The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)

by Buckley, Fiona

  “He was evidently a man of wide interests.” Mason spoke courteously enough this time. “He was quite right. Only,” he added, with regret, and slight irritation, like a teacher whose favourite pupil has failed to fulfil his potential, “da Vinci never did unlock the secret. He always thought in terms of flapping wings, and I have observed falcons and seagulls when they come inland in winter. They rise on the wind with their wings stretched and still. Could the secret lie not in violent flapping, but in the shape of the wing and its size compared to the body?

  “Also, there is the matter of speed. When ducks and swans take off from water, they have to get up speed first and a fine to-do they make over it! I am thinking of trying to launch from the tower with a catapult. Heavy stones used to be thrown by siege catapults. Given enough speed for take-off, one might contrive an engine with rigid wings which might hover like a falcon and survey a terrain from above, which could be of use in time of war.”

  “Ah, now that does sound worthwhile—if it can be done,” Rob said.

  “And why should it not be done? We live in an age of new ideas,” said Mason. “New exploration, new commodities, new inventions; human knowledge expands every day. I have been experimenting with different shapes of wing, placed at various angles in streams of water. My workshop is at the far end of the yew garden, and it’s very cold there today, but I have some diagrams of my results in my study. If you would care to examine them . . .”

  I would have loved to say yes, because it would have given me a chance to familiarise myself with the study, but he had turned away from me and was only addressing Rob. Rob responded with a well-mannered “Naturally!” and the two men departed, taking their wine with them. The ladies were obviously not invited.

  I was left chafing, with Ann, but there was no help for it. Sipping my wine, I asked Ann how her children did, and where their little dogs had gone.

  “One of the dogs died of an illness,” she said, “and then one ran in front of our coach wheel and was killed. My naughty boys were chasing it. The last remaining dog turned vicious, I think because of their teasing, and bit Cathy. We found it a home with Dr. Forrest, the Anglican vicar in the village. The children were upset, but I told them it was their own fault. That sobered them somewhat.”

  “I’ve come to help you with them,” I said, “so will you tell me about them?”

  “Oh, of course. Well, George is thirteen and Philip is twelve. Then comes Penelope, who is just turned eleven. She has a sharp mind, and lately she has shown interest in her studies. She now shares her brothers’ lessons in Latin and Greek—though I fear she is still unruly. They all are! Next comes Jane, who is nine, and Catherine—every family must have its Catherine, mustn’t it?—who was seven only last November. My little Henry is not yet one and a half. Well, he is not unruly yet, though no doubt it will come! He is sleeping just now. Of course, your concern will be mainly the girls.”

  “Seven altogether! You have a big family,” I said.

  “I suppose I have. They exhaust me sometimes,” Ann said, sipping her own wine and looking somehow uneasy about it, as though in the normal way she hardly ever sat down for a little quiet refreshment, “but then, that is a woman’s work in the world.”

  I didn’t answer that. Dale had never become pregnant, and had told me she was relieved, while I, deeply as I loved Meg, had had a hard time at her birth. Afterwards, Gerald had taught me how to use a vinegar-soaked sponge to discourage conception. We would wait before we tried to have any more babies, he said. To risk my life would be to risk depriving the infant Meg of her mother. I had been grateful, but I did not think Ann would understand.

  Ann noticed the silence, though, and at once filled it with a change of subject. “If you’ve finished your wine,” she said, “would you like me to show you your room?”

  It was the same room that Dale and I had shared before, well lit, with plastered walls and a high, beamed ceiling. Its mullioned windows overlooked the topiary yew garden between the two wings of the house. The yews had a sombre air. The bushes were clipped more or less into the shapes of chess pieces, but like so much at Lockhill, they were in need of better maintenance. The timber building just visible beyond the topiary was presumably Mr. Mason’s workshop.

  The room was in order, however, and while Ann was showing us the empty clothes press and pulling out the truckle bed for Dale, Jennet came in with towels over her arm and a jug of hot water. Soap was on the washstand already.

  “There,” said Ann. “I hope you’ll be comfortable. We shall dine in an hour. Later, I expect you will want to talk to my girls, Mrs. Blanchard—you really don’t mind being addressed as Mrs., I hope? Leonard says . . .”

  “Yes, that he wants to follow the modern fashion.” I did not much care for this particular modern usage but had already realised that it was gaining ground. “That will be quite all right,” I said.

  “That’s good. Leonard is not really unworldly,” said Ann, “even if he does often seem to be walking in a fog. His work fills his mind. Sometimes he stays in his study until the small hours and then snatches a little sleep in the room next door so that he can begin again first thing in the morning. At other times he comes to bed, and then gets up in the night and goes to his study because an idea has come to him and he wants to attend to it at once.”

  Leonard Mason led a busy life, I thought. Between working in his study at night and siring his numerous family, when did he ever find time to sleep at all?

  And how was I to examine his correspondence if he was liable to wander into his study in the small hours? I had been relying on night-time for my search.

  Downstairs, someone was calling urgently for Mrs. Mason. Excusing herself, Ann hurried away, to be greeted from somewhere below by a cacophany of raised voices. Tiptoing out of the bedchamber after her, I paused on the little landing at the top of the main stairs, listened, and then traced the sound through an arched doorway to the head of the back stairs. The voices came from the kitchen.

  “. . . I only wanted a bit of marchpane. It smelt so good and I’m so hungry. Dinner’s going to be late again; why can’t I just have a bit of marchpane . . . ?”

  “. . . because I can’t have ’ee under my feet,” thundered an irritated male voice, another one with a Berkshire accent. “Least of all when I’m a’trying to make dinner for three extra mouths no one told me were coming. The master’s always querying the bills so I never make food to spare and now . . .”

  “Perhaps, Pen, if you went into the kitchen to help instead of getting in the way and eating food that’s meant for the table, it would be different. You should learn to cook. When you have your own home . . .”

  “I’ll not have any of them learning in my kitchen, madam. We’ve tried that if you recall, and I’d as soon have imps of Satan under my feet. If I had some extra hands, good, skilled hands in the kitchen, it might be different, but with only Mrs. Logan and Joan and Jennet, and them doing other things half the time and no spitboy . . .”

  “. . . is there no peace in this house, ever? Why is somebody always shouting?” Leonard Mason had burst upon the scene. “In God’s name, what’s happened now?”

  The angry voices receded and a slamming door shut them off from me. I withdrew, to find Dale standing wide-eyed in the doorway of our bedchamber.

  “It’s just the same as last year, isn’t it, ma’am?”

  “I’m afraid it is,” I said as I led us back into our room and closed our own door, softly. “I feel I’ve never been away!”

  “Ma’am . . .”

  “What is it, Dale?”

  “Well, ma’am . . . you’re here to find something out for Sir William Cecil, isn’t that right? That’s what you told us. That something might be wrong here at Lockhill.”

  “Yes, Dale, that’s perfectly correct.”

  “Well, I just wanted to say . . . if you’re looking for signs of a plot, ma’am, are you really looking for them here?”

  I sighed, and sat down on the e
dge of the bed. “I hardly know. Sir William told me to be alert to anything that seemed odd or unusual. The oddest and most unusual thing I’ve seen so far is Master Leonard Mason hurling an imitation bird off the tower! Do you think, Dale, that that could possibly qualify as a sign of a plot against the Queen?”

  “I can’t see how, ma’am! It seems to me that in this house, well, it’s all children and uproar and Mr. Mason trying to study all sorts of peculiar things! As for plots—well, I just can’t imagine . . .”

  For a glorious and comforting moment, I saw my own private vision of Lockhill shared by someone else; given credence. I saw the Mason household bathed in merriment and innocent muddle, like a dilapidated building in afternoon sunshine. I started to laugh and Dale joined in. “Neither can I, Dale!” I gasped. “Neither can I!”

  Then Dale helped me to change my clothes, and we went downstairs to dinner.

  CHAPTER 7

  Intelligent Conversation

  “The children used to eat separately,” Ann Mason said across the dinner table, “but Dr. Crichton has lately decided that it would benefit them to join the adults. So now,” she commented brightly, “we all eat together, as a family.”

  I could see that the brightness was an effort. Chronic weariness was evident in her eyes and her voice, but she had put on fresh clothes and was doing her best to uphold her dignity as the mistress of a manor house. Ann Mason had standards. She just lacked the time and energy to impose them in more than one or two places.

  She had evidently concentrated her efforts on the dining room. The side table, where Redman was pouring a sauce over a platter of boiled chickens, was protected from the hot dishes by a clean white cloth. There were aromatic strewing herbs among the rushes underfoot, and the dining table was furnished with another white cloth, and with burnished spoons and pewter goblets.

  Looking about me, I noticed that, like the Cecils, the Masons had improved their dining room since I last saw it. Here, too, were new tapestries. The old ones had been very faded, but the walls were now adorned by richly coloured panels telling the story of the Return of the Prodigal.

  Rob saw me looking and remarked on them to Mr. Mason. “They’re very fine. Florentine, are they not?” he said.

  Mason had also dressed for his guests, donning a tailored doublet, faced in fawn silk and embroidered with blue and green leaves. Dr. Crichton, on the other hand, was still in his dusty black gown and didn’t even have the presence with which to carry it off. An impressive figure, Dr. Crichton was not. The children, all well washed, padded, brocaded and ruffed, were considerably smarter than their tutor.

  Instead of answering Rob’s question himself, Mason looked to Crichton for a reply, and it came with some assurance.

  “Quite right, Mr. Henderson. The designer came from Florence. The draperies the family in the tapestry are wearing are in the style seen in many Florentine paintings.”

  I had turned to look closely at the panel nearest to me. “I think—” I began, but Leonard Mason broke in.

  “As a matter of fact, although he is too modest to say so, these tapestries actually belong to Nicholas Crichton here. An uncle left them to him as a legacy. Having nowhere of his own to hang them, he is kindly allowing me to decorate my walls with them. They are finer than anything I could afford. Such tapestries as I do own, I inherited from my father and I have lost some of those through moth and mildew. I am grateful to Crichton for his loan.”

  “Well, I am grateful to have a place to put my legacy,” said Crichton. He had a flat, morose voice—no wonder he couldn’t command his pupils’ attention. “My uncle,” he said, “had had them for many years, but fortunately they are still in good condition. On these walls, they continue to give pleasure, and we can look at them and discuss the ins and outs of Italian design. And that, children, is partly why I wished you to share our mealtimes. By doing so, you not only learn how to behave in company, but you have a chance to enhance your education by hearing intelligent conversation. Penelope!”

  Penelope had let out a shriek and punched Philip, who was sitting next to her. I gazed at them in bemusement.

  “He kicked me!” Penelope said. “Philip kicked me!”

  “I am thinking,” said Leonard Mason coldly, “of finding a school for you two boys. Dr. Crichton can continue to teach your sisters but I think it’s time that you boys were taught away from home, where, although I regret it, you may find yourselves subject to a harsher regime than I have ever let Crichton impose on you. Intelligent conversation, indeed! How can one have any conversation at all, if it is to be punctuated by this sort of thing?”

  Rob Henderson, however, had a decidedly mischievous streak in his nature. “Did you kick your sister?” he enquired of Philip. “If so, why?”

  Philip sulkily applied a spoon-edge to a dumpling and refused to answer.

  Penelope did it for him. “He doesn’t think there’s any point in girls listening to intelligent conversation so as to learn how to do it themselves, because he thinks we aren’t capable of it. He kicked me to remind me that he’d said that.”

  George emitted a snort of mirth, and Jane and Cathy giggled.

  Repressively, I said. “The Queen of England would not agree with Philip. Queen Elizabeth has the keenest wit I have ever come across and can follow every twist and turn of a debate between scholars.”

  “And I’m quite sure,” said Ann, “that Queen Elizabeth would not kick or punch anyone. Is that not so, Mrs. Blanchard?”

  “Certainly,” I said, with doubtful truth. Admittedly, I had never actually seen Elizabeth launch a kick or a punch, but she sometimes slapped her maids of honour, and I had once seen her snatch off a shoe and throw it at Lady Katherine Knollys, for venturing to remark that, considering his clouded reputation, Robert Dudley was being allowed into the Queen’s private rooms too often. Elizabeth was less of an example than one could wish, but I didn’t propose to say so.

  Penelope was impressed by this talk of the Queen. “Have you seen Queen Elizabeth, then, Mrs. Blanchard?” she asked.

  “Now, Penelope. You know that I explained to you all that Mrs. Blanchard is one of the Queen’s ladies, although she is taking a brief rest from the court and has come to help me meanwhile,” said Ann reprovingly. “Tell us something of court life, Mrs. Blanchard. You must meet many well-known people there. How did you come to join the court?”

  Therefore, while Redman served the chickens and we began to eat them, I talked of my past life in Antwerp, and my present post with the Queen, and how Rob Henderson and his wife were fostering my little daughter and educating her so that one day she too might come to court. Rob occasionally put in a remark. I knew I should be effacing myself and listening to the Masons’ conversation, in case it contained any of the clues I sought. I also badly wanted a closer look at those tapestries. However, even though neither Mason nor Crichton had addressed a word to me since I came to the table, these people were my hosts and sheer good manners required me to be agreeable. If I were asked to talk, I had better do so.

  The Mason children now listened attentively and caused no more disturbance. Indeed, Penelope, possibly bent on refuting Philip’s rude dismissal of female intelligence, took to asking searching questions.

  “Can ordinary people see the Queen, Mrs. Blanchard—have audiences with her, I mean, not just watch her go by in her coach? Are they allowed?”

  “Oh yes, sometimes. Not long before I came here, a quite ordinary clockmaker was granted an audience so that he could present her with a gift. I was there at the time.”

  “What was it?” George asked with interest. “A golden clock, all set with jewels?”

  “Well, it had a gilded case, but it was actually a—”

  Penelope’s manners hadn’t become perfect on the instant, and she interrupted impatiently. “Of course it was jewelled. It must have been studded with gems! Would you dare to offer a queen anything that wasn’t?”

  “Yes,” said George. “I wouldn’t offer her a g
emstudded saddle. She wouldn’t be able to sit on it!”

  “Now, now,” said Crichton, but Penelope plunged eagerly on.

  “Does the Queen live in great luxury, Mrs. Blanchard? Does she eat off gold dishes every day?”

  I looked carefully at Penelope, thinking that although she would never be a beauty, not with that bulging forehead and square jaw, her zest for life conferred its own attractiveness. I liked her. I gave her a smile.

  “The Queen lives with proper dignity,” I said. “When she holds state banquets, then there are gold dishes and napkins with gold embroidery, and yes, she often wears dresses sewn with jewels—she is particularly fond of pearls. But she is well aware of the need to curb extravagance. She has to strike a balance between impressing dignitaries and avoiding waste. In private, she wears simpler gowns and she dines from gilt dishes, not gold. She is herself abstemious in food and drink.”

  “One hears rumours,” said Crichton, addressing me at last, “of much extravagance at court—in dress and furnishings, and behaviour, too.”

  I shook my head. “The court is well conducted, and if the furnishings are fine, most of them were there before the Queen came to the throne, or have come to her in the form of gifts. She is careful with the realm’s money. She spends much less than Queen Mary did.”

  “Ah. Poor Queen Mary.” Dr. Crichton sighed. “She made many mistakes, but she was a sick and disappointed woman.”

  “She was also a very extravagant one,” I said. If there were people here who wanted to bring back the past, then let them be reminded of the truth about that past. “Queen Elizabeth makes a point of nurturing the economy. One of the first things she did when she came to the throne was to improve the coinage.” Cecil had enlarged on this subject before I left the court. “None of her gold money is less than twenty-two carat,” I said, “and her sovereigns and angels are above twenty-three.”