It would have relieved his mind immensely if Robert had agreed, but his son-in-law only shook an emphatic head. “I have to go. I’d be ashamed to be left out,” said Robert. “Philippa understands. I’ve talked to her. She realizes how much it means to me and she has given me her blessing.”
It occurred to Stephen that however much in love Robert might be with Philippa, there were things he didn’t know about her. He had never lived with the Algonquin. Of course Philippa, the granddaughter of a chief, had not wept or shouted or even protested. Algonquin women didn’t. They hid their feelings when their men went into danger, but some of them burned inside, and their eyes betrayed them.
Philippa was and always would be partly Algonquin. So Philippa knew what this venture meant to Robert and was happy to see him go, was she? Robert was a fool. What Philippa felt and what Philippa said were two completely different things.
Robert was still talking. “It is such a privilege! To be one of the instruments, however humble, in bringing Queen Mary Stuart to her rightful power and the old faith back to England! How could any man worthy of the name give up the chance, even for the greatest domestic bliss? It would be like a knight refusing his lord’s summons to go to war. Wives and homes and children had to be left behind then. Their honour was at stake as well as the man’s.”
Dear God, said Stephen to himself. He had been frightened for his daughter when she married Robert, but this was worse. He had never known such dread.
“So,” said Jane furiously, marching into Stephen’s chamber with only the briefest of knocks. “So you and Tobias and Robert are all off to London tomorrow and Tobias is still talking nonsense to me about going to a tournament. You, apparently, are going along to give general help with the organizing, meet some of Toby’s well-bred friends and renew your acquaintance with London. Am I expected to believe a single word of this?”
Stephen, who was packing clothes into a hamper, straightened up and said, “I don’t expect it, Aunt Jane. It’s spring, and that was the season we heard mentioned when we stood outside the chapel door that night. And now the summons has come. What you and I fear may well be true. I have managed to make Toby believe that I think as he does. I am going with him and Robert in the hope, mainly, of protecting them. If they need protection, that is. I need to know how real, how serious, this is—this thing they seem to be involved in. It’s my duty, anyway, Aunt Jane. It’s every citizen’s duty.”
“You mean that if it’s serious, you’ll run to the authorities. You’ll admit what you’ve learned! You’ll throw Tobias and Robert to them!”
“Hush!” said Stephen. Jane’s voice had risen alarmingly. For a moment they stared at each other in silence and Jane, watching her nephew’s face, thought that he was about to speak but had checked himself.
“Stephen…” she said pleadingly.
“If the thing is truly serious,” he said, “and not just foolish dreams and unworkable schemes, then yes, I must report what I know. But first I’ll get Tobias and Robert out of it if I possibly can. If they’ll let me!”
“What if you can’t? What if they don’t let you?” Again Jane’s voice had risen, and there was a note of hysteria in it. “And what if you run into danger yourself? Aren’t you putting yourself at risk of arrest?”
“I hope not. Aunt Jane, please. Try to trust me. As a young man,” said Stephen, trying to smile, “I was an adventurer. I still am, but a more responsible one than I was then. You can trust me, Aunt Jane. At least to try as hard as I can to do what is right.”
“What is it you’re not telling me? There’s something. I know it!”
“Dear Aunt, I beg you. Ask no more questions. If Tobias and Robert are running into peril, then I’ll do my utmost to get them out of it but…no, Aunt Jane!” She had begun to protest again and he caught hold of her, grasping her upper arms strongly. “Listen to me, please, please listen. If this plot is serious, then it is a terrible thing. The future of the whole realm may be at stake. Do you want the Inquisition here in England? Do you?”
“The Inquisition!” Jane’s eyes widened in horror.
“Yes,” said Stephen relentlessly. “The Inquisition. Like the days of Queen Mary Tudor, but worse. You remember those days, don’t you? So do I! My father…!”
Jane began to sob. He held her firmly. “Hear me out. If I learn of a real, dangerous plot and hold my tongue, even to save Tobias, even to save my own son-in-law, and the plot succeeds and the Inquisition comes here, then every hideous death they bring about will lie at my door, and if I hold my tongue for your sake, then it will lie at yours, as well.”
“What?”
“I mean it. You must listen.” He released his grip and put his arms around her instead. “It is because of those terrible memories, because of what happened to my father that I must tread so carefully now. Only believe that I will do my best for us all. Don’t betray me to Toby or Robert. Let me deal with this in my own way. Don’t meddle! I will try to save them—if only they’ll listen. If they don’t, then the choice will be theirs and only theirs.”
“I have tried already to talk them into backing out!” said Jane wretchedly. “I said I didn’t believe the tournament story, that I suspected they were in a conspiracy, and pleaded with them to abandon it. They treated me as though I were a stupid woman who knew nothing! They just shook their heads and Toby said he hoped to win a trophy in the lists. Tournament!” She almost spat the word. “Very well, I won’t meddle further.” She drew herself away from him and wiped her eyes. She was trembling. “I understand what is at stake. At stake! Horrible word! I know why Mary Stuart must never rule here. But I charge you with this duty, Stephen. Get them out. Get them out.”
“I have called you here for a very important reason, Gilbert,” said Jane, standing behind the desk in the study. “You are dismissed.”
“Dis…?” Gilbert Mallow, who when Tim Snowe came to fetch him had been on his knees in the chapel praying for the success and safety of the three men who had just left for London, looked at her in bewilderment.
“Yes, Gilbert. Dismissed is the word I used. I want you out of this house. Here are the wages you’re owed.” She picked up a small bag from the desk and held it out to him. “You need not fear betrayal. I can’t denounce you as a conspirator against the queen without also implicating my own family. I know perfectly well why my son and grandson and my nephew have gone to London. Don’t try to deny your part in it. I can never forgive what you and that man Dupont have done between you. I won’t have you here any longer. Not another day.”
“But…!” Gilbert seemed genuinely amazed.
“How many people do you imagine want the kind of rule you wish to inflict on England? I pray, night and day, that the conspiracy fails without bringing about the deaths of Tobias, Robert and Stephen.”
Though so angry that she was shaking, Jane had remembered to include Stephen in the list. Gilbert must not suspect that there was a cuckoo in his little nest of traitors. “Dear God, how could you and Dupont behave like this, confusing their minds with wild dreams? Yes, dreams! Like the visions of someone in a high fever!”
“Mistress Allerbrook, that isn’t so!” Mallow did not seem to understand how outraged she was. His voice was as eager as ever and he even smiled, trying to win a smile from her in response. “Dear Mistress Allerbrook, they have gone on a quest, like King Arthur’s knights, like the crusaders, to restore the true faith—”
“Whose true faith? You mean your faith. Do you also hope to see the Inquisition installed here, to see heretics hunted as they were in the days of Queen Mary Tudor?”
“It wouldn’t be like that, Mistress Allerbrook! Our gracious lady Mary is gentle and merciful….”
“So was Mary Tudor, to start with. I don’t care about your faith, Gilbert. What about mine? How dare you be so arrogant? And how dare you call me dear Mistress Allerbrook? Neither I nor my family are very dear to you if you are prepared to hazard our lives—to hazard the whole country—like t
his. If my family were not virtually hostages, I would denounce you. You have misused my hospitality and led my kinsmen into terrible danger. I wanted to throw you out long ago but—” careful, don’t say it was Stephen’s advice “—I feared it would anger Toby and the others and maybe drive them further into danger. However, they couldn’t be deeper in than they are now! Pack your belongings and go.”
He had still not taken the money. She shook it at him. “Take this. Take it!” Reluctantly he did so. “Be out of this house within one hour,” she said grimly, “or be ejected by force, by the Snowes and Jack Edwardes. Now, leave me. I wish never to set eyes on you again!”
“I have ordered Gilbert Mallow out of the house,” Jane said some time later, walking into the hall where Blanche was putting a bunch of gold and purple heartsease flowers into a little bowl of water. “I trust he has gone?”
“Yes. Whatever did you say to him?” Blanche turned a worried face toward her mother-in-law. “I saw him going off on his pony, with all his belongings. He looked terrified.”
“I daresay. He’s probably afraid that I’ll denounce him, although I said I wouldn’t. I hold him responsible for the way your husband and son and Philippa’s father have been drawn into this dreadful situation.”
“What do you mean? What dreadful situation?”
“If you suppose, Blanche, that I don’t know that this talk of tournaments is all a taradiddle, then think again. I know very well why they’ve all gone to London. I tried to talk sense into them before they left, but they wouldn’t heed me. I think they want to be martyrs! I’m furious with all of them and afraid for them, too. Aren’t you?”
“Yes,” said Blanche in a low voice. “And if you think I haven’t tried to talk Tobias and Robert out of going, you would be wrong. I did.”
Blanche put the last flowers in place and looked at them miserably. “Flowers! What’s the use of women making a home pretty when the men would rather ride off on demented quests? I agreed to become a Catholic to please Tobias, but when all this business began—well, I pleaded with them both but I failed, and then I promised all three of them my prayers. They don’t know I’ve been praying they’d change their minds! I don’t understand it all,” said Blanche, “but I think that the plan is to free the queen of Scotland from her prison. After that, I’m not sure what is intended. Are you?”
“No, but isn’t it obvious? Dupont was a Jesuit, and Jesuits believe that Queen Elizabeth is baseborn and therefore has no right to the crown. In which case, the rightful queen is Mary.”
“She can’t be put back on the Scottish throne,” Blanche said. “Her son has that one. If she doesn’t choose to go into exile, then…”
“Quite. The Jesuits want her on the English throne.”
“But that can’t be,” said Blanche, “unless the present queen is deposed and shut away or worse. I can’t sleep at night for worrying. I don’t know about Philippa. I didn’t want this marriage because Tobias didn’t, but there it is and I’ve tried to make friends with her, as a mother-in-law should with her son’s wife, but she keeps her own counsel so much. She doesn’t confide.”
“I know,” said Jane. “But to my eyes, she’s been mopish since Robert rode away. Where is she now?”
“I think she went out for a walk. She’s been gone some time.”
“Has she? She shouldn’t walk too far. I know she’s strong, but all the same, she’s big, for five months. I think,” said Jane, “that I ought to go after her.”
Philippa, as Jane had once done, liked to walk up to the ridge. She might have done so now. Jane made her way out to the track up the combe. She had guessed right. Before she was at the top, Philippa was in sight.
She was on the skyline, facing the east, holding up her hands, palms outward, as if in supplication. Jane, disconcerted, quickened her pace, wishing she were as active as in her youth. She had put on weight in the past few years, and going uphill made her breathless.
She was too short of breath to call out as she came up behind Philippa, but a moment later she was glad, because it would have seemed somehow a mistake to break in. Philippa was talking, apparently to the sky.
Another moment and she realized that whatever her great-niece was saying was not in English. She was speaking a language that Jane had never heard before. And it was an invocation; Jane knew that at once, by the intonation and the rhythm of the words. She stopped and waited.
The prayer ended. Philippa’s hands dropped. “Philippa!” Jane half whispered. “My dear, what are you doing?”
Philippa turned quickly. “Great-Aunt Jane! I thought I was alone!”
“Obviously. But what were you doing? It looked—sounded—like…praying.”
“It was.”
“But…people don’t pray like that. Not standing out in the open and…and looking up at the sky. Philippa, people pray on their knees. In church, or at least indoors.”
“I was praying to the greatest god of my tribe, if he can hear me. England is far away from his territory. But he is very powerful. His name is Wakonda. I was praying to him.”
“But…” said Jane, and then stopped, words failing her.
Philippa was standing straight-backed as she always did and her face was so calm that it might have been carved from wood. “I was asking Wakonda,” she said, “to look after Robert, now that Robert is going into danger.”
“Philippa!” Sheer horror gave Jane back her powers of speech. “My dear, dear girl. You must forget your heathen gods! Something terrible could happen to you if it were known that you said such prayers! You must kneel in the chapel and ask the true God to look after Robert. There isn’t any other, my dear, and no one must ever, ever know about this.”
“The gods of my people,” said Philippa, “are more merciful than your god. I have learned how the queen who loved the old faith persecuted those who preferred the new—and sometimes it was the other way about, was it not? Not so often, perhaps, but it happened. And when we were on the Tiger with Sir Richard Grenville, I heard how the Spaniards had treated other tribes like mine, farther south, because they were not Christians. They did such terrible things. Even worse than the Inquisition in Spain. I heard about that, too, on the ship.”
“I know, my love. We all know how the Spaniards have conducted themselves in the New World. Our vicar, William Honeywood, has spoken of it from his pulpit.”
Philippa shuddered. “I was frightened when Sir Richard attacked the Santa Maria, but I was glad, too. I had already learned to hate the Spaniards. He was generous, letting her crew go once he’d got hold of the treasure.”
“If the plot in which Tobias and Robert are entangled should succeed,” said Jane slowly, “we may find ourselves with the Inquisition here in England. We must pray, Philippa—in the chapel, not up here—but we must pray for more than the safety of our menfolk. We must also pray that their plot fails, so as to keep the Inquisition out. Do you realize that?”
Philippa’s dark eyes widened.
“Gilbert Mallow—whom I have just ordered off the premises, by the way—says that won’t happen. But I fear it.”
“I didn’t understand. I mean, I didn’t know that if…if this Queen Mary Stuart that Robert has talked to me about were to take the throne, then it might mean the Inquisition coming here. But Robert wouldn’t…his father wouldn’t…”
“I think they are deluded,” said Jane unhappily. “They don’t see, or won’t see, that Mary could not take power here without bringing civil war on us all, and that if the Catholics won, then the Inquisition would most likely appear in England. It’s even possible, if she succeeds, that it would be with the help of Spain.”
“I can’t think in that way,” said Philippa. “I can’t think about inquisitions and rival faiths and a queen called Mary Stuart. I am simply afraid for Robert and lonely without him. If you’re right, then what he is doing is…is dreadful—madness…but it makes no difference to the way I love him. Great-Aunt Jane, did you ever love anyone like this?
Your husband?”
“No, dear. Not my husband. Mine was a forced marriage and I never managed to be more than mildly fond of him, though he was good to me in his way, I suppose. I loved someone else. I do know what it means.”
“Was he your lover?” Philippa asked it outright.
“Once,” said Jane, meeting candour with candour. “Once and once only. He made the marriage his family expected, for money and position, and I went on living here at Allerbrook. He died far away in Ireland. The news didn’t reach me for months and then only by accident, when I was dining with the Luttrells and someone casually mentioned him. I cried so bitterly that night. I could bear being without him as long as he was still alive, still under the same sky as I was, sharing the sun and the moon with me. To know that he wasn’t here anymore…that was dreadful.”
“I’m sorry,” Philippa said.
“Well, it was years ago now. It’s a strange thing, but it’s possible to love a man steadily lifelong, even when the time the two of you had together amounts only to a few days. It kept me from ever wanting to remarry. That and loving Allerbrook so much and having three young people to look after, as well! Now, we must get back to the house. We will go to the chapel.” Jane studied the younger woman with concern. “Are you still homesick, Philippa?”
“Not now. I was at first but this is my home now, the home I want to share with Robert, forever. If only he comes back! I suppose I was—calling for help from every possible direction. Old habits…”
“Come back to the house. You shouldn’t walk far just now anyway. Philippa, never, never invoke these strange gods of yours again. Promise me!”
“I promise,” said Philippa.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
Nightmare
1586
This, said Stephen Sweetwater to himself, is a nightmare. I never knew before what that really meant.
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