Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  I fetched money from my room and counted out as much as I dared spare. Blanchard hemmed and hawed and then sent Harvey for his own locked money chest. Two lots of gold coins changed hands. Fifteen minutes later, we were in the bowels of the castle, in the dungeons. Where Dale was.

  I had seen dungeons before, but this was worse. The cell to which we were escorted by De Clairpont, the two guards, and a turnkey, was behind a door in a fetid passage lit only by a tiny grating and, just now, by the jailer’s streaming torch. We weren’t allowed into the cell but could see Dale only through a little barred opening in the door. She clung to the bars and thrust her hands toward us and both she and Brockley wept because the guards wouldn’t let them touch each other. She told us, sobbing, that the cell was tiny and that she had no bed, only some straw and a dirty rug, and that the walls were damp. “I’ll die if I’m left in here! Oh, Roger! Ma’am! I’m so frightened!”

  “We’ll get you out!” I promised. “We will get you out. It’s all right, Dale. It will be all right.”

  “They say I wanted to poison someone! And they say that even if they can’t prove it, they can still try me for . . . for . . . you know . . .”

  “Heresy,” said De Clairpont.

  Dale screamed aloud and shook the bars in desperation. “We’ll pray for you!” my father-in-law promised. “We’re all on your side. I feel as though I’m surrounded by madness,” he added to me. “This can’t be real.”

  Helene said eagerly, in English: “But, Dale, if you were to embrace the true faith, I’m sure . . .”

  “Yes, do that! Say anything, Fran, anything to save yourself!” Brockley begged her.

  “I’ve said I’d do that, but they’ll kill me just the same, I know they will!” Dale wailed.

  And how would they kill her? I dared not imagine that.

  I turned on De Clairpont. “Why are you doing this? You can’t believe there’s any truth in this absurd accusation!”

  “We shall arrive at the truth, I trust.”

  “Do you mean what I think you mean? If so, then you are going to force poor Dale to say whatever you want her to say. But that won’t be the truth!”

  De Clairpont shrugged. I felt that if I put my hand on his bare skin, it would be like touching ice. “I am a loyal servant of Her Majesty Catherine, the queen mother, and of the Catholic cause that we both serve. I will root out their enemies wherever I find them. It may be that the innocent sometimes suffer with the guilty. But then, innocent Catholics have been murdered by the Huguenots, have they not? That is what happens in war.”

  He spoke French this time and Dale, her face pressed to the bars, could hear him but not understand him. I saw her terrified eyes, asking me what we were saying, begging me to tell her that I had made him see it was all a mistake.

  But I couldn’t. We had to go away and leave her there. I felt as one feels at funerals, when the moment comes to turn one’s back and leave a loved one alone in the cold earth. As we went, we heard her weeping slowly fade behind us.

  But I had one more weapon in my hands, or rather, on my hand. De Clairpont left us at the door to our suite, saying that we must hold ourselves in readiness to answer more questions. He then took himself off. To the others, I said: “I must see Sir Nicholas at once. I’m going back to the banqueting hall.”

  Blanchard and Brockley came with me. Our timing was good. The banquet had just finished, and people were leaving. I saw Throckmorton crossing the anteroom with a group of gentlemen, and led the way quickly toward him.

  “Sir Nicholas!”

  He stopped, courteously. “Mistress Blanchard? I saw you being fetched out of the banquet. What has happened?”

  “Can we speak apart?” said Blanchard.

  “By all means.” He excused himself to his companions and drew me to the side of the room, out of the stream of people. “What is it?”

  We told him between us, and then I held out my hand with the ring on it. “Do you recognize this?”

  “What’s this about?” Blanchard demanded, taken by surprise.

  “It’s all right, Master Blanchard. This is a little device that Queen Elizabeth sometimes provides to help those in her service.” Throckmorton’s eyes met mine gravely. “You wish to use it to speak to Queen Catherine?”

  “Yes. I have had one audience and perhaps might have to wait for another. But this is urgent. I think,” I added, “that Queen Catherine recognized the ring when I was presented to her.”

  “I understand. Return to your suite and wait. I will do my best.”

  13

  Golden Conversation

  The wait was dreadful. Brockley was in despair. I had never seen him like this. Ever since I had known him, he had been a rock of dependability but now, he was the one who must depend on others for strength. He alternated between pacing about, muttering, and striking the furniture with his fist, and sitting down to stare into space as though at a nightmare visible only to himself. William Harvey had sensibly sent for food and drink, but Brockley would touch nothing.

  For my part, I used some of that weary wait to ask Helene a few questions. She, after all, had searched our baggage at St. Marc.

  “You found that phial in Dale’s saddlebag, Helene. Since we’ve been here, you’ve shown an interest in De Clairpont. Have you met him without any of us knowing?”

  “I hope not!” My father-in-law broke off in the middle of trying to persuade Brockley to eat. “Clandestine meetings with a man, Helene? If you have dared to do such a thing . . .”

  Old grudges die hard. He couldn’t forbear giving me a sharp look as he said it. I had met his son behind his back, and those of my own guardians, which was why I now called him father-in-law.

  “No, I didn’t!” said Helene resentfully.

  “Please!” I said. “I just want to know what induced De Clairpont to order that search. It might not have been an assignation, Master Blanchard—it could have been a chance encounter. But, Helene, we need to know. Did you—even by chance—talk to De Clairpont and if so, did you mention that phial?”

  “No!” She was, as usual, wearing her silver crucifix. She held it up. “I swear on the cross. I have never had private speech with the Seigneur de Clairpont or any of his men either, and I did not tell him about the phial of poison.”

  I believed her, because I did not think she would lie when swearing on the cross, and anyway, since we came to St. Germain, she had hardly been out of my sight. Others besides Helene might have seen that phial when our luggage was searched at Le Cheval d’Or. After hemming and hawing in my mind, I had decided that Cecil’s men were responsible for that, hoping to find a letter from Matthew. But what if I were wrong, if that rummaging were part of some plot which I didn’t understand, quite unconnected with Cecil’s trap for Matthew? Something was going on below the surface of things. I was somehow enmeshed, but I couldn’t see the web that held me.

  I stood by the window, staring out as dusk fell. The banquet hadn’t been the end of the wedding festivities, of course. The guests would have gone to another room for dancing and by this time, they were probably getting raucous. In which case, Queen Catherine would surely withdraw. By now, Throckmorton might have been able to send word to her.

  Harvey said: “Someone’s at the door. This’ll be your summons, maybe.”

  It was.

  * * *

  Throckmorton was there to escort me. Elizabeth’s ring, it transpired, had near-magical properties. Someone of my standing would normally get no nearer to Queen Catherine than a public audience chamber and that only after a delay. The ring brought me to her private apartment that same day.

  Though not for a tête-à-tête. In a handsome room with a vaulted ceiling and wall tapestries depicting more biblical scenes, Catherine de Médicis was seated amid a crowd of ladies and courtiers, eating sweetmeats as though she didn’t know what a banquet was and feared no one would give her any supper.

  She was also watching a play enacted by dwarfs. She signed to me to
stand and wait until the scene in progress should finish. It was not easy to follow because the French was very rapid and there was a great deal of shouting and exclaiming in absurd voices that I realized were meant to be funny. A male dwarf with a humpback, but a very broad chest, swaggered and bellowed and knocked several other dwarfs flat. Another dwarf, slightly taller than the rest and dignified in mien, was marched before the humpbacked one, and apparently tried for the crime of being a Catholic. This seemed to be a peculiar drama for the head of the Catholic faction to be watching but Catherine appeared to be enjoying it. The swaggering hunchback knocked the prisoner down, too, and shrieked that he must hang for the crime of patriotism and supporting his lawful rulers. The prisoner was taken away and the hunchback, exclaiming at the top of a falsetto voice that he was the savior of his people and inspired by God, was then overcome by his own wondrousness, rolled his eyes heavenward, and collapsed backward into the arms of some diminutive henchmen.

  They laid him tenderly on a settle, calling him mighty prince. The surrounding ladies and courtiers burst into cheers and clapping and it dawned on me that Catherine’s dwarfs were making fun of the prince of Condé, the leader of the Huguenot faction, who was reputed to be both hunchbacked and aggressive. It was likely, I thought, that Elizabeth’s offer of mediation was quite pointless.

  As if she had heard me thinking, Catherine beckoned me to her and under cover of the applause, she said: “If a land is divided, one may compromise to restore peace. We have done so already. But we may still have our own private opinions of those who would destroy us and our beliefs, and in private, may express them. That is our privilege. You are making use of a privilege, too. At this moment, you are yourself claiming one; that of speaking with us as a matter of urgency, Madame Blanchard. Well, you may speak.”

  Throckmorton had brought me to her side and then stepped back, but he had told me what to do. Kneeling before her, I put my case as succinctly as I could.

  “My tirewoman, Frances Brockley, also known by her maiden name of Frances Dale, has been arrested on a false charge. For some reason, our baggage was examined while I was at the banquet today. A phial of poison was found among Dale’s belongings. She was carrying it because she was afraid of coming to France, of being accused of heresy. Such things have happened here recently, after all.”

  “Until we softened our principles in the hope of placating the enemy and called the hounds off the heretics,” Catherine remarked. “But we did call them off. This is a very strange story. However, you may proceed.”

  “Dale has been accused of seeking the life of . . . yourself or the young king She did not. It is not true. Your Majesty, I plead for the release of my tirewoman. A tirewoman is all she is. She would never harm anyone. I represent Queen Elizabeth and I would never have brought with me anyone who was not absolutely trustworthy.”

  Succinct, but not succinct enough. Catherine’s attention was wandering. She beckoned the hunchbacked dwarf to her, and presented him with a dish of sweetmeats coated with gold leaf. “You have made us laugh. A fine performance.” She snapped thick, swarthy fingers at a hovering attendant and a purse was placed in her hand. She gave it to the dwarf. “For you and all your troupe.”

  The hunchback retired backward, bowing. I said, as though I had not noticed the interruption: “Your Majesty, can you, will you, help me and help Dale?”

  “Music!” said Catherine. “We will have music!” She spoke loudly, and as if conjured by sorcery, a group of musicians emerged from the crowd, carrying instruments, took up positions in front of Catherine, bowed to her, and set to without delay, on the rebec, harp, and drum. But as the throng shifted out of their way, a heavily built cleric, who up to then had been concealed at the back, came into view. Across the room, his eyes met mine. He showed no surprise at seeing me there. He merely bent his head in polite recognition. But on his fleshy face, there was a smile.

  A triumphant smile.

  And then I understood. This was why only Dale had been arrested—not myself, or Blanchard, or Brockley.

  The argument that Dale would have little chance to poison anyone in the royal house was actually quite sound. No one in their senses would choose a visiting tirewoman for such an errand. I wondered how De Clairpont, who was surely intelligent enough to know that, had been persuaded into pretending otherwise. But I knew who had done the persuading. He was there, smiling across the room at me, and he had guessed why I was here and on my knees.

  “How dare you threaten my mistress?” Dale had said to him.

  And what had he said in answer? You seem to have a devoted servant, Mistress de la Roche. 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.

  That earlier search of my baggage, I thought, must have been somehow or other connected with him. Charpentier had told Matthew that I was in France and asking for him. Had he told anybody else? Told, for instance, another ardent anti-Huguenot who chanced to be at hand? Someone who had later brooded over what he saw as my attempt to betray Matthew yet again, and conceived this as an act of vengeance?

  A cruel vengeance, but what else could one expect of that subtle, obsessed, pitiless so-called man of God, Dr. Ignatius Wilkins?

  He had chosen not to attack me directly. He had threatened to save my heretic soul for me but he had decided on this oblique onslaught instead. My heart should be broken for the sake of the servant for whom I cared: my poor, innocent, terrified Dale.

  I stared fixedly across the room at him, and once again, he smiled back. In the folds of my skirts, I clenched my fists.

  But Catherine was speaking to me again. “We understand your concern for your servant.” I dragged my eyes away from Wilkins and turned eagerly toward her.

  “Ma’am . . .”

  She raised a hand to silence me. “But do you know how often the friends, the families of condemned men—and women, too—bring petitions to us to intervene? We cannot take upon ourselves the control of our entire judicial system. We have officials to do it for us and they must be allowed to work unhindered. Your woman—and you also—will have a chance to speak in her defense. Be content with that.”

  “But, ma’am, she is innocent!”

  “We are sure that you believe that, Madame Blanchard.”

  There was a silence. The rebec wailed drowsily, like a drugged cat. “We have made it a rule,” said Catherine,“only to intervene in very extreme circumstances. One of them is the likelihood of innocence, naturally. But rulers, whether regents or those who reign in their own right, cannot be sentimental. If we are to overturn the judgment of our own officials, thereby incurring their indignation and perhaps damaging their loyalty, then there must be some advantage to us or to our realm. A greater advantage, my dear Madame Blanchard, than that of a purified conscience. That is something we cannot afford. That is for cookmaids, not for queens.”

  The words came out of me slowly, as I dredged my mind to fetch them up. But they came out accurately. They were the words De Clairpont had spoken earlier that day: “The Catholic cause in Paris is troubled at the moment by the need to arm and feed its soldiers.” It struck me that this was probably the means by which De Clairpont had been induced to arrest Dale. Perhaps Catherine was susceptible to the same inducement. “Ma’am,” I said, “would you look favorably on my plea if I offered a—substantial contribution to . . . to your cause?”

  For the first time, Catherine looked at me with real interest. “You speak, in effect, of a ransom?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Money has a golden voice, of course,” she said. “You are right; our coffers are always hungry, above all at present. If the offered contribution were sufficiently substantial, we would delay the trial until it was produced, and have the woman released the moment the ransom was in our hands. But what kind of substantial ransom, Madame Blanchard, can you possibly offer?”

  I paused again, frowning,
as once more I delved in my mind to recall the words aright. Then I recited them, as I had done in the treasury at the Tower of London, the day Elizabeth gave me the letter that had brought me, and Dale, to this place.

  “Item, one full set of gold plate, value approximately ten thousand pounds, including twenty-four drinking goblets, marked with the badge of a noble Spanish house, set in cabochon rubies and emeralds.

  “Item, a golden salt, two feet high, shaped as a square castle tower, with a salt container under each turret and spice drawers below. Decorated with the same badge, set in rubies. Value approximately twelve thousand pounds.

  “Item, a silver salt, with a fluted pattern and a chased pattern of birds and leaves around the rim. There is a hinged lid in the likeness of a scallop shell, beneath which are four salt containers that may be lifted out.Value approximately three thousand pounds . . .”

  On the verge of adding the last item, concerning the sundry small costly ornaments, total value approximately seven hundred pounds, I checked myself. Fetching all this would involve considerable expense. The small costly ornaments could be useful and any that happened to be leftover could be offered when the time came, as an extra sweetener, like a drift of sugar over a cake.

  “Allowing for the approximations . . .” I had a rough and ready knowledge of the equivalents between pounds and crowns “. . . it could be a total value of over between eighty-seven and eighty-eight thousand crowns.”

  Royal personages are very good at keeping their faces blank, no matter what their thoughts may be, but Catherine’s eyes widened as soon as I embarked on the discription of that golden salt. “This is golden conversation indeed,” she said, and her voice was impressed. “And the items are obviously most beautiful. Exquisite. Surely we would like to see them, and if we were to sell them, we would hope that their new owners would cherish them and not melt them down. But can you, Madame Ursula Blanchard, truly lay your hands on this treasure?”