Queen Without a Crown

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  I said: ‘We know the man that Madge Goodman saw wasn’t likely to have been Gervase Easton. Because we have established that Easton was almost certainly right-handed and she saw a left-handed man.’

  ‘And I am left-handed and I was already in love with Judith. Ah, well. No, Susannah isn’t lying. I made a mistake in not getting rid of dear Lightfingers, instead of making her my accomplice.’ Susannah let out a faint shriek. ‘At the time,’ said Bowman, ‘it seemed a good revenge for her thefts, getting her to name Gervase – making an accomplice of her. I wanted Judith Easton so much.’

  He paused, looking not at us, but into the depths of his wine, as though he were seeing memories alive again in the glass.

  ‘How can I make you understand? I was younger then,’ he said. ‘Later in life, a man learns more sense, but twenty-three years ago . . . Even then, I didn’t know till it happened what it was like to be in love like that. I’d loved before, though not in that fashion. But I was only someone who made gloves for her, and she was wedded and never had eyes for any man but Gervase. He was a fool to worry about Hoxton. While Gervase was there, she couldn’t even see Hoxton; I’m sure of it. I remember that soft glow in her eyes whenever she looked at Gervase or spoke his name. She could hardly see me, either, except as a glover. I paid her a compliment now and then, tried to let her know with a look, or a light remark, how I felt, but she never noticed. She never would, while Gervase lived.

  ‘It was like a madness. It was a madness. Like being bewitched. She was the kind that can cast an enchantment just by breathing. I saw her image before the eyes of my soul, all day long. I acted out scenes inside my head, like a strolling player: inventing conversations, making love, with Judith. At night, I’d dream of her. I considered getting rid of Gervase, but then I’d think: there’s Hoxton. Mostly, he tires of women quickly, but he’s gone on and on hunting Judith. Maybe she’s put a spell on him too, and women do fall for him. With Gervase gone, maybe then she will notice him, and where will that leave me?

  ‘I wanted rid of Hoxton and Gervase alike, but how to do it? Besides, I was afraid that if I struck at Gervase Easton, someone would work out the link, or they would once I started courting Judith. Then I thought of striking at Hoxton and somehow putting it on to Gervase . . . Oh well. It’s always a fool’s business, letting women get mixed up in anything. The trouble was rooted in women, after all. I knew Mistress Mildmay in those days, to speak to – nothing more – but it was from her that I learned to recognize nightshade and heard what it could do. If I hadn’t known that . . . It was her fault partly, though mostly Judith’s.’

  ‘How could it be Judith’s fault?’ I said indignantly.

  ‘Too beautiful for her own good, and no use at standing up for herself,’ said Bowman harshly. ‘Marriage to her showed me that. Nothing like marriage for breaking an enchantment.’ He took a long drink of his spiced wine. ‘Poor, enchanting, foolish Judith. She couldn’t deal with Hoxton; she couldn’t even deal with Gervase. Well, she couldn’t stop him from fighting Hoxton and half-killing him. It wasn’t true, by the way, that I once heard Gervase make threats against Hoxton when he was drunk. I made that up. But the fight was real enough. It was all beyond Judith. I suppose you could say she couldn’t deal with me either. I made a push to get her as soon as she was free, and she couldn’t hold out against me. She was the kind that can’t make their way through life without a man to lean on. They’re faithful, but they’re not strong in other ways. We got wed, but when she knew me better, she got to be afraid of me. Then I didn’t want her any more. Who wants to love a mouse? I wanted to love a woman.’

  ‘She had the resolution to run away with Gervase,’ I said, nettled. ‘They married against his father’s wishes.’

  ‘He ran away with her,’ corrected Bowman dispassionately. ‘Not the other way round, I’d wager. She put a spell on him, without realizing it, same as she did with me, and he offered her a life with a man to look after her and just swept her off her feet. That’s how I’d read it. Well.’ His pale blue eyes stared round at us. ‘What do you want of me?’

  Brockley said: ‘We have made these enquiries on behalf of Judith’s son Mark. As you know, Mark wishes to marry and the girl’s family won’t consent until his father’s name is cleared. What we want of you is a written and signed account of the truth which we can show them. We don’t intend to show it to the authorities.’

  ‘You could forge that for yourselves,’ said Bowman and swallowed another gulp of wine.

  ‘Thank you, Bowman. Unlike you, we are not criminals,’ said Ryder coldly. ‘Forgery is a crime. We want your own confession because it will be more impressive than merely repeating Susannah’s testimony, though it is true that we could do that, and swear to it, if necessary.’

  ‘There will be other sworn statements to back up yours,’ I said to Bowman. ‘Testifying that Gervase was not left-handed, for instance.’

  ‘I won’t swear anything!’ said Susannah, in a panicky voice.

  ‘If you refuse to provide the confession,’ said Ryder, ignoring her, ‘then we will go to the constable with Susannah’s testimony. You will probably hang. Susannah probably will, too. A confession, though, made privately to us, could save both your necks.’

  Susannah set up a blood-curdling howl at this point, and Dale, kindly enough, went to put an arm round her.

  Bowman, ignoring her, turned to the rest of us. ‘All right. If that’s what you want. If you reckon this girl’s people are that persuadable. Why should I hinder a young man in love? I know what it’s like. Where are my writing things? Get off that window seat, Mistress Lightfingers. You’re sitting on them.’

  Dale coaxed Susannah off the seat, and Bowman lifted it up. From the storage chest beneath, he took paper and a writing set. He carried them to the table and sat down. In silence, we watched while he sharpened a quill, opened a phial of ink and, holding the pen in his left hand, began to write.

  He didn’t write for long. After a very few minutes, he blotted the sheet and looked round. ‘Who do I give this to?’

  ‘What if they take it to the law?’ wailed Susannah. ‘These folk you’ll be showing it to?’

  ‘We hope we can persuade them not to,’ said Brockley.

  Susannah, clearly unconvinced, burst into fresh howling.

  ‘Give what you’ve written to me,’ I said to Bowman. I took it from him and read it:

  I, Jonathan Bowman, Glover, of Windsor, declare that in September fifteen forty-seven I poisoned Peter Hoxton. The witness who said she had seen Gervase Easton adding an item to Master Hoxton’s dinner tray was in error. The man she saw was myself. There was a likeness between Easton and me. Easton had nothing to do with it. His wife Judith was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen and I wanted her for myself. Hoxton was in love with her, too. I feared that even if her husband should die, Hoxton might become my rival. By destroying him and making sure that her husband was accused, I could clear them both out of my way.

  I declare before God that what I have written here is true. Written and signed this 9th day of February, 1570.

  Jonathan Bowman.

  He had signed it with panache, in an ornate Italian hand.

  I handed it to Brockley. He and Ryder read it together. Ryder looked up, straight at Bowman, who was sitting half-turned on his stool, watching us, the quill pen still in his fingers.

  ‘I’ve been married myself, and widowed,’ Ryder said. ‘I know about love. But this love you’ve been telling us about . . . I can’t imagine it. It’s not . . . not healthy.’

  Brockley and I said nothing, but it was the silence of agreement. I wondered what the love Bowman had described really felt like. I found it hard to believe in it, and looking at him, it seemed incredible that such a huge and murderous passion could ever have existed within this little, hook-nosed, ordinary glover of Windsor.

  He was still holding the quill, but even as I gazed at him, he dropped it. He looked down at his left hand. ‘It’s gone limp,’
he said and gasped, as though he found it hard to breathe. ‘I’m losing strength. And I think . . .’

  It wasn’t until he retched, and suddenly we were all staring at him intently, that we realized, even by candlelight, that apart from the flush on his cheekbones, his face had changed from pale, to a sickly greyish-green.

  ‘What is it? What have you taken!’ Ryder sprang at him and grabbed his shoulders, but Bowman merely laughed, and then retched again.

  Gladys scrambled for the salt and took out the spice trays, sniffing at them. ‘Nutmeg . . . This one’s cinnamon . . . Nothing wrong there . . . This looks like cinnamon again . . . Ah!’ She put her nose closer. ‘This one smells funny,’ she said. ‘Garlicky. That ’ud be hemlock, like as not. Mixed in with the cinnamon, I’d say. Reckon he put this in his wine.’

  The story goes that the philosopher Socrates was executed with hemlock and died a gentle death. I doubt it, somehow. We lit more candles, so that we could see what we were doing, and tried to help him, but he thrust us away, refusing the warm salt water and even knocking away the basins we brought for the sickness and the dreadful liquid motions.

  Ryder rushed out in search of a physician and brought one back eventually, but it was far too late by then for any treatment to work, even if the doctor had been able to recommend one.

  Before he sank into his last coma, Bowman talked a little more, though jerkily, between gasps.

  ‘Always knew, one day, someone would find out. I think that manservant, Edwards, had his suspicions, but I dealt with him. Watched out for him in the Antelope inn with something ready in my pouch and spiked his drink for him. That settled him. But then you started – sent your man, Roger Brockley here – to ask questions. Soon as I saw you bringing . . . Susannah Lamb . . . that very moment . . . knew the day was here. But I’d made my plans. Grew the hemlock, had it handy, mixed with cinnamon. I’m good with potions. I sell a lot, quietly – drops to brighten a girl’s eyes, like I told you, tinctures to ease pain and give sleep, ointments for chapped hands. I make wine, too, and sell that now and again. It all helps. Keeps me solvent!’

  ‘You work with Catherine Mildmay?’ I said.

  ‘She sends me customers. We keep it quiet. Catherine gets asked . . . often . . . she’s respectable, scared for her good name . . . but she don’t mind passing ’em on to me. Girls wanting love philtres . . . then things to get rid of the results of love. Started working with Catherine after I buried Judith. I still lived in the town then but . . . I had . . . a garden. I tell my customers I can curse ’em if they talk out of turn.’ He even laughed, then, until another burst of vomiting came.

  An hour after that, he died.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Go Hunting No More

  The physician didn’t come until Bowman was unconscious and did not hear any of his last words. Nor did we repeat them to him. We told him, indeed, nothing of our purpose in visiting Bowman; only that we had chanced to call on him and found him very ill. At the inquest two days later, another physician testified that Bowman had had a disease, a growth in his abdomen, which must soon have killed him. The verdict was that because of this he had killed himself. With that, it was over.

  Brockley found an inn for Susannah Lamb and a passage on a barge returning to Oxford the next day. Meanwhile, I had quietly folded the confession away in my hidden pouch. Hugh and I would obtain the other statements from Madge and Arbuckle and get them sworn. We would see that everything was sent to Mark, with a letter explaining how it was obtained and a plea that the matter should end there, without involving Susannah any further. Bowman, the prime mover in the crime, was dead, after all. Susannah, by comparison, was nothing.

  I would also write separately to Pen in Tyesdale and to Ann and George Mason in Lockhill and tell them what we had learned, though without mentioning Susannah’s name. I had done my best and could only hope that it would be enough.

  ‘Why didn’t we see from the start that Bowman was a likely candidate?’ I said to Hugh. ‘Looking back now, it seems so obvious.’

  ‘I think I did see,’ Hugh said. ‘From the first moment I set eyes on him, I disliked him. I even noticed that parrot nose of his and remembered you telling me what Madge had said – that the man she saw had a beaky nose. Only, I saw him look at you, and he did that straight away, whether you realized it or not, and I thought my suspicions were just my jealousy. Though even then . . . I wouldn’t admit it to myself, but I think something else was at work in me when I made Brockley burn the gift. Gloves can be soaked in poison, you know.’

  ‘You really feared . . .?’

  ‘Not openly. I told myself it was simple jealousy. I know that I don’t think as clearly as I used to do, Ursula. I imperilled Hawkswood through muddled thinking, and we still don’t know for sure whether Mark will pay. The statements have only just gone off to him.’

  ‘I wonder how long it will be before they reach him?’ I said restlessly.

  But as far as that was concerned, we need not have worried. We sent our package with a royal courier who was travelling north and would be able to change horses frequently. He made excellent time. He found Mark in Carlisle, just back from an unproductive sortie over the Scottish border, where the fugitive insurgents had hidden themselves very successfully. This was annoying, Cecil said, but at least Anne of Northumberland and her adherents were now among them, fugitives instead of active conspirators. My brief and eventful stay at Ramsfold had, it seemed, most effectively ruined Lady Northumberland’s scheming. She had had to flee from English soil, and the latest news was that her remaining supporters in the north of England had lost heart and nerve and were unlikely to regain them. Elizabeth was pleased with me.

  For my part, I was pleased with Mark, whose response was immediate. In the letter that he sent back with the courier, he said he would be riding to Tyesdale at the earliest possible moment, but whatever the outcome, Hugh and I had done all that he could possibly ask of us – and here, with his love and gratitude, was the purse we had more than earned. The letter went on to say that he had successfully concluded the sale of his Devonshire property and was happy to tell us that he had done better out of it than he expected.

  We counted the contents. Mark had actually paid more than he had promised. ‘Hugh!’ I said. ‘Hawkswood is safe! It’s safe!’

  ‘Yes, it’s safe. Thank God. And thank you, Ursula. Thank you!’

  I looked at him. He was smiling, and I swear that even as I scanned his face, in that moment, the lines of pain and illness softened and grew fainter. The shadows in the sockets of his eyes lightened. Between one moment and the next, he had shed years.

  ‘Shall we go back to Hawkswood soon?’ I asked.

  ‘As fast as we can. Meg said to me yesterday that she wanted to go home. We’ve never told her in so many words that Hawkswood was in danger, but she can hardly be unaware that we’ve been anxious and that Mark’s commission was important. She may have overheard things, too. I might tell her the story, now that it’s all over, and I really think she’ll be glad to leave the court. Ursula, about Meg . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We know now that Hawkswood will remain ours, so I don’t think we need fear that young Hillman will change his mind about us, not that I ever really thought he would. If he and Meg get on well, next time they meet, should we get her married at sixteen and not send her to court as a maid of honour? We spoke of this once before, but I feel perhaps it’s time we actually made a decision.’

  ‘I think it would be an excellent idea,’ I said. ‘I suggest we invite young Hillman to stay as soon as possible.’

  ‘I’d like to take her father’s part at her wedding, I must say. She’ll go away to Buckinghamshire, of course, but we can visit her. Even I could get there by coach in good weather, and later on, let us hope there will be grandchildren for you. I know that life isn’t so very exciting at Hawkswood – or Withysham – but it could be very pleasant.’

  ‘Exciting? I’ve had excitement enough for
several lifetimes. What made you say that, Hugh?’

  ‘Even now,’ he said, ‘after all your reassurances, I still sometimes think to myself – what about Matthew de la Roche, in France?’

  ‘No! No, Hugh. I have told you before. I meant it then, and I mean it now. I shall remain dead to Matthew. He has a new wife, and a child, and besides . . .’

  ‘Yes? And besides?’

  ‘I have said this before, as well. I don’t want to turn time back, and I don’t want to live in France with one of Elizabeth’s most implacable enemies. I want England. I want you.’

  ‘I’m glad to know it. I’m so much older than you . . . You know, if anything should happen to me, I would like to think of you marrying again, and the best kind of husband for you would be someone like . . . Well, like Brockley. He’s a good man, a good pattern, as it were. In fact, if he’d been free, I sometimes wonder if you wouldn’t have preferred him to me.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t think of Brockley like that. It’s true that we’re friends. But – it is only friendship.’

  I spoke the truth and spoke it with certainty. Once, long ago, it had very nearly been more than friendship, but the moment had passed and, in the end, so had the desire. To be replaced . . .

  To be replaced by that extraordinary, crazy and hilarious psychic union in the hall of Ramsfold House, which still echoed in my mind. Brockley and I would remain friends, close friends, until one of us died; I knew that now. We would never be less. Nor would we ever be more.

  It is a rare situation between a woman and a man, but it can happen. Elizabeth was capable of it. I believe she had such links with both Robert Dudley of Leicester and Sir William Cecil. Even her father (and mine), the terrifying Henry the Eighth, who had two wives executed, possessed some of it, for in my days at court, I had been told that he had always remained on friendly, brother and sister, terms with Anne of Cleves after their marriage was annulled. He was better as a brother than a lover.