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

by Buckley, Fiona

  “You both came down here that night. Why was that?”

  In a low voice, she said: “He had just begun to undress when I went into his room. He had taken his doublet off. He told me to go away so that he could finish undressing in private—he said that to me, who had disrobed him with my own hands, so many times! I … I said as much to him and he ran out of the room in his shirt and hose and rushed away down the tower stairs. I ran after him and caught him up in the tower parlor. I confronted him again. I …”

  “We have no need of the details,” said Rob, I think as much out of embarrassment as out of pity. But Lady Thomasine shook her head impatiently.

  “No. You must know why I did what I did. I want you to understand. If you have ever known love, then remember it now. Ask yourself how you would feel if the object of your love let you abase yourself and then cast you off with despising words. Don’t think that it hurt me less because I am nearer sixty than fifty, and he was only twenty. It hurt me more. I was being put away for something that was only on the outside of me. Inside, I was—I am—still only twenty. I said that to him too! I implored him to listen. I … knelt! Knelt before him! I pleaded! But he put me from him and he ran from me again, and came in here.”

  She straightened her back and drew a long, tremulous breath. “Again I followed; again, here in this room where we are now, I confronted him. He told me to go back to my chamber. I begged him to come with me. We quarreled, but all in whispers because there were people sleeping overhead. Alice was up there. He was afraid she would hear. At last, because he could not be rid of me, he said, come into the study; we won’t be heard so easily there. He took the key from its place and let us in. There was still a fire in the hearth here. He lit a candle at it and took it into the study. He closed the door. Then I learned why he was so anxious for us to be secluded, for he meant to be cruel, to break our bond finally by breaking my heart and he feared that I would cry aloud.”

  “Did he laugh at you?” asked Rob quietly.

  She nodded. “He said it had amused him for a while, to be my lover. He had been flattered by my interest and he had liked the gifts I bought him, he said. That was a lie, for we were lovers before I ever gave him his first present. Oh, what does it matter now? He said it was all over, that his services were no longer for sale, and yes, he laughed. I suppose he did it to make me go away. He told me to … to look in the mirror and compare myself with Alice. I became angry, so angry. He hurt me so much and he didn’t care. He laughed at my pain. I … I tried to swallow my anger. Tried to swallow my pride. I made one last appeal. I tried to put my arms round him. He was a cleanly boy,” said Lady Thomasine. “He washed himself all over twice a week. I used to help him, sometimes. He used a perfumed soap. He got it in Hereford. I told you: they have everything under the sun in Hereford. Merchants bring goods up the Severn from Bristol; there is nothing you can buy in London that you can’t buy in Hereford. I don’t know what the perfume was—it was spicy, not sweet; a man’s smell. I always loved it. To stand near him and breathe the scent of him would make my senses reel. I breathed it then and it melted my whole being with longing. Do you understand?”

  I said: “Yes,” with feeling. Owen Lewis had done just that to me, although he’d never known it and never would. Gerald and Matthew had done it, too. They had known it perfectly well, of course, and thank God neither of them had ever thrown me off with cruel words or laughed at me.

  “Rafe pushed me off,” she said. “As though I repelled him. He said he was going back to his room and would bolt the door against me. He said he hoped I wouldn’t shame myself by hammering on it and shouting and rousing the whole castle. I was weeping, and he said my tears made me even uglier than age had made me. I couldn’t bear it. I was beside myself. When he’d said his say, he made for the door again. By the light of the candle, I saw the dagger gleaming on my son’s desk. I picked it up and …

  “I didn’t know what I was doing,” said Lady Thomasine bleakly. “I wanted to hurt him as he had hurt me. I wanted to … to … stop him from leaving me. I wanted to reach him, to make him aware of me. To make him respect me, to know that I wasn’t a nothing, a toy that he could throw away if he pleased, with impunity. I struck! He staggered forward and fell. I stooped over him and said oh, my God … or something like that. I tried to get the dagger out of his back but it wouldn’t come. Some blood came, though. I suppose that’s when it got onto my slipper. He moaned and turned his head and stared up at me and then … then his eyes … changed and I knew I had killed him.”

  She fell silent. “Oh, ma’am!” said Nan, inadequately. “I didn’t know. Was that why you wanted me to stop sleeping in your room and made me take the little room above? So that he could come to you? And not because I snored?”

  “Quite,” said Lady Thomasine. “You don’t snore, if it’s any comfort to you. I didn’t expect you to understand how it was with me and Rafe. I took trouble to keep it from you. I sent you to sleep alone so that Rafe could visit me at will.” She turned to Rob. “I went to my son. Who else when I needed help? He was still up, reading in his room. I clutched at him and told him what had happened. He …”

  “Did he already know about you and Rafe?” Rob asked.

  “We had never told him but I thought he must know, or guess, and I was right. He had seen things, once or twice, as your wife did. When I went to him that night, he told me so. I said to him: ‘Whatever you think of me, please help me now,’ and he said: ‘But I thought no ill of you. You are a great lady. Why should you not please yourself? The boy was willing, I suppose, and a young man can learn much from a woman with knowledge of life. I let it be.’ He is a good son, my Philip. He said he would help.”

  “I think we did once wonder if he had killed Rafe for being too close to you,” I said. Lady Thomasine shook her head.

  “I can do no wrong in my son’s eyes.” It was not a boast but a statement of fact, something she took so much for granted that she had never questioned it. “He is loyal unto death, my Philip. He said he would come down to the study to look; that perhaps I was wrong and Rafe wasn’t dead. So down we came and found you there, you and your manservant, standing by the body! Philip was clever. He thinks quickly. He pretended I had brought him there because I had thought someone was creeping about in his study. We both pretended to be taken by surprise when we saw Rafe lying there. It was as though we were thinking with one mind. Then I accused you, and Philip understood at once and followed where I led.”

  “How much did Pugh and Evans know?” I asked.

  “They believed what we told them; that you had killed Rafe. They thought that in getting rid of you and arranging for Rafe to be found at the foot of the Mortimer Tower, I was protecting my family’s good name, that it was all because you and I are related through the Blanchards.”

  “Sir Philip knew what you had done with us,” I said as a statement, not as a question, and she nodded.

  “I was afraid of you,” she said. “An inquiry by the sheriff of Hereford could be so dangerous. You are a former lady of the court, a friend of the Cecils’. You would be listened to. I knew that Mistress Henderson probably guessed about me and Rafe. I saw her that time she looked into my room when we were embracing. I said we must get rid of you, but Philip shrank from murder.”

  “Yes, that was what Gladys thought,” I said.

  Lady Thomasine looked at me as though I were a little insane. “What has Gladys to do with it? I shrank from outright killing too. One was enough. One was too many! I am not a murderess by nature. Rafe … oh, poor Rafe! Then I thought of shutting you in the hut.”

  “That was kinder than stabbing us?” I inquired. “Or was the idea to give us a sporting chance?”

  “It wasn’t like bloodletting!” said Lady Thomasine hysterically. “Philip said very well, but he did not want to know any more. I should do as I wished and he would not interfere. Perhaps it was giving you a chance in a way but I didn’t think you could escape. I don’t know what I was thin
king! I just hoped never to hear of you or see you again! I wanted you not to exist! Why did I ever bring you here? Why did you have to go to the study just then, and find Rafe? I wanted it all not to be! We thought we could pretend that Rafe had killed himself and be believed. Then there began to be whispers—but we caught Gladys and thought she could be blamed.” Lady Thomasine showed no sign of remorse concerning Gladys. Her voice was tinged with savagery as she said: “Then, yesterday, you came back! You were supposed to be dead but there you were, prepared to shout from the housetops that Rafe had been stabbed. To go back to what we said at the beginning, to saying that you’d killed him yourself, was all I could think of to stop you, to protect myself and my son. I was desperate.”

  She was visibly exhausted but her anger gave her strength. “What else could I do? I brought you to Vetch to protect Philip, Mistress Blanchard. Are you now going to throw him to the gallows? Don’t, please don’t! He didn’t kill Rafe and he only let me send you to the Black Mountains; he didn’t plan it or take part. I did all that. I planned everything and Pugh and Evans did the … the physical tasks. Oh God. I could not bear to look on what the fall from the tower had done to Rafe. I crept away from his wake, to cry alone. My son only kept my counsel and what son wouldn’t?”

  The porch door opened again and Gladys peered in. Her unlovely face was ineffably smug. On impulse, I beckoned to her.

  “Nan,” I said, “meet the face at the window. It was Gladys that people saw looking out of the haunted tower, both a few days ago, and this afternoon just gone. You did well, Gladys. Most of the castle thought the ghosts were at large, before Brockley twanged a single note on his lute. Oh yes. It was Brockley out there, pretending to be the ghost of Rhodri.”

  Gladys bobbed an ironical curtsy to Lady Thomasine, who stared at her with astonishment and loathing. Nan gave a shriek. “You mean it was all a trap, a snare to take my lady? Oh, you wicked thing, you cruel, wicked …”

  “It was both wicked and cruel to take Mistress Blanchard and her servants to a cottage in the hills and lock them in to die,” said Rob acidly.

  “So there were no ghosts,” Lady Thomasine said wearily. “Just a man with a lute and an old woman peering from a window. I should have known. But it’s so late at night and I’m so very, very tired.” She turned once more to Rob. “What now? You have said nothing about Philip. What will you do? Is it the dungeon for both of us or only for me? Will you drag my son from his bed? Or can he sleep at least till day, and can I begin my captivity by passing the rest of tonight locked in my own chamber?”

  “I will permit that,” Rob said, “although I shall place a guard at your door. In the morning, I will take a final decision on what shall be done with the two of you. Barker will be your guard.”

  We took Lady Thomasine to her chamber quietly, without disturbing anyone else. The search in the courtyard had reached its unsuccessful end, and the menservants had gone back to their quarters. There were still a few lights over there, and no doubt a good many of the servants were still huddling together, half terrified and half excited, chattering about ghostly minstrels. But none of them came over to Aragon or the Mortimer Tower and Lady Thomasine was locked into her room in discreet fashion.

  She refused to have Nan with her, although we would have allowed it. Nan cried bitterly over that, but Lady Thomasine said coldly that she was not impressed by the tears of a maid as careless as Nan had been, and that she wished to spend the rest of the night in prayer, alone. “You shall come to me in the morning, Nan,” she said, “and I hope you will be mistress of yourself by then and mistress also of your neglected trade!”

  “In the morning,” said Rob, when we were downstairs again, “we will take Mortimer in charge, and those two men, Pugh and Evans. As they haven’t been alarmed, they presumably won’t run for it and we’ll collect them at breakfast. Just now, I feel more inclined to go to bed for what’s left of the night.”

  We all agreed with him. Once in bed, I fell instantly asleep. It seemed only a moment before I woke to find Gladys shaking me and saying: “Wake up, mistress! Wake up! Master Henderson wants to see you. Something’s happened—terrible it is, terrible—get up, do.”

  I scrambled out of bed, got myself into a wrapper, and rushed out of my room. Rob, fully dressed and pale of face, was just coming to fetch me. “It’s Lady Thomasine,” he said. “She’s lying in the courtyard, below the Mortimer Tower. She’s dead.”

  “I never expected this,” Rob said to me as we stood side by side, looking down on Lady Thomasine. She had not changed her clothes, and lay on the cobbles in last night’s finery. One twisted, shattered leg protruded from her disordered skirts, and its slipper had come off. The other leg was decorously hidden except for the foot, which still wore the slipper stained with Rafe’s blood. The pearl-edged cap had tumbled awry so that her hair flowed loosely about her head.

  Beneath it was something at which I did not want to look closely; a dreadful hint of blood and brains and splintered bone. But her face was unharmed and perfectly quiet, as though the shock of death had been so swift that she had felt no pain. I hoped this was so.

  “So many of the windows in the towers are arrow slits,” Rob said. “But not in her room. I’ve just been up there and the casement is modern. There are mullions, and the windows in between can be opened and they’re wide enough for someone to get through who isn’t fat. Lady Thomasine was quite slender. She must have been very quiet about it. Barker was outside her door but he heard nothing.”

  “I think her father modernized the windows,” I said. “I—am not as surprised by this as you are. I wondered, even last night.”

  “Did you, indeed? Typical of you not to say anything. I know,” said Rob, “of a previous occasion when you helped a condemned man evade the gallows. Cecil told me.”

  A footfall made us turn. Mortimer was there, with two servants, who were carrying a tabletop between them. A dark cloth lay on it. “We want to move her,” Mortimer said. “She is to be taken into the chapel and laid out decently.”

  I moved aside for him, and his almond-shaped, greenish eyes met mine with bitterness. “Why didn’t you leave Rafe’s death alone?” he said. “Nothing now will bring him back. I blame you for my mother’s death. Master Henderson has told me all that passed last night. All else apart, I gather that I am myself under house arrest as an accessory. As though I would not have done anything—anything—to protect her.”

  He stared down at her and I heard the gasp of a muffled sob. “Look at her. Look at her. She was the best of mothers to me. She couldn’t bear to grow old, that was all. She couldn’t bear the loss of her beauty. You never knew her when she was young. She was the most exquisite being you ever beheld. And to see her now like this … I adored her when I was a boy and I still do, whatever she has done.”

  “I am sorry,” I said, though I wasn’t quite sure what it was I was sorry for—his bereavement, Lady Thomasine’s grief for her lost youth, or the hopeless disaster in which they and Rafe had become enmeshed.

  “No doubt. Oh, I’m sure you thought you were doing right. That’s what busybodies always say.” He raised his eyes to me again, his face more bitter than ever. “Well, it is better this way, perhaps. The inquest will be bad enough but perhaps, Mistress Blanchard, you would not enjoy thinking of Lady Thomasine with a rope round her neck. Any more than I.”

  23

  Lioness Rampant

  The following morning, Rob Henderson ordered Pugh and Evans to be locked into their respective rooms, and then took two men with him to Mortimer’s chamber and questioned Sir Philip for an hour. Then he returned to the guest keep, his face grim.

  “We have to ride for the court without delay,” he said. “Before we go, I must send a messenger to St. Catherine’s Well. When I come back, I want to find William Haggard here. He will have to be questioned as well. And just what am I to do meanwhile with Mortimer and those two delightful henchmen of Lady Thomasine’s—Pugh and Evans? Last night, I decided
to arrest all three of them and be done with it. But now—I find myself uncertain. I don’t want to make a mistake. Once in a while,” said Rob with regret, “I do make mistakes.”

  I didn’t comment. Matthew was alive and free because Rob had once forgotten to place a guard at the back of a house. I recalled the occasion with thankfulness but I knew that Rob didn’t.

  “From the start,” he said now, “the queen and Cecil said that discretion was important. And the more I look at these horrible forgeries, the more I agree with that! I long to bundle Mortimer into his own dungeon on a charge of treason and being an accessory to murder. I long to drag him to the Tower. I’d dearly love to put him in the charge of the sheriff of Herefordshire. But I can’t be sure if the queen would have me do so—and there’s another difficulty.”

  “What difficulty?” I asked.

  “When I was questioning Mortimer, he said something highly disquieting.” Rob’s good-looking face was grimmer than ever. “Damn the man. Damn him!” He took to pulling at his flaxen beard in indecision.

  I said: “Brockley and I have been to the stables. Our horses are not there, nor is our saddlery. Before we leave, will you ask Pugh and Evans what was done with them?”

  Rob looked at me as though he thought me incurably frivolous but he did as I asked. Under his bullying, Pugh and Evans admitted that before they collected me and my servants at dawn to take us to the Black Mountains, they had led Bay Star and Speckle quietly from their stable and turned them out in a secluded pasture near the castle. “And after they returned from locking you in that hut,” Rob said, “they went back to the horses and took them off to turn them loose on the Malvern Hills. God knows where they are now. Your saddlery’s all right—pushed under a heap of oddments in a storeroom. Too good to throw in the moat, I fancy! They seem to be provident folk at Vetch! I’ve retrieved it. It’s in Barker’s quarters for the time being.”