A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court)

by Buckley, Fiona

  “Well . . .” The thought of a morning’s sport appealed to me, but I wasn’t altogether sure I wished to be Dormbois’s guest. “Would I need Queen Mary’s permission? After all, if she is to be present . . .”

  “She’ll not object. Darnley said she had taken to you. And I take leave to say, Madame de la Roche, so have I.”

  I blinked. The gaze that Sir Brian Dormbois had now fixed on me had become bold and searching, as though he were wondering what I looked like beneath my cloak and my black velvet.

  I took an involuntary step backward. I had been right to find this man alarming. This sounded ominously like a complication, of a sort that I decidedly didn’t want.

  “There will be no objection either, I trust,” I said modestly, “if I come attended? It is my custom to have my groom always nearby when I ride out.”

  The ice-water eyes glinted again. “Pretty ways, very becoming! But I shoot straight for my target, lassie; I don’t believe in havering and nor do you, I fancy. If you did, you’d not be setting out to hunt a murderer. I like you fine already and I’ll know you better before long or my name’s not Dormbois. What’s a groom? We can always lose him!”

  11

  Falconry and Fever

  For purposes of unraveling the mystery of Edward’s death or the fate of his list, the hawking party was useless. It wasn’t even enjoyable just as an outing, not as far as I was concerned, anyway.

  With Dale and Brockley, I had moved into Holyrood the previous evening. Queen Mary herself had come to see if I was comfortable and reiterated that I must stay for Mary Livingstone’s wedding, which was to take place a week later. “And I hope you will stay longer. Be with us for two weeks, at least. It is such a pleasure to welcome congenial guests,” said Mary engagingly.

  Our new quarters were certainly an improvement on the lodgings down in the town. We had three rooms, not overlarge but very comfortable, and Brockley approved the stabling for our horses. He had our mounts saddled and ready in good time for the hawking party.

  When, attended by Brockley, I joined it in the courtyard, Queen Mary was already there, dashingly attired like a man in breeches, doublet, and a hat with a feather in it a good twelve inches long (the effect, oddly enough, was not masculine but enchantingly female). With her were Mary Seton, the earls of Moray and Bothwell, Henry Darnley, and half a dozen lesser gentry. Dormbois came out of the palace last, accompanied by a short, red-faced priest, with whom he seemed to be arguing. Catching sight of me, he raised a hand in recognition and turned to the priest and visibly snapped at him, at which the man’s face turned a deeper shade of red and he retreated—or rather, scuttled—back indoors.

  “That was my secretary, Father Bell,” Dormbois said, coming up to me. “He ministers to all the Catholic souls at my home but comes with me when I travel, since I’m no great hand at the reading and writing. He is forever forgetting his place and reminding me that I should arrange this or write a letter about that. Are we no’ ready to go?” he added restively, putting a foot in his stirrup and swinging himself astride. “Ah. Here is my falconer.” He smoothed the leather glove on his right hand and leaned down to take his bird, a beautiful female peregrine, onto it. “Let us hope for good sport.”

  Brockley helped me into the saddle, and then mounted his own horse and positioned himself behind me as we moved off. I had neither hawk nor falcon, but I was ready to take pleasure in this outing across the heathery hills outside the city. The skies were gray but the cloud was high, and beneath it the weather was dry and there was a silvery winter light in which one could see for miles.

  Except that from the very beginning, Sir Brian Dormbois rode close beside me, and the first thing he said to me was: “I am sorry, lassie, but the time has been too short and I havenae discovered anything aboot Adam Ericks. I’m for my home tomorrow, but I’ll be back two days before Mistress Livingstone’s wedding, and maybe then I can do some prying for you. We shall meet at the festivities.”

  “Thank you,” I said, and wished that he were not riding so very close that his right knee was almost brushing my left one. I was glad that Brockley was at hand.

  “You should ride astride for this kind of sport,” Dormbois remarked. “As Queen Mary does.”

  “I’m used to the sidesaddle.”

  “You ride verra well,” he conceded.

  “Thank you,” I said, wondering doubtfully just what form Dormbois’s prying, as he called it, was likely to take. Looking at the thick, dark eyebrows and the glinting eyes and teeth, I thought that if ever there was a man who was not of a tactful or dissembling nature, Dormbois was that man. Changing the subject, I said civilly: “You say you have to go home for a few days. You have a family there? You have a wife?”

  “Two,” said Dormbois with a sigh, and I turned to stare at him, before recovering myself and saying in tones of scientific inquiry: “You follow the Muhammedan faith, then?”

  “No,” said Dormbois, acknowledging the hit with another ice-water glint. “They’re in the churchyard, poor souls, and I didnae have them both at the same time. There was Jeannie, when I was no more than a lad, and a richt sweet wee thing she was. But she was young—too young, verra like, and she died in childbed and the baby with her. Then I went to France, to visit kinsmen there and to serve Queen Mary—Queen of France as she was then. My father was French, a younger son of a good family. He liked to travel, came to Scotland, and fell for my mother, who was her father’s only child, and heiress to our keep and our land. He wed her and stayed. I look all Scots, like her, but I wished to see France and my father—he died only last year—arranged it for me. It was there I met my lord Rene of Elboeuf and entered his employ. It was also there that I met my second wife, Marguerite.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” I said.

  “She was a pretty lass. But when we all came back to Scotland with Queen Mary, well, the climate of Scotland is raw and harsh compared to France and it didnae agree with her.”

  “Queen Mary spoke yesterday of a guest who had fallen sick at Holyrood,” I said. “She put it down to the northern winter.”

  “Verra likely! Scotland is fine for those that are bred there. My mother loved it; it was some malady from badly cured meat that was her death, not the climate. But poor Marguerite never even survived one winter. Also, my home of Roderix Fort is a rough place compared to the châteaux of France. I brought her here in August but she shivered even then, and she pined in Roderix as though it were a prison. She fell ill as soon as the cold set in, and I spent that Christmas in mourning. I believe that ye’ve also been wed twice, Madame de la Roche? Edward did not speak of you to me, but it is known here at court that Matthew de la Roche wed a young widow.”

  I found myself obliged to tell him something of my history, of my runaway marriage with Gerald Blanchard, of the birth of our daughter Meg and Gerald’s death in Antwerp from smallpox, and of my second marriage, only a few months later, to Matthew de la Roche, who was then a visitor at Elizabeth’s court.

  As I talked about Matthew, however, I grew extremely uncomfortable. The main reason was the simple fact that Dormbois and I were on a hawking party. For it was on a hawking expedition, though admittedly on a hot day in Richmond Park rather than a cold one in Scotland, that I had first met Matthew. Like Dormbois, he was half French, and he had talked to me and asked me about myself just as Dormbois was doing now. At that time, I had been still grieving for Gerald, who was only a few months buried; now, in the same way, I was suffering from the loss of Matthew, also only a few months dead.

  This ride with Dormbois was too much like an echo of that long-ago ride with Matthew. I had known very quickly that Matthew was interested in me and now I was sure I could see the same signs in Dormbois. When a man like Dormbois canters at a woman’s side with his eyes fixed on her, talking to her continually, and listening attentively to every word she says, it only means one thing.

  When Matthew began to court me, though, I knew from the first that I was drawn to him,
and I was not drawn to Dormbois in the same way. With Matthew, thinking that it was too soon, I had tried to resist a temptation. Dormbois was different. He too was attractive in his way, but I did not find him a temptation, but somehow or other, a threat.

  I was glad when a shout from Bothwell told us that the business of flying hawks at game had started. The party scattered over the hillside. Dormbois unhooded his falcon, which roused her feathers and showed immediate interest in the world. Then he threw her up and she soared away, to hover and glide above us, awaiting a glimpse of prey, and we broke off our conversation in order to attend to her.

  Over the next half hour, our hawks brought down a few small birds and rabbits, and I got away from Dormbois, to exchange brief, laughing remarks with Mary Seton and Darnley. But then there was another hiatus and once more, there was Dormbois at my side, expressing triumph because his peregrine had caught a brace of rabbits, and asking me to tell him about my daughter and my home in the south.

  I found his intent gaze worrisome and looked ahead between my horse’s ears while, politely, I talked about Meg and described Withysham. Withysham interested him.

  “It must be verra different from Roderix. Now, Roderix is a plain Scottish fortress, somewhat in need of civilizing—aye, I’ll admit that, much as I love the place—but my lands are wide and the soil is good, too. I care for my lands and let nothing go to waste.”

  He paused so that I instinctively looked at him. Once again, I encountered that bold and searching gaze that had made me uneasy in the garden at Holyrood. To my annoyance, I felt myself redden, and the maddening Dormbois promptly gave me the full benefit of that glittering grin. “I don’t like to see a woman like you go to waste, either, lassie,” he observed.

  I didn’t answer, mainly because I couldn’t think of an answer. The grin intensified. “There’s one thing that both Jeannie and Marguerite would have said of me,” he declared. “I’m a damned good lover.”

  • • •

  I could hardly believe my ears. The man was impossible. Another shout, from Moray this time, gave me an excuse to spur my horse and gallop away from Dormbois, and a furious signal with my arm brought Brockley up beside me in his stead.

  “Stay there,” I said to Brockley. “Don’t leave my side.”

  “Has that man been offering you impertinence, madam?”

  “You could say that, yes. And when he first proposed this outing and I said I’d have my groom with me, he said we could always lose a groom. Don’t you dare let yourself get lost!”

  “Don’t worry, madam,” said Brockley grimly.

  But of course, there was still the matter of finding out more about Adam Ericks. Throughout the rest of the outing I kept my distance from Dormbois as far as I could, but I several times caught glimpses of that disconcerting smile, and when we all bunched up together to ride back through Edinburgh, he once more edged alongside me to say: “If I have news of Ericks, madam, I will tell you at the wedding.”

  “Thank you,” I said wearily, wishing I hadn’t tried to make him my deputy for my inquiries about Ericks. I wanted no more to do with him. He hadn’t seen Edward. He hadn’t got the list. There was no point in pursuing this acquaintance and some very good reasons for ending it.

  The image of Edward in death was still savagely vivid, crying out for justice. But for that, I thought, I would leave Holyrood the very next day and set out for home.

  As it was, I knew I could not. I must consult with Brockley and see what new ways there were by which we might make inquiries. I could not give up searching for Edward’s killer until all possibilities had been tried and had failed. Even if it meant giving Dormbois a chance to obtain some information.

  When I returned to my quarters, I found that I could not have left Holyrood on the morrow in any case, for to my distress, I was confronted with a tottering Dale, whose face was very white, except for an ominous, orange-tinged patch of color on each cheekbone, and whose first attempt to speak to me was lost in a volley of sneezes. “I’m sorry, ma’am,” she said huskily when the sneezing was over, “but I seem to have a fever. I think I may have caught cold.”

  12

  Confrontations

  In this crisis, even the pursuit of Edward’s slayers had to wait. Dale needed care. Except for my occasional attacks of migraine, I had the sound Faldene health, and Brockley was as tough as a ship’s timber, but Dale was vulnerable. With Dale, even a cold could never be disregarded as trivial, and this was more than a cold. Like Sir Brian Dormbois’s hapless second wife, and the unknown guest at present being cosseted at Holyrood, she had fallen victim to the northern climate, probably exacerbated by the exhaustion of our long journey (not to mention the horror at the end of it).

  In the few days before the Livingstone marriage, Brockley and I had our hands full with her.

  However, the warmth and comfort of our suite and the nursing we gave her did their work, aided (which touched me) by a kindly message from Queen Mary, who had heard of Dale’s illness and sent along a page not only with her good wishes but also with a draft to encourage sleep.

  “Her Majesty says to tell you it is made of some foreign poppy and will help a sick person to sleep if sore throat or headache are keeping them awake. Good sleep is part of healing, she says,” the page repeated.

  Whether the sleep that the poppy draft did indeed induce made any difference, I don’t know. But after three days of fever and sneezing, Dale began slowly to recover, and our own efforts with balsam inhalations and doses of horehound stopped the cold from attacking her lungs. By the day of the wedding, she was still pale and visibly weak, but she said in firm if nasal tones that she couldn’t abide the thought of asking anyone else to help me dress for the occasion. Valiantly, and oblivious to my assurances that she need not, she got onto her feet, saw to my hair, and fastened me into my silver-gray and violet gown.

  I thanked her sincerely and went to the wedding in a cheerful mood, looking forward to it as a treat after the worry of Dale’s illness, and a day’s holiday from the matter of Edward. Mary Livingstone was marrying for love, and the celebrations should therefore be full of happy potential, like the launching of a ship or the laying of a foundation stone.

  I was more at home in Holyrood by then. It can be lonely, attending a function when you know hardly anybody there, but although, while looking after Dale, I had never left the palace, I had still had a few brief intervals in which to learn more about the court and make some new acquaintances, and I had seized my opportunities. The more I knew about this Scottish world, the better my chances of tracking down Edward’s killer, and as an extra, I could now expect friendly greetings at the wedding and partners for the dancing.

  Admittedly, my efforts to learn more about the touchy and much-intermarried Scottish nobility hadn’t all been successful. Their pedigrees were so entangled that they resembled knitting that has been got at by a playful kitten, and their feuds were nearly as bad. It would be a long time before I had all that off by heart.

  On the other hand though, I had now met Mary Livingstone’s bridegroom, John Sempill, a well-born young Englishman who was one of the best dancers at the court, and I had learned that one of the other Maries, Mary Fleming, was being courted by the queen’s Secretary for English Correspondence, a middle-aged man called William Maitland, whom I had also met.

  I had had conversations too with the little Italian David Riccio, and with a somewhat curious individual called Christopher Rokeby, who was part of the English ambassador’s permanent staff in Scotland but seemed to be more often about the court than attending to his ambassador, making himself useful and, I suspected, prying.

  He was a round-shouldered man of goodness knows what age, with dull clothes and a grayish face and a knack of being unobtrusive. I saw him sometimes hovering where he could overhear conversations between people who had clearly failed to notice him. I suspected that he was in the same line of business as myself, by which I mean one of Cecil’s agents. He got into conversatio
n with me several times, and I thought gloomily that if my presence in Scotland wasn’t reported to Cecil by anyone else, it probably would be by means of Christopher Rokeby.

  I did once or twice think of asking his help, but he also had a knack of fading away just as I had almost worked around to asking him, as though he had sensed my intention and wished to avoid it.

  In addition, I had been approached, when taking a short turn in the formal garden, by the queen’s uncle Rene of Elboeuf, who insisted on walking with me for a while. Since he was Dormbois’s employer, I decided that I could at least ask a few questions about Dormbois and did so, to be told that he was a most trustworthy and valiant soldier, willing to do anything his lord commanded.

  I tried to probe further into this intriguing testimonial but Elboeuf, a gallant Frenchman to his very bone marrow, changed the subject and started paying me compliments, obliging me to remember that Dale was due for another dose of horehound, which I must hurry off and give to her.

  I had done my best with the week, I said to myself. Dale had recovered her health and I had learned a little, though it didn’t include anything that pointed to Edward’s killers or the fate of his list. I wondered whether Dormbois really would appear at the wedding and whether, if he did, he would have any news for me. I would have to be glad, now, of help from anyone, for the scent was growing colder every day.

  • • •

  It was done. Amid wafts of incense and much feminine cooing, and sumptuously dressed at Queen Mary’s expense, Mary Livingstone had become Mary Sempill, and no one had tried to burst in and disrupt the nuptial mass, either. Largesse had been distributed to the beggars of Edinburgh. With the three remaining Maries and a number of other ladies, I had gone to the bridal chamber to strew dried rosemary and other sweet herbs and little fresh flowers across the coverlet of the bed, so that the couple could be bedded amid fragrant scents and the symbols of spring and fertility.