Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  “Not exactly.” I had already told Dale on what terms Matthew and I had parted. I repeated them to Brockley. He nodded.

  “He was talking good sense, madam. With France in such a turmoil, this isn’t the moment for you to join him, even if that’s what you want to do. I’d say it was in your interest to get that letter safely delivered to the queen mother. You told us it was an offer from Queen Elizabeth to help in mediation, between her Catholic government and the Huguenots. What’s their leader’s name? The prince of Condé? Well, a peaceful France would let you make your mind up freely, and meanwhile, you will, I suppose, have to go on living at the court of Queen Elizabeth. Best to please her, wouldn’t you say?”

  I found myself reluctantly smiling. “You’ve a good brain under that high forehead of yours, Brockley. You’re right, of course. Until there is peace in this country again, my whole life is like a pot left simmering on the edge of the fire, until someone has time to attend to it. And yes, in the meantime I suppose I must go back to England.”

  “And we oughtn’t to fall out with Master Blanchard.” Dale, too, had been thinking. “We’re all traveling together in this dangerous country. Travelers in perilous places ought to stick together. If you ask me, he’s more frightened of France even than we are!”

  “Yes, I daresay. I’m more angry with Cecil than with Master Blanchard,” I said. “Sir William Cecil saw a chance and seized it, I fancy! He’s a servant of the queen first of all and laying hands on my husband could benefit England, in their eyes. But to use me as bait!”

  I choked on the words, thinking of my last glimpse of Matthew, as he took the bay gelding’s bridle from the groom. Where was my husband now?

  “Very well,” I said at last. “We will go on as before. And the sooner the better, I feel. We’ll start for Douceaix later today. I must take some rest first, but we will leave after dinner. Brockley, you had better let Ryder know.”

  “I’ll tell Master Jenkinson, too, madam. He was talking, on the way here, of riding with us to Douceaix and even on to Paris, given that you and Master Blanchard agree. It would be a good disguise, he says, to blend into someone else’s escort as just one more retainer.”

  “I can hardly imagine Mr. Jenkinson as just one more retainer. He’d stand out of any crowd,” I said. “And what if these Levantine rivals of his are still on his scent? Haven’t I got trouble enough? I’m getting very tired indeed of mysteries and alarms.” I paused to think. “But if he wants to come with us to Douceaix, I can hardly refuse him. He has done well by us and I owe him something. I must find Helene. She’ll want to know what happened last night and I must tell her to make ready to leave. She should have had time enough by now to say good-bye to all the nuns and confessors in the province. Go and see Ryder, and then get a little sleep, Brockley. Dale, attend me.”

  Brockley withdrew. Dale and I went in search of Helene.

  She was not in her room, but a lay sister who was sweeping the stairs near her door said that she thought Helene had gone into the church. “Perhaps to give thanks for your safety, madame.”

  I had doubts about that, but with Dale, I went out of the guest house and across the courtyard to the church. It was a big place, ornamental on the outside, with gargoyles and elaborate carvings on the stone walls. Inside, it was cool and dim, fragrant with incense, and the shadows were touched here and there by the gentle flames of votive candles, and by shafts of light through stained glass.

  The day had turned sunny and on the eastern side of the church, a window depicting the Last Supper blazed with azure and ruby and deep amber and cast jewel-colored patches onto the stone of pillars and floor, and on the golden candlesticks of the altar candles. One glowing ray lit up a niche in which stood a golden statue of the Virgin and Child. But above all, there was quietness here. I could see no sign of Helene, but the atmosphere of prayer and worship was like a calming hand on me. Even Dale, whose prejudices were stronger than mine, responded to it. Benches were set in rows on either side of a central aisle and I sat down. Quietly, Dale sat down beside me.

  I let Helene slip out of my mind and once again, I thought of Matthew. I had believed, when I left England, that the way back to him was closed; that I had closed it myself a year ago when I refused to flee to France with him. But now, once more, there was a possibility . . . a chance . . .

  Presently, I slid forward to my knees and silently prayed, to whichever version of God might be listening, that one day the warring sects might be reconciled and I might at last find Matthew again and live in peace with him, and that Meg should be with us, so that we could live as a family.

  I prayed, too, for the souls of the Huguenots who had been murdered last night. Anglicans aren’t supposed to pray for the dead but no one would know except God and I hoped he would understand.

  Then Dale, who was still sitting upright on the bench at my side, whispered: “Ma’am!” and nudged me and at the same moment I heard footsteps approaching. Opening my eyes, I shifted back onto the bench and turned to find myself looking up at a thickset priest with a silver-gray tonsure. I gazed into watchful brown eyes and into a well-remembered fleshy face, scored with lines of ruthless authority.

  “I saw you come into the church. I want to speak to you, Mistress de la Roche,” said the phlegm-filled voice of Helene’s confessor, Dr. Ignatius Wilkins.

  I had used him as an excuse for staying at Le Cheval d’Or, but in all the uproar of the night, I had completely forgotten him. I came to my feet. “Dr. Wilkins!”

  “So you remember me,” he said. “Why are you here?”

  He was speaking English. He was, of course, English by birth. He had once been a parish priest in Sussex, not far from my old home. They had been Sussex people, the father and daughter he had committed to death in the flames.

  They had died together. How hideous to know, in that last agony, that the parent, the child, you have loved is sharing the same torment. If I were to die so, it would double my anguish to know that Meg was suffering the same thing, and her pain would be doubled by mine. Wilkins might want to speak to me but I didn’t want to speak to him. I had to say something, but I kept it brief.

  “I am acting as companion to Helene Blanchard. You know her, I think. Her guardian is taking her home to England.”

  “Yes, poor child. She has come to ask my blessing and such comfort and advice as I can give her, before she sails for her exile in a heretic country.”

  His tone was almost sentimental. But his voice issued from a relentless mouth with a strong upthrusting lower lip and downturned corners. I was instinctively afraid of him, but I wouldn’t show it. “It’s your own country, Dr. Wilkins,” I said.

  “No longer,” Wilkins said. “Not until such time as it returns to the true faith.” He was barring my way out to the aisle. “I have heard,” he said, “of the events of last night at the inn. Your men have talked freely. They are full of regret that their quarry, your husband, got away. They seem hardly aware that they are in a Catholic abbey. For myself, I rejoice that the Seigneur de la Roche has once more escaped from your coils. You say you are here as a companion to Helene Blanchard. Indeed? I think otherwise. It is not well done, madam, when a wife betrays her husband and brings the emissaries of a foreign land to seize him.”

  The attack took me by surprise. I was too startled to answer. Not that it mattered, for Wilkins’s thick voice was still speaking. “A wife should be subject to her husband, should follow him wherever he leads, keep his counsel, and avoid speech with his enemies. But you! You have betrayed him three times over.”

  “Last year,” I said, recovering myself, “I saved his life and yours as well. I kept the door barred while you and Matthew escaped out of the window!”

  I had raised my voice and it echoed in the wide spaces of the church. Wilkins raised a quelling hand.

  “Do not raise that shrill voice of yours in the house of God. Women should be silent in church.”

  “I will not be silent when unjust accusation
s are hurled at me, in church or out of it!”

  “Unjust? Oh no, I think not. You refused to come with us,” Wilkins said. “You chose between your husband and your false faith, and you did not choose your husband. I have warned him since never to trust you again and now see how right I was.”

  “How wrong you were!” Dale leapt to my defense like a fighting cock going into battle, all spurs and beak. “My mistress did not know she would be followed to the inn! She came here to bear Mistress Helene company, and then her husband wrote to her. So she went to see him. How dare you say she betrayed him?”

  “All right, Dale!” I didn’t want her to attract Wilkins’s ire. But I patted her arm by way of thanks for her support before I said to him: “Why did you follow me in here to throw accusations at me? What is the point?”

  “The point,” said Wilkins, “is to warn you to keep away from Matthew de la Roche in future. All women are a snare to men, that I know very well.” He gave Dale a single brief glance, acknowledging her existence for the first time. Then his unfriendly brown gaze shifted back to me.

  “But you,” he said, “are a particular snare to this man. He is a noble defender of our faith, one of the sharpest spearheads in the great offensive of God that we shall one day launch against your Lutheran island and against that apostate queen of yours. Matthew de la Roche is not to be seduced in your soft coils or endangered by your foul plans. For I have no doubt at all that you came here as an agent of your queen with his harm in mind. If the chance should present itself,” said that thick, odious voice, lowered now but in menace rather than respect for sanctified surroundings, “I will save your heretic soul for you. But you will not enjoy the process.”

  As he spoke, he took a single step back, drawing himself up, as though distancing himself from me before pronouncing judgment. The light from Judas’s crimson robe in The Last Supper turned his face to the color of flame. For a moment, he looked so demonic that superstitious dread engulfed me. My knees trembled and I could not speak. It was Dale, far too furious to be afraid of him, who cried out: “How dare you threaten my mistress!” Once more, I put out a hand to her, resting it on her shoulder.

  “Dale, don’t.” We were in France, after all, not England.

  “You seem to have a devoted servant, Mistress de la Roche,” Wilkins said. “And you seem as protective of her as she is of you. A touching spectacle. But I would advise you both to watch your tongues and take care. I have faith in the mills of God. And in my own long memory.”

  He turned on his heel and strode away. He wore sandals, like a monk, but his tread was heavy, all the same. Shaken, I sat down again on the bench. I knew what his threat meant. I thought of his two burned parishioners.

  “That man is wicked!” said Dale vehemently. “Evil!”

  “Yes, he is.” I made myself stand up. “And I want to get away from him, and from here. Where in the world is Helene? We’ll go back to our chamber. Perhaps she’s waiting there.”

  Which turned out to be a more or less prophetic statement, for Helene was indeed in our room, although she couldn’t be precisely described as waiting for us. She was going through our baggage.

  We halted in the doorway, hardly able to believe our eyes. I almost forgot Dr. Wilkins in my indignation. Our baggage for the visit to St. Marc was not large; a pair of saddlebags each and one modest pannier. Helene had them all out on my bed, and she was rifling one of Dale’s saddlebags. When we interrupted her, she was just removing a small phial of dark liquid from the bag. She did not see us at once, and while we stood staring, she drew out the stopper and sniffed at the contents. Outraged, I opened my mouth to ask her what she thought she was doing, but Helene saw us at the same instant and spoke first. As though she had a perfect right to search our belongings and ask questions about them, she demanded: “What is this?”

  “Put that down at once!” gasped Dale. “What are you doing? Mistress Blanchard, she’s been pawing through our things!”

  “But what is it?” Helene persisted. She held the phial up to the light. It seemed to be made of blue-green glass. She tipped a few drops of the contents into her palm and I saw that they were a murky brownish-green. Helene put out her tongue and made as if to taste the liquid.

  “Don’t do that! Don’t taste it!” Dale shrieked. “It’s yew-tree poison!”

  There was a frozen silence before I said: “Yew-tree poison? You’re carrying yew venom, Dale?”

  She had been with me that night when I cut yew twigs and brewed the deadly potion over my bedroom fire during the hours of darkness. In fact, I had asked her advice. Dale was fairly knowledgeable about extracting essences from plants. She knew how to make the poison. What I couldn’t understand was why on earth she should want to. I gazed at her in bewilderment.

  Dale seemed unable to answer. “Sit down,” I said. “Both of you. I want to know why there is poison in your baggage, Dale. And, Helene, I want to know what in the name of all the saints you think you’re doing poking into our things. Helene, you first!”

  I tried to sound authoritative, though I didn’t feel it. What I really felt was exhausted and miserable. I had had enough of this fraught journey. In that moment, I even forgot Matthew in my longing to go home, to be safe again. I wanted to be in England, walking or riding in Windsor Park with Elizabeth; sitting in a sunlit arbor with the other ladies, embroidering myself a new pair of sleeves; or—above all—at Thamesbank, playing with Meg. I had but to close my eyes to see my dark-haired daughter, who was so like her father, running toward me across the lawn of Thamesbank, where the greensward sloped down from the house to the landing stage and the Thames.

  Corrupt her? No, I had been wrong to fear that. On the contrary, she would be health and salvation for me. I certainly didn’t want to be here where inns caught fire, and assassins sprang from the shadows; where innocent families were slaughtered and wars came between man and wife; where fathers-in-law pretended to be ill when they weren’t; and people searched your baggage the moment your back was turned.

  I was still waiting for Helene to show some sign of embarrassment. But she neither stammered nor offered excuses. She just looked smug.

  “I thought it might be poison,” she said. “So I pretended I wanted to taste it, to frighten the truth from you.”

  “You impertinent girl!” squealed Dale. “Who do you think you are? The Grand Inquisitor?”

  “I know all that happened last night,” said Helene, ignoring Dale and continuing to address me. “You said you would come to tell me, but there was no need, for the whole abbey is humming with it, madame. I know how you led your men to capture your husband. He is your husband, is he not? The famous Seigneur de la Roche, who is so great a supporter of our Catholic cause, both here and in England?”

  “Is that any of your business, Helene?”

  “It is the business, madame, of anyone who holds to the true faith.”

  “I said from the first that she would be trouble, ma’am! The wretched Papist creature! I can’t abide them!” Dale was furious and I couldn’t blame her. The high and righteous pitch of Helene’s voice was one of the most irritating sounds I had ever heard. Controlling a strong desire to box her ears, I said grimly: “You are under a misapprehension. I did not lead anyone to the inn. I was followed. And I still want to know why you were going through our baggage.”

  The fact that I was furious seemed to have penetrated at last. Helene, for the first time, eyed me with some uncertainty. “I was only looking for some white thread, madame. The hem of my shift is coming down and Jeanne was careless and did not bring white thread with her. And then I grew interested in what kind of person you are, madam. I looked at the book of poems you have with you.” Here, she seemed to retain some confidence, apparently through contempt. “They seem mostly to concern the lusts of the flesh,” she said disdainfully.

  “They’re poems of love,” I said coldly. “They contain the works of Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey. Yes, they wrote of pas
sion. Rather than despising them, I advise you to study them before you enter into the married state. You could learn something useful.”

  The spurt of confidence faded. She threw back her head, however, visibly bracing herself, and I was oddly reminded of my own efforts not to show my fear of Wilkins. “Did you bring that poison with you in the hope of giving it to your husband?” Helene inquired.

  “What?” I reeled. The sheer horror of the suggestion made me refute it, even though Helene had not a shadow of a right to question me. “I’d have taken it with me last night if that was its purpose! Don’t be so silly!”

  “Then what is it for?”

  I turned to Dale. “It’s your turn now. Why were you carrying it, Dale? What is it for?”

  “It’s for our safety,” said Dale. “Because this is a land where decent Protestants are called heretics and what if persecution were to start again and we were seized? The poison is so that we can escape the flames. It’s for you as well as us, ma’am, if the need arises, which God forbid. Brockley and I made it, the night before we left Greenwich. When you let us spend the night together.”

  “When you . . . ? Brockley knows about this?”

  “Roger thought of it, ma’am. We stole what we needed from the queen’s topiary garden at Greenwich, after dark. I was frightened,” said Dale candidly. “Oh, ma’am, all those dark yew bushes, cut to look like horses and huge birds! At night, you almost think they’re coming alive! But we got what we wanted easily enough and went back to Roger’s lodgings and made the brew over his brazier.”

  I held out a commanding hand for the phial and Helene let me take it. I looked at it. There was probably enough there to kill three people. I twisted the stopper back into place. “So now you know,” I said to Helene. “Dale has brought along a potion that will let us quickly out of the world if we are threatened with death as heretics. It’s not for anyone else; just for ourselves. In future, keep your fingers out of other people’s belongings, and don’t hurl silly accusations about. Do you understand?”