Queen's Ransom

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  But it was not Wilkins who now filled my mind. Elizabeth had made such a point of sending me to France with that letter. That needless, unasked, ill-timed letter. Why?

  And then, cruelly, as though the words were being written in my soul by a cold, cold pen—by an icicle—I saw what the answer to Sidney’s question might be.

  “I don’t know,” I said to Sir Henry. “Believe me, I am not in Her Majesty’s confidence to a sufficient extent. I imagine she thought she was, as you suggest, keeping one step ahead of everyone else. Perhaps it was a mistake. I did as I was told, but I am only a Lady of the Presence Chamber. I am not a council member.”

  Sir Henry sighed. “I suppose that is true. But I did want to ask you.”

  He was a likable man, was Sir Henry Sidney: competent, intelligent, far far kinder than his sister’s husband, Robin Dudley, but for that very reason, in some ways an innocent. If I had guessed right, then that letter had had a very definite purpose, though not one to be discussed with Sir Henry. It was my private business.

  “I need to speak to you,” I said to my father-in-law. “Privately, if you will.”

  He gazed down at me, frowning, but saw that I was very serious, and said mildly enough: “The sun is warm. Let us go to the courtyard garden.”

  The courtyard garden was a good place for private conversation. The box hedges that surrounded it and edged the little gravel paths between the regimented beds of flowers were only two feet high. No one could lurk behind them and overhear us. The flowers were familiar, blooms I had known in England: golden and purple heartsease, little blue forget-me-nots. In the center of the garden there was a flowering tree and beneath it was a bench, where we sat down. Then I came to the point without wasting time for I was by now extremely tired of mystery and evasion.

  “I already know,” I said, “that when you brought me to France you knew a trap was being set for my husband, Matthew de la Roche. To keep me close to his home for a while, you feigned illness at Le Cheval d’Or. You knew that Cecil’s men were watching me. One of your own men, Harvey, searched my baggage in case Matthew had written to me. All this, I have already discovered. But was there more? I thought that Cecil was just seizing the opportunity given by my journey to France. Now, I think that my entire journey was planned for that purpose.”

  “What?” Blanchard stared at me.

  “I think,” I said, “that Cecil asked you to seek my help in bringing Helene over; so that I would not suspect that it was his idea and that of the queen; so that I would not suspect I was to be used as bait! I think, too, that the queen gave me a pointless letter to deliver to Paris in order to keep me in France longer, to take me to the court, where Matthew might well be if he were not at home in the Loire. All to increase the chances that Matthew and I would contact each other.”

  I thought back bitterly to that summons after the visit to the Tower, to that apparent last-minute request to carry a letter to Queen Catherine. It had been clever. Elizabeth had made use of the massacre at Vassy to give color to it, to make it seem extra important.

  “I remember,” I said, “how you always shouted out my name very loudly whenever we reached an inn. Almost as if you wanted to tell the whole of France that Mistress Ursula Blanchard had arrived. Am I right?”

  “Of course not!” But he had gone crimson and when I stared at him fixedly, he would not meet my eyes.

  “I am quite wrong?” I asked him. I added: “I do not blame you for obeying the queen and Cecil. I have said as much before. Everyone obeys them. We have been over all that. Matthew is safe away and I can afford, Father-in-law, to understand your position. But just what was that position? When you asked me to come with you to France, did you really do so as a private family matter? Or because the queen and Cecil had ordered you to ask me?”

  Blanchard’s dignified face was full of resentful misery. “Very well! Since you will have it, madam! Cecil knows—a great deal. He must keep himself informed about a good many things that one might think are none of his business. He knows who all your relatives or relatives by marriage are; he knew about Helene and he knew that I wished to bring her to England.”

  I wasn’t surprised. Cecil, no doubt, had an informant in the Blanchard household. He had them in all sorts of places.

  “He sent for me,” said Blanchard shortly,“and, yes, proposed that I should ask you to go with me, and told me why. Well, what was I to do? Cecil is the Secretary of State and he was acting on behalf of Queen Elizabeth. She did all she could to ensure that we would be safe in France, you know.” He sounded querulous. “And it was mostly for your safety, not for mine. For God’s sake, what difference does it make whether Cecil and the queen made use of my journey to France—or arranged it from the beginning? It’s not much of a distinction!”

  “Is it not? If the trap for Matthew was a mere sideshow, tacked on to the side of a journey for another, private purpose, that is one thing. But if the entire enterprise was a trap, with me as the cheese . . . yes, I think there is a distinction! “I wonder what would have happened if I had refused to go at all. But I suppose I know the answer to that.” I sighed. “I would have been ordered to go, to carry the letter. And I would have obeyed orders, just as you did.”

  “Yes. One does—obey orders. Even when I pretended to be ill, I was obeying Cecil’s bidding. That was his idea. He told me to make it seem convincing—even to sending for a physician. When you offered to fetch one,” he added, “I wondered if you were seizing on a chance to escape from the inn to make contact with your husband. I had you followed.”

  “I know.,” I said.

  “When I had your luggage searched,” said Blanchard, “it was because the doctor’s errand boy had just brought my medicine. Harvey told me that a messenger had come asking for you. We didn’t then realize it was the doctor’s lad. Harvey and I both thought it might be someone with word from De la Roche. My men,” he added, “are of course fully in my confidence. Sweetapple did not care for the deception and once even had the impertinence to say so, but when I reminded him that it was being done on the queen’s orders, for the purpose of apprehending a traitor—”

  “Sweetapple, too, obeyed orders,” I finished for him. “Yes, I see. I can accept all that, though if Matthew had been caught I might feel differently. I know about orders from Queen Elizabeth and Sir William Cecil. So, I have it right?”

  “You have it right. Ursula, I had to do as I was bid. Things can happen to men who refuse orders from the court. They can find themselves losing their lands, their positions, or their sons can. And besides . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “I was not altogether unwilling. Your husband,” said Blanchard, “is a traitor to England. I have said that to you before. And you know it as well as I do.”

  “He is still my husband.”

  “I once said to you that, after all, Gerald chose well. One might say that Matthew de la Roche chose well, too. But do you choose well, Ursula? Your choices seem to make a good deal of trouble, every time.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I understand everything now.”

  There was no more to be said. I walked out of the garden by myself, leaving my father-in-law to stare after me. I had forgotten him almost before I reached the gate, for he, after all, was not the one who mattered. I felt as though I were looking into hell.

  21

  White Night

  I endured the rest of the day as best I could. I went to see Dale, who was sleeping in my bed, with Brockley watching beside her, and I was glad for them. I returned to the sitting room. Blanchard had not yet come back and Jenkinson was out, too. I read my book of poems for a while, and then tried to do some embroidery, which is usually a soothing occupation. It did nothing to soothe me now. I gave up, and took to pacing the floor.

  I was pulled up short by Jenkinson, who suddenly burst in with Ryder. They began talking animatedly to me before they were well through the door. “News, Mistress Blanchard! Such news! Ryder came to my lodging to tell me
and now we’re bringing it to you!” Jenkinson was incandescent with it.

  “We found out at the cockfight.” Ryder was grinning broadly through his brindled beard. “You did well, Mistress Blanchard, very well indeed.”

  “Did well? What do you mean, Ryder?” I could make no sense of this.

  “I’ve been told everything that happened in Antwerp,” Ryder said. “I know almost as much as though I’d been there. Mistress Blanchard, a ship called the St. Margaret is in port here! Is that name familiar to you? I’m sure it must be.”

  “Yes. I knew she was here and I’ve been wondering about her.”

  “Wonder no more!” said Jenkinson. “Tell her, Ryder!”

  “The tavern where we saw the cockfight was full of it, mistress,” said Ryder. “The skipper of the St. Margaret was in there. He brought his ship in yesterday, he said, and according to him, he’d never had a voyage like it. He was enjoying himself, I can tell you. He had his audience in his palm. Most actors would sell their teeth or their souls to get such attention. And by the time he’d finished, he had half the clientele vying to buy him drinks.”

  He paused, teasingly, and I said: “Well, go on.”

  “It seems,” said Jenkinson, “that he’d sailed from Antwerp with some passengers, a learned doctor named Ignatius Wilkins with three servants, and also two respectable Venetian merchants . . .”

  “Really?” I said.

  “Really. But although he started off with six passengers, he ended up with only three. Go on, Ryder. It’s your story. I only know it secondhand, from you.”

  “It seems, mistress,” said Ryder, “that one morning, the learned doctor and the two merchants didn’t come to the dining cabin to eat breakfast, so he sent sailors to see if they were ill and they came back saying that all three were gone. The cabin the merchants had shared was empty, of belongings as well as people. The doctor had a cabin to himself—his men shared a different one—and the doctor’s quarters were in confusion as if there had been a struggle. There was no blood, but everything was thrown about and the bedding was all anyhow. And that wasn’t all. One of the small boats that the St. Margaret carries in case they have to abandon ship was also gone. They were quite near Ostend, not far offshore, and the captain put in to make inquiries. He didn’t learn much, but he did discover that two men resembling the Venetian merchants had had breakfast at a hostelry in the town. There were only the two of them. But from the state of the doctor’s cabin, he didn’t leave willingly. It looks as if only two men reached the shore, not three. The captain of the St. Margaret himself thinks that.”

  “And so do we,” said Jenkinson. “It appears that the captain of the St. Margaret mentioned the names of the two merchants. They were Signor Bruni and Signor Morelli.”

  “I take your meaning,” I said. “Excuse me one moment.”

  I went quietly through to the room where Dale was asleep. Brockley smiled at me from the other side of the bed. “She’ll mend, madam,” he said. “A few days of food and rest. They did feed her, and they did give her a better cell, but she’s been so frightened she could scarcely sleep or eat.”

  She had had much to fear. Ignatius Wilkins would have consigned Dale, living, to the flames. I would not pity him.

  But I knew what had happened, as clearly as though I had witnessed it. Bruni and Morelli had crept into Wilkins’s cabin at night. He must have resisted, or the cabin wouldn’t have been in confusion, but they had made sure that he made no noise. If they had told him they believed that his name was really Jenkinson, they hadn’t let him shout out his denials. They must have stopped his mouth, and if he was lucky, they had stopped his breath as well before they dragged him out. But they had cruelty in them, those two. It was likely; it was all too likely . . .

  That they had not killed him but merely gagged him before they carried him out and threw him overboard.

  Death by drowning is easier than death by fire, much easier. But it was not pleasant to think of him, struggling and choking in the bitter water as the ship drew away against the stars; perhaps swimming—if he could swim—frantically after it, knowing all the time that he could never catch it up and that no one could hear his cries for help. Knowing that his prayers would be ignored by his God; that he was going to sink under the waves, alone, in the night, that this was the end of the world for him.

  Once again, I had brought about a man’s death. I knew that in the same circumstances, I would do the same again, for it was my innocent Dale who mattered, and the other honest, frightened people who might now live because Wilkins was dead. But it was hard, all the same, to take it in and accept it finally as a part of myself.

  Although I knew I must, and knowing it, I made a beginning then and there.

  “Dale?” I said, my voice determinedly hearty. “Could you take a little more food? It’s nearly suppertime.”

  Wilkins had been a greater barrier between me and Matthew than I knew, until I learned that he was dead. Now that I knew I would never see him again except in bad dreams, it became possible to think of staying in France. Why not?

  There was a war on, but I was married to a Frenchman and France should be my country now. I could not send for Meg until peace returned; no of course not. But to go back to England meant returning to the court of Elizabeth, who had used me in a fashion I did not think I could ever forgive.

  But . . . but . . . there were so many buts. And with that, I fell prey to a welter of emotions so violent and conflicting that I felt they might kill me.

  I had loved Elizabeth for many reasons. One bond was that of sympathy for we shared a tendency to white nights and sick headaches. Both of these horrors now descended on me. I lay awake throughout almost all of the following night, only falling into a heavy doze when dawn was near, and waking, little more than an hour later, to blinding pain.

  It was as though a vise were clamped around my brows, and all the bones of my skull were being ground together. Later in the day I threw up, but the pain only eased for a little while, before returning with renewed violence to start the cycle again.

  Dale, shaky though she was, got up and ministered to me, bringing me the chamomile potion that sometimes helped. This time I couldn’t even keep it down and so great was the pain that I hardly slept the next night, either. By the following morning I was desperate, my stomach muscles sore from repeated vomiting, and my head a ringing gong. People came to see me: my father-in-law, Jenkinson, Sidney, all of them worried and none of them with anything useful to suggest. They went away shaking their heads anxiously.

  “Oh, ma’am, what am I to do for you?” Dale was in despair. “Who can help you? Shall I get a physician?”

  “Don’t you dare. A physician would bleed me and probably offer me something disgusting like a mouse coated in honey,” I said, trying to be humorous, and then grabbed for the basin again because the mere image of a honey-coated mouse was enough to launch disaster.

  I did need help, most certainly, but not in the form of potions or medicines. I needed advice, from someone solid and sensible, on whom I could rely.

  “Dale,” I said, “bring Brockley here. I want to talk to him.”

  Brockley had been nearby although he had stayed tactfully out of the sickroom. Now he came in quickly, glad to be of service. “Madam, I am so very sorry. You wanted to see me? Is there something I can do?”

  “Yes. Dale, will you guard the door? I want no one to come in, or hear what I’m going to say. Brockley can tell you all about it afterward; it’s not a secret from you. But it has to be a secret from everyone else.” Dale bobbed a conspiratorial curtsy and went out, shutting the door firmly after her. “Sit down, Brockley,” I said, “there, on the edge of the bed, and listen.”

  “I’m all ears, madam.” It was one of Brockley’s rare jokes, an attempt to amuse the invalid. I was grateful to him. As he sat down, his outline was slightly blurred because my eyes could not focus properly. But in all creation, if anyone could tell me what to do, it was Roger Brockl
ey.

  “I’ve been betrayed, Brockley, by the queen and by Cecil, and in a way that I can hardly believe, except that my father-in-law has confirmed it. You know of course that Cecil sent three men with me, hoping that while I was in France, my husband would contact me?”

  “Yes, madam. You told us that in the abbey at St. Marc.”

  “Quite. And it was with Master Blanchard’s connivance. Well, I have been talking to him and it seems that things were worse even than I thought. The fact is that Matthew is badly wanted in England. He has information that Cecil wants, concerning those in England who would like to see Mary Stuart in Elizabeth’s place. I knew all that, and I even understand it—but Matthew is my husband. In this respect, the queen and Cecil should have been willing to do without me. But instead . . . I just didn’t know how much Cecil—and Queen Elizabeth—want that information, and I didn’t know how far they were willing to go to get their hands on Matthew.

  “I thought Cecil was just taking advantage of the fact that I was coming to France. It wasn’t so. My whole journey, from the beginning, was planned so that I should be the bait. I was given a letter to carry secretly to Queen Catherine, but there was no need for that letter, no need for any secret messenger. The letter was nothing but a devious Tudor plot in a fine Tudor hand!”

  Bitterly, I told him the whole story of the invented errand.

  “Matthew knew he was in danger,” I said. “He’d been taking care. Cecil and the queen hoped that if I passed close by, it would bring him into the open and so it did, and I helped it to happen because I couldn’t forbear to ask after him. I played their game, Brockley, but unknowingly. And so we all came into peril, Fran most of all. I am so very sorry, Brockley.”

  “You were hardly to know, madam.”

  “No. I didn’t know. I never thought Elizabeth would use me so. Never! Cecil, perhaps—but not Elizabeth.”