Lettice smiled. ‘Well, I think that when he spilt that wine – it was on to the wrist of his left sleeve – it may have been on purpose. He put the jug down, and pulled out a handkerchief to mop his wrist with. I saw that much though not clearly, because he was so very quick about it. Then he put the handkerchief away and pulled another glass towards him to attend to it, and I think that one was my husband’s. He filled it but I couldn’t see him do it because then, his right sleeve was completely in the way. I am wondering if he could have palmed something that he had picked from his sleeve – from inside his cuff – when he mopped it. Something he could have dropped into my lord’s glass.’
‘But what?’ I said. I tried to think it out. ‘It must have been powder or liquid and it would need a container. Paper or glass.’
‘It need only have been small,’ Lettice said. ‘A little paper packet or a tiny phial with a stopper, I should think, and powder inside. That would be the easiest. He would have opened it and used it while his hands were hidden. It would all need some sleight of hand. But, Mistress Stannard, M’sieu de Lacey is clever with conjuring tricks.’
‘God’s teeth! Yes, he is! He calls it dabbling but I’ve seen him give a display and I would say that he was quite skilled though he claims that he isn’t. Have you told your husband all this?’
‘Yes, but until now, we couldn’t see how Lady Margaret could have got the wrong glass. I thought perhaps de Lacey had somehow confused the glasses, but my lord kept on saying nonsense, and I am not to start foolish rumours.’
‘Or cause scandal,’ I said bitterly.
‘Yes. But what you say explains it. Only de Lacey could have contaminated the keg and whoever doctored the keg must also have doctored that glass. It was doctored. Poor Lady Margaret died! The rest of us recovered quite quickly. I don’t believe for a moment that it was all an accident. And the real target must have been my husband. No one else is likely.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I agree!’
‘I see,’ said Cecil. ‘You have certainly found out a great deal, Ursula. We have wondered, as you have, if Leicester was the target of a plot but thundery weather and the accidental contamination of food did seem a reasonable explanation. I suppose we should congratulate you.’ But he looked grave. Even stern, I thought.
‘Accident was a very reasonable explanation. But now,’ said Walsingham, none too pleasantly, ‘along comes Mistress Stannard with what sounds like genuine evidence.’ He didn’t sound delighted.
I had requested an interview with Walsingham and been granted it, but when the page brought me to his office, I found Cecil there as well. I was pleased at first, since I felt that both of them ought to know of the information that I was bringing. Except that now it was clear that neither I nor the information were welcome.
‘I am sorry,’ I said, ‘if you would have preferred this whole miserable affair just to sink into oblivion, but I was a victim too. Of course it is for you to say what shall be done with any discoveries I have made. But I felt it right to make them if I could and to inform you of the result.’
‘You say,’ said Walsingham, ‘that when the glasses started sliding about, you think you pushed them back to the wrong places and that the glass Lady Margaret drank from thereafter was really Leicester’s?’
‘Yes.’
‘And if that idea were to get about,’ said Cecil, ‘so that the public came to think the Duke of Alençon and de Simier attempted the life of an English earl, it would probably mean a mob in the street on the wedding day, wanting to assassinate the bridegroom!’
‘We don’t like this marriage any more than Leicester does,’ Walsingham said. ‘But we cannot have it said that the queen is involved with – even in love with – a man who sends his minions to murder her servants. You should trust us, Ursula. At the moment, the situation in the Netherlands, which demands Alençon’s attention, is working for us. It will delay the ceremony and a sufficient delay could protect her majesty’s safety, by reducing or even cutting out the hope of an heir. Every birthday that she has brings that moment nearer.’
He smiled. Walsingham’s smile could be, and on this occasion was, sinister enough to frighten a demon, or any legendary hero. Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, might both have quailed before it.
Cecil said: ‘All the same, I agree that we can’t simply ignore your news, Ursula. As you know, there are factions in France, and assuredly in Spain as well, who wish to prevent the marriage and may be scheming to do so. If de Lacey does have Spanish origins, then he may be part of such a scheme and not a dutiful servant of Alençon and de Simier after all.’
He ruminated. ‘Janus is investigating those rumours and will report to us. Meanwhile, in the light of what you have told us, we will enquire into de Lacey’s background, if we can. I think we must.’ He sounded exasperated. ‘We will go that far.’
‘My department already has,’ said Walsingham. Both Cecil and I looked at him in surprise.
‘I do have the backgrounds of foreign visitors investigated,’ said Walsingham. ‘Ambassadors, envoys, their secretaries, grooms and valets. My department is thorough, believe me. De Lacey’s father was French but his mother was Spanish and as a child, he made occasional visits to Spain, staying with his maternal grandmother and playing with Spanish cousins.’
‘But …’ I said.
Cecil said: ‘I could wish your department were less discreet, Walsingham. That piece of information should have been shared with me.’
‘It proved nothing,’ said Walsingham. ‘The man had been accepted by the Duke of Alençon and Jean de Simier, had apparently behaved as a loyal and competent employee, was in fact pursuing a well-paid and successful career in his father’s country. Now, after all, it seems that all may not be as it seems. His outburst at the masque suggests that there could have been more Spanish influence in his childhood than anyone has realized. Even Alençon may not realize it. But still …’ he frowned, obviously thinking ‘… we must keep the matter from spreading round the country in the form of garbled theories.’
‘So, what do you recommend?’ enquired Cecil. ‘Ursula’s evidence is disquieting. We must avoid scandal but nor can things be left as they are. If the man is guilty, he may try again.’
‘The Earl of Leicester is taking precautions,’ I said.
‘There is still one thing that I want to get clear.’ Walsingham stopped suddenly, grunted, and sank down onto a stool. I remembered that he suffered from a bowel complaint that caused him to have gripes and sometimes attacks of diarrhoea. After my own recent experience, I could sympathize. For a moment, I pitied him. He worked loyally and competently for an exacting mistress, who trusted him but didn’t like him, and he had to toil on, and deal with crises, while suffering poor health. His couldn’t be an easy furrow to plough.
‘I am all right,’ he said, after a moment. ‘Just a twinge. I want to be sure that I have the details right. Your idea, I think, Ursula, is that the venom in the wine was intended not to kill but to cause illness in everyone at that dinner, and therefore act as a cloak, under which more serious poison could be introduced into just one glass, and take the life of just one person. It would presumably be hoped that he was just unlucky – that there was bad food or wine at the table and that he had ingested more of it than the rest of you, or was more sensitive to it.’
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It would have needed craftiness but de Lacey is a clever conjuror. He might well have managed to doctor Leicester’s wine undetected.’
‘I think,’ said Walsingham, ‘that in view of your information, Ursula, and in the interests of protecting my lord of Leicester and the good name of her majesty, we must get de Lacey out of England. I recommend that he be unobtrusively removed under escort, taken to the coast and put aboard a ship bound for France – accompanied by a very watchful escort. Meanwhile, we must send a messenger ahead, to tell the Duke of Alençon when to expect de Lacey and why he is being sent home. What the French do about him when he lands will be very
instructive. Meanwhile, as far as the public in England know, the guests at the Castle Inn all still had a most unfortunate and quite accidental experience of food poisoning.’
I let out my breath in a long sigh of relief. It was out of my hands now. I had done my duty. The rest was up to Cecil and Walsingham. I could go to the queen and ask permission to go home. Only, there was one thing still on my mind.
‘I hope to return to Hawkswood soon,’ I said. ‘With her majesty’s consent, of course. But whether I am here or there, there is still this unhappy business of the murders of Thomas Harrison and Eric Lake. I am almost sure that Robert and George Harrison were responsible and …’
‘Ursula …’ said Cecil.
I stopped. Cecil smiled and his smile was not sinister but kindly and also patient. ‘Christmas is not so very far away,’ he said gently. ‘We are into autumn now. Not too soon, perhaps to think of Christmas gifts. Mine to you, dear Ursula, will I think take the form of a very large wooden spoon.’
‘A … a what?’
‘You really do enjoy stirring events up,’ said Cecil. ‘Like a cook with a mixing bowl full of eggs and sugar, or a witch with a cauldron full of newts’ eyes and chopped-up snakes and deadly nightshade. But we must ask you – no, command you – not to stir this particular cauldron.’
‘But why not?’
‘Leave it!’ said Walsingham. ‘We mean it, Mistress Stannard. You don’t know as much as you think you know. You are trying to meddle in things you don’t understand. Leave it alone!’
TWENTY-FOUR
The Queen’s Fiat
I stopped feeling sorry for Walsingham. I went away seething and still utterly unable to understand why a simple matter of law and order should be treated in such an extraordinary way. Murder had been done. Twice. Yet both Walsingham and Cecil seemed to think that it didn’t matter; that the miscreants should not be pursued even though we knew who they were. Just what, I wondered, would the queen think about that?
Did she know of this strange decision, which in a way touched the safety of every soul in her realm? I had been given to understand that Cecil and Walsingham kept her well informed, but had they told her about this? Suddenly I doubted it. Dear God! If one – two – murders of harmless citizens, one of them a mere boy at that – were to be ignored, what kind of precedent did that set? Whose life, thereafter, would be safe? Would Elizabeth ever consent to such a state of affairs?
Back in my rooms, I sat by the window, which overlooked an orchard, and puzzled and frowned, until Dale begged me to tell her what was wrong. Finally, I explained. She at once fetched Brockley, my dear, reliable Brockley, who was so much more (at one time very nearly far too much more) than just a manservant, and Brockley was decisive.
‘Madam, you should go to the queen. You are her sister – and she is the queen. The care of this land is her charge. She would want to be told.’
‘Poor Elizabeth,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t want to live her life! Such a weight of responsibility – and all the time in fear of plots and surrounded by men with ambitions …’
‘Go to her, madam. That’s my advice.’
I wanted to see Elizabeth, anyway, to ask permission to go home. I sought a private audience and it was granted.
Elizabeth’s private chamber had a view of the river and the ripples cast reflections on the ceiling. In sunny weather, they were flickers of golden light but today was overcast and both the water and its reflections were steely and dour. So was Elizabeth’s face, as she sat there, formally dressed, on her throne-like chair. She greeted me with a smile, however, an austere one but still a smile.
‘We welcome your company, Ursula. We have just spent an hour with my ladies and a merchant who had brought samples of material suitable for new gowns, for them and for me. My ladies argued interminably, chirping like sparrows, over whether to choose peach or cinnamon or apple-green. Anyone would have thought, listening to them, that they were discussing things to eat! It was absurd. We will ask the Master of the Revels to work it somehow into the next masque; it should produce much laughter. So!’ Her tone sharpened. ‘You wished to speak with us, Ursula. We take it that you want to go home. We have been expecting this.’
Then she sighed and dropping the royal we, said: ‘I have never been able to blend you into my world, have I, my sister? You have never truly liked the life of the court. Well, I shall not refuse you. The Duke of Alençon cannot return to England yet; he has a campaign ahead of him, in the Netherlands. But he will come back eventually and then … then I must marry him. My country needs it. When he comes back, then I may call on you again, to stiffen my resolve. Until then, you are free to go back to Hawkswood.’
‘I do want to go home,’ I said. ‘That is part of the reason why I am here. But there is something else. It’s a complicated story, but there is something I think you should know. May I tell you?’
‘You may.’
I set out for her, as simply and plainly as I could, the whole tale of Thomas Harrison’s disappearance and the discovery of his body, the death of Eric Lake and its probable reason, and the suspicions I harboured concerning George and Robert Harrison. She listened without interrupting, her pale, triangular face more like a shield than ever, her golden-brown eyes intent.
‘I did not know,’ she said at the end. ‘And I am shocked that I did not know. What are Walsingham and Cecil about, I wonder? They are honest men; I have never had cause, for a moment, to doubt either their loyalty or their wisdom. I don’t understand this, Ursula. But I am appalled. I do not take lightly the idea that my subjects can be murdered and justice denied to their memories or to their kin. I shall pursue this matter, have no fear. And I will let you know the outcome.’
‘I would be grateful, ma’am.’
‘I will see to it. I said, you are free to go to your home. Go today if you will, as long as you come back when I want you, when the duke returns to England.’
I ventured to say: ‘The thought of marriage still worries you, then, ma’am?’
‘Can you ask that?’ She looked weary. ‘I have worried and worried and shouted at my ladies and even slapped them because I am so very worried.’
I had guessed right. If Elizabeth’s irritable temper of late had been partly due to the absence of her lover, it had also been due to fear of him.
‘You know my feelings,’ she said. ‘Childbirth itself is a sufficiently alarming prospect, but before that comes a surrender that for all your reassurances, and the reassurances of others, I sometimes think I cannot endure. I miss the duke, I want to be with him, to talk to him, dance with him, even … even flirt with him. But to lie there and let a man invade …’
‘Ma’am, it isn’t like that, or it shouldn’t be …’
‘Ah! So you admit that it can be and sometimes is!’
‘If the duke knows his business,’ I said carefully, ‘and from what I have seen of him, I would say that he is a man of sensitivity and also – knowledge …’
‘Experience, you mean. You may as well say it.’
‘Experience, then. In that case, he will know how to stir, to inspire you, so that you want him, in … in that special way, and then there will be no question of invasion; you will be welcoming a guest into your being, a guest you want to welcome, long to welcome, with all your heart.’
‘And body?’
‘Yes.’
‘I hope you’re right. Some of my ladies have said much the same thing. I still … oh, let it be. I shall recall you when I need you. And you will come!’
‘Yes, ma’am. I will come,’ I said.
‘As for the other matter,’ said Elizabeth, her eyes hardening, ‘I will indeed look into it. Murder shall not go unregarded in my realm!’
Many times, after long journeys and sometimes after terrifying experiences, I had been thankful beyond words to see Hawkswood again. This time my journey hadn’t been long and I hadn’t been in danger – at least not much though being half poisoned might count as danger, I supposed. But
when I glimpsed the chimneys of home in the distance this time, I was as grateful as though I had been to Cathay and back and fought dragons along the way.
As we neared the gate-arch, Dale, from her perch behind Brockley (fortunately, Firefly had accepted a pillion rider without more than a disapproving snort or two), put it all into words.
‘I’m that glad to be back, ma’am. I can’t abide the court these days and that’s the truth. It was always stiff and formal in a lot of ways but now it’s become a thousand times worse. The queen’s so distant, not like a human figure at all! Whenever you see her, she’s just like a … a gown, all brocade and silk and ropes of pearls … with … with a sort of walking statue inside it and she’s surrounded by her ladies and hordes of guards, and there’s a page running ahead to announce that she’s coming through this doorway or that and everyone’s to get out of the way … it’s not a natural way for a woman to be!’
‘She’s not like that all the time,’ I said. ‘She dances, and talks to guests; she’s not always surrounded, as you put it.’
‘You see her in ways most of us don’t,’ said Dale. ‘But, ma’am, do you like being at court?’
‘No,’ I said truthfully. ‘In fact, I agree with you. The court has grown very stiff.’ And with that, we rode into our own courtyard, and my household came out to greet us with smiles and happy exclamations and Harry was there, and home enclosed us all in its cloak of comfort.
Ten days later, Christopher Spelton arrived. I was in the east room, studying the household accounts for the time of my absence, and making out a list of stores to be purchased. I had at one time used Hugh’s old study for these tasks, but the east room, with its three cushioned settles and its floor strewn with rugs, was more comfortable and had better light as well as being quiet, and my habits had changed. I used the study now mostly for seeing visitors who came on business. I didn’t hear Christopher arrive, and didn’t know he was in the house until Sybil brought him to me, with Adam Wilder on her heels, carrying the usual welcome to a guest in the form of a tray of refreshments.
A Deadly Betrothal Page 20