To Shield the Queen (11 page)

S
oothing her by promising to do my best, I settled Lady Dudley and retreated to my own room to think.

On the face of it, her instructions were absurd. Except by saying to Verney, “Lady Dudley wants to know what your business is,” how could I possibly find out? And what was the point, anyway? There couldn’t be anything wrong about it. Why should there be? I struggled to work it out. Dudley
couldn’t
be the queen’s lover, not without the whole court knowing, and therefore Elizabeth could not be carrying his child. Even if he did want to marry her, he must know perfectly well that Amy was dying, which in due course would release him. He had no need to injure her, although Amy firmly believed that somebody had tried and her story of attacks of nausea, which had stopped after Dr. Bayly became suspicious, was uncomfortably suggestive.

Verney was Dudley’s man and Forster was Dudley’s treasurer. This visit was probably something to do with Dudley’s finances.

However, for over a month I had lived with Amy’s fears, and I couldn’t forget that someone had tried to send a covert message, of unknown content and destination, through John Wilton. Nor could I forget that my attention had been drawn to Peter Holme by de Quadra, almost in the same breath as his warnings that the rumours surrounding Lady Dudley could be the smoke which meant, somewhere, a genuine fire.

If I cared for Amy, I thought, then I ought not take anything or anyone for granted. Be alert to everything that goes on in that house, de Quadra had said. He was right. It was part of the business of protecting her, just as tasting her food was. She wanted to know what was going on between Verney, Holme and Forster, over in Forster’s wing, and she might well have good reason. It was therefore my duty to find out. It was that simple.

Only it wasn’t simple at all, because I couldn’t for the life of me see how to do it.

Midday came. Amy ate in her room and after I had performed my usual service of tasting her food, Pinto stayed with her while I went downstairs to the dining room and ate with Dale. Though dining at the same table as myself, Dale knew her place and did not try to talk, which was as well, because I was still trying to think.

The afternoon was quiet. I sat sewing in the parlour with Dale. I stitched at the white silk sleeves I had been making on the day when I was called to see the queen and Dudley. I was still embroidering them. When, at last, barking dogs, cackling geese and the sound of hoofs announced that Mr. Forster had ridden home, I went down to meet him.

If I could manage to be the one who told him that he had guests, he just might say something about them which would tell me why they were here. Mrs. Odingsell, however, was there first. When I came up, she was already in the courtyard and telling her brother-in-law about the new arrivals.

“. . . they’ve spent the afternoon strolling round the home farm but they’re in their room now. Do you want them called down to the parlour?”

“Can I be of service?” I enquired helpfully, coming to Mrs. Odingsell’s side. “Shall I call them for you?”

“Oh, not yet.” Forster seemed irritated. He swung down from his horse. The dour-faced groom, Roger Brockley, was waiting to lead it away. Brockley, in fact, though unsmiling, was really one of the better features of Cumnor for he was extremely competent. “I’m covered in dust from my ride,” Forster said. “I want to wash and change. Tell Ellis I want supper for three at the usual time, in the little dining room. We shall wish to be private, if you will excuse us.”

They went indoors and I returned slowly to Amy’s parlour. Dale was still sewing. Outside, clouds were gathering and she remarked that the sky was getting dark. “Going to rain cats and dogs in a minute and I just hope it don’t thunder. I can’t—”

“Abide thunder,” I said absently. I stood gazing across the courtyard towards Forster’s part of the building. I knew where the small dining room was, and from where I stood, I could see its windows, four of them, regularly spaced and identical. The room was on the first floor, above the sloping roof of the cloister, but I could hardly climb on to the cloisters and crouch there to eavesdrop. Nor could I very well press my ear to the door inside the house. How would Ellis or the maids get in and out with the dishes or fresh supplies of wine? The idea was so ridiculous that I had to stifle a giggle. Then a mental picture rose before me, of the inside of the small dining room. I had laid the table in there on occasion. Surely . . . ?

“Dale,” I said, “I have something to do for Lady Dudley. Tell the kitchen to leave me a cold supper. I shall be back later. And don’t ask questions.”

“Yes, ma’am. No, ma’am,” said Dale, startled.

Suppertime was not far off. I must hurry. I had the forethought to use the privy first: if it proved possible to carry out my plan, a call of nature could ruin it. I was already dressed in clothes which allowed me some freedom of movement. When one’s work involves fetching and carrying, not to mention turning mattresses, elaborate dresses are a nuisance. I had never again put on the cream gown I wore when Matthew came. Today, I was in a dark gown with no farthingale and now I had only to remove a rustling silk underskirt and change noisy shoes for quiet slippers.

What I had remembered, and seen in my mind’s eye, were the tapestries round the walls of the room. There were gaps for the windows and the door and a stretch of panelling on either side of the door, but otherwise, the walls were hidden. If, I had thought, I could conceal myself behind those tapestries . . .

A foolish notion. For one thing, they didn’t come right down to the floor. I couldn’t hide behind them because my feet would show. In fact, even the rest of me would make a noticeable bulge, for the hangings were close against the wall. Ursula, my dear, you are a silly girl. You’ll never make a spy and there’s nothing to spy on, anyway. You’re imagining all this. You’ve let Amy infect you.

Three? But the small dining room, viewed from across the courtyard, had four windows. I went to the hangings and peered behind them. Oh yes, of course, and how typical of Forster.

The tapestries in the small dining room represented the virgin goddess Artemis turning her ardent pursuer Acteon into a stag and setting his own hounds on him: a dramatic and spirited tale to which the design did not do justice. Artemis was portrayed as a female so fat and blank of face that one couldn’t imagine any handsome youth bothering to chase her, and Acteon wasn’t handsome anyway. In the panel where he was reaching up to clutch in alarm at the antlers sprouting on his head, he looked like a bucolic amateur actor whose headdress was slipping. The bodily proportions of the hounds were odd to the point of deformity.

It was a poor, cheap tapestry, and it had obviously been bought ready-made instead of commissioned to fit the room. In fact, it was several feet too long and Forster had simply ordered the extra footage to be hung over one of the windows, obscuring it.

Here was the fourth window, complete with a recessed seat on which one might perch without causing a bulge, one’s feet well clear of the foot of the hangings.

Voices were approaching. I had half a second to decide whether or not I was to do this crazy and dangerous thing.

The people who came in, however, were the butler Ellis and a maidservant. I couldn’t see them but I heard them speak to each other, heard wine being unstoppered and Ellis saying something about another serving spoon. I heard the maid scurry off to fetch it, and then come back. Presently, I heard them both leave.

The wall of fabric in front of my nose was frustrating. I felt stealthily at my girdle, where I had a huswife pouch containing a case of needles, a thimble, a couple of spools of thread and a little pair of scissors. I listened intently to make sure that the room really was empty, and then, using the point of the scissors, I made a small hole in the hangings. With my eye to this I could see the table.

When the door opened and Forster ushered his guests through it, I drew back at once, illogically sure that because I could see them, they could see me. I sat trembling, while they took their places. I heard Ellis’s voice again, and wine being poured, and then Forster said, “All right, Ellis; that will do. We’ll look after ourselves now. See that we’re not disturbed, will you?”

The door closed. Fearfully, I ventured once more to apply my eye to the slit I had made. Forster and his guests were indeed alone, helping themselves to wedges of pie. Candles had been lit because of the dark weather. I had quite a good view, since none of them had his back to me. Verney’s proud profile and Forster’s blunt one were outlined against the light from a branched candelabra on the sideboard and Holme was facing me. I could see his upper half quite well although his face was shadowed.

Whatever their business was, they had already discussed it. Forster hadn’t waited until supper to talk to his guests, after all. Silently, I cursed. Holme did say something in reply, but as he too now had his mouth full, I couldn’t make out what it was. It was difficult to hear, anyway. The threatened rain had begun and the wind was throwing squalls of it against the window behind me. When I picked up the thread of the conversation again, they were talking about Amy’s ex-physician, Dr. Bayly.

“. . . shocking behaviour on the part of Lady Dudley’s doctor,” Verney was saying, in the drawling voice which went so naturally with that arrogant profile. “His wild accusations must have been an appalling embarrassment.”

“He’s an opinionated old fool,” said Forster irritably. “I threatened to have him in court for defaming my character if I had any more of his nonsense. The vicar was scandalised by it. He said to me . . . ”

Rain hit the window again, as though the sky were emptying its slops. When the squall had passed, the conversation had again changed course. For some reason, they were now discussing Abingdon Fair, which was due to begin in just over a week, on 7 September.

“I hope it won’t rain,” Forster said. “One year, it poured steadily throughout all four days of the fair.”

“That certainly would be a disaster,” Verney remarked, “and it would also be very bad luck.”

There was a pause, broken only by the sound of mastication. Then Forster remarked, changing his tone, “What about my contract, by the way? I understood that you were bringing it with you. I’m not prepared to proceed without it, as I hope I’ve made clear. I ought to have thought of it much sooner.”

I peered intently, trying to get a better look at Holme. I couldn’t somehow place him. He had a wide, pugnacious jaw and squashed-together features, as though a giant had put a palm on the top of his head and rammed it downwards. His voice was lightly countrified in accent, but not in grammar. He was broad shouldered and neatly clad in a russet doublet which any man might wear, from a farmer on a Sunday to a lord at ease by his hearth. In the presence of Sir Thomas Smith and the Earl of Derby, he had been obsequious, and when I saw him in the Cumnor stableyard, I had supposed that he was Verney’s manservant. However, at this table, he seemed to be on equal terms with Verney and Forster.

“I have it with me,” Holme was saying. “Sir Richard here was so keen to get on with settling details, up in the bedchamber, that I didn’t have a chance to mention it before your butler announced supper.”

“Though our principals are not happy about it,” Verney observed. “You would get your remuneration without this, Forster. I never like to put such confidential matters in writing. I was not pleased when you wrote to me to ask for the contract, and still less when you sent the letter by your man Bowes.”