The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's

by Buckley, Fiona

  “The windows are open,” he said, “and I accidentally overheard you, Madame Ridolfi. I wonder if you would let me take a hand in this matter of Arthur Johnson.” His French was fluent but the English accent was unmistakable. He smiled at me. “You must be Mistress Stannard. My name is George Hillman. But Madame Ridolfi should do the introducing, of course. I am just a new employee. I am sorry, Madame.”

  “This is my husband’s new secretary and courier,” said Madame Ridolfi. “He has come to replace that poor fellow Gale, who was murdered. Master Hillman, if you can curb Johnson’s tongue for us, we would be only too grateful. Can you?”

  “I can speak to him, saying that I have your authority, if you so wish. A man might have more influence over him and he won’t be able to pretend he doesn’t understand me. I have heard him making suggestive remarks to the maidservants and I agree that he should be checked.”

  “Please try!” said Donna. “I’m sure Mistress Stannard doesn’t really want the task.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said.

  I was looking carefully at Master Hillman. He was in many ways very like Julius Gale—less stocky and taller by a couple of inches, but similar in his red-brown coloring, in the square shape of his good-looking face, and in the frankness of his expression. He sounded educated and his clothes were good, as though he came from a well-to-do family. His hat was a mildly dashing brown velvet affair with an amethyst brooch in it. The brooch looked costly. I wondered what his background was.

  A movement outside caught our attention, and we all turned to see Johnson going into the topiary garden with his shears. He was not alone. At his side was a small, slightly bent female figure in a dark red dress.

  “Who is that with him?” Hillman asked.

  “One of my servants,” I said. “Gladys Morgan. She’s a trifle . . . ” I tapped my forehead. “She does plain sewing and little jobs like that. My other servants are supposed to keep an eye on her—she sleeps on a truckle bed in their room, in fact—but she’s obviously eluded them. So she’s making friends with Arthur Johnson! They’ll make quite a pair. Nothing he says is likely to embarrass her.”

  “It isn’t the moment, perhaps, to pursue Johnson with strictures on his behavior,” said Hillman. “Indeed, I have another errand, which must come first. Madame, where is your husband? This package has arrived for him, from a City merchant. A messenger delivered it just now.”

  “You’ll find him in his study,” said Madame Ridolfi.

  Master Hillman withdrew. He passed close to me as he did so, and I had a brief but close look at the cloth-wrapped package. Whatever was inside the cloth had sharp corners and was probably a box.

  I did more than just look at it. I heard it. Faintly, but definitely, it clinked. More money was being passed to Ridolfi, and privately, not at his business premises.

  Interesting.

  13

  Where the Swans Are

  It wasn’t the first time I had entered a stranger’s household in order—to put it crudely but honestly—to spy on the people there. I had once entered a respectable manor house allegedly to teach the daughters embroidery, while poking into their father’s private correspondence; another time, I had worked in a pie shop, gutting poultry, rolling pastry, serving customers, and trying to discover whether my employer was plotting against the life of the queen. I had learned how to go about the spying business.

  Above all, to avoid suspicion, one must perform the duties for which one is ostensibly there. I actually did improve the embroidery of the Mason girls, and I had sweated through hot summer days in that pie shop, doing the work for which I was being paid, albeit inadequately.

  In the Ridolfi household, therefore, I tried to be genuinely useful to Donna, which wasn’t difficult, for she was a delightful young woman. It was no lie that I wanted new gowns for myself and Meg, and Donna wanted new clothes too. Also she was interested in the details of her household. She liked sometimes to buy supplies in person, rather than leave it to her servants. She was serious for her age, which was indeed only twenty, and though she was so shy, she was still very aware of her position as mistress of the house. The portly butler, Greaves, respected her and fortunately they could converse because Greaves’s previous employer had taken him to France, where he had acquired some French (“and my round belly,” Greaves admitted to me. “The French cook so well!”).

  I took Donna to markets and merchants, interpreting for her, but also encouraging her to try out her English and speak for herself. Under my guidance, she learned the English names of materials and garments, foodstuffs and household goods; soon she was able to ask for cuts of meat and specify spices and could order candles or lamp oil. She learned to request weights or quantities and arrange for their delivery.

  I walked in the grounds with her, discussing the plants in the knot garden and telling her their English names, and I established a daily hour of formal English instruction for her. She was a quick learner and I was used to teaching, having helped Meg with her studies. Before I left the Ridolfi household, I decided, Donna would be at home in London.

  She seemed to like me, which was helpful in one way, though it created a difficulty in another because it was hard for me to get away from her. Her husband was out, attending to business, for most of the day and she depended on me for company. If we were not shopping, or supervising in the kitchen or garden, or studying English, she wanted me to sit with her, to talk and sew, or to practice music. She could play both spinet and lute and when she found that I could do the same, was eager to try out duets with me. If she had a fault, it was a tendency to cling. If I asked for time to myself, she did not refuse it, but she would pout, just a little.

  In addition, she expected me to attend the Mass that their chaplain, Father Fernando, said each morning in the upstairs parlor, and also to come to the same parlor before supper, to listen while Fernando read passages from devotional works. Ridolfi was usually present on both occasions and I would watch him covertly. I could tell, by the ardor with which he prayed and listened, how intensely he believed. It could have been touching, but in a man who could be sending cipher letters to Mary Stuart, it was alarming.

  Ridolfi, in fact, displayed more ardor in his religious observances than his chaplain did. Fernando was elderly, a pink-faced little man with a white tonsure who, I think, just wished for a quiet life. I rather liked him, but these regular sacred observances were horribly in my way, for they were just one more obstacle to snooping.

  However, this too was something I had learned to overcome. Once you know a household’s routine, you also know the chinks, the gaps during which stealthy investigation can take place. The middle of the day was always busy, with dinner to be served both in the dining room and, as a rule, in Ridolfi’s study. He usually came home for the meal but ate it at his desk, before hurrying back to the City. But when he returned home in the evening, he and Donna generally spent an hour or so in private, in their chamber or in one of the parlors, and then I was free.

  I had to be wary of the servants, of course, but at that time of day, the cleaning work of the house was finished, and the servants would usually be in their own part of the house unless summoned by their employers to bring refreshments or carry messages. With caution, it was possible to do a good deal of prowling then, looking in closets and presses, and even into locked document boxes. I had once more taken to wearing divided overgowns with pouches stitched inside the opening, and in those pouches, I carried my old lockpicks.

  But I found nothing of note. The month of May came and went. At Hawkswood, Meg’s fourteenth birthday was drawing near and I sent her a crimson damask gown and a gold necklace. June arrived. I knew that investigations had continued into the deaths of Gale and Walt, and when I or the Brockleys encountered anyone from Norfolk’s household, we asked about them, but so far, it seemed, the mysteries remained unsolved.

  I could do nothing toward solving them myself. I stayed where I was, wrote harmless letters to Hugh and to Meg, mi
ssed them both to an extreme degree, and got nowhere. If Ridolfi were up to any mischief, he was keeping it well concealed.

  When he was at home, I did my best to watch his movements and take note of his visitors, but I didn’t see any more money change hands. I felt I was plowing a very stony field, but I kept at it. In my experience, if there were anything at all to find, traces would ultimately appear, probably when one least expected them.

  • • •

  “How foolish of me,” Donna murmured. “I have left my lute music downstairs. I was playing for my husband after supper yesterday. He is fond of music, you know, Ursula.”

  “Yes.” I looked around from arranging my own music at the spinet in the upstairs parlor. “I remember how good the music was that was played when I dined here, with my husband and the Duke of Norfolk.”

  “Indeed, yes. Roberto is so cultured.” One of Donna’s charms was her obvious admiration for Ridolfi, who, in her eyes, was a prince who could do no wrong. I hoped I wouldn’t one day shatter her trust in him.

  Dinner was over and Donna wanted to spend the afternoon practicing her music. Fran Dale was with us, quietly stitching, but Donna’s maid was not there. Brockley had gone out to buy physic for an ailing horse and Gladys was in the garden, talking to Arthur Johnson as she often did. Hillman had duly spoken to him and Johnson had behaved better since. I worried far more about Gladys upsetting him than the other way about, and I had told him that she was a little odd at times, but harmless. He chuckled and assured me that he wouldn’t take her amiss. They seemed to get on together and while she was with him, I didn’t think she would get into trouble.

  Donna, meanwhile, was asking permission to send Dale in search of her music. I smiled and shook my head. “I’ll go,” I said, getting up from the spinet. “I know where it is, I think. You were in the downstairs parlor yesterday evening, were you not? I will be quicker, and Dale has already run dozens of errands for me today.”

  Dale caught my eye and smiled. She had run hardly any errands that day but she knew that every time I had a chance to move about the house, I seized it, just in case I came on something of interest.

  I left the room, crossed the dining chamber, and went down the wide stairs. A few moments ago, I thought I had heard someone knock at the front door and be admitted. Ridolfi had dined in his study as usual and had not yet left to go back to the City. The caller might be with him now.

  The wide stairs led down to a vestibule at the back of the house, equivalent in size to the reception hall at the front. This rear hall had dark paneling, and was as shadowy as the other was light. Doors led off to various ground floor rooms, one of them the parlor where the music had been left. Another was Ridolfi’s study. As I reached the vestibule, I heard voices from behind the study door.

  No one was about. I was wearing soft slippers, a considered choice. On silent feet, I stepped up to the door and put my ear against it.

  I had done this kind of thing before, as well. It was distasteful but often necessary and if it made me feel like a prying maidservant, it couldn’t be helped. It was nerve-racking, too, just as searching other people’s papers always was, because of the risk of being caught. When I had one ear to a door, the other was always alert for approaching steps.

  In the Ridolfi house, I had nearly been caught twice already and all for nothing, since I never heard anything more interesting than Ridolfi commissioning a miniature painting of Donna or warning someone away from a foolish investment. I didn’t expect anything better this time. I simply tried my luck.

  One of the voices belonged to Ridolfi. He was speaking English, though, and whoever was with him sounded like a London man. I thought his voice was faintly familiar but I couldn’t put a name to him. Listening intently, I thought his tone was strained, uncertain.

  “. . . expect to have it ready tomorrow morning, and I can bring it when you like . . . ”

  “I am most grateful, though I knew I could rely on you.”

  “I hope I’m doing right. The scheme should placate the Spanish administration and that can only benefit merchants like myself, who have let too much of our trade become dependent on Antwerp, but this is the first time I have been involved in politics and I’m not sure . . . ”

  “A modest contribution to a respectable cause can’t be called getting involved in politics, my friend. Some more wine? It really is a respectable cause, you know. Mary Stuart is the rightful queen of Scotland and there is nothing wrong in wanting to see her wisely married and restored to her place in the world. Even if it does mean buying support here and there. Men are so venal,” said Ridolfi regretfully.

  “There will be opposition. Unless she is willing to become an Anglican . . . ”

  “That will never be, nor should it!” There was unmistakable passion in Ridolfi’s voice. “She would lose my support at once and my support counts for something, believe me!”

  “Ah, well. I have no strong feelings on the matter myself . . . ”

  “I am sorry to hear it. You English are so . . . so phlegmatic in these matters. It troubles me. Your immortal souls are in peril and you seem unconcerned!”

  “I . . . er . . . don’t think we altogether agree there,” said the visitor’s voice mildly.

  “Well, well, we will not argue about it. You said earlier that you didn’t wish to bring the money to the house . . . ”

  They were moving away, turning their backs on the door. I pressed my ear harder against the paneling. I heard the other man say something about discretion, and then Ridolfi laughed.

  “You mean that if something went wrong, it wouldn’t do if you were known to have visited me more than once. You’d rather not have come here at all. Ah well, you’re not the only one who’s timid!” Ridolfi’s voice was resonant. I could still hear him, at least. “. . . for those who wish to be discreet, I can make other arrangements. Your house is on the river, like mine, is it not? Some way from here, but still, if you wish to visit me secretly, come by water! I can arrange for us to meet out of sight of the house, just after nightfall. I often do so, for people who have no real excuse for visiting me. Tomorrow evening would be convenient. See now—come over to the window. You can see from here that . . . ”

  Annoyingly, Ridolfi too moved out of earshot. However, he must have turned back a moment later, for then I heard him say: “. . . de Spes has met me there once or twice. In his whimsical way, he calls it where the swans are. He refers to it thus because he says, if we should be overheard, no one will know what it means. He is always afraid of listening ears. The government is so suspicious, he says!”

  “He clearly has a poetic mind,” said the other voice, dryly this time. Whoever owned it wasn’t a nonentity, I thought, and wished I could fit a face to it.

  “De Spes is ever poetic,” said Ridolfi. “He can hardly see a tree without indulging in flights of fancy about dryads. Until tomorrow, then . . . ”

  I retreated, tiptoeing rapidly away from the study door and into the parlor. I found the sheets of music and picked them up. I stood for a moment thinking and then made my way quickly out of a door on the far side of the parlor, through a short passage and out to the stable yard. I looked for a groom and presently found two of them in the harness room, polishing saddles.

  “When Roger Brockley comes back, will you tell him that Mistress Stannard wishes to see him at once?”

  Incuriously, they assured me that they would. I made my way back indoors and upstairs to where Donna was waiting. I heard and saw nothing of Ridolfi or his guest on the way. Donna was strumming the spinet, somewhat restively.

  “I was about to send Dale to find you,” she said. “You were so long!”

  “I went to see if Brockley had come back yet,” I said. “He wasn’t there, so I left a message that I wanted to see him when he returned. I want to ask about the ailing horse. I’m so sorry to have kept you waiting. Let’s begin without delay!”

  • • •

  Word was brought about an hour later that Br
ockley was back. Donna excused me, though with a trace of a pout, as usual. I went straight down to the stable yard and found him insisting that the horse—it was the packhorse that had brought my belongings—should be separated from the rest because it was coughing and the other horses might catch it. There was an overflow stable block for use when the Ridolfis had a crowd of visitors, but at the moment it was empty. “It would be best to put the packhorse there,” Brockley was saying.

  “If you’ll put some bedding down for him, I’ll lead him across,” I said to Brockley. In a low voice, I added: “I want to talk to you . . . ”

  14

  Skulking in the Alders

  “This is like old times,” I said the following evening, as Brockley and I made our way toward the river, by way of the topiary garden, to avoid being seen from the windows. “Do you remember how we set out in the dark to investigate a document box in that castle on the Welsh border?”

  Brockley said: “I remember it well, madam. You found a dead man lying on a study floor and we spent the rest of the night in a dungeon.”

  The topiary garden was itself a little menacing at dusk. As we hurried through its shadowy paths, I wished I hadn’t reminded us of Vetch Castle. We had been in grave danger then.

  Danger of more than one kind, too. That was the time when Brockley and I had come closer to each other than was proper for a lady and her manservant. The most perilous moment in our friendship had taken place in that castle dungeon.

  I think Brockley was remembering the same things. Smoothly changing the subject, he now said: “How did you account to Madame Ridolfi for leaving her this evening?”

  “It was difficult. That’s why I’m later than I meant to be. Master Ridolfi shut himself in his study after supper and then Madame wanted me with her while the chaplain read to us again. In the end I pretended I had a headache and asked to go to my room. I waited there long enough to let Father Fernando get under way with his reading, and then slipped downstairs and into the garden and found you among the yew trees.”