A Web of Silk

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  Both were smiling but Joyce took the lead, coming forward to take my hands. ‘Mistress Stannard! We are so happy to welcome you and so sorry that Father is out. He will not be long. There was some trouble with our bullocks – they got out of their field and would have been in the corn if not promptly chased back to their proper place. And this is Mistress Jester?’ She turned to Sybil, and now Jane came forward and very sweetly kissed Sybil in greeting.

  ‘And this is Fran Dale, my maid and my friend,’ I said, establishing relationships firmly. I never allowed the Brockleys to be regarded as mere servants to be kept in the background, but insisted that they should be treated as guests like myself and Sybil. ‘And her husband, my manservant and also my friend, Roger Brockley.’

  ‘You must take off your riding cloaks and come up to our parlour,’ said Joyce. ‘Hamble is already bespeaking refreshments for us all. Will you come now?’

  We followed the two of them out of the hall and up the staircase, which was long and just as ill-lit as the entrance hall. It led up to a wide passage with slender lancehead windows at each end. I could see that at the far end there was another staircase, probably a continuation of the one I had reckoned led up from the kitchen quarters. It went on up to the floor above, but the front staircase which we had just ascended apparently did not continue.

  As a means of letting in daylight the lancehead windows were hopelessly inadequate, and this too was a place of shadows. But Joyce threw open a door on our left and we went into what, to our relief, was a comfortable parlour with more mullioned windows.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Joyce, waving us to an array of cushioned settles and stools. ‘Jane and I embroidered some of those cushions – you can see which ones by all the mistakes. With your help, we hope to improve. Do please be seated. Jane, will you go and see why Hamble is taking so long? He should be here with his tray by now.’

  ‘I am here,’ said a voice behind us, and we moved hastily to let the steward through. His tray held a wine jug, goblets (silver, what else?) and several dishes of small eatables – raisins, nuts, some little pies. ‘These pies are chicken, and these have plum preserve in them,’ Hamble said, setting the tray down on a small table and pointing.

  Joyce dismissed him. She was the dignified twin, I thought, and usually the foremost one, while Jane was sweeter, less commanding and more impulsive. We all sat down to partake of the refreshments. Joyce asked what kind of journey we had had; Jane told us that when our lessons began they would take place in the same parlour, if that should be agreeable to us, as the light was good. ‘It isn’t good everywhere in this house,’ she said and then, with candour, added: ‘We don’t like this house very much. The one we had in the Midlands was much pleasanter.’

  ‘We shall have to make the best of it,’ Joyce said austerely, and then changed the subject by telling us that she had been looking out of the window when we arrived and had caught sight of our horses. She very much liked the look of the dark chestnut.

  ‘That is my Firefly,’ said Brockley, and she began to tell him about her dappled mare, Patches, who was the greediest animal on earth. ‘One has to stop her from trying to snatch a mouthful from every bush we pass. If I relax for an instant, down goes her head and she starts to graze! And we do feed our horses properly, believe me.’

  We were deep in friendly conversation when the door opened to admit Master Frost, who came in hastily, with an apologetic air.

  ‘I am sorry I was not here when you arrived. Welcome, Mistress Stannard. And Mistress Jester, and the Brockleys! I hope you had easy travelling. Is there any wine left in that jug? I have been with the men, chivvying bullocks away from my cornfield. I am exhausted and parched, and I still have to see the bailiff about the bullocks’ field. It wants new fencing and better drainage.’

  We all greeted him politely. Joyce poured him some wine and offered him the various dishes. He looked as much as ever as if he had just been out in a blizzard and I kept half-expecting him to call for a towel to wipe the snow off his hair, eyebrows and moustache.

  After a while, he said: ‘Joyce, my dear, when I came in I saw the baggage being brought upstairs. I think it is time that you showed our guests where they are to sleep. I must go to my study. The bailiff should be there by now, waiting to see me.’

  He left the room, and Joyce said: ‘The guest rooms are upstairs. Come, we’ll show you.’

  The twins led the way and we followed. ‘Most of the rooms on this floor are bedchambers,’ Joyce said. ‘But they are all occupied.’ She pointed to a door opposite. ‘That’s Father’s room, in the front of the house, and his study leads out of it. That other door leads straight into the study. Next to the study are the two rooms that the Hambles use. Mrs Hamble – they like the modern fashion of address – is our housekeeper. Their son is the porter’s boy. Beyond those, in the corner by the back stairs, is quite a nice chamber that our chaplain, Dr Andrew Lambert, uses – you’ll meet him at supper. In the other corner there’s a music room. Our bedchamber is next door to this parlour, and beyond that is where Susie sleeps – she’s our maid, we share her. The rest of the women servants have a dormitory on the floor above, opposite the guest chambers, and the men are up another flight of stairs, in the attic along with the lumber rooms.’

  ‘Father likes Susie to be near us,’ said Jane. ‘She’s very pretty,’ she added.

  I wondered if that was really a non sequitur, but saw the reproving glance that Joyce shot at her twin and decided it wasn’t. For a moment, I felt that something secret and questionable had slid into the atmosphere.

  No, I thought. I didn’t like this house any more than the twins did, though probably for quite different reasons. I said: ‘Shall we go upstairs, then?’

  Brockley said: ‘I must go to the stables, or the kitchen, and find Eddie. He had better start for home soon.’

  The rest of us followed the twins to the staircase at the far end and went up. This flight was tiresomely shadowy, like so much else in this house, and it creaked as well.

  The next floor was similar to the one below except that only the back stairs continued to it. Here, too, was a wide passage, or elongated vestibule, running from the back of the house to the front with rooms on either side. We had been allocated two rooms, one for Sybil and myself, the other for the Brockleys. Sybil’s and mine was the bigger of the two, but both, I was glad to see, were reasonably well lit and comfortable.

  Both rooms had four-poster beds, corner cupboards and good-sized clothes presses, and the deep window seats lifted up to reveal ample storage space beneath. Each room also had a washstand and several floor rugs, and a prie-dieu with a little statuette of the Virgin and Child. There was no pretence that this was not a Catholic household. Dale, who had once, in Catholic France, been charged with heresy, drew her breath in with a disapproving hiss.

  ‘The rooms are very pleasant,’ I said loudly, and hoped the twins hadn’t heard the hiss.

  I asked a few artless questions about the layout of the house. If I was going to search it for Eleanor’s stolen chest, and I supposed I had better at least try, then knowing my way round would be useful.

  ‘Oh, the women’s dormitory is behind that door opposite? And there’s a spare bedchamber on the other side of the one for the Brockleys, and a little one at the back of the house next to the dormitory? And those are the stairs up to the attic floor? It’s quite a big house, isn’t it!’

  ‘It seems odd having the guest rooms on the same floor as one of the servants’ rooms,’ said Joyce apologetically, ‘but we had to arrange things to fit our household. Well, we will leave you. We will have some hot water sent up, and there are towels in your corner cupboards. Do come down to the hall when you are ready. We shall be there with Father and Dr Lambert.’

  I asked another artless question. ‘What’s the room to the left as one comes through the front door? Opposite the door to the great hall, I mean.’

  ‘Oh, that’s the ballroom,’ said Jane. ‘We hope to do some en
tertaining once we are properly settled in. We’ll show you when you come downstairs.’

  When we presently descended, they duly met us in the entrance hall. Jane, with the air of a showman, led us at once to the door opposite the great hall and flung it open, revealing a wide and empty room, with a wooden floor, numerous lamp stands and at least a dozen multi-branched (silver) candelabra, which would certainly be needed when the ballroom was in use because this was yet another shadowy place. I looked to the right and saw that in the corner there was a low, unobtrusive door. Like the one I had noticed at the rear of the great hall, it presumably led outside. Much more noticeable was the dais beside it, with a clavichord standing on it alongside a table on which lay a sackbut.

  ‘When minstrels come, they have their own instruments, of course,’ Joyce said, ‘but sometimes they find we have something they haven’t got and are happy to use it. We have a harp in that little music room upstairs and our lutes are there, too. We practise regularly. Father often likes us to make music after dinner.’

  ‘I shall look forward to hearing you play,’ I said politely. One comprehensive glance had shown me that wherever Master Frost had stowed the purloined chest – if he had purloined it at all – it wasn’t in this empty and public place.

  It was not yet dusk but the sky was beginning to dim, so that inside Knoll House the shadows were deepening more than ever. As we left the ballroom, Brockley reappeared from the stables and kitchen quarters to say that Eddie had left over an hour ago and should be well on his way home by now. ‘He should be there before it’s fully dark, madam.’

  I said ‘Good,’ and we all started towards the door of the great hall. As we did so, a tall woman appeared from the direction of the kitchen, carrying a lit taper. She began to light candles. Light sprang up, glinting on the silver candlesticks and the ivory-coloured points of the antler decorations, though there were still shadows in plenty, stretching this way and that, elongating and shrinking, racing ahead of us as we crossed the chessboard floor.

  ‘This is Mrs Hamble, our housekeeper,’ said Joyce. ‘Mrs Hamble, here are our guests. This is Mistress Stannard … Mistress Jester … Master Roger Brockley and his wife Frances …’

  ‘Welcome to Knoll House,’ said the housekeeper, turning to us. She was lean as well as tall, and dressed in businesslike fashion in a plain black woollen gown. The dark material was relieved by a small white ruff and a white cap. Between ruff and cap, her face was a long, pale oval with little expression. Her words expressed welcome, but there was no accompanying smile.

  We all murmured that we were happy to make her acquaintance and then we followed her and her taper into the great hall, where she set about lighting yet more candles, and we saw that the table was set for supper. An ornate salt had been set out in the middle of the table. It was bigger and even more costly, I thought, than the one that Stagg wanted to give to Eleanor. Why on earth, I thought, should Giles Frost wish to steal it, when he already had this?

  The twins led us towards the hearth, where a fire had now been lit and where a thin man in the dark gown and cap of a cleric was seated. He rose to greet us. He had been telling the beads of a rosary, which he was now putting away in a belt pouch. ‘This is Dr Lambert, our chaplain,’ Joyce said. ‘Dr Lambert, this is …’

  She got no further with the introductions, because Master Frost suddenly appeared and took them smoothly over. Lambert greeted us in a most amiable fashion, but I realized at once that he was going to be a permanent source of irritation, for he had a maddeningly affected ecclesiastical voice which sounded as though he were intoning through his nose. We heard more of it during supper, which was served almost at once, as Lambert said grace and thereafter did a good deal of talking – on numerous topics, including the fencing and drainage of the bullocks’ field, how much he approved of young ladies learning the skill of embroidery, and the tiresomeness of winter for Master Frost when seagoing trade was almost at a standstill.

  Frost himself said little, though he made some small talk with me and Sybil. The Brockleys were at the table as well – because during an exchange of letters before our arrival I had made it clear that I wished this to be so – but Master Frost didn’t choose to talk to them.

  I wondered when and how I would get a chance to feed untruthful remarks about the size of Elizabeth’s navy into the conversation, and decided that it must not be too soon. I needed to absorb atmosphere, learn the way people talked to each other in this house, make haste slowly.

  And search the house for an errant dowry chest as well. But how on earth I was going to manage that, with creaking staircases and the twins and various servants coming and going all the time, I couldn’t think.

  Well, I would find a way, no doubt. Meanwhile, I had to admit that the cooking in this house was excellent.

  TEN

  The Search Begins

  That night I had a bad dream. I was searching Knoll House. In the dream it was even gloomier than it was in reality. I groped my way about and bumped into pieces of furniture that I couldn’t see. Tall black figures came and went. One of them thrust a pale oval face into mine and laughed, before vanishing; another came at me with a knife. I woke sweating, thankful to find myself safe in a four-poster bed with Sybil fast asleep beside me, but wondering what the source of the dream could be. It suggested that in this house there was something to fear, and somewhere deep in my mind I knew what it was. But if so, it was too deeply buried to be found. I did not know what it could be.

  In the morning, Dale came to help us dress and, when she had done so, said: ‘Roger would like to see you, ma’am – well both of you – before we all go downstairs. Shall I call him?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  He must have been waiting just outside, because Dale merely put her head out of the door and spoke his name and there he was. Shaved, and dressed for the day in a serviceable brown doublet and hose, looking both anxious and tired.

  ‘I’ve been awake half the night,’ he said. ‘Thinking.’

  ‘And I’ve been dreaming,’ I told him. ‘I had a nightmare last night. I don’t like this house, though I couldn’t really tell you why. But I remember feeling like this once before. Do you remember Stonemoor House, in Yorkshire? I had an unreasonable feeling there that something was wrong, only it turned out to be not so unreasonable after all. I have the same feeling now. What is it that is worrying you, Brockley? Do sit down, you do indeed look tired.’

  With an air of thankfulness, he seated himself on a stool. ‘There are too many mysteries – too many strange things – crowding in on us, madam. There was Sir Francis Walsingham, giving you orders to come here and give false information. And warning you against Simeon Wilmot’s brother. Then there was Philip’s death. Well, who did attack him? And why did they attack him? The coroner just dismissed it as “murder by someone unknown”. Philip let us down, he betrayed us, I know that, madam, but he was my son, the son I didn’t know I had until he suddenly appeared and then …’

  His voice shook. Quietly, I said: ‘I know. I really do know. Last year I feared I had lost my own son.’ Dale went to him and laid a hand on his shoulder, and after a moment, he recovered himself.

  ‘Then there was the broken window in the church,’ he said. ‘And after that, Julius Stagg asked you, since you were coming here, to look for the stolen bridal chest. When we visited his workshop, he brought that chest to your attention almost like a conjuror forcing a card on someone, playing one of those tricks that Wilmot used to do when he was pretending to be an entertainer. He …’

  ‘That was it!’ I said, suddenly enlightened. ‘After that visit I had a feeling that there had been something wrong, a false note. That was it. We were made to look at that chest, to admire it, to be told what it was for!’

  ‘Yes, madam. It’s all too much. So many things. I keep feeling that they must be part – facets – of just one thing, one hidden thing, but I can’t imagine what it is. But last night it all came together in my head and ke
pt me awake. I’m afraid for you, though I can’t guess where or what the danger is.’

  ‘I think you are very likely right.’ Sybil spoke briskly. ‘But we are here now, with tasks to carry out. All we can do is carry them out and keep our eyes and ears open. I’ve been thinking too. If we’re really going to look for this wretched chest, well, it won’t be easy to search this house. There will be so many people about.’

  ‘Yes. Very true,’ Brockley said. ‘Last night I did some prowling. We all retired at the same time, but after that I put my dressing robe on and went down to the kitchen. Everyone was still very much awake there. The chief cook – he’s a jolly sort of fellow, nearly the size of an elephant and a great contrast to the Hambles – was overseeing the arrangements for tomorrow’s breakfast …’

  ‘Making bread dough and counting out chops?’ asked Sybil, amused.

  ‘Not him. He was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room shouting orders to three scuttling minions – two young fellows and that young Bessie. And Mrs Hamble was there too, lecturing another young maid about pans not scoured to her satisfaction. I asked her if I could have some mulled wine because my wife thought she had a chill.’

  ‘That black clad beanpole!’ said Dale. ‘She makes me feel creepy.’

  ‘She was quite human when I spoke to her,’ Brockley said. ‘She said certainly, she would prepare it herself while I waited, and I could call in every evening if I liked and collect mulled wine for two. Guests are to be made comfortable, she said. And while I was there, the steward came in through a door I hadn’t noticed, carrying a tray with several flagons of wine on it. I took a look through the door, and there were steps leading downwards. This house has cellars. We shall need to search those too. Probably on tiptoe in the middle of the night, which won’t be easy.’

  ‘We’re facing problems,’ I said.

  But for the moment, we had other things to do. We went to breakfast and afterwards Brockley, who had told the grooms that he wished to groom and exercise Jaunty and Firefly himself, departed to the stables to attend to them. I asked the twins if we could now go to the parlour to begin the embroidery lessons, and sent Dale to our room to fetch the necessary materials. Dale brought them to the parlour and then left us, saying that she wished to press the pleats in my ruffs and would also walk through the house ‘so as to get used to it’. She gave me – not a wink, exactly, but a briefly drooping eyelid which amounted to the same thing. The search was beginning, in a cautious way.