Perhaps when I had Meg, I would even be able to contemplate life without Brockley and Dale!
Matthew did not again mention the idea of paying them off, and neither did I. By tacit agreement, we left all that until they should return. Two and a half weeks after they had left for England, I saw a hired barge approaching up the river, and as I looked from my sitting room window, I recognized Brockley and Dale on the deck. But although I peered and strained my eyes, I could not see any little girl with them. I sped down to the château landing stage and their grave faces confirmed my fears even before I spoke to them. It was I who spoke first, before they had even come ashore. “Where is she? Where is Meg?”
They stepped quickly onto the jetty, Brockley giving a hand to his wife. “Madam …” he began, and then stopped.
“What is it? Brockley! Dale! Tell me at once!”
“Meg was there when we got to Thamesbank,” Dale said earnestly. “Very lively, very healthy, and asking after you, and how she’s grown, ma’am; you’d hardly credit it …”
“Dale!”
“We had a good journey,” Brockley said. His even voice made me attend to him. “We were there in four days,” he said. “We meant to spend a week at Thamesbank and then get the child away. We thought it would be easy, for the house was busy. Sir William Cecil came, the day after we did, to spend a few days there and he brought his wife, Lady Mildred, and a guest of theirs, a Lady Mortimer. There was entertaining and any amount of coming and going … I’m coming to the point, madam. We were laying plans. As we expected, Bridget didn’t want to come to France, but she was willing to help us. Also, I’m sure she didn’t talk; she’s got plenty of sense. We were all careful and I’m as sure as I can be that what happened had nothing to do with our plans. But … well, one morning, Bridget and Meg weren’t there. They’d vanished in the night. Just gone.”
“Gone?” I said blankly.
“Yes, madam. No horses were missing from the stable and no one had seen or heard anything. They had slept in their beds—one could see that—but a hamper had disappeared from a cupboard in the room, and so had some of their clothes, Mistress Henderson said, although not everything—just a set of daily wear and a change of linen. Master Henderson sent riders out everywhere, to inquire if anyone had seen them, and I rode out too.”
“What?” My voice was still blank. I could hardly take in what he was saying.
“We couldn’t hear of a single sighting,” Brockley said. “Not on any road or on the river. I helped the search for three days but there wasn’t a trace, not a single trace. Mistress Henderson was frantic, shut in her room in tears most of the time. It was a foggy morning when they went; you know how the vapors rise off the river. They’d just—vanished into the mist.”
3
Hawk or Donkey
“I won’t be away longer than I must,” I said to Matthew, as he stepped onto the barge, bringing an extra rug to protect me from the breeze. “But I have to find Meg. I must. Once I have her safe, I’ll bring her home. I wish you could come too.”
As I took my seat, I looked up at the château. It was very beautiful, its turrets and crenellations elegant as well as practical. It was built of pale Caen stone, which changed color according to the weather. Under cloudy skies, the walls were white, but sunlight would tint them with gold, and at sunset they flushed to the softest shade of rose, and their reflection in the Loire, wavering with the ripples, was like the outline of a faerie fortress.
“I’d gladly come, but I’m a wanted man in England,” Matthew said. “Be careful, Ursula, my dear one. According to Brockley, Sir William Cecil urged him to fetch you to England to look for Meg. Be careful of Cecil.”
“I will.” It still saddened me to say that. Sir William Cecil and his wife, Lady Mildred, had in the past been very kind to me. They had found me my post at Elizabeth’s court; they had arranged for Meg to be fostered by the Hendersons. It was Cecil, mainly, who had enhanced my income by employing me on secret tasks, watching and investigating the enemies of Queen Elizabeth.
And then Cecil and Elizabeth between them had sent me to France on a seemingly innocent errand, and I hadn’t known that they were using me as bait to draw Matthew out of hiding. We had been married for some time by then, but were estranged. When I learned how I had been used, I ended the estrangement and chose to stay with Matthew. I had told him that I understood that betrayal better now, but I still could not see how I could ever really trust either Cecil or the queen again.
I said: “I only want to find Meg. That is the only reason why I am going, and the only thing that I intend to do.”
“I shall pray that both of you will return to me soon,” Matthew said. “I shall pray in my chapel, every day.”
“And I.” Uncle Armand had come to the jetty to say good-bye as well. “I shall keep a night vigil once a week, until you return, madame. It is very right that you should wish to find your daughter and bring her here.” He spoke quite warmly and it occurred to me that like many priests, he was uncomfortable with women in general but got on better with those who were mothers. Screaming out my enraged rejection of martyrdom by parturition I had scandalized him; but in my present anxiety for my little girl, I was an object of sympathy.
Dale and Brockley were aboard, their bags at their feet. The boatmen were settling to their oars. It was time.
“Matthew …”
“Godspeed, Saltspoon.”
We had a parting embrace, long and fierce. Then he stepped ashore and stood on the jetty, waving farewell as the barge slipped away downstream. I watched him grow smaller as the distance between us grew.
A divided heart, divided loves, are a terrible burden to carry.
It was a quick journey. We reached Nantes in a day and there we had good luck, for we found a ship in which Matthew had shares, about to sail for England with a cargo of wine. When the Cygnet left next day, we were aboard her. The winds were playful, but they drove us in the right direction. I had feared seasickness but none of us fell ill, although the tossing sea made Dale nervous. “I just wish the wind would drop a bit, ma’am,” she said miserably. “I can’t abide the sea. I wouldn’t do it for anyone but you and Roger and that’s a fact.”
“You’ll soon be on dry land again,” I said comfortingly.
“I hope so, ma’am. The way those timbers creak; they make me think the ship’s going to fall apart and drop us all in the water.”
“Matthew de la Roche,” I said, “doesn’t buy shares in unseaworthy buckets. The Cygnet will get us to England; don’t worry.”
The Cygnet did. We landed safely at Southampton late on a May evening and went to an inn where a good night’s sleep made Dale more cheerful and the sound of the English language was a delight to me. In the morning, Brockley found us some hired horses, and we set out for Thamesbank.
The house where Meg had been living with Cecil’s friends, Rob and Mattie Henderson, was beside the Thames, near Hampton. I was in a furious hurry to get there and because posting inns couldn’t always provide proper sidesaddles—only pillion saddles, but riding pillion would have slowed us down—I rode as Dale always did, astride and in breeches, though over them, I put on one of the open-fronted skirts which I usually wore on top of an embroidered kirtle. In my impatience, I also shocked Brockley with my curses when the hired horses were less than ideal.
They often are, of course, for they are ridden hard, in all weathers, by all kinds of riders. They nearly always have iron mouths and temperaments either phlegmatic or cussed. I remember that one of my mounts nearly drove me mad with its reluctance to go faster than a slow jog and with its big clumsy feet, which seemed to find every single pothole in the track. “This damned horse swerves out of the way on purpose to tread in a hole and stumble!” I raged, and thereafter named the animal Dogmeat. “Blast you, Dogmeat, pick your feet up!” “Get on with it, Dogmeat; we haven’t got forever!”
Yet through it all, the beauty of England in early May reached and touched me. It
was subtly different from France: the new young leaves a more delicate shade of green; the sunshine gentler. No golden orioles whistled in the woodland; thrushes and blackbirds sang unchallenged. Villages were quiet and mostly prosperous; there had been no civil war in England to take men from the land. France was now my home, but I would never cease to care for England. I was glad to see it once again.
We had to spend one night on the road, but in the morning, we found ourselves with better horses and I made good use of them, pushing us on as fast as possible, deaf to Dale’s protests that it was surely dinnertime and when were we going to eat? By three in the afternoon, we were all very hungry, but the ornamental red-brick chimneys of Thamesbank House were in sight. “We’re there,” I said.
The lodgekeeper sent his son Tom running ahead to announce our arrival and by the time we rode into the courtyard, Rob Henderson, tall, fair-haired, and handsome, jauntily clad in green with a feather in his cap, as though he were about to go a-hunting, was out there to meet us. Brockley made to dismount and help me down, but Henderson reached me first and I was out of my saddle before Brockley was out of his.
“I knew you would come. I knew it!” Rob exclaimed. “Welcome!”
“Of course I came. Is there any news of Meg? Have you found her? I’ve been frantic.”
“I feared you would be. I’m sorry. Yes, there’s news.” Rob smiled and I saw that his expression was both cheerful and tranquil. “Put your mind at rest and come indoors.”
“She’s safe?” Relief weakened my knees, so much so that for a moment the whole courtyard spun. I must have gone white because Rob looked at me in concern and took hold of my arm.
“Steady, now. Meg is all right. I promise. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
“But where is she? Is she here? What happened?”
“She’s not here but she’s perfectly safe and you can go to her soon. Have you dined? No?” Dale was shaking her head. “Brockley, leave the horses to my grooms, take Dale to the kitchens, and ask for some food for the two of you. Come inside, Ursula. A meal will be brought to you and you shall eat while I talk.”
“But where is Meg?” I let Rob lead me up the porch steps and steer me into a parlor, but I would not stop asking questions. “If you’ve found her, why isn’t she here? What is all this? And where’s Mattie?”
“My wife is with Meg.” A maid appeared to take my cloak, and someone else arrived with a tray of wine. Rob barked some orders to a hovering butler, concerning food. Then he steered me to a settle, poured a glass of wine, and offered it to me. Impatiently, I put it aside. “Rob,” I said, “I mean, Master Henderson …”
“We know each other well enough to be Rob and Ursula, even if we haven’t met these two years past. Meg is with Mattie and with her nurse, Bridget. She is safe and well. She’s growing into as bonny a wench as I ever saw and when you see her, you’ll think so too. But she’s not at Thamesbank,” said Rob. “She’s in Herefordshire. To be precise, she’s near the Welsh border, at a place called Vetch Castle, a few miles west of the Malvern Hills.”
“Rob, I’ve never heard of the Malvern Hills or of Vetch Castle. What is Meg doing there? How did she get there? Who took her and why?”
“Drink some wine, Ursula. … On the day they vanished, Meg and her nurse were taken quietly from Thamesbank before dawn. They stayed for a few days in a comfortable household until Brockley and Dale gave up hope of finding them, and set out for France to fetch you.”
“What?”
Rob picked up my right hand and my wineglass and firmly wrapped my fingers around the stem. “Take a good long draft of that, and don’t agitate yourself so. … As soon as Brockley and Dale had gone, Mattie set out with Lady Mortimer, who was our guest at the time, and who also happens to be the chatelaine of Vetch Castle, until such time as her son marries. They joined Bridget and Meg and then they all went, well escorted, to Herefordshire. Meg supposes herself to be on a visit. Mattie and Bridget are with her; she hasn’t been frightened or upset in any way. She …”
“But why? What’s it all about … ?” I saw him looking at me quizzically. “It was to get me back to England, wasn’t it? Rob, how could you? How could Mattie? Brockley told me that when Meg vanished, Mattie was so distraught she shut herself in her room. Was all that a mere performance? In God’s name, why? No, don’t tell me. This is some scheme of Cecil’s, isn’t it? Bloody Cecil—I might have known!”
“He is a good man, Ursula. No queen ever had a more trustworthy Secretary of State. Which means, of course, that at times he puts his loyalty to her first—ahead of other things and other people. Are you not wise enough to understand that?”
“Yes, I am. I understood it some time ago,” I said grimly. I gulped some of the wine as bidden, feeling the need of it. “But this!” I said. “Am I wanted back in England for some particular purpose? Does the queen want me, or is it just Cecil?”
“This request didn’t come originally from either of them,” Rob said. “As a matter of fact, it came from Lady Mortimer. But it concerns the queen; most certainly it does. And for the moment, my dear—my very dear—Ursula, that is all I can say. You will hear the rest when Cecil arrives. He is with the court at Richmond, but young Tom from the lodge has gone off by boat to tell him that you’re here. Ah.” A butler had come into the room and was clearing his throat. “I think, Ursula, that your meal is nearly ready. There should be hot water in your room, if you want to wash before you eat.”
“Thank you,” I said. “Listen, Rob. I want to be reunited with Meg as soon as possible and I then intend to take her straight home to France and I am not prepared to take no for an answer.”
“I said you’d say that. But,” said Rob, with a glint of disquieting laughter in his blue eyes, “you’ll have to fetch her first.”
He wouldn’t explain further. I must wait until Sir William Cecil arrived and then I would understand everything. I ate my meal, fuming. After that, I roamed restlessly from room to room and asked questions which Rob wouldn’t answer, until I realized that I was wasting my time. On Dale’s sensible recommendation, I then settled in the parlor and tried to play backgammon with Rob’s twelve-year-old son, Harry, a jolly lad with a marked resemblance to his merry dumpling of a mother.
In the early evening, glancing out of the window at the sweep of lawn and the river beyond, I saw a barge draw quietly alongside the Thamesbank landing stage, and tie up. Whereupon, I sat down again and remarked to Harry that we needed to light the candles if we were to play another game. I would not hurry out to greet Cecil. I had come to find Meg as a hawk comes to the lure and he had known I would. But I would take wing at his bidding no longer.
Within a few minutes, however, there were voices outside the room. Rob was speaking in quiet, respectful tones. Then the door opened and his head came around it. “I am sorry, Harry, but I must interrupt you. Ursula, will you come to the study?”
Beyond the tall leaded windows of the study, a quiet blue dusk was falling across the land but the room itself, with crimson velvet curtains and cushions and vivid rugs, was bright and welcoming. It was quite a big room, and I saw that a supper table laid for four had been placed at one side. There were lighted candles on the table and in wall sconces, and a small fire burned in the hearth, for the evenings were still cool. Sir William Cecil was there, standing beside a chair in which a cloaked woman was seated. I looked at her and as I did so, she raised a long-fingered hand, laden with rings, to push back her hood. She smiled and automatically I dropped into a curtsy.
“Good evening, Ursula,” said Queen Elizabeth sweetly.
She looked older. Elizabeth was senior to me by only a few months, but had I not known this, I would have said three or four years. Her golden-brown eyes had always been watchful but now I would have called them wary, and there were tiny scars at her temples, where the light red hair was drawn back into its crimpings. She had had smallpox since I saw her last but she had been luckier than my Gerald. She had escaped not on
ly with her life but with most of her complexion.
Her pale shield of a face was as I remembered it, though, and so were those long, jeweled fingers, and so too was the curious quality of unexpectedness, which was one of her most outstanding characteristics.
Elizabeth lived, for most of the time, just as her father, King Henry, had done, wielding her power openly, amid splendor and protocol, in ornate rooms, surrounded by a crowd of people. Yet she could at will detach herself from all of it, wrap herself in an anonymous cloak, take a journey by barge with no escort beyond Cecil, seat herself in the parlor of a private house, and look as though she had grown there. Like the ermine whose white winter fur was part of her regalia, she could change to match her surroundings, taking one by surprise.
I sometimes thought that this mercurial side of her perhaps came from her mother, Anne Boleyn, who had been described to me by my own mother, who once served Anne. Elizabeth never mentioned her mother by name but there were times, such as now, when I felt that Anne was glimpsed again in her royal daughter.
Cecil had changed a little, too. His neatly combed fair beard and intelligent blue eyes were the same, but the line between his eyes was deeper, and seemed now not so much a line of worry as of sternness. I noticed as he stepped forward to meet me that he was limping a little, and he said briefly: “Gout, I fear. The years exact their toll.” His tone did not encourage further inquiry.
He had always been formidable; I thought that over the last two years I had forgotten just how formidable. Now, face-to-face with him, I saw the weight of responsibility that he carried—for England, and for the person of Elizabeth, who was England’s representative. Against all that, the claims of my private life and loves seemed to shrivel. When I had kissed the hand that Elizabeth offered me, I rose and gave my hand in conventional fashion to her Secretary of State, and I did not find it possible even to burst out into questions, let alone accusations. I waited.
To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court Page 3