A Perilous Alliance

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘Unless the bedchamber keys are all the same,’ said Brockley hopefully. ‘They might be.’ He fumbled in his belt pouch. ‘Here’s the key to our room. Let’s see.’

  He tried the key. It didn’t work.

  ‘After dark,’ I said tersely. ‘Now, we have to behave like innocent guests, and prepare to dine with our hosts.’

  Before dinner, Brockley and I went down to the stable to see for ourselves whether the grey pony was Ambrosia’s Irons. There was little doubt of it. Not one horse or pony in a thousand could have the same curious colouring as Ambrosia’s pony, and as Brockley said, if the animal now in the stall beside Jewel was not Irons, well, it was true there was such a thing as coincidence, but he didn’t believe this was an example. ‘Not if you’re right about what you saw, madam, anyway. It can’t be.’

  ‘As a daughter, you’re frankly a disappointment, Kate. You must learn to be more womanly. So take that sulky look off your face and get your grandfather’s food on the table and get ready to feed him. It’s your turn. Do it at once!’

  ‘Sheila doesn’t mind feeding him and I hate it. I can’t eat my dinner properly if I have to feed him his at the same time and he doesn’t like me feeding him anyway. I do the least thing wrong, fumble or something, and he hits out at me. He doesn’t do that to Sheila! Let Sheila do it, or Peters. Why does he have an attendant if not to do things like feeding him? Or we’ve got footmen and scullions who could …!’

  ‘Sheila is not as clumsy and careless as you are. Naturally he likes her better. If you were more careful he would like you too. Try harder! Peters has enough to do, looking after him the rest of the time and it’s not a footman’s task, nor a scullion’s! Do as you’re bid! Here he is now!’

  The wind was dropping at last. We had all returned to our rooms to make ourselves tidy for dinner, which was announced by a gong. When we stepped out on to the gallery, the harsh voice of an angry female came clearly up to us. There was the sound of a slap and a cry. We all stopped to look over the balustrade and saw that the central table was laid for the meal, and that a very aged man was being brought in by a manservant, on whose arm he was leaning.

  The dark girl we had caught sight of earlier was waiting to receive him. Her small, pretty face was reddened on one side and her expression was one of tight-lipped fury. Under the grim gaze of a tall, angular woman with a heavy shawl round her bony shoulders, hard dark eyes and an uncompromising mouth, she helped the manservant to seat his charge and tied a napkin round the old man’s neck. She did this quite gently and yet somehow conveyed that she longed to strangle him with it. Morley came in with a steaming bowl of something and gave it to her. She set it on the table, just as her father and a younger girl, dressed in yellow like her presumed sister, came in and sat down.

  There was a pause, during which the old man picked up a spoon and banged it on the table and shouted something incomprehensible from a toothless mouth. The angular woman gave the dark girl a nod, and the girl took the spoon away from her grandfather, and began to feed him from the bowl.

  ‘What an enchanting household,’ growled Brockley.

  ‘Our places are set. Come along,’ I said. ‘Before they see us gawping.’

  We hurried on down, pretending that we had noticed nothing. Once in the hall, we were introduced to those we hadn’t met. The angular woman was Mrs Ferguson. She greeted us civilly but gave a strong impression of controlled anger, presumably with the dark-haired girl who, as we had surmised, was Katherine, and also, I thought, with the ginger-headed young man, who was indeed Duncan, the son of the house.

  Katherine herself greeted us politely but briefly, over her shoulder, while continuing to feed the old man, who spluttered and dribbled and certainly didn’t seem to like being fed by her much more than she liked the task of feeding him. Once he knocked her hand away just as she was bringing a spoonful to his mouth, so that the contents of the spoon went all over the table, whereupon he cackled with geriatric laughter.

  The younger girl was Sheila, the Sheila, no doubt, who wasn’t to be allowed to marry until her parents had managed to get rid of Katherine. She was like Katherine in feature but was less defined, her hair brown and her eyes hazel instead of being dark like her sister’s hair and eyes. She was the only one who gave us a genuinely friendly smile, and it was she who made most effort to talk to us. We on our side told a carefully restricted version of our errand. Mistress Sybil’s widowed daughter had run off with the count, and there had been a strange event back at Hawkswood, involving the death of one of our cooks under odd circumstances. The count could have been concerned in this, in which case, Mistress Wilde might have run off with a murderer. Everyone exclaimed in horror.

  The polite greetings over, Mr Ferguson pronounced a brief grace – the grandfather, clearly, hadn’t wished to wait for it – and at last the rest of us could begin the meal. It was an uncomfortable one. The food was good but the air seethed with family friction and with something more than that; a sense of unease that had no obvious connection with their private squabbles. Hamish Ferguson and his wife kept exchanging glances for no apparent reason, and Duncan was entirely silent. On our side, we were all concentrating so hard on not saying anything unwise that our efforts at conversation grew more and more stilted. We were thankful to leave the hall and return to our rooms, saying that we needed rest.

  Without discussing it, we all went at once into my bedchamber, shut the door after us and stood looking at each other.

  ‘Something’s badly wrong for sure and they all know it,’ Brockley said.

  ‘Yes. They’re on edge; I could feel it,’ I said.

  ‘If you’re right about what you saw, it’s hardly surprising. Well, first of all, we have to make sure. But, madam, once we have, then what do we do next?’

  I shook my head. I had been worrying about the same thing. ‘At the moment,’ I said, ‘I haven’t the slightest idea. What can we do? Ask Mr Ferguson to explain?’

  There was a silence while we all tried to imagine this and failed. Then Sybil said: ‘First things first. We make sure. Frankly,’ she added, ‘I’d be relieved to know you’re right, Mistress Stannard. Only, in that case, where is Ambrosia?’

  No one had an answer to that.

  Dale said: ‘Well, at least that wind has gone. I’m tired out with all this travelling but I’ll be glad to get away from here and we don’t need bad weather hampering us as well when we go. I can’t abide this feeling of being frightened all the time.’

  We kept to ourselves for the rest of the day. Brockley went out to the stables before supper to tell Joseph all that had happened. ‘In case we have to get away in the middle of the night. He needs to be ready. You never know,’ he said to me when we all met to go down to supper.

  Supper was eaten in the same unease as dinner, except that this time Sheila fed the old man and we were spared Katherine’s scowls and his visible dislike of her. After supper there was an attempt at entertainment. The table was cleared, the old grandfather’s attendant, Peters, produced a guitar and played for us. We did our best to seem appreciative, but retired as soon as we could.

  ‘Midnight,’ I said to Brockley as we were parting to go to our rooms. ‘Just us two, I think. With luck, we’ll only be a few minutes. We only need to open that door and just look. Meanwhile, we should keep alert, just in case they try to move – it.’

  ‘With us up here,’ said Brockley, ‘I doubt it.’

  By midnight, not only had the wind completely ceased, but after one brief rainstorm, the sky had cleared. A full moon shone in at the tall windows of the hall, casting white light and black shadows over table and balustrade, except for the dull red embers of the fire.

  Sybil and I waited, fully dressed, until we heard Brockley’s soft tap on the door. He and Dale were both there and I let them in, pleased to see that Brockley had brought one of his lanterns. I braced myself. ‘Let’s get this over.’

  Despite Brockley’s presence, I was tense and nervous. The task be
fore us was not one that sat well with the silence of the sleeping house, the darkness and the cold moonlight. I felt in my hidden pouch to make sure my picklocks were safely there, which they were, and noticed that my hand was trembling. ‘We must be very quiet,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t be long,’ said Dale tremulously. Sybil said: ‘Good luck,’ as though we were setting forth on a perilous voyage to Cathay.

  Stealthily, Brockley and I made our way back along the gallery and round the corner to the short side, Brockley holding the lantern on his right, the side away from the balustrade. The gallery creaked a little under our feet, no matter how careful we were. ‘I wish we knew where everyone else sleeps,’ he whispered to me. ‘I’d like to think they were well away from here.’

  ‘Me too,’ I whispered back. I came to a halt. ‘This is the room.’

  ‘I hope you really are sure. This moonlight distorts things. I just hope we’re not about to walk into the marital bedchamber.’

  ‘I doubt it,’ I muttered. ‘If I’m right, they wouldn’t want that in the room next door.’

  I tried the door first, in case it was no longer locked, but it was. I got out my picklocks. My hands were certainly shaking and I fumbled as I chose one of my slender steel aids to prying into other folks’ business, and slid it into the keyhole. It was the wrong choice and I had to try again with another one. Brockley stood behind me, directing the lantern-light on to the lock, his eyes and ears alert for any movement in the house. The lock yielded at last and I pushed the door gently open. It made no sound. I pushed it wider and slipped inside, Brockley behind me.

  A moonbeam from a window on the far side of the hall came in with us, casting a long white shaft of light across a bare plank floor and on to the canopied bed. The canopy only sheltered the bedhead; there were no curtains to hide the sheeted shape that lay there, or the dangling hand and arm that had slipped from under the covering. The moonlight showed the shape and size of the hand, a man’s right hand for sure, and gleamed coldly on the great ring on the fourth finger. It leached all colour from the square-cut stone but Brockley brought the lantern nearer and the flame brought out the deep rich red of a ruby.

  ‘That’s what I saw,’ I said. ‘A shape, a dangling hand, and that great square ring. Brockley …’

  He stepped closer and pulled back the sheet.

  I had made no mistake. Count Renard lay on the bed, stone dead. He was reverently laid, with his left hand still resting on his breast, and beneath it, a little crucifix. The body was dressed, but there was no doublet on its upper half, just a loose shirt of white silk. At least, it had been white. I looked, and gagged.

  Brockley said: ‘Chrrrist!’

  The front of the shirt was one huge stain of blood, black in the moonlight but hideous all the same. The count’s left hand and the crucifix lay on top of it. Brockley, gingerly, moved the head and then we saw that it had been half-severed.

  ‘So now we know,’ Brockley said.

  ‘Yes.’ I was trembling violently, seized by an irrational fear of the horror on the bed, as though at any moment it might open its eyes, might move, might suddenly stand up, but it would not be the count who would arise, only his body, possessed by some passing spirit or demon, wandering in the darkness of night and the mystery of the moon.

  ‘Yes. We know. Now let’s get away,’ I said.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said a voice from behind us. ‘The count told us things about you, Mrs Stannard. He said you made him nervous, you were such a strange woman. He said you were known at court. That you had a reputation.’

  FIFTEEN

  Scotland Versus France

  We all swung round but we knew the voice before we saw his face, white and frightened in the moonlight. Duncan Ferguson, the young ginger-headed son of the house, who was being crossed in love by his father.

  ‘I sleep on this side of the house. I’m the only one that does,’ he said. ‘My parents and the wenches are on the other side. I like my room because it looks to the north and I can see the Pole Star from my window on clear nights. I don’t close the shutters at night because I like to see the sky but moonlight can send you mad, they say, so I don’t care for south-facing rooms.’ He seemed to realize that he was rambling and pulled himself up. ‘I heard a noise,’ he said. ‘Footsteps, and I thought it came from this direction. So you’ve found him. But how?’

  ‘Earlier, the wind blew this door open just as I was passing it,’ I said shortly. ‘I saw a hand dangling from under the sheet, and I recognized the ring on it.’ I tried to speak plainly, and was fighting my shivers and my irrational fears. I recalled that I was the sister of a queen and the daughter of King Henry the Eighth. It was not my business to cower in fear, even from a situation like this.

  ‘This man,’ I said, ‘was until lately a guest in my house. I now know that he was not a guest I would wish to harbour, but that doesn’t mean I wanted him murdered. I was told, by your father, that Count Renard had been here but had travelled on to France, with his companions. Now I find him laid in a room in this house, with his head half off. How did this come about? And where are his companions? Answer me!’

  Brockley remarked calmly: ‘This is an uncomfortable place to hold a discussion. Shall we go back to Mistress Stannard’s room? Her women are there and they too should hear the answer to madam’s questions.’

  Back in my room, Sybil and Dale were waiting nervously in the candlelight, sitting side by side on the bed. They looked horrified when we came in with Duncan, who whispered: ‘Sorry, sorry,’ to them, as Brockley pushed him on to a stool, before lighting some extra candles.

  I closed the door quietly. I was trembling in spite of myself. I sat down on the bed next to Sybil. ‘We found what we expected,’ I said. ‘It’s the count and he’s dead.’

  ‘Very dead,’ said Brockley grimly. ‘Almost beheaded, in fact. Now then, young Duncan, just what happened? How does a guest, who no doubt believed himself to be among friends, come to be lying murdered in a disused bedchamber in your house? Who killed him?’

  There was a long, aching silence. Duncan began to say something and then stopped, his mouth quivering. ‘Well?’ barked Brockley.

  More silence. And then: ‘I did,’ said Duncan abjectly.

  We all stared. ‘It wasn’t murder,’ he said. ‘He left this house, making for the port and the ship where he’d got passages for all his party. But I went after him and challenged him to a duel. I won,’ he added with a touch of pride.

  ‘A duel!’ I exclaimed. ‘But – why?’

  ‘Duels aren’t murder!’ Duncan insisted.

  ‘Duelling has never been legal for untitled gentlemen,’ Brockley told him, ‘and as it happens, the queen does not approve of it for anyone and she has now made it illegal for all, though juries are tolerant in cases of severe provocation. That could save you, perhaps, despite your lack of a title. But it would have to be very severe provocation indeed. What was it?’

  ‘Titled men? I didn’t know that. But I was provoked, right enough. Oh, yes, indeed, I was certainly that. He was very open that he was carrying news to France, about things he’d learned at your home, and earlier, at court. He said that he had to warn the French royal family that a spy called Christopher Spelton had been sent to work in France, and he had other news, too. He didn’t tell us what the news was or what this Mr Spelton had gone to France to do, but he was quite frank that he’d been spying. He thought we’d approve, as we’re Catholic too, and anyway because we’re – we were – his friends. But he was wrong; we’re loyal subjects of the queen and what he was doing was … wrong, so wrong.’

  He stopped for a moment, as if unsure how to continue. Brockley said: ‘Go on.’

  ‘All right. My father can remember the days of the Catholic Queen Mary and he said he pitied her victims that she executed for heresy. Father saw a burning once, when he was a boy. He still has nightmares about it. We don’t want those days back, he said. He said it to Count Renard! But the count said that Mary of Scotl
and, who to his mind should be queen here, is a gentle soul and no one need fear her. He said that she wouldn’t persecute anyone for having a faith different from hers; he himself did not believe in that, and had even been exiled from France for speaking up for the Huguenots. But Father said Mary could never get the throne without help from abroad and that would mean Philip of Spain and that would mean the Inquisition.’

  ‘It assuredly would!’ I snapped. I had steadied myself.

  ‘Yes. Father told the count that England is safe and quiet now and we like it that way. We didn’t want to help the count at all but he was an old friend and had trusted us because of that. As I said, he didn’t tell us what the information was that he was carrying and Father said we didn’t want to know. Father said we wouldn’t report him, but he must get on his way to France and never come back here. It should have ended there. Only,’ said Duncan, rubbing his forehead, ‘he still couldn’t seem to understand how much we were shocked by his spying. He tried to recruit me.’

  ‘Recruit you? How?’ I demanded.

  ‘He took me aside and told me he could write to friends in Queen Elizabeth’s court and get me a place there, and once I’d settled down, I could take over his spying duties. He wouldn’t be in England much in the future, he said, and he wanted a replacement. He was grateful for our promise of silence and wanted to do something for us in return. He said that a sharp young man even in quite a modest position would have chances to find things out, and I would have a salary from France as well as my court salary – for whatever post I was in – and I’d be working for the Catholic faith and the kingdom of God! I was so angry!’ His voice rose, and I said: ‘Hush.’

  ‘I was insulted, I tell you!’ said Duncan, though he lowered his tone. ‘It was an insult to think I’d agree to anything like that. I said so. He smiled and said, well, think it over. You know where my home is, if you want to get in touch. He left a couple of hours later and I saw him go, but I was seething, seething. How could he expect me to consent to such a thing? How could he? I was growing angrier and angrier and in the end I couldn’t leave it there.’