A Deadly Betrothal

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  ‘What did you say in answer?’ I asked.

  ‘I insisted that he must stop! Of course I did! The idea of doing away with Uncle Eric was intolerable. Finally, he calmed himself, promised that he wouldn’t harm Uncle Eric after all. I didn’t trust him, though. I wanted to warn Uncle Eric but how could I do that without arousing suspicion against my father, and indeed myself? I worried and worried and in the end I held my peace and decided I would have to trust my father and I soothed my conscience by saying yes, I would marry Jane.’

  ‘So you let your uncle take his chance.’

  ‘Yes, frankly, I did. And prayed Father would keep his word. Only he didn’t. He went off on what he called a little holiday at sea, for his health, and got himself to Penzance.’

  ‘He had enough money for that, evidently,’ I remarked.

  ‘He did have some of his own,’ said Robert. ‘From his savings and the sale of his stock. But he demanded some from my mother. Said that it was legally his. He battened on her.’

  His voice was angry. ‘I advised him to go home when he wrote to tell me the straits he was in, but I never thought he would just snatch money from her the way he did! Well, when he decided to confess, for my sake – he’s not quite without some human feelings – he told my mother everything and she repeated it all to me when we met at Aunt Lisa’s. She was horrified, crying.

  ‘He’d told her that he reached Cornwall before Uncle Eric, and did some reconnoitring. He’d had it in mind from the start, that he might use the mine itself as a trap. He visited the place after dark, twice, and prowled round it with a lantern. He said that straightaway he found a support that would obviously cause a rockfall if it were pulled away. Then he went back to Penzance but kept himself informed by making stealthy visits to Rosmorwen – seeing without being seen, that’s how he put it. When he knew that Uncle Eric had arrived, he went back to Penzance again and set to work. He told my mother he’d had good luck, in finding a boy who belonged to a Rosmorwen miner, to take his note to Uncle Eric. He apparently hoped that Uncle’s death would be taken for an accident.’

  ‘Only it wasn’t,’ I said.

  Harry had seen the note delivered, and Eric had not destroyed it. Except for those two facts, I thought, the deception just might have worked. Shuddering, I said: ‘Your father is a very ruthless man, and so are you, if not quite in the same way.’

  ‘Perhaps. But I am more inclined that he is, to be on … didn’t I once make a little joke about being on the side of the angels? I am not by nature a criminal. When I speak of being on the side of the angels, I mean celestial beings with wings. My father is on the side of the ones that men made with gold. Perhaps the poverty of his early life isn’t the only thing that drives him. He has a hunger for wealth that is apart from that, a natural greed.’

  Angrily, I said: ‘I don’t believe anyone could do what he has done, even if he was … was … sick in mind … unless his nature had in it a strong streak of sheer wickedness!’

  ‘You may be right. But he is my father.’

  ‘You love him,’ I said.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ said Robert surprisingly. ‘I don’t even like him. But as I said, he is my father. It matters. Can you not understand, Mistress Stannard? How would you like to think of your father being hanged? Whatever he’d done.’

  Such a feat of imagination was beyond me. After all, my father had been Henry the Eighth and he was one to take the lives of others, including two of his own wives. Queen Anne Boleyn had died at his orders; so had poor little Catherine Howard, who had been faithless, yes – which Queen Anne probably hadn’t – but was hardly more than a child, a young girl who should never have been sought in marriage by a gross, diseased, ageing man. Everyone at court knew her story and many outside the court, too. Had I ever known King Henry, I think I would have feared rather than loved him. Had he, too, had a streak of wickedness in his nature? Or had he just been pitiful, deluded, still believing himself capable of holding the love of a young girl; still able to provide England with further princes, since the one he had was not strong? I didn’t know. The thought of him sometimes made me shudder.

  And yet, he was my father. I had had reason, once or twice, to remember that I was a king’s daughter, so as to stiffen my backbone in times of danger. I suspected that Elizabeth sometimes did the same thing. Both of us knew the bond of father and daughter. I could partly understand Robert Harrison, though not entirely. A quality that should have been there in his tale seemed to be absent. He had suffered from shock, that was clear enough, but real horror, genuine recoil, genuine loathing, were oddly missing. He had been willing to … to touch, to involve himself directly, physically, with the monstrous thing his father had done. I didn’t know what to make of that.

  I wrenched my wandering thoughts back to Robert, who was still talking.

  ‘I have tried to protect him. Now I too will give myself up; I may as well, for I shall be arrested anyway. As for why I am here, well, before I surrender myself, I wanted you to know the truth. From the first time we met, I have … liked you. I wish to stand well in your eyes. I didn’t like thinking that you believed me to be a heartless killer. I was appalled when I rode into your courtyard and one of the grooms told me that Antoine de Lacey was with you! I am happy that I arrived in time to avenge you, though sorry that I was not here just a little sooner.’

  I said: ‘Brockley and I found Thomas’s body. There was a button from your doublet, caught in the sacking. I recognized it.’

  ‘I lost the button while I was up that tree,’ said Robert. ‘All the result of my mother’s excellent cooking.’

  Perhaps, then, the hateful image of Thomas, in terror, fighting for his life, was wrong. Perhaps he had died at once. I hoped so.

  ‘I was suspicious of you before that,’ I said. ‘The button only confirmed – appeared to confirm – what I already thought.’

  ‘Oh? What made you suspicious?’

  ‘Your offer to marry Jane. It was as though you were already certain that Thomas was dead. But you couldn’t have been, unless …’

  ‘I see. Sharp of you, Mistress Stannard! Well, Jane can forget me now, but she has Rosmorwen and with me and Father out of the way, Aunt Lisa may be able to get the rest of Edmund’s estate for her after all. There must be plenty of people willing to swear that her twin brother was the image of Edmund and was therefore presumably his lawful son – which would make Jane his lawful daughter. Anyway, she should find a good husband easily, and he won’t be a cousin. Cousins shouldn’t wed. I’ll go now, Mistress Stannard. Your women are longing to take care of you.’

  He gave the fretting Sybil, the indignant Dale and the glowering Gladys a smile that embraced all three of them.

  ‘And so they should,’ he said, ‘for you have had a nightmare experience. When I give myself up, I will explain how the corpse that has just been removed from this room to your attic came to die at my hands. It will clear you of any guilt. Have no fear. Now, I shall leave your house, and leave you to be cared for as you need to be. Goodbye.’

  He kissed my hand before he went. Then Dale and Sybil took me away and before long I had been put into a warm bath, my skin lovingly and kindly washed free of the contamination of de Lacey’s body, and then I was dried and helped to my bed and Gladys came with one of her potions, to help me to sleep. By the next day, I was not much the worse, except for the horror of the memory. That would haunt me for the rest of my life and I would have to teach myself not to think about it. It had happened, I said to myself, but it was now in the past.

  Or so I thought.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  The Coveted Gift

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t reasonable. After just one, enforced union, I surely couldn’t be … sheer arithmetic was against it. It was so unlikely. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t … It couldn’t!

  It was seventeen days since de Lacey’s attack on me. Three days ago, I should have begun a course. I had not. Dale had noticed. ‘Ma’am, I’m worried
about you.’ She stood in my bedchamber, her arms full of items for the washtub, looking at me anxiously. ‘You’re three days late, aren’t you? You’ve not taken any of the clean cloths that were in the drawer ready for you. You’re never late as a rule. It might be just shock, I suppose, I mean, you’re not … not a young girl …’

  ‘No, I’m in my forties and when women are in their forties, their systems do sometimes become disturbed. Let’s hope it’s just that and I’ll get over it and go back to normal quite soon.’

  ‘But if it isn’t, ma’am …’

  ‘I don’t know what I’ll do, Dale. I really don’t know.’

  I did, though. Improbable though this whole situation was, it was still possible and I had decided what to do if necessary. I despatched Dale to attend to the laundry, and then, once she was busy down in the stone-floored room we used on washing day, working with Phoebe and Tessie, who dealt with Harry’s things, in a welter of steam and splashing water, I fetched Gladys to my bedchamber and said shortly: ‘I’m overdue, Gladys. By about three days. It may be no more than shock but if it isn’t … I will not bear a child to that man de Lacey. I will not. Can you help?’

  ‘Look you, I wouldn’t recommend any woman past forty to bear a child to anyone,’ said Gladys. ‘Not you, not the queen. Oh yes, I know all about what’s going on at court; got it from Dale. Clean crazy, that’s what it is, risking her life at her age. Should of got an heir ten years back if she wanted one that much. Nice state of affairs it’ll be if we end up burying a queen what’s been good to us, and go sticking a crown on the head of an infant in a cradle. It’ll fall down over its ears and it’ll squall and burp – a pretty coronation that’ll be …!’

  ‘Gladys, please! We’re not talking about the queen. We’re talking about me.’

  ‘Yes, I know and yes, I’ll help but we’d best make sure first. You been sick at all? Felt funny?’

  ‘No. I haven’t.’

  ‘Could be just that what he did’s made you shut down, as if you was a business that’s stopped trading. There’s a bit of time in hand. See how it goes for another week or whatever. Meanwhile, I’ll get the right things together. Pennyroyal … I got some dried leaves in store. Girls from the village come asking now and then …’

  ‘Gladys, if you’ve been breaking the law, I don’t want to know. Isn’t pennyroyal dangerous?’

  ‘Can be, but I know how much to use. I ain’t killed no one yet. And you’re a fine one to talk about breaking the law, seein’ you’ve just asked me to!’

  ‘I know. And it doesn’t matter even if it is dangerous,’ I said wearily. ‘I’d rather die than have de Lacey’s bastard. But no one is to know. If we have to use it, then you get rid of your supplies, do you hear me? If anything happens to me, it’s nothing to do with you. Understand?’

  ‘Aye, aye. I understand. I ain’t a fool. Meanwhile, you’d best go riding. Nothing like a bounce on a horse for outwitting nature.’

  As it happened, the prescribed bounce became obligatory the very next day, when a messenger from Walsingham arrived at Hawkswood. I was commanded to present myself in his office at Richmond, forthwith. I left the next morning.

  As before, I took Brockley, with Dale behind him, and Eddie as the groom. The messenger, who was a stranger to me, had orders to escort me and therefore rode with us as well. He was a stern, unsmiling man and not very agreeable company, and was visibly irritated by the presence of Dale, because a pillion rider always slows a party down. However, we went as fast as we could and reached Richmond in the early afternoon.

  I was to have my usual rooms, the messenger said, but there was no time for me to go to them and wash and change before seeing Sir Francis; I was to attend on him immediately. He made this announcement while we were all getting off our horses, and I had to leave the Brockleys and Eddie to their own devices, while I followed our unfriendly escort into the palace, through the maze of passages and galleries and narrow stairs, to Walsingham’s office.

  There, the messenger handed me over to a clerk and disappeared, his duty done. The clerk too was solemn of face, and so was Walsingham’s secretary, who came out of the main office as soon as the clerk announced me and walked past me without even glancing at me. I went in and the clerk closed the door after me, leaving me alone with his master.

  It was like being alone with a thunderstorm. He was seated at his desk, apparently calm, but when he looked up at me, his dark eyes were so angry that they resembled glowing coals. Angry men had been my portion lately, I thought. First de Lacey and now Walsingham. Well, Walsingham could be relied on not to attack me physically. I stood where I was and said: ‘You wished to see me, Sir Francis?’

  ‘No,’ said Walsingham grimly. ‘As a matter of fact, I would like never to see you again, except perhaps with your head on a block.’

  ‘What?’ I blurted it out but he didn’t reply. He just stared at me with those angry eyes and I wondered wildly if he meant what he said. Panic ran through me. Was I about to be arrested? But if so, why? ‘What have I done?’ I asked tremulously.

  This time he did answer. ‘You ignored my express orders. I told you to leave the matter of the Harrisons alone. But did you? No, you did not. Full of self-righteousness and believing that you know best, you went straight from me to the queen, and told her everything. Things I and Lord Burghley had most carefully kept from her, so that we could retain the services of the best agent this court has ever known. Have you had any letters from Janus recently?’

  ‘From Janus?’ I was wrong-footed by the apparent non sequitur. ‘No, I haven’t, but …’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t. Because Janus is in the Tower. Robert Harrison is in the Tower. Robert Harrison is Janus, you stupid woman. His wine-growing employer in France was well paid, by me, to provide him with a position that looked respectable, but also required him to travel, ostensibly to see customers, in reality, to carry out his secret duties.’

  ‘But Robert Harrison can’t be Janus!’ I protested. ‘One of the letters I had from Janus arrived while Harrison was in England! It was just after Thomas disappeared. Janus was supposed to be in France!’

  ‘Robert Harrison is usually in France,’ Walsingham agreed. ‘He was however in England when his nephew vanished, and while he was here he did a little travelling, apparently to call on some of his employer’s English customers. In fact, he was following up a lead connected with the scheme he had got wind of – to damage the queen in some way and put a stop to the Alençon marriage plans.’

  ‘So he sent the letter from somewhere in England?’

  ‘From London. He was actually looking for the family of Spanish sympathizers who later on sheltered Antoine de Lacey after he escaped from us. We have picked up the family now – two half-Spanish brothers and the wife of one of them. They are in the Tower as well.’

  ‘I see,’ I said, bemusedly.

  ‘George Harrison is the man who murdered the boy Thomas and also Master Lake,’ Walsingham said, ‘but Robert helped his father to conceal what he had done. He seems to have done that because Robert Harrison is a good son. He is also a brilliant agent. He has a network of contacts, some of whom don’t know how they are being used; and he doesn’t flinch from doing whatever may need to be done, for the protection of England.’

  ‘Indeed!’ I said. Whatever may need to be done. Now I could understand why a natural level of horror and recoil had been absent from his account of his father’s iniquities. As an agent, he must have gambled with his own life and that of others; from the sound of it, he was prepared if necessary to take lives directly. He was inured to killing.

  ‘He has done more,’ Walsingham was saying, ‘than any other agent I have ever known to outwit the queen’s enemies, thwart their plans, learn their plans, and report his findings to us. Before he came back to England this last time, he had uncovered the fact that de Lacey was Spain’s agent here, entrusted with the task of wrecking the chances of the queen’s marriage by creating a scandal. There seems lit
tle doubt that the sorry events at the dinner in the Castle Inn were de Lacey’s doing. Probably Jean de Simier’s illness was his doing as well, and he no doubt encouraged the rumours that my lord of Leicester was responsible.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.

  ‘When you came and told me that you had evidence that Robert Harrison had been involved in a murder, yes, I was shocked. But for the sake of keeping Janus in the field, I would have let it go. Even if it meant letting George Harrison go as well. Janus is – was – that valuable. Now that I know that in fact Robert was not personally responsible for murdering anyone, I feel that even more strongly. The queen, however, doesn’t agree! She says we are never to employ Janus again. He is an accessory to a crime, a heinous crime, she says. I pointed out to her that he was but an accessory and that out of loyalty to a parent. But there is no reasoning with her! She can be very obstinate.’

  It was known that on occasion the queen had thrown things at Walsingham. It occurred to me that at times he probably yearned to throw things at the queen.

  He had paused, visibly fuming, but now he burst out: ‘Why couldn’t you do as you were bid? You just had to go and reveal his – Robert’s – guilt to her majesty, and this is what comes of it. She will not wink at the murder of her subjects, she says, not for any reason. That, she says, is the sort of thing her cousin Mary of Scotland might do – almost certainly did do, over the murder of her husband Lord Darnley – but Elizabeth will have no part of it.’