by David Field
‘Please calm yourself, my Lady,’ Cecil murmured as reassuringly as he was able. ‘I shall not leave a single stone unturned until I get to the truth of the matter before anyone else and I shall then mould whatever that truth may be into a suitable form that shall reflect nothing of guilt towards your good self.’
‘I want the actual truth, Cecil, not whatever version of it you choose to broadcast abroad for public consumption. I must know if Robert did it for love of me, and if I shall be adjudged to be of equal guilt in consequence.’
‘You cannot be held to account for whatever sickness of mind may have overtaken Robert,’ Cecil assured her, ‘and we do not know for certain that his hand was behind it. First and foremost there must be an inquest into the circumstances of the death and regardless of its outcome I shall then conduct my own discreet further enquiries.’
Blanche looked up at Cecil with an expression of enquiry. ‘You seek to ferret out the truth?’
‘Her Majesty demands it. And I would know it for myself.’
‘But surely those responsible will hide themselves away from your interrogations?’ Elizabeth objected.
Blanche gave a light chuckle as she held Cecil’s gaze. ‘This will not be the first time that my cousin has gone in search of the truth by means of stealth. As when he was able to prove that there had been no letter passing between you and those implicated in the Wyatt rebellion against your sister. And later, whether or not your sister was indeed with child.’
Cecil allowed himself a slow smile. ‘You mean Thomas Ashton?’
‘Was that the wretched young man’s name? A true rogue if ever there was one, but useful in wheedling the truth out of young female servants. Are you still in communication with him, William?’
‘Why would I be, given his nature? The last I saw of him was when we returned him to his mother’s estate of Knighton, on which occasion you were both present. For all I know he has spent his way through the family’s modest fortune and is even now in gaol as the result of another of his devious schemes. More charitably, he probably has three wives, six children and a burgeoning gut full of local ale and bacon.’
‘But you will seek him out?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘He has been of good service to us before and there shall be rich reward should he be able to bring us the truth of this terrible business.’
‘The rich reward will no doubt secure his services.’ Cecil nodded. ‘I shall journey into Leicestershire when his services are required.’
‘Why not now?’ Elizabeth demanded with irritation.
‘Because, Your Majesty,’ Cecil replied, ‘I wish first to acquaint myself with as much of the facts as I am able. Only then shall I unleash my ferret.’
The inquest that Robert Dudley had insisted on in order to clear his name concluded that ‘the lady Amy by misfortune came to her death and not otherwise.’ But Cecil was far from satisfied, since ‘misfortune’ was apt to cover death by the hand of another. It was with Robert’s blessing that Cecil pointed his mount’s head north and on the morning of the fourth day found himself being admitted into the small ground floor chamber of the Manor of Knighton. He had been advised by the slovenly looking self-proclaimed Steward of the Manor that ‘the master’ was engaged in ‘important business upstairs’ and Cecil turned to the sound of footsteps descending the staircase that led to the upper chamber. There was a man in his early twenties who was barely recognisable as the Tom Ashton whom Cecil had carried in his memory for the past four years. He was now almost six feet in height, handsome in that ruddy-faced way common to country gentlemen and with a fashionably trimmed short black beard and moustache.
‘They told me that I was being graced by a visit from the Queen’s Secretary,’ Tom grinned cheekily, ‘but all I see before me is William Cecil.’
‘One and the same, young Thomas,’ Cecil assured him, ‘although I fear that the years have been kinder to you than they have to me. I come on the Queen’s business, but in secret.’
‘From which I deduce that she has not sent you to collect those debts due by way of judgments imposed by her local bloodhound. In any case, you are too good to be employed as a bailiff. So what business of Her Majesty’s brings you back into Leicestershire?’
‘I have need of your services,’ Cecil told him, ‘and if my experienced eyes do not deceive me, you have need of the rich reward that Her Majesty is offering for those services. Have you heard of a Courtier called Robert Dudley?’
‘The man who killed his wife in order to marry the Queen?’
‘The man who stands so condemned in the estimate of the Court, certainly,’ Cecil conceded, ‘but it shall be your task to prove otherwise.’
‘I am no file-tongued lawyer,’ Tom objected.
Cecil nodded. ‘Indeed you are not, but you are a very devious, underhand, unprincipled jackanapes whose capacity for eluding the gallows is matched only by your ability to tup information from female servants of the lower sort.’
‘I would not quarrel with that description from an old friend such as yourself,’ Tom said, ‘but mind me not to seek a good name from you should I seek a position at Court.’
‘I will also mind you not to ask for same,’ Cecil said. ‘Now, do you wish to learn the details of your mission?’
‘How large is the “rich reward” of which you spoke?’
‘How extensive are your debts?’
‘I have in truth lost count of them,’ Tom replied with an open and candid grin.
‘You will undertake to weasel out the true circumstances of the death of Amy Dudley?’
‘I will, once you give me such information as you have at present.’
‘Very well, pay attention and listen carefully,’ Cecil instructed him. ‘The eighth of September last — a Sunday — was the day of the Abingdon Autumn Fair. Abingdon is in Berkshire and close by the location of said fair is a mansion known as Cumnor Place. Living there on that day was Amy Dudley, Amy Robsart as was previously, the wife of Robert Dudley, but given to living separately from him. She was a long-term guest of the tenant of Cumnor, Sir Anthony Forster and occupied most of the upper storey of the house, in which she had a suite of rooms. Also dwelling there at that time were Sir Anthony’s wife and two other of his relatives, a Mrs Odingsells and a Mrs Owen. Amy Dudley kept a separate household, whose ten or so servants were accommodated in the old stables beneath the house. Leading between the two — the upper storey and the stables — was a staircase of some fifteen or so steps, by means of which one might access the rear garden. Do you wish me to repeat any of this?’ Cecil asked as the sound of raised voices outside grew louder.
‘I think not,’ Tom assured him, ‘but first I must silence that clamour.’
He rose from the table and walked outside, where his Steward was shouting the odds with three men armed with clubs, once of whom was claiming to be a county magistrate while another insisted that he was a shire constable.
‘There you are!’ the magistrate yelled. ‘Come you outside to pay your debts, or shall you be consigned to the lock-up awaiting transport to Leicester Gaol?’
‘Neither, you impudent oaf,’ Tom replied heatedly. ‘I have long since denied those debts, as you are well aware.’
‘A pity, then, that you did not see fit to travel to deny them in my court. Take him in charge, Samuel Hopkins, and if he resists you may rattle his noggin.’
‘Before you do anything of the sort,’ came a commanding voice behind them as Cecil stepped out into the sunlight, ‘how much is the full extent of the debt?’
‘It runs to six shillings in all,’ the magistrate told him, ‘but what interest be it of yours?’
‘This man is currently engaged on the Queen’s business,’ Cecil replied, ‘and it would not be convenient for him to do so from a cell viewed through a grille set into the roadway of a street in Leicester.’
‘What about the six shillings?’ the magistrate demanded. ‘I am authorised by Her Majesty to uphold the law in this county. And who, while we are abo
ut it, might you be?’
‘I am William Cecil, Secretary of State for England and I am authorised by Her Majesty to enact the law for the entire nation,’ Cecil replied calmly as he reached into the money purse at his belt, selected six shillings and threw it down onto the well-trodden earth between them. ‘There’s your money — now leave us in peace.’
‘That was very generous of you,’ Tom said as they sat back down again. ‘I am eternally in your debt.’
‘Not eternally,’ Cecil replied, ‘since I shall reimburse myself from whatever sum Her Majesty authorises me to pay you for your services. Now how much, if anything, do you recall from our interrupted discussion?’
Tom closed his eyes and thought hard before replying.
‘A country house somewhere — a lady living in an upper storey reached by a set of stairs that led up from a garden. And something about a local fair. Will that suffice?’
‘For the moment,’ Cecil nodded, ‘but now to the gravamen of the matter. The lady in question was of course Amy Dudley and she was found at the foot of the stairs with her neck broken and therefore dead. The person who found her was one of the kitchen staff employed at the house, a girl called Lucy Bracegirdle and with her was a young man from nearby Abingdon with whom she planned to go to it in the stables where she lived. They called in the authorities. There was nothing seen of any other person near the body, nor anything to suggest how it might have come to be there. Everyone else in the house was at the fair. ’
‘What said the authorities?’ Tom asked.
Cecil’s face set slightly. ‘Therein lies the object of your mission. There was a coroner’s inquest that concluded that Amy Dudley died as the result of “misfortune” and I wish you to probe deeper into what precisely that “misfortune” might have been.’
‘Surely the word is apt to suggest that the lady fell accidentally?’
‘It is also apt to suggest that someone pushed her,’ Cecil pointed out.
‘Her husband?’
‘Him, or someone at his bidding. The man himself was with the Queen at Windsor Palace.’
Tom’s face set in a look of concentration, then he had a further question. ‘If there can be no proof of Dudley’s involvement, why is there any ongoing problem?’
‘Because popular ill-feeling towards him also shouts loudly that the absence of any evidence of his involvement does not mean that he was not involved.’
‘You talk in riddles, Master Cecil. You say that absence of proof of guilt does not eliminate suspicion of guilt?’
‘Precisely, which is why your services are required — to prove that he was not involved.’
‘I must prove a negative assertion?’
‘In the sense you mean, yes. But there is one other piece of information that you do not currently possess.’
‘And that is?’
‘The position of the head-dress.’
‘What of it?’
‘It was found on her head. Picture that in your mind for a moment, then tell me what that suggests to you.’
Tom’s eyes opened wide as the penny dropped. ‘If she fell from a height and landed sufficiently hard to break her neck, her head adornment, whatever it was, would have fallen from her head.’
‘Precisely and the fact that it did not adds fuel to the speculation that she was hit from behind. There were several bruises on her head and it is possible that these were the first blows, until the one that broke the neck. She slid to the ground and her coif hood remained in place. This is a more likely explanation than that she fell down a set of stairs, fifteen in number, then hit the ground.’
‘So I am to travel to this place and ask questions regarding the positioning of the hood, beginning with the girl who found her, who by your account is receptive to a good seeing to?’
Cecil winced. ‘Precisely. I can hardly be expected to conduct such an enquiry, given that I am known to be a favoured Courtier of both the Queen and the man who she would marry if given her head.’
‘And given that you are an old man who would not be likely to attract the passion of a kitchen wench?’
‘Less of your impertinence. Prepare to ride south with me on the morrow and look to it that you do not fail me. The future of the nation may depend upon your disgraceful carnal talents.’
VII
William Cecil was no sooner back in London, after dispatching Tom off to Cumnor Place, than his son Robert brought him news of another dramatic development. King Francis II of France had died a few weeks short of his seventeenth birthday, of a malady that some said was an infection of the ear that had travelled to his brain and others put down to poison, depending upon one’s religious affiliations. The consequence, whatever the cause, was that Queen Dowager Catherine de Medici was now Regent for Francis’s successor, his ten-year-old brother Charles, who was destined to become Charles IX in due course. The old Queen had never been a great admirer of her Scottish daughter-in-law and before long — according to Throckmorton’s information, diligently acquired from sources corrupted by his new assistant Walsingham — England could expect Mary back in Scotland, aged a mere eighteen, highly eligible as a bride and anxious to bolster Catholic fortunes following the death of her mother Mary of Guise, even though the most influential person within the rival Protestant ruling faction was her own brother James Stewart, her father’s illegitimate offspring.
England had benefitted greatly from the brief period of peace across its northern borders following the tearing up of the Auld Alliance and the dominance within Scotland of the Presbyterian Church that could, if one glibly skipped points of difference, be regarded as roughly equivalent to the English Church of which Elizabeth was the guiding light. The last thing England needed was for Mary to make a powerful match with a Catholic prince, particularly one who was either Spanish or affiliated in some way with the Habsburg Empire.
It was time to take a deep breath, summon up the moral courage and raise once again the matter of a royal marriage with Elizabeth, who had successfully avoided the topic for almost two years now and who, if one believed prurient tittle-tattle, continued to lie on most nights with Robert Dudley. The worrying factor in such gossip was that it tended to originate with the more humble domestic staff within the royal household and therefore the most likely to be aware of its accuracy. One did not need a great deal of experience in bed-making to know whether one pillow or two had been engaged.
The sooner that Elizabeth was married off the better, since experience had demonstrated that rumours of Robert’s involvement in the death of his wife was not likely to act as a damper on their passion for each other. Since whoever was eventually chosen as her husband would clearly be regarded by Elizabeth as second best, one could select candidates on the basis of their significance for the role of England within Europe, with particular reference to blocking any aggrandisement of Spain. This left two possible candidates, neither of whom would be likely to appeal to Elizabeth and Cecil felt his bowels knot as he contemplated the prospect of pressing their claims on her.
First and foremost, from England’s perspective, came Archduke Charles of Austria, whose name had already been whispered in Elizabeth’s disinterested ear. He was the son of the current Holy Roman Emperor and would be a powerful block against Philip of Spain. He would also make a very dangerous suitor for Mary of Scotland, from England’s perspective, since Charles was a practising Catholic.
But recent events in France had revealed two other possible candidates for the role of Queen’s Consort. The French King in Regency, Charles of Valois-Orleans-Angouleme, had two younger brothers who were currently unmarried. The first and the older of the two, was Henri, Duke of Angouleme, their mother’s favourite and an artistically inclined Protestant. A match with the royal house of France would sit very nicely with England’s need to show Spain that it had powerful friends, and Cecil hoped that Elizabeth would be attracted to a man eighteen years her junior who was known to be inclined towards scholarship and the arts rather than warfare.
Elizabeth tutted with irritation when Cecil raised the matter tentatively during a late supper, after she had returned from a day’s hunting with Robert in the grounds of her favoured deer park at Richmond and Robert had tactfully withdrawn to his house in Kew.
‘Do you intend to ruin this excellent supper with more unwanted advice on who I should marry?’ she demanded. ‘You grow as tedious as my Council, which is why I have sent them away to reflect on their presumption. Take care that I do not do the same to you, Cecil, for all the years that you have served me loyally and well. Why can none of you accept that there is every chance that I will never marry? And please do not incur my displeasure by making yet another reference to the need for a royal heir — as I understand it, I can nominate my own heir, just as my brother Edward did.’
Cecil braced himself to give the obvious advice. ‘Forgive me for my temerity, Your Majesty, but I am duty-bound to remind you of the chaos into which the nation was plunged as the result of the crown being bequeathed to the Grey girl.’
‘Enough of this, Cecil! When do you expect to be able to bring me further news regarding the death of Robert’s wife?’
‘Whenever Thomas Ashton returns, my Lady.’
‘If prefer “Your Majesty” while you are presuming to advise me, Cecil. And what of my Scottish cousin?’
‘My informants advise that she is feeling some discomfort in her present role as the second Queen Dowager in France, with the first one — her late husband’s mother — now spreading stories that her precious Francis died as the result of his over-exertions with his young and beautiful Queen. It is believed that she will return to Scotland to take up her crown there.’
‘Will she be welcome, think you?’
‘Not if she attempts to return the nation to the Catholic observances, certainly, and therein the importance of what I had hoped to raise with you this evening. Mary of Scotland is still young and beautiful, so they say, and will no doubt be seeking another husband from among the princes of Europe. I had hoped that you might take your pick of them first.’