By Royal Command

by Mary Hooper

  Shortly after I’d reasoned this, Tomas entered the room with a tiny woman, no bigger than a child of six, on his arm. He was masked and again wearing the Harlequin outfit, and the little woman was partnered with him as Columbine and dressed in a satin gown of quite startling yellow, with everything about her in miniature, from the tip of her jewelled headpiece down to her feet in minute satin shoes. I’d never seen such a delightful and engaging creature in all my life before, not even at a fair, and could not stop from staring whilst she and Tomas promenaded around the floor, drawing all eyes to them.

  There was much clapping from the floor, and calls of ‘Charming!’ and ‘Enchanting!’ before, after making two circuits of the room, Tomas led her to the platform beneath the throne. She sat down on the edge of this, swinging her legs, and hadn’t been there more than a moment before she was approached by one of the queen’s ladies-in-waiting who, lifting her as if she were a doll, carried her off to a window alcove.

  ‘’Tis the queen’s dwarf, Tomasina,’ said a woman standing nearby, noticing my fascination. ‘Have you not seen her before?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Her Grace is most fond of her. She has a bed in Her Grace’s apartment and is always taken on progresses.’

  I curtseyed to my new acquaintance, who was, perhaps, in her mid-thirties and wearing a dark gown and single row of pearls. She looked neat and elegant – and ‘twas therefore difficult to tell whether she was a guest or a high servant.

  She asked very politely who I was, and I told her my name and that I’d come to the palace with Dr Dee.

  ‘You work with him?’ she asked, startled. ‘You are some type of . . . of cunning woman?’

  I shook my head quickly. ‘No! I’m merely his children’s nurse.’

  She stood back a little and surveyed what I was wearing. ‘Well, my dear, I must say that you don’t dress like a nursemaid.’

  I smiled. ‘I have a friend who is a lady, and she gave me this gown,’ I said. I hesitated, then saw no harm in telling her the truth. ‘But I’m not here as a nursemaid, for I’ve come to help set up Dr Dee’s apparatus ready for an experiment.’

  ‘Really, my dear?’

  I was torn then between curiosity and politeness, and the former won. ‘And do you . . . ?’ I asked, leaving the question open.

  ‘I’m maid to one of Her Grace’s maids of honour,’ she said proudly.

  ‘And have you been so for long?’

  ‘Ten years,’ was the reply. ‘My young lady came to Court as a girl of twelve, and is now twenty-two.’

  ‘Is she here now?’ I asked, nodding towards the groups of ladies.

  ‘Indeed she is,’ said the woman, speaking like a proud mother. ‘She is in blue velvet, with her hair coiled about her head.’

  I saw the girl immediately, for although she had quite a plain face, her hair was fair and arranged most beautifully in plaits around her head, these plaits having pearls threaded through.

  I gave a cry of admiration. ‘Her hair is very elegant.’

  ‘And most complicated. It took a very long time,’ she confided with a sigh.

  ‘You must have many skills and abilities.’

  She nodded. ‘All the lady’s maids must be able to style hair, iron ruffs, mend lace and calm a high complexion. Oh, and apply a poultice to feet that have seen too much dancing,’ she added with a smile.

  ‘And is it true you’re like one big family?’

  She nodded and laughed. ‘Mostly we are, because we love what we’re doing and revere Her Grace. Sometimes, though, one or other of us is churlish and there’s a falling-out – as is usual in a family.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, and I made some other chit-chat, admiring the cut of a dress, the colour of some leather slippers, asking how the young ladies managed to keep up with fashions and so on, and all the time wondering how I could gain more knowledge of Mistress Pryor. After a short while I said, ‘My cousin, who is ‘prenticed to a perfumer, visited the Court once. She met a lady-in-waiting who was very kind to her, and oft speaks of it.’

  ‘Who was that?’ the woman asked.

  ‘I believe the lady’s name was Mistress Pryor. Is there anyone of that name here?’

  ‘That would be Madeleine Pryor,’ said the woman. She looked up and down the hall. ‘She’ll be here somewhere; I saw her earlier.’ She smiled. ‘You wish to give her your cousin’s greetings, do you?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t dare to approach her! If I saw her I could tell my cousin of it, that was all.’

  ‘Well, you’ll be sure to see her, for everyone comes into the hall when Her Grace opens her gifts. Although . . .’

  I glanced at her enquiringly.

  ‘I know Mistress Pryor has been feeling rather out of sorts of late, for she oft retires early to her chamber.’

  I put on an expression of concern. ‘It’s nothing severe, I hope.’

  ‘I trust not, for if one young lady suffers with an ague or a fever, then they all seem to catch it. But Mistress Pryor’s ailment seems to be more one of melancholy, for she is oft sad – and now that I think on it, she was so out of sorts she didn’t come with us on Her Grace’s progress to Kent last September.’

  ‘My cousin will be sorry to hear that she’s unwell,’ I said, my mind sifting and sorting this information. Why had Mistress Pryor declined to go on the progress? Was it in order to pursue her own interests; to work secretly for the Scottish queen?

  ‘I shall be interested to see Dr Dee,’ said my new companion. ‘When will this amusement take place?’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know whether it will be before or after the queen opens her gifts. How do these matters usually go?’

  ‘The gifts take some considerable time, for as each is opened they are logged into a book by the Lord Chancellor.’ She lowered her voice. ‘By the end of it, the only one who is in the least interested in what comes out of which box is the queen herself, so the strolling players and other divertisements are to keep us from being bored while Her Grace is indulged.’

  There was a sudden fanfare of trumpets and a set of double doors were flung open. Everyone turned expectantly and I held my breath, anticipating the queen and wondering what glorious gown and sumptuous jewels she’d be wearing on such an important occasion, but instead a group of five or six noblemen came through, followed by some of the queen’s ladies, including, I saw with a start, Mistress Pryor. All eyes watched while they walked down the room and climbed on to the platform, the ladies dainty and elegant, the men holding themselves very high and proud.

  ‘Her Grace will be here afore long,’ said my companion in my ear. ‘And there is the lady you asked for, wearing pink satin.’

  I thanked her.

  ‘And do you know who the gentlemen are?’

  ‘Not all of them,’ I replied. ‘Who is the big, bear-like man with the gold chains about him?’

  ‘That’s Sir Francis Walsingham,’ came the reply.

  I nodded, pleased to have seen him at last. Realising then that there was someone missing, I scanned the faces once more. ‘But where’s Her Grace’s favourite?’ I asked, for Robert Dudley wasn’t amongst the group on the platform.

  My companion glanced quickly about her before she spoke, but no one seemed to be paying us any attention. ‘He rode home to his fine castle on Christmas Day,’ she said in a low voice, ‘and has not been seen since.’

  ‘I heard a rumour . . .’

  She nodded, putting a finger to her lips. ‘We all know of it. ‘Tis no more than a rumour still, but everyone is affrighted lest Her Grace get to hear.’

  ‘But doesn’t she wonder why he isn’t here at the palace?’

  ‘He’s reported to be unwell, but e’en so . . . Her Grace wants all her men in attendance over Christmastide, and has already let it be known she’s most displeased with him.’

  There was another fanfare of trumpets and everyone looked towards the doors once more. I picked up the front of my skirts rea
dy to curtsey, but still the queen didn’t appear. Instead, a dark-suited equerry entered, walked swiftly through the room, knelt before Sir Francis Walsingham and held out a letter.

  Sir Francis bade the man rise, read the letter and spoke to him very closely and urgently for several minutes. Following this, they both conversed with the other noblemen on the platform.

  By then, most of the room were watching this scene, wondering what was happening, and though I, too, was engrossed, I made sure that I kept part of my attention on Mistress Pryor. Eventually the equerry bowed to Sir Francis and went off, followed by the other gentlemen. Sir Francis then walked to the middle of the platform and, standing with one hand on the gilded arm of the throne, appealed for silence.

  When silence was achieved, he said, ‘I fear Her Grace will not join us this day,’ and my heart plunged for a moment, for I thought something terrible must have happened. Others must have thought it too, for there were some cries and exclamations of alarm. Sir Francis went on quickly, ‘Be reassured that Her Grace has come to no harm. However, some correspondence has been discovered which, only just now decoded, has uncovered a plot whereby our royal lady would have been unseated from her throne and replaced with the usurping Queen of Scotland.’

  Consternation broke out across the hall until, after a moment, Sir Francis again lifted his hands for silence. ‘Rest assured that the plot was revealed before any harm could be done, and Her Grace is perfectly safe. But as she and her advisers must speak together at some length to ensure her continued safety and well-being, she will not be opening her gifts today. Nevertheless, she entreats you to stay, if you will, and enjoy the company gathered here.’

  While all this speech was taking place I was watching Mistress Pryor, and as the word ‘plot’ was uttered, saw high colour come into her cheek. She was alarmed, I could see. Was this just because she feared the queen to be in danger – or because they had uncovered a plot that she was involved in?

  As Sir Francis left the platform, disquiet filled the room. People formed and re-formed into groups, discussing the news, and I heard the word ‘Catholic’ uttered in anger several times. A few people left the hall by the double doors, seemingly on urgent business, and others entered. It was then that something very puzzling occurred, for I saw a figure detach himself from a group nearby, walk swiftly down the length of the room and disappear. He was a tall man wearing a short black cape lined in red silk and, though I only saw him in profile and he wore a mask, in style and bearing he seemed very much like Mr Sylvester – so much so that I could not stop myself from calling out his name. Of course, the commotion about the room was such that no one heard me, least of all him, and although my companion looked at me curiously, I merely said that I thought I’d seen someone I knew.

  Could it really have been him? I wondered after. The figure had seemed very like, and certainly Mr Sylvester had a cloak the same. But . . . but only a few days past I’d heard him say that the Court was mere artifice, that he hated that foul world and would never enter it. But . . . he’d said never enter it again, I thought, recalling his exact words. As if he’d entered it before and found it not to his liking.

  ‘Well,’ said my companion, after we’d watched the courtiers and guests come and go about us for several moments. ‘It doesn’t look as if I shall see Dr Dee’s demonstration after all.’

  ‘It does not,’ I said, adding that I was somewhat relieved.

  ‘Are you going to stay longer?’ she asked then, but I hardly replied to her question, so intent was I on watching Mistress Pryor. She was helped down from the platform in a gracious manner by Tomas, then made her way across the crowded room, concealed from me now and again by the groups of people between us. All was well until she reached the far wall, when she neatly – and very suddenly – disappeared behind a silk hanging. So smoothly did this move occur that if I hadn’t been watching at that precise moment, I might have supposed her to have been magicked into thin air.

  I paused only to say a brief farewell to my companion, then hurried across the room, slipped behind the same hanging and found myself facing an open doorway. Steps descended here and without hesitation I went down, hearing below me the tip-tapping of Mistress Pryor’s shoes on the stone. At the bottom of the steps I found myself outside in a courtyard full of carts and coaches and, swiftly surveying them, saw Mistress Pryor slip into a dark-painted carriage with the driver already atop.

  I gave my first thought then to Dr Dee and wondered if he’d look for me in order to go home. I decided he would not, for if he gave me any thought at all he’d surely expect me to make my own way there. Deciding this, hearing the door close behind Mistress Pryor and her voice calling to the driver to whip up the horse, I quickly climbed on to the luggage rack at the back of the carriage and made ready to hang on for as long as the journey took.

  As the carriage rocked and swayed through Richmond I began to wonder if I’d done a foolish thing, and by the time the horse was stumbling through Barnes on a rutted road and I was being jolted from one side of the rack to the other, I was sure of it, for the continual movement was making me feel unwell. I was greatly relieved, therefore, when in another five minutes we came to a better road – the turnpike road to Hammersmith, I thought – and my journey became somewhat smoother.

  We seemed to be somewhere in Putney when we slowed down. We were near to the river – for I could smell it in the air – and there must also have been a glue-maker’s shop nearby, for I could detect the stink of boiled animal bones. Feeling the coach easing up, I braced myself to jump. I was not worried about hurting myself so much as spoiling – perhaps tearing – my beautiful gown, so I gathered as much material as possible in my arms and waited until the coach had almost stopped before I half-rolled, half-scrambled off the back and then hastily brushed myself down and smoothed out my skirts.

  Dusk was falling and it was easy to conceal myself in the shadows of a doorway and from here peer out and see Mistress Pryor, most of her pale hair concealed under a hood, climb out and speak to the driver. I studied her then, and again as she walked away from the carriage, and perceived that there was something different about her manner now that she was away from the confines of the palace. Perhaps I felt this because of what Isabelle called my Sight, or perhaps I was just imagining it, but Mistress Pryor, for some reason, seemed eager, lighter in her step – and her mind, too. As if – the thought occurred to me – she was only now being her true self.

  There were a few people around in the lane: boys on errands, housewives late with their shopping, a peddler selling ribbands, and as Mistress Pryor moved off I sauntered amongst these, pretending interest in a nearby shop window. She turned into a long passageway which sloped up and away from the river and appeared to have several alleyways going off it, and I followed, finding the way getting narrower and darker as it ran between tall, beamed houses, their jutting bays making them almost meet in the middle. A window opened above me and a bowl of washing water was thrown out, which splashed my gown and shoes. Stopping to shake my skirts, I saw, in the distance, Mistress Pryor go up some steps, cross a small bridge over a stream, then disappear.

  It was at this point I realised that someone was following me, for I heard a man’s heavy footfalls behind me and the panting of someone out of breath, as if they’d been running to catch me up. Frightened, I went through a gate that was standing ajar and entered a small courtyard, hoping that whoever had been following me would presume I’d reached home, and turn away.

  I concealed myself behind the gate as the heavy footfalls came closer, and the thought occurred to me that anyone involved in a plan to kill a queen would not hesitate to kill a nursemaid. I don’t know why I should have thought this, for there was nothing to link my pursuer with the woman I pursued and any dire plot. Somehow, though, I felt there was a connection.

  I held my breath – if I could have remembered a prayer at this time, I would have said it – and kept completely still, fearing that my pursuer might hear my h
eart thumping. After hesitating on the other side of the gate for some moments, however, he went on.

  I tried to steady myself, for my legs were shaking and I feared they wouldn’t bear my weight. I would not, I decided, come out of the courtyard until I’d counted to fifty, in case the man was still lurking nearby. I’d only got halfway through my numbers, though, when looking about me in the near-gloom I saw that a notice had been nailed to the back door of the house whose yard I sheltered in. I was immensely grateful then that I could read, or I might have halted there longer, for on this paper was marked a large red cross, and the words,

  MAY GOD HAVE MERCY ON US.

  Seeing this, I ran out of the courtyard as if the hounds of hell were after me, for whoever had been following me was surely not as terrifying a prospect as the plague.

  ‘I ran off straight,’ I said to Tomas later, ‘and when I reached a little open square at the top of the passageway I found that Mistress Pryor – and whoever had been following me – had both disappeared. I think they may have been together . . .’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he nodded. ‘There are bound to be several other people involved.’

  ‘I’m sorry I lost her again.’

  ‘But this time we know where she went: to somewhere close to a plague-ridden house in Putney. She won’t be so difficult to find.’

  ‘I could show you where I last saw her,’ I offered.

  Tomas nodded. He was not wearing the Harlequin outfit now, but was all in black, with a cloak, hat and silk hood pulled low across his face. In the darkness, he might have passed for anyone, but I knew him by his grey eyes, which reflected almost silver in the light from the candle lantern he was carrying.