Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  When at the inn we had found for our third night’s lodging, Jeanne had to be helped off her horse and almost carried inside, Jenkinson came to speak to me. “You’re overdoing things. If you kill yourself—or us—with exhaustion, will that help Dale?”

  He was right, of course, and I should have listened. Traveling together, we had become friends. I had by now told him a good deal about not only Matthew but also my runaway match with Gerald, and I had told him as much as I could of my reasons for detesting Dr. Wilkins, and why I believed that he might have something to do with our present emergency. I was careful not to speak of my work for Cecil but I could say I had been one of the queen’s ladies, and complain that Cecil had used me as bait to catch my husband without mentioning that I had ever been a spy myself.

  “I notice,” he said, “that you are not on very friendly terms with Helene. What is wrong between the two of you?”

  “Helene went through our baggage once and found that phial,” I said. “Though it wasn’t Helene who told De Clairpont about it; I challenged her with that and she denied it and I think she spoke the truth. She swore on the cross and I don’t think she would have done that if she were lying. Anyway, she hasn’t had much chance to go tattling. I suspect that the phial was found by someone else—I don’t know who—much earlier.” I told him about the mysterious search of our luggage in Le Cheval d’Or. “That was probably nothing to do with Helene. Cecil’s men might have been looking for signs that I had been in touch with Matthew . . . but on the other hand . . . perhaps it was someone else. Oh, I am so tired of mysteries. I just want to get to Antwerp and get back with Dale’s ransom and then get out of France forever and say farewell to Helene forever, too. I don’t suspect her of harming Dale, but I still can’t forgive her for poking into my bags, or for her insufferable sanctimoniousness.”

  “She’s an aggravating girl, I agree,” Jenkinson said comfortingly. “And I don’t like Dr. Wilkins any more than you do. I met him briefly at St. Marc’s Abbey.”

  But although he was now a friend I trusted, I didn’t trust him to be right when he said we were riding too hard. I made us press on at the same pace. The continent of Europe, when one is in a hurry, seems unending. In England, even the topography seems to know that it is on an island and that each landscape, each area of chalk hills, forest, upland plain, fen, or moorland, must be confined within a reasonable space if all are to be fitted in. On the Continent, everything has much more elbow room and uses it. Deer grow bigger antlers, wolves continue to thrive, and landscapes go on apparently forever.

  The bad weather seemed determined to go on forever, as well. The wind and rain did not abate and although we all had stout leather cloaks, the end of the day always found us soaking wet as well as exhausted.

  On the afternoon of the fourth day, Jeanne virtually collapsed again and had to be shifted onto Sweetapple’s horse and held there with his arm around her. We were obliged to slow our pace, and then, just to add to my exasperation, Blanchard’s mount went lame. We could do nothing but halt at a most uncomfortable hostelry attached to a hamlet in the middle of nowhere. There were allegedly a couple of horses there for hire, but they were out and not expected back for two days, and Jeanne, in any case, needed to rest.

  We were at least over the French border by then, though not by much. This had cheered my father-in-law up a good deal, but it did little for me. We were still a long way from Antwerp.

  I cried that night, thinking of Dale in her prison and Brockley, waiting in anguish for my return. At breakfast the next day I knew my eyes were red. Jenkinson noticed, and later on, came to the damp little parlor where I was listlessly sitting with Helene while Jeanne lay in bed.

  “We shall get there. Don’t be afraid. We can pass the time,” said Jenkinson firmly,“by laying a few sensible plans. I intend sailing for England, as you know, but I’m unlikely to find a ship at once and meanwhile, if I can help you, I will. Now, exactly what do you intend to do when we arrive? I do know Antwerp a little.” I wondered if there was anywhere that Jenkinson didn’t know. Cathay possibly, although I wouldn’t have gambled even on that. “Where precisely is the warehouse?” Jenkinson asked. “Near the river Schelde? Most of the warehouses are by the river or close to it.”

  “It’s close to it,” I said,“maybe a couple of miles north of the cathedral. There’s a kind of network of waterways and docks leading off from the river and it’s beside one of the waterways. It has a landing stage. There’s a land entrance, too, onto a street on the other side. The street’s called Hoekstraat—Hook Street, that is. When Gerald took me to see the warehouse, we walked through Hoekstraat first. It’s shaped like a hook, with a straight stretch and then a curve. The straight part runs parallel with the waterway and the warehouse is one of a row in between them. But the best way to get there is by boat. After he’d shown me Hoekstraat, Gerald hired a rowing boat and we went along the waterway and entered the place by way of the landing stage.” I frowned, remembering. “I rather think that the easiest way to transport the treasure would be by water. There are dwellings beside some of those waterways. If we could arrange to stay somewhere from which we can go by boat all the way to the warehouse . . .”

  “But surely,madam,” Helene said,“the owner will long since have learned that your former husband is dead and that you have gone away. What if he’s let it to someone else by now?”

  “I have a key,” I said.

  “So we are to—burgle it?”

  “Yes,” I said bluntly.

  “We shall need to find a hostelry at first,” Jenkinson said thoughtfully. “But we could look round then for a rented house on a suitable waterway. A house would give us more privacy, anyway. You’ve said that you and your first husband were in the household of Sir Thomas Gresham. Will you call on him?”

  I had been thinking about that. If one has something to hide, it is well to behave as normally as possible.

  When I reached Antwerp, to visit Sir Thomas would be the normal thing to do. If I didn’t, and he learned of my presence by accident, he might wonder why.

  “I might,” I said, “but I must be careful what I say to him. He would want that treasure sent to England. The plight of one tirewoman in France might not seem to him so very important.”

  “Yes, I see.” Jenkinson stroked his brown beard thoughtfully. “I have met him,” he said. “I would like to call on him. There are some matters of commerce I might fruitfully discuss with him, and he could help us obtain passages for England. We could all visit together. You can simply say you and Master Blanchard wished to get out of France quickly. I see no difficulty about that.”

  “I wish we weren’t having so much difficulty in getting to Antwerp in the first place,” I said.

  But for all my impatience, I was tired, and secretly glad to rest from the hard riding for a while. I was sleeping badly, too, and when I did sleep, I had nightmares. Twice, the following night, I woke from terrifying dreams. Once, I sat up with heart pounding, sure that someone had set fire to the inn. I sat bolt upright in the darkness for several moments before the quietness and the complete lack of any smell of smoke convinced me that all was safe.

  I lay down again and drifted off to sleep once more, and this time dreamed that Dr. Wilkins had come into the room and was telling me that I would never bring the treasure back from Antwerp. He sat on the end of my bed and laughed at me, making the bed shake.

  I shot upright again, to find that it was morning and that the rain had stopped. The wind still plagued the trees that grew at the back of the hostelry, but it was less boisterous and there were traces of blue between the racing clouds. Helene was already up; indeed, it was she who had been shaking my bed, although gently.

  “It is time for breakfast, madame. See, I am dressed already and I have been out into the open air. The weather is much better.”

  “But Master Blanchard’s horse is still lame and the horses belonging to this place are still out. And how is Jeanne? Is she much better as
well?”

  “Yes, madam, she is. She can go on tomorrow, she says, if only we need not ride for quite such long hours.”

  “The horses should be back today,” I said. “But they will need a night’s rest . . . tomorrow will have to do, I suppose,” I said grudgingly.

  Tiredness and worry were making me bad-tempered. I was angry with Jeanne for falling ill, even angry with Blanchard’s horse for going lame. We could have been much farther on our way but for these maddening mishaps.

  Hoping that fresh air would help me, I took a walk myself after breakfast. I went through the small village, looking at the farmland, listening to the local patois, which was a curious mixture of French and Low German. I was glad to get out of the inn. True, it wasn’t quite as primitive as the one before, which had the last-century system of dormitories for men and women and no private rooms at all. This one, despite its remoteness, did at least have some separate rooms for hire. But the beds had bugs, the tables were inadequately scrubbed, and the wooden platters carried the encrusted remains of previous guests’ meals. The place was run by a father and a middle-aged daughter who snapped and shouted at each other all the time. Le Cheval d’Or was a haven of comfort and good cheer by comparison.

  The walk did help. My mood grew less stormy, though my spirits stayed low. I missed both Dale and Brockley. I had long leaned on Brockley’s common sense and reliability. Jenkinson was a good companion, but his interests were his own and not mine. Brockley was like a sturdy windbreak, and without him, I felt the draft.

  I went back to the inn to eat an indifferent dinner of dumplings in a thin stew, indigestible barley bread, and an allegedly sweet omelet that was sloppy in the middle and not properly sweetened either. Jeanne, who had got up for dinner, said, though wanly, that she would sit in the parlor with Helene, and I decided to go upstairs, take off my shoes, and lie on my bed for a while. I fell asleep, awakening suddenly, much later, to realize that it was already nearly evening, and that in my father-in-law’s bedchamber next door somebody was shouting and somebody else was in tears.

  Hurriedly, I put on my shoes and went to investigate. I knocked at the door and called, but no one took any notice, so I turned the handle and stepped inside. Helene, red in the face and weeping copiously, was backed against the window and reiterating, over and over: “No, it isn’t true; I didn’t; I haven’t!” She was leaning back as if to get away from my father-in-law, who was shaking his fist in her face.

  “Master Blanchard!” I shouted.

  Blanchard swung round. “Ah, Mistress Ursula. And where have you been all afternoon? Jeanne is resting again; but you are supposed to be Helene’s companion. You should have been with her, watching over her, instead of letting her run about unsupervised. What have you to say for yourself?”

  “I was asleep myself,” I said. “I left Helene with Jeanne. But what has Helene done?” I found it hard to imagine what a model of piety like Helene could possibly have done, especially in a lonely place like this. The opportunities for mischief seemed so very limited.

  Blanchard promptly confounded me. “She’s been meeting a man, that’s what she’s been doing! I saw her myself, from the window. She was out there with him, under the trees, and what’s more, I think I know who it was. I knew the shape of him. It was that thickset fellow Longman. She crept out of the inn on her own this afternoon, because you weren’t keeping an eye on her—”

  “I didn’t, I didn’t!” Helene wailed.

  “I saw you with my own eyes,” bellowed Blanchard. “I saw you leave him and come back into the inn yard; I watched you all the way till you came indoors. Don’t whine to me that you didn’t, you didn’t! You did, madam, you did! You’re betrothed, let me remind you! Betrothed to a young man from a good Sussex family, a good Catholic family; and what’ll they say if he finds out on your wedding night that you’re damaged goods? Answer me that, slut!” He grabbed Helene’s shoulders and shook her. “Has he had you? Has he?”

  “No, I’m not a slut, I’m not!” bawled Helene.

  “But you met him! I saw you.” Blanchard shook her again.

  “Yes, all right, but it was only to talk, just to talk. He’s nice. He’s kind. He’s good company. But we didn’t do anything wrong, we did not!”

  “If you’re lying,” said Blanchard menacingly,“if I find out that you’re lying—if you lose your virtue before you get to the altar with your lawful bridegroom, you’ll wish you were dead. You’ll cry tears enough to float a merchantman and you’ll sleep on your stomach for a week. I’ll have to compensate your groom for taking you secondhand. If he takes you at all, that is! Most likely, he won’t and I’ll lose all the profit I ought to have made!”

  He had begun this speech in a moderate tone but ended it in a shout because, by then, Helene was not so much crying as screaming. She jerked about in his grasp, turning her head from side to side. Finally, he stepped back and let her go, and Helene’s screams subsided into sobs. I found a handkerchief and handed it to her.

  “Perhaps,” I said to Blanchard, “we ought to have a word with Longman.”

  “It won’t be any use,” said Helene in muffled tones from behind the handkerchief. “He’ll deny it all. We . . . agreed that he should. If any questions were asked. He values his employment. It’ll be his word against yours.”

  “I saw the two of you together!”

  “But we were only talking!”

  “Were they?” I asked Blanchard. “Did you see more than that?”

  Unwillingly, my father-in-law admitted that he had not. “Go into our chamber,” I said to Helene. I saw her through our door myself and as I did so, I whispered: “If all you did was meet and talk, there’s no harm done. That is all it was, I hope.”

  “He kissed me,” Helene whispered back. “But that was all. Truly, that was all.”

  “Still no harm done. But don’t do it again,” I said, and turned the key on her before going back to Blanchard.

  “I think she’s telling the truth,” I said. “She hasn’t had much opportunity for assignations, with Longman or anyone else, and these things take time to develop. Especially with good, pious girls like Helene. Can you imagine anyone seducing Helene without having to work at it?”

  “I had no idea . . . no idea,” said my father-in-law, “what a responsibility a girl of sixteen can be.” He wiped a hand across his brow. He was actually perspiring with rage.

  “It could even,” I said, “be a good thing.”

  “A good thing?”

  “You were quite glad when she showed an interest in De Clairpont,” I said, “because it meant that she was human. So does this. What sort of wife would an alabaster saint make? A wife needs a few natural urges.”

  “She’s not entitled to natural urges until she is a wife. You would say a thing like that,” said Blanchard, quite pettishly. “You and Gerald eloped, after all. You let your natural urges get the better of you, both of you. Oh, never mind. All that water flowed under the bridge and down to the sea a long time ago now. But I shall speak to Jenkinson. I shall tell him to keep his man in order. The horses attached to this inn have come back—they came in this afternoon. We’ll be on our way in the morning. Oh, how far is it to Antwerp? Will we never get there?”

  15

  Leaping Fish

  Altogether, it took ten days to reach Antwerp. Blanchard continued to be annoyed. In his opinion, Jenkinson had not been shocked enough by Longman’s assignation with Helene.

  “Stephen’s no fool. He wouldn’t try to seduce your ward, Master Blanchard. But a little flirtation—well, why not? It might do that girl good,” said Jenkinson, and added: “I’ve never known him be attracted by pious airs and a lanky figure before. He likes them plump and giggly as a rule. But I’ll have a word with him if you like.”

  “I’ve no confidence in what he calls having a word,” my father-in-law confided to me. “He doesn’t take it seriously.”

  Whether Jenkinson did or did not speak to Longman, I didn’t kn
ow. But Helene showed no further inclination to creep out to clandestine meetings. We traveled more slowly on the last part of the journey, but both she and Jeanne were exhausted at the end of each day and Helene was content to remain in her room in whatever inns we found, and even to take meals there rather than join us downstairs.

  The final day was easy riding, since the road was well maintained and the land was flat. Antwerp, like most trade centers, was surrounded by villages as a prince is surrounded by courtiers or, as Anthony Jenkinson more cynically remarked, a mouse hole is guarded by cats. As we passed through the last village, we saw the tall pinnacles of the Cathedral of the Holy Virgin coming nearer, and soon we were in Antwerp itself, in the winding streets among the tall, narrow houses that I remembered so well. By dinnertime, we were unsaddling in the courtyard of an inn called, if translated into English, the Sign of the Leaping Fish.

  Both Jenkinson and I had been there before, though at different times. Although Gerald was a member of Sir Thomas Gresham’s household, we had not lived under Sir Thomas’s roof. Before we left England, Gresham had noted Gerald’s talent for getting to know people and persuading them to talk to him, and had decided that this young man would be good at finding people who could be bribed or blackmailed into helping to steal the city’s treasures.

  If so, his prospective victims would trust him more easily if his address was not the same as Gresham’s, and we spent our first few days in Antwerp at the Sign of the Leaping Fish, while we looked for lodgings. Jenkinson, it now transpired, had stayed there two years before us. We both remembered it well, however, and agreed that it would be a good choice if it hadn’t changed hands.

  It hadn’t. The landlord we had both known, Meister Piedersen, was still there. He was big and ginger-bearded, one of those highly professional hosts with a memory for names and faces, and he spoke English. “Mistress Blanchard! Master Jenkinson! But of course, of course, I remember you both. And this is your father-in-law, Mistress Blanchard? You are most welcome, sir. And where is Master Gerald? Dead? I had no idea. What a tragedy. I am desolated to learn of it. And this is your ward, sir? Welcome, Mistress Helene. You have had a long journey, it seems. You must be thankful to be out of France. The stories we are hearing . . . ! You wish to be known as Master Drury, sir? By all means. You can trust my discretion. Yes, we have rooms. A merchant and his train have just left . . .”