To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court

by Buckley, Fiona

  “Can I see your right thumb, Master Haggard?”

  “My … ?”

  “Your right thumb. Please.”

  He looked at his thumb as though wondering what it was. I reached out and before he could stop me, I took hold of it and turned it over. The zigzag scar was still there, scarcely healed even now. I let go and pointed to the bloodstained letter.

  “You’ve handled that. There is the evidence.”

  “Nonsense. Anyone could have a jagged cut like that.”

  “On your thumb,” I said, “about half an inch from one end of the big scar, there are signs of a smaller puncture. It’s just a pale pink dot now but when you touched the letter, it was still oozing.” I pointed to the letter, to the single dark spot a little away from the larger mark.

  “Even to have seen these letters,” I said, as his dogged stare met mine once more, “is so dangerous that it could bring a man to the block, or worse.”

  “But I know nothing about them!” he said obstinately.

  “Oh, I think you do. Master Haggard, for God’s sake—or for your own sake, and the sake of Bess and Alice—tell me what you can.”

  Without answering, he picked one of the letters up. Then he put it down again, quickly, but not before I had seen his hands trembling.

  “What am I to do? I can’t let you question me, a young lass like you. And in my own study too.”

  “Would you prefer a dungeon with no windows, torches on the wall to give the only light, thick walls to muffle the screams, and a man with a mask and a rack?”

  Something in my voice or my eyes must have got past his fixed ideas at last. This time his face did not flush. Instead, it paled to the color of Gladys’s goat cheese. His mouth slackened.

  “Please believe me. I really do represent Her Majesty. Cecil’s man really will join me soon. And you could be in the gravest possible trouble. Your best chance of helping yourself is to tell me the truth now.”

  He let out a sigh which was almost a groan and the dogged expression turned to a dismal kind of frankness. “You’re in no danger from me, Mistress Blanchard. Your men waiting out there to guard you need not have bothered. I wouldn’t harm a woman, least of all a young woman like you. Men ought to look after women, protect them. But you talk as if you’re offering to protect me.”

  “I will if it proves possible. But I need to know what I’m dealing with. Telling me won’t make anything worse, Master Haggard. If you talk to me then perhaps, perhaps, you won’t be made to talk under more ruthless circumstances.”

  Master Haggard passed a hand over his scanty hair. And then startled me by his next words. In tones of desperation, he said: “I’d sell my soul to be got out of this.”

  I felt the surge of excitement that the huntsman feels when the quarry is brought to bay. “Perhaps there is a way out,” I said. “I can’t tell until I know just how you came to see these letters and in what way you are involved.”

  “My brother-in-law don’t mean any harm,” Haggard said defensively. “He’s not a wicked man.”

  I had most decidedly concluded that he was. I waited.

  “Sir Philip,” said Haggard, “is a most loyal servant of the queen. But he’s half a Mortimer and half a Vetch. He’s got all the great Mortimer barons of bygone times on one side, and on the other … the Vetches were never great like the Mortimers, but you’d think they were, the way they feel about their ancestors. They damn near worship them. They’re proud of that castle, too. Lady Thomasine’s father modernized it for comfort’s sake, but all the same, he kept the legends about it alive. He never opened up the southwest tower. There are supposed to be ghosts in it. You knew that?”

  “Yes. Lady Isabel and the minstrel Rhodri.”

  He nodded. “Philip’s got long family histories on both sides, and he’s a dreamer. He wants to be like his great Mortimer ancestors. Oh, how do I explain? He’s all full of yearnings and visions; nothing to do with the real world. Philip imagines things that can’t happen and makes himself believe they can. He’s not wicked and he’s not a madman; but …”

  “He makes a new world in his mind and tells himself that it’s the true one?” I was beginning to understand.

  Haggard was nodding. “Yes, that’s how it is. Well, somehow or other, he got hold of these. I don’t know what they really are.” He flicked at the letters with a disdainful forefinger. “There’re names mentioned here. Well, Anne’s a common name and so is Mark. People used to call their children after the names of the saints. Those are both saints’ names …”

  I picked up one of the letters. It was the one dated the tenth day of January 1533. I read aloud.

  “‘My heart’s joy, I know that to write to you thus is perilous, but I am so full of love, I cannot always keep it within me. Oh, to relive our Christmas revels. How I wish that moments such as that, when we can be wholly together, could come more often. Yet, my sweeting, what does the future hold for us? I cannot turn back now from the course on which I am set. It gives me pain to tell you that my letters, my unwise letters which I know I should not write but which come unbidden to my pen, must be destroyed when you have read them but …’”

  I did not stop there but read on: “‘… but so it is. Yet truly, when I whispered to you in the dark that although I am queen of the realm, the only realm I truly desire to rule is that encompassed by your heart and your bed, I meant what I said. And then you said it was as though the whole world had turned into a song, and mine the voice that sang it. We are both minstrels now, you said, singing in duet. That moved me so much, dearest minstrel Mark …’

  “There’s more, but that is enough,” I said. “The signature is just an initial, A. Now let us look at the other.”

  I picked up the earlier letter, the one dated the eleventh day of November 1532. From this too I read aloud.

  “‘My dearest love, once again, I cannot help but put my passion down on paper, for though we often meet and even speak one to the other, we can so rarely say the words we wish or even let our eyes speak for us. When can we hope once more to be lovers? I was so touched by your poem. It was rash of you, dangerous, to call it To Anne … but perhaps you could not help yourself …’”

  “Doesn’t necessarily mean anything,” said Haggard defiantly. “I said, anyone might be called Anne, or Mark …”

  “‘When I whispered to you in the dark,’” I quoted relentlessly, “‘that although I am queen of the realm …’”

  “Could be just a fancy, just a conceit. She could have meant ‘even if I were queen of the realm.’ Everyone doesn’t write good grammar. I don’t even speak it. It needn’t mean that she was really the queen.”

  “I know,” I said. “But even if the words weren’t meant literally, they could easily be—well—misunderstood. If Sir Philip came by them accidentally, he should have destroyed them at once. As a loyal subject of Queen Elizabeth, it was his duty. Have you observed the dates? Or did he perhaps point them out to you?”

  Master Haggard said nothing. He seemed to shrink.

  “These letters may be forgeries,” I said. “They look old, but a clever forger could no doubt make them seem so. He could write on old parchment and let the ink dry out in the sun, which would bleach and age it. Or they may be genuine but written between two ordinary people called Anne and Mark. What they appear to imply, however, is that there were romantic dealings between the queen of England and someone called Mark, between November 1532 and January 1533.” I found I had lowered my voice, as though I feared enemies might overhear. “The queen of England then,” I said, “was Anne Boleyn and one of the men executed for adultery with her was her minstrel, Mark Smeaton. And Queen Elizabeth was born on the seventh of September 1533.”

  “Was she?” The quarry was backed against a rock-face, and putting up a last defense. “I don’t recall when the queen was born. Who’s there to remind me? We don’t move in those circles.”

  “Perhaps not, but I fancy Sir Philip knew, if you didn’t. I also suspec
t that he told you. Why else would he show you the letters? I think you understand the implications very well, Master Haggard.” I lowered my voice still further, hardly able to bear the words that I must say. “These letters amount to a hint that Mark Smeaton was the father of Queen Elizabeth, instead of King Henry. You said that Sir Philip meant no harm, but if so, why did he keep them in his strongbox? And why did he show them to you?”

  “He only meant,” said Haggard wretchedly, “to show them to the queen and promise to destroy them if she would grant him—at least some of the castles and lands that belonged to his ancestors, or their equivalent in money or other property.”

  It was obvious, of course. I had been assuming it for some time. But it still came as a shock when I heard it said out loud. I stared at him without speaking.

  “He thought,” said Haggard, “that she’d want the letters hushed up at all costs.”

  “He would have been the one who was hushed up,” I said, recovering myself. “And the costs would have been his. He would have paid dear, in the dungeons under the Tower, and then on the gallows. He’s insane.”

  “No. It’s as you put it. He makes a new world in his mind and tells himself it’s real. Then he thinks they must be real to others.”

  “Why did he confide in you?”

  “Well,” said Haggard roughly, “if he is mad, he’s still not too far gone to know he was doing something risky. He scared himself with his own scheme, if you want to know. Here.” He picked up his own document box and clicked it open. From it, he took four more letters and handed them to me. “Take them. Take them away. I don’t want ever to see them again.”

  “These are more of them?” I said in horror. “He gave you these? Handed them over to you? But why?”

  “To protect himself. He thought that if things went wrong, he could bargain; he could say that there were more letters, that someone else had charge of them and would send them to what he called interested parties if he were arrested. He thought that the threat of these letters getting known would save him.”

  “He was wrong,” I said. I looked at the four letters. I won’t quote from them. They were all much the same as the others; except that some of the wording was even more indiscreet. The idea of such things being published abroad made me shudder.

  “Can’t think Queen Anne really wrote them,” Haggard said. “But I suppose some folk might believe it. Whoever is supposed to have written them was a woman, and women can be foolish.”

  “If Queen Anne wrote them, then foolishness is a mild word! But it makes no sense.” I was thinking hard. “My mother told me that Queen Anne and King Henry were married in January 1533—the twenty-fifth, I think. Elizabeth must have been conceived in December 1532. Smeaton was just a junior minstrel, then, in the king’s suite. If she ever did play the fool with him and my mother always swore that that was a lie …”

  “Your mother?”

  “She was one of Queen Anne’s ladies. She said that the accusations against Anne were lies. She herself was gone from the court long before Anne’s downfall, but she said she knew the queen and she didn’t believe a word of the things charged against her. But even if there was truth in them, it’s hard to believe she’d have played King Henry false then! In the months when they became lovers, and the heir to the throne was conceived—and King Henry married her! After angling for the crown for years on end! … Why did you agree to take these and keep them?”

  “I hoped no harm would come of it. Didn’t think he’d ever have the nerve to show them to the queen, to tell you the truth. He locked us into his study to show them to me and he was all of a dither—shaking, he was, with excitement and fright. Like a boy taking a dare and half-wishing he needn’t,” said Haggard.

  “But you agreed to help him,” I persisted. “Why?”

  “I’m in debt!” It burst angrily out of him. “Bad debt. I heard there was copper on young Rafe Northcote’s land and I thought maybe there’s some on mine. So I borrowed money to have my land prospected for copper and I was told there was some, so I borrowed more money to start workings, and the seam ran out. And then there was Alice—got to get her wed. Philip offered to arrange this marriage for her—only he wanted a commission, and there’s Alice’s dowry too. It’s in both money and land. If I’d keep the letters for him, he said he’d pay my debts, waive the commission, pay for the wedding, and help with the dowry as well.”

  Mortimer was in debt; Haggard was in debt. Rafe’s death would solve Mortimer’s problems and then he had hoped to blackmail the queen into giving him more, enlarging mere solvency into riches. Meanwhile, he would safeguard himself by kindly offering to solve Haggard’s difficulties as well as his own. At one and the same time, it was all quite mad, and perfectly logical.

  “He’s not a traitor!” said Haggard frantically. “It was just a threat, don’t you see? He wouldn’t really have published these letters and he didn’t really expect that I would. They’re a bluff … a lever … he knew that I’d never send them to …”

  “Mary Stuart?” I said. My skin crawled. Mary of Scotland already maintained that King Henry’s marriage to Anne Boleyn was invalid and that Elizabeth was only his illegitimate daughter. If she once got hold of the idea that Elizabeth wasn’t his daughter at all, lawful or otherwise …

  “And then,” said Haggard bitterly, “Alice has to go falling in love with that stupid boy Rafe. And you say women aren’t foolish.”

  “She probably thought Owen Lewis was old enough to be her grandfather,” I said. “If she’d been told more, it might have made a difference.”

  “She should do as she’s bid. I’m her father, aren’t I? What are you going to do with those letters?”

  “Cecil must see them,” I said. “That is unavoidable. But I may—only may—be able to convince him that you intended to do nothing harmful with them. Which brings me at last to the main reason why I came here in such desperate haste, without waiting for his representatives to join me. Have you or Sir Philip shown these letters to anyone else, anyone at all? Have you shown them to your wife?”

  “Good God, no! Philip said he hadn’t shown them to anyone but me and I most certainly haven’t. Least of all to Bess! Involve my wife in a thing like this? Never!”

  Relief made me feel weak. “If that’s so, then you may escape more lightly.” I looked at him very seriously. There were beads of sweat on his forehead. “You may think women are foolish, Master Haggard, but I recommend you, all the same, to listen to me now, and forget that I am someone you hold in low esteem.”

  “I don’t hold women in low esteem.” He wiped his wet brow with the back of his hand. “But they shouldn’t mix themselves up in men’s business.”

  “A moment ago, you told me that you’d sell your soul to be out of this business yourself. I am trying to help you out of it. Your best chance is to decide now that on the subject of these letters you will be utterly silent, forever. Forget they ever existed. Tell no one about them, not even your wife. You will have to invent a tale to explain my visit …”

  “No, I shan’t. If I don’t choose to tell her anything, Bess won’t ask. Bess concerns herself with domestic matters and never questions me about anything. She is an admirable woman and I wish all women were like her.”

  I refrained from saying that if all women resembled Bess Haggard, the world would be full of very bored men.

  “It will undoubtedly make things simpler if you need not lie to your wife,” I said. I hesitated. A thought had crossed my mind. Philip Mortimer’s abrupt departure from Queen Mary’s court, and the duel which occasioned it, were still nagging at my mind. “Master Haggard, do you happen to know why it was that Sir Philip left court ten years ago? He fought in a duel, I believe, but do you know exactly what was behind it?”

  “No, mistress, I don’t. I’ve heard of the duel, yes. It was supposed to be something to do with a woman, though once …” He hesitated. Then he said: “If you want to know, once, after we’d taken a fair amount of wine
together, Philip let out that he’d told his mother it was about a woman, but it was really to do with what he called a financial misunderstanding. Then he checked himself and didn’t say any more so I never found out what he really meant. Not that I tried very hard. I’m the sort to mind my own business.”

  “Thank you!” I said. Two ideas, hitherto unrelated, suddenly slid together at the back of my mind. “There’s one other thing,” I said. “Owen Lewis struck me as being smitten with Alice. If you’re short of money, he might take her with less dowry. My husband, Gerald Blanchard, married me when I had no dowry at all. Men in love do surprising things. Good day, Master Haggard.”

  19

  Inspiring Terror

  I went back through the parlor and took my leave of Bess as quickly as courtesy allowed. My cloak was fetched, and Bess said she would see me to my pony. As we went into the courtyard, there was a stir at the gatehouse and in rode Owen Lewis, his manservant with him. From his tall felt hat to his polished boots, he was dressed to impress, and as he swung down from his horse and tossed his reins to his man, I saw that his beard was freshly trimmed. As he came toward us, the scent of aromatic soap preceded him. Owen Lewis had come courting.

  “Mistress Haggard! I am here before you expect me, but keep away, I could not. And Mistress Blanchard! There’s a surprise, now. What brings you here, mistress?”

  It was an unlooked-for opportunity. I was as sure as I could be that the hateful letters lied, but they might well convince others. I needed to know, for certain, who had really written them. William Haggard obviously did not know. He knew only that somehow or other, Philip Mortimer had got hold of them. But when I asked him about that long-ago duel, he had unwittingly said something which had started a new chain of thought in my mind. From the beginning, I had had a persistent feeling that the events of a decade ago were somehow part of this present mystery. Was the right lock pick in my grasp at last?

  A moment ago, I had been thinking that the only way to learn more would be to go back to court and talk to whomever I could find who had also been a courtier in the days of Queen Mary. But now, here was Owen Lewis, who had been a close friend of Mortimer’s for a long time. People sometimes told friends more than they told their own families. Presented with a chance, even an outside chance, of confirming that the letters were forged, and encouraged by my success with Haggard, I seized my opportunity with both hands.