbelief, leaned forward to take off his slippers. “Don’t let’s wake Dale,” he whispered. “I’ll snuff the candle in a moment. We can draw the curtains, and I’ll slip away before dawn. She’ll never know I was here. I take it that I’m welcome?”
“You most certainly are not! When did I ever . . . ?”
“Yesterday, at dinner. You were iridescent, sweetheart; like cloth of gold in full sunlight. It was as plain as could be that you were longing for a lover, but Master de la Roche has gone away again and left you. I must go, too, in the morning, but for tonight, I’m
still here and I’ve noticed during the past week that you rather liked me. I would never try to seduce a virgin,” said Master Robsart virtuously. “That would be quite immoral. You have been married, though, darling, you know what it’s all about. I felt sure that if I came to you tonight, you wouldn’t order me away.”
“You were sorely mistaken! I am but recently widowed and still mourning for my husband. I have no interest in any other man, and if I had, Master Robsart, I would hardly choose you! You have a wife! Please go away at once.”
“Hush, hush. We don’t want to start a scandal. Come now, sweetheart.” The obtuse young fool was about to take off his robe. I didn’t think he had much, if anything, on beneath it.
“Dale!”
I shrieked.
“What? What? What is it, ma’am? Oooh!” She sat up on her truckle bed and stared at Arthur in amazement.
“Dear Dale,” said Arthur. “I’m sure you’re an excellent and trustworthy maid to Mistress Blanchard, and that means you’re discreet, but virtue should be rewarded . . . ”
“I’m glad you think so!” I said waspishly.
“. . . and I will happily reward yours to the amount of a gold angel.”
“I should stand out for several gold angels if I were you, Dale,” I said, “but I’ll pay them to you for
not
promising discretion. I shan’t need it.” Secure in possession of the funds Dudley had already provided for me, I added to Arthur, “If Dale thinks she deserves a pay rise, she has only to ask. Now will you please go?”
“But darling, why?” Arthur did have the decency to do up his girdle again although he still seemed disposed to coax. “Where’s the harm? You needn’t worry about my wife, I assure you. She won’t know.”
“None that I know of. I take care,” said the lighthearted tomcat perched on the side of my bed. “But even if I did get you with child, you needn’t worry . . . ”
“I’m quite sure I needn’t! I don’t intend to give myself cause!”
“You know I’m Amy’s half-brother?” enquired Arthur.
“Yes, but what . . . ?”
“Wrong side of the blanket,” said Arthur cheerfully. “Same father, but he wasn’t married to my mother. He acknowledged me and paid for my upbringing, though, and I bear his name. I’d do the same for any child of mine. There’s nothing to fear.”
“Master Robsart,” I said. “Please listen. I don’t
want
a love affair with you.”
“A few days ago you said you would miss me when I went away. All week I’ve been growing more and more certain . . . ”
“You were amusing company, nothing more. Now, will you please
get out?
If you don’t, I shall scream at the top of my voice and rouse the whole house and I don’t think Lady Dudley will be pleased. It could be bad for her, too,” I added, ruthlessly using his sister’s poor health as a lever.
“Oh, very well.” Arthur put on his slippers again. “I thought it was worth trying,” he said philosophically. “One can’t win every time.”
“Oh,
really!”
“You don’t understand yourself,” he added, as he stood up. “Recently widowed or not, you want a lover. What went wrong between you and de la Roche?”
“He came here courting you, didn’t he? He made no secret of it. And you want him, I saw it at that dinner, but when he left I thought I’d been wrong. I wasn’t wrong, though. You’re giving off signals like a flagship. You want a man and if it isn’t me, then it’s de la Roche. Why did you let him go?” said Arthur, and then picked up his candle and sauntered out of the room, waggling his fingers at me in an impertinent farewell as he turned to close the door.
“Ma’am!” said Dale in a staggered voice.
“I know. Outrageous behaviour! Bolt the door, will you, Dale?” I said.
• • •
I didn’t sleep at all that night. I lay there open eyed as the hours went by, and grieved because I knew that Arthur had been right. I saw the truth now. I did want Matthew. When he was near me, my bones shook.
There are no sane explanations for it, the way that a certain set of features, a certain build, the laughter lines at the corners of a particular pair of eyes, the timbre of a special voice, can overwhelm one’s senses. He had a long chin and a strong nose; his eyes were dark and narrow, his bones long and loosely jointed, his voice deep. All these things are commonplace, but added together they made Matthew, Matthew,
Matthew
. Now my eager body and my hungry heart shouted at me to forget religion and Gerald and Amy Dudley, and marry Matthew at once.
But he had gone away and I didn’t know where. He had said he would come back although he hadn’t said when. For all his protestations, he might meet someone else or simply change his mind; might stroll out of my life as Arthur had just done.
I had had my chance. I might well have thrown it away, too.
The Scent of Danger
I
have been five weeks at Cumnor Place, I thought. Five long weeks. Amy is as ill and as nervous as ever she was and I am no nearer learning the truth. Are her fears soundly based or not? I don’t know. And oh, how I wish I could hear from Matthew.
It was a month since Matthew had left, and Thomas Blount and Arthur Robsart had left early the next day. For all I had heard of Matthew since, he might never have existed. I had had no message, no letter. There was nothing I could do. I could not go back to court to seek word of him. I had not left Cumnor Place once; not even for a walk round the home farm or a short ride. Amy needed me too much. Duty and compassion (not to mention the feeling that I must earn my pay) bound me within the walls of Cumnor as firmly as their vows bound the monks of bygone days.
I crossed the parlour to pause, as I often did, at the window. If only Matthew would ride in again. But the courtyard was empty.
In the parlour, just behind me, Amy and Pinto were sitting, Amy trying listlessly to do some embroidery,
and Pinto mending some garment or other. I had got nowhere with Pinto. She still feared that I was Dudley’s creature and her suspicious eyes watched me all the time. I had continued to taste Amy’s food, and I often felt that Pinto wished someone
would
poison it, for my benefit. I was sure that she would love to see me fall down in convulsions. And as for that man Anthony Forster . . .
At that moment, the short, square figure of Forster emerged from his own door. He looked up, saw me, and beckoned.
I turned to Amy. “Lady Dudley, Mr. Forster seems to want me. He’s in the courtyard. Shall I go down?”
“Yes, oh yes. See what it’s about.”
I had expected her to say that. She was intimidated by Forster and his sister-in-law and anxious not to displease them. I sometimes wondered whether Forster and Mrs. Odingsell had any closer relationship but I thought not. To begin with, Mrs. Odingsell was one of the rigid breed of Protestant and it was difficult to imagine her enjoying carnal relations even with a husband, let alone a lover. The vicar of the nearby church apparently saw nothing strange in their household, and regularly dined with them, and Forster played the organ in church every Sunday.
However respectable they might be in that sense, I still considered them odious. I didn’t actually believe that the upright Mrs. Odingsell was plotting against Amy’s life, although Forster might be, but they both bullied Amy in subtle ways. Forster starved her of money, and their habit of using her servants and encouraging Mrs. Owen to do so as well, was becoming slowly more marked, and more insufferable. I now understood that Forster (whose stingy streak put me strongly in mind of Uncle Herbert) followed a deliberate policy of keeping his own wing understaffed so that he could get work done for nothing by purloining
the services of Amy’s people, while she was too timid to stand on her rights and give orders to his.
Lately, he and Mrs. Odingsell had even taken to purloining me. I had a maid and manservant of my own and was still officially one of the queen’s ladies, but I had several times been called into the Forster wing, even when Amy needed me, to help out with female tasks such as setting a table, or helping to turn a mattress. John Wilton had also found himself being used as an odd-job man. He was displeased and had once taken it upon himself to remonstrate with Forster, although it made no difference. To Forster, this sort of thing just meant economic sense. What, I wondered crossly, did he want now?
I wasn’t needed to lay a table this time. “Ah, Mrs. Blanchard,” he said, as I joined him. “Mr. Hyde is here. He has been with me all morning, and now he wishes to pay his respects to Lady Dudley. Can she receive him?”
Mr. Hyde. I stood there, using one hand to keep a capricious wind from blowing my skirts about and the other to keep it from whisking my cap off, and thought how very pleasant it would be to jump up and down on the cobbles with both feet at once, shake my fists in the air and scream.
Thomas Blount, Arthur Robsart, Matthew de la Roche, had all gone but we did not altogether lack company. Mr. Hyde was Forster’s brother-in-law, another of the relatives by marriage who seemed, with Forster, to fill the place more usually occupied by blood relations. He lived in Abingdon and had visited Cumnor several times in the past month. He came to see Forster, but he always wanted to “pay his respects” to Lady Dudley. Mr. Hyde’s idea of paying his respects made him into a menace.
Mr. Hyde, in fact, was a rotund and amiable nitwit who firmly believed that if someone were ill or
anxious, nothing would do them more good than to be regaled with juicy pieces of gossip. Once, he brought us a lurid tale of an Abingdon woman who had died suddenly, and whose husband had been arrested on suspicion of having poisoned her. A neighbour had seen the husband kissing somebody else’s wife and now everyone believed the worst. The second time, he brought a further instalment of the story, to the effect that the man had been released for lack of evidence, but no one round about had any doubt really that he was guilty.
Pinto used to make the most vituperative remarks about him and on these occasions I had every sympathy with her. Dale’s comments on the subject of Mr. Hyde were also a pleasure to hear. Dale was welcome to say she couldn’t abide
him
.
However, Amy’s distress was heartrending. After both of these visits she went to her prie-dieu the moment Hyde was gone, prayed for a long time that her husband might not be faithless and that no one should try to harm her, and then burst into tears and had to be helped to bed. Another visit from Mr. Hyde was exactly what she did not need, and Mr. Forster, I thought savagely, ought to know it. He’d been present throughout all the previous visits.
“I didn’t hear him arrive, no,” I said. “I was looking at Lady Dudley’s furnishings, earlier. She has quite a generous allowance from her husband. Surely she could have more tapestries in her rooms and some new furniture? Some of her chests and tables are very old and quite badly scratched. I’ve worked out what replacements would cost, and I’m sure they could be provided.”
Forster’s knowing eyes fairly sparkled with amusement at the idea of a young female like myself working out figures. “You can cipher well enough for that, can you?”
“It seems a little pointless,” he said. “I am the household treasurer, after all. You can safely leave such matters to me, Mrs. Blanchard. About Mr. Hyde. Can he see Lady Dudley now? He and I then intend to ride back to Abingdon where I am to dine with him. I don’t want to come up myself; I have one or two things to do.”
Pinto and I, in one of our rare moments of agreement, had offered, after Hyde’s last visit, to refuse him admittance, but Amy had said no. “It will offend Forster,” she had said.
“I’ll ask her,” I said. “If she says yes, I’ll come and fetch him to her. But, Mr. Forster, please ask him, this time, to be a little discreet in what he says. Lady Dudley is not well and she is easily upset.”
“Of course,” said Forster.
Amy, predictably, said that Mr. Hyde could come to the parlour and Forster probably did say something to him, because Hyde’s first words were: “I’m sorry to hear you’re not so well today.” However, if Forster had warned him to watch what he said, he either hadn’t been convincing, or Hyde had a short memory. Within five minutes, our maddening visitor had launched into his latest piece of gossip, which concerned a gipsy woman who had been taken up for saying that the queen was pregnant. He didn’t mention Dudley, of course—even the maladroit Mr. Hyde wasn’t as foolish as that—but he hardly needed to.
The moment he left, just as Pinto and I knew she would, Amy slid to her knees beside her little altar
and began to pray aloud that her husband might come back to her, and that the tales of his obsession with the queen were lies.
“You can see why she’s frightened,” Pinto said to me in a low, fierce voice. “If that story’s true, then what?”
“It can’t be true,” I said. “The queen lives her whole life virtually in public.” On this subject I felt sure of myself. “It isn’t possible.”
“. . . let it not be so, oh Lord. Let his heart turn to me again . . . ”
“And how would you know? You weren’t a Lady of the Privy Chamber. I’m not ignorant; I know how these things are arranged. You were just one of the women that go about with the queen when she’s out in public,” said Pinto, rather as though she were saying, “You were just a worm.”
“. . . but if it is true,”
said Amy, hands gripped together before her,
“then, oh God who succours the helpless, let both of them be . . . be . . . ”
We turned, alarmed, as Amy not only burst into tears, but began to pound upon the altar with her linked hands. They looked as frail as though the bones were only dried twigs, and yet she hammered so hard with them, on the prie-dieu, that one of the candlesticks jolted to the floor.
“My lady!”
“Please, Lady Dudley . . . !”
We ran to her. Pinto put a hand on her mistress’s shoulder but Amy ignored it. She shook her head from side to side and her voice rose.
“. . . If it’s true then let them both be damned for it!”
She put her head down on those skeletal hands and began to wail. Again in partnership, Pinto and I helped her up. She couldn’t stand. We half-carried her, still wailing, across the intervening anteroom to her bedchamber. Two of her maidservants, alerted by
the noise, came running to us, and Dale hurried from our quarters, a clothes brush in her hand.
“It’s all right. Lady Dudley is distressed, that’s all.” I waved them all back. “Someone bring a soothing draught. The usual one—tell the kitchen!”
We got Amy into bed and the draught was brought. I remembered to sip from it before giving it to Pinto to hand to Lady Dudley. Pinto put an arm round Amy and helped her to drink, very tenderly. I always felt more kindly towards Pinto when I saw how good she was to her mistress, but Pinto did not feel more kindly towards me. As soon as Amy was settled, she called for a maid to sit with her, took my arm and almost dragged me back to the parlour.
“Now then,” she said, as she shut the door after us, “did you know about this story before you came here?”
“What story?”
“That the queen is with child, of course! We all know who the father is, if so.
Did you know what is being said?”
“No, I did not. And I tell you, it is
not
true. Junior lady I may be, but I assure you once again that the queen’s life is so arranged that such a thing would be impossible without the whole court knowing.”
Pinto looked me up and down, unpleasantly. “Why should I believe a word you utter?
He
sent you here, didn’t he? If he’s got the queen with child, he’s got no time to lose and nor has her virginal majesty.”
“Pinto, if I were to report what you have just said, you would find yourself before the magistrates in a very short space of time.”
“Then report me! And break my mistress’s heart. Or is that what you want? It might help her on her way, and if this rumour’s true, helped on her way she’ll have to be, won’t she? The two of them daren’t
wait for God to call her. So why shouldn’t I believe you’re here to jog God’s elbow?”
“You’ve thought that from the start,” I said wearily. “How do I convince you? The queen and Dudley are not lovers; there is no child; I am here only to give Lady Dudley comfort, and how do you think
you’re
helping her, Pinto, by quarrelling with me? Do you think Lady Dudley needs an atmosphere of strife and suspicion all round her? You stupid woman!” I found I was losing my temper. Amy’s outburst, the worst I had experienced yet, had shaken me badly. “The only threat to her is from her illness,” I said loudly, “and if you loved her as you claim to do, you wouldn’t want her to think otherwise!”
Her flinty eyes didn’t change. I uttered an infuriated noise which even to my own ears sounded animal—somewhere between an exclamation and a growl—and flung myself away from her, out of the door and down the stairs, making for the open air. I marched out into the courtyard, into which John Wilton was escorting two horsemen who had evidently just arrived. Lately, one of the jobs Mr. Forster had found for John was to put him on duty in the gatehouse.
“Here’s Mistress Blanchard,” said John as I neared them. “Very likely she’ll know. Ma’am, these gentlemen are enquiring after Mr. Forster. I know he’s gone to Abingdon but I don’t know when he’ll be back. Maybe you can tell them.”
“He’s dining with Mr. Hyde,” I said. “I suppose he’ll be back for supper. May I know your names, gentlemen?”
However, the man on the goodlooking and probably very expensive chestnut gelding, the tall man with the good clothes and the haughty profile, I had already recognised. He was Dudley’s retainer, Sir Richard
Verney. The other, who introduced himself as Peter Holme, was the man de Quadra and I had seen in Richmond Park, talking to the Earl of Derby and Sir Thomas Smith.
“Would you like to see Lady Dudley?” I asked. “She is—er—resting at the moment, but after dinner she may be able to receive you. Can I take her any message?”
“Lady Dudley is unwell, is she not?” said Verney. “We really have no need to trouble her. Our business is only with Master Forster. By all means transmit our respects to her.”
Forster’s butler, Ellis, had come out of the house now, and was advancing towards us. As I handed the visitors over, I glanced upwards and saw Amy’s face at her bedchamber window. She made signs at me to come to her. I made my excuses and hurried indoors.
Pinto was still in the parlour. As I reached the top of the stairs, I glimpsed her through the door, stitching at something, her face sulky. I slipped across the anteroom and into Lady Dudley’s bedchamber. Amy was sitting on her front window seat, clutching her wrapper round her. Her cheeks were stained with her recent tears and the eyes she turned towards me were full, once more, of the fear I had seen on the day that I first came to Cumnor.
“That was Verney, wasn’t it? My husband’s man.”
“Yes, Lady Dudley. Look, I don’t think you should be out of bed. If I straighten the sheets for you . . . ”
“Never mind about the sheets! Is Verney coming to see me?”
“No, I understand his business is with Master Forster. He sends his respects.”
“The time Pinto overheard Forster and some visitors talking about me,” said Amy, “the visitors were Verney and that other man who was with him just now.”