But he smiled and his blue-grey eyes were as steady as ever, and bright with good news. He said: ‘I think I have found Harry.’
‘I was very careful,’ he said, after he had finished describing his disguise, and the lonely house with the encircling wall, and the glimpse of the face that might have been Harry’s. ‘I didn’t think they had any suspicion of me, but I took no chances. I’d asked them the way to Warwick and they told me, so I rode off in the direction they recommended. Until I was out of their sight. Then I sat down hard in the saddle and rode for Sheffield as though a fiend with horns and a tail was in pursuit! Thank you, Fran, love!’ Dale, after giving her husband a welcoming hug, had hurried out of the room and now returned with a tray bearing a flagon of wine, glasses and a dish of cheesecakes.
‘That will go down very well,’ said Brockley with gratitude, seizing on a cheesecake while Dale poured the wine. ‘There was a lot of cross-country riding. Fortunately,’ said Brockley, gulping wine and engulfing cheesecake, ‘Jaunty is a very good horse. So here I am, after two more days, and it’s after dark, but I’m here. Eddie’s looking after Jaunty now. I think we should keep that horse when we go home. He’s an ornament to any stable.’
‘Yes, we will. But Brockley, please go on!’
‘There isn’t much more to tell. If I’m right about the house I found and the face at the window, then Harry is safe for the present. What has been happening here?’
‘I went to a card and supper party held by Mary, and I meant to slip her just a drop of hemlock in her wine, to give the impression to any prying spy that I was trying to do something but …’
Until then, I hadn’t told Dale, who burst out in horror. ‘Ma’am, you couldn’t! You didn’t!’
‘No, Dale. I couldn’t and I didn’t. I couldn’t bring myself to it.’
‘You once smuggled poison to a man to save him from a worse death,’ Brockley said, recalling an assignment I had had many years before.
‘That was to save him, and he was glad to have it. He took it of his own choice. There’s a difference.’
‘Yes. Yes, I see that there is.’ Brockley brushed crumbs off his beard and scratched his chin. ‘Is there a barber in the castle? If so, I would welcome his services tomorrow.’
‘I’m sure there is.’ Most of Talbot’s men were clean-shaven and short-haired and a resident barber would have plenty of work to do.
‘And tomorrow,’ said Brockley, ‘we have to consider what to do next. We have to get Harry out of that house. Somehow.’
I said: ‘I think … it may be time to talk to Sir George Talbot.’
‘So that was it,’ said Talbot. He had made no difficulty about seeing us, and Brockley and I were now in the study where we had first met him. Bess was also present. It was late on the same evening and there was a conspiratorial feeling about this gathering, lit by candles and with the window shutters closed. The Talbots had listened with increasing horror to the tale I had to tell. ‘I take it,’ said Talbot, ‘that the queen and Sir Francis Walsingham know about all this?’
‘Yes. But I dared not confide in you, not until now,’ I said. ‘My captors – who are also Harry’s – threatened to sell him if there was any hue and cry after them, any public search. Until we knew where he was, we dared do nothing. Even now …’ I looked at Brockley. ‘You are sure?’
It was not the first time I had asked that question but more like the fourth. Brockley made the reply he had already repeated several times. ‘The house matches the description that Harry gave us in his letter. He wrote that the place was built of grey stone with a slate roof and had ivy on the walls, a wall round the house and garden and a front courtyard. The house I found is also about an hour’s ride away from the Ashley cottage. That matches with what his widow told me. And I think I saw Harry at a window.’
‘It sounds as though it is enough,’ said Talbot. ‘Well, what do you want to do?’
Brockley, who had once been a soldier, promptly produced a soldier’s solution. ‘I think we need your help, Sir George. Help in the form of armed men. I think we should attack, preferably by night. It should be a secret business as far as possible – so as not to alert them if by any chance it’s the wrong house. Though I don’t think it is. We should burst in, in force, find Harry and grab him. And them!’
‘You’ll certainly need men for that,’ said Bess. ‘How many can we provide?’
‘How many would be enough?’ I saw with relief that Talbot was not shying away from the prospect of a violent assault on the lonely walled house. His hazel eyes were no longer grave but gleaming with enthusiasm. He was not noticeably like Brockley but in this, I could see that they were kindred spirits. They were both relishing the adventure. ‘I can supply twenty,’ Talbot said. ‘Better too many than not enough. They can look on it as an exercise. They’ll enjoy it.’
Bess was visibly thinking. She was a formidable woman with considerable intelligence. Now she said: ‘If Brockley has it right, Harry is being held somewhere near Warwick. We can’t take a force of twenty men from here to Warwick, a journey of two or three days, without being noticed. Especially if, as Mistress Stannard fears, there are people spying on her and events around her. Do you believe these conspirators really do have a spy here in Sheffield Castle, Mistress Stannard?’
‘I can’t be sure,’ I said. ‘It might be wise to assume so.’
Bess nodded. ‘Then we need a good excuse for sending a squad of men galloping from here to Warwick – I take it we shall aim for Warwick first.’
‘Best start by going to the castle,’ said Talbot. ‘I would like to consult with Sir Ambrose. If he’s there.’
‘He was expected when I left Warwick,’ Brockley said.
‘We are on friendly terms,’ Talbot said. ‘Yes, we should make for the castle first, so that I can talk with him, and we can establish a base, a secure place to bring Harry to, if we find him.’
Bess said: ‘Last year, he and a number of his men visited us and we had some friendly competitions between his men and ours. Not a tournament, but competitions for marksmanship, swordplay, races over obstacle courses and so on. Why should we not have a return match? That can be the excuse for taking twenty men to Warwick and we can make sure everyone we meet on the way knows about it.’
Talbot grinned. ‘I can send a courier with a sealed letter for Sir Ambrose’s eyes only, and have it on the way within half an hour.’ He looked at me. ‘Mistress Stannard, if there really is someone here, watching you, have you any suspicions about who it could be? Very few people have joined us recently, except for yourself. One of the cooks, I believe, and Lady Alice Hammond – that’s all.’
‘It could be a most unlikely person,’ I said. ‘And not necessarily someone who has recently joined your household.’
Brockley said: ‘According to my wife, Master Russell Woodley has been paying you attention, madam. Have you considered that he might be the one?’
‘Yes, I have,’ I said. It had crossed my mind once or twice. ‘But his symptoms,’ I said dryly, ‘began before Harry was taken, and in any case, they suggest a somewhat different disease!’
Talbot looked enquiring and Brockley looked startled. Bess laughed. ‘I think he has proposed marriage to her,’ she said. ‘Someone overheard him – he chose to make his proposal in the middle of a passage when people were going to breakfast.’
‘I declined,’ I said.
The Talbots had, it appeared, often travelled to Warwick and had standing arrangements in place, at inns and private houses where accommodation was always kept in readiness, in exchange for payment. If haste were required – and we all felt a need for it – then everyone went on horseback, carrying basic necessities in saddlebags and shoulder-packs. Baggage wagons could follow.
Elaborate gowns couldn’t easily be carried on horseback but Bess said that the Countess of Warwick would lend any ladies in the party fresh dresses until the baggage caught up. ‘She has done so several times,’ said Bess. She added that
she would accompany us. ‘And Mistress Stannard and I will take our maids. Our party will then look like a private excursion, for pleasure.’
‘My wife is Mistress Stannard’s maid,’ said Brockley. ‘But she is not able to ride hard, not as hard as we shall need to.’
‘Then she can stay behind,’ said Bess shortly. ‘I will lend Mistress Stannard a younger woman. I will leave my usual maid behind and take Lady Alice as my attendant. It will keep her under our eye.’
‘Once we get to the house,’ I said, ‘how do we get in? If there is a wall all round …’
Talbot smiled at me benignly. ‘My dear lady, there are such things as ladders. We can collect those in Warwick. From what Master Brockley has said, the distance from there to the walled house is not too great.’
‘Not much more than an hour, without ladders,’ said Brockley. ‘And with them, not that much longer. We can put them on a cart and drive it fairly fast.’
Talbot nodded, and went to his study door. He put his head out and shouted, which quickly produced a page. ‘Everyone is to assemble in the great hall, forthwith,’ he said. ‘Find William Cropper and tell him I want him. Also, find Captain Grey and send him here. I shall order them to gather the household and the entire garrison. I want everyone there – cooks, scullions, ladies, my soldiers. As fast as possible!’ Coming back, he said: ‘I don’t think I will be able to accompany you to the house itself, though I shall come as far as Warwick. The queen does not like her lords to be personally involved in – unorthodox actions. And you, Mistress Stannard, you will hardly want to be there with the raiding party, though I take it that you will wish to come to Warwick.’
‘On the contrary,’ I said, ‘I shall accompany the raiding party. I shan’t climb the ladders or go over the wall or wave a sword about, but when Harry is freed, I mean to be there for him. I’ll use a pair of Brockley’s old breeches and ride astride for the occasion. I won’t look so out of place then and a cross-saddle probably is safer for hard riding in the dark.’
The next day dawned grey and cold, but with a promise of something better to come. The clouds were high and did not threaten rain. Fasts were broken in the chilly twilight of daybreak and full daylight found the raiding party assembled on horseback in the main courtyard: Sir George, Bess, myself, Brockley, Lady Alice, some grooms (though not Eddie, for I had left him to look after our coach horses) and a young waiting maid, Jenny, for me. Dale, tearfully, had had to agree to following with the baggage. In addition, there were the twenty armed men. No, twenty-one, for out of the crowd, Russell Woodley came spurring towards me.
‘Mistress Stannard! Sir George has told me what is happening. I have had some training in arms and I am coming with you.’ He smiled at me. ‘You would not accept my hand but I beg you to accept my sword. I understand that your son was lost and needs rescuing. I will be so glad to serve you.’
This was no time to be coy. ‘I accept your service,’ I said gravely, hoping that it wouldn’t lead to complications in the future. Russell Woodley looked pleased.
I shall long remember the journey to Warwick, which took two days and a couple of hours on the third. It will be with me always: the sense of urgency, the relentless hours on the road, the steady pounding of hooves and the tossing of manes and the creak of saddlery. And above all, the sense of taking action at last, of being on the way to Harry, to Harry, to Harry. His name rang in my head, in time to the rhythm of Jewel’s hoofbeats.
In the inn where we stayed the first night, I went to the stable on the excuse of making sure that Jewel had been properly cared for, found Brockley tending her, and seized the chance of some private talk with him. From the moment of his arrival at Sheffield, my head had been so full of plans for Harry’s rescue, that there were questions I had left unasked. I asked them now.
‘When you left Hawkswood,’ I said, ‘what were things like there? Had you learned anything new?’
‘No, madam.’ Carefully, he brushed a tangle out of Jewel’s dark mane, and ran a hand down her off foreleg to pick up the hoof and begin cleaning it. ‘Before I left, as you know, I sent Philip to Guildford to trace Miller’s movements there if he could. He returned just as I was setting off after Harry’s letter reached me. He hadn’t been able to find anything out at all. Meanwhile, madam, I had let Miller alone. There is no actual proof that he is involved in this business and I have to admit, he is very good with the horses. If we can once get Harry safely home, we can go into things further. If we take some prisoners,’ he added, ‘they may talk. If I get my hands on any of them, they will talk, I promise.’ He looked up from his work with the hoof-pick and I saw how grim his face was.
My voice echoed that grimness, as I said: ‘You would have my full support, believe me.’ A thought crossed my mind. It had begun to niggle at me since Brockley recounted his search for the man Ashley, and the sad ending to that search. I said: ‘Ashley. Do you think that he really died in an accident? Or did someone think that perhaps he knew too much, about the house, and so on?’
Brockley straightened up and looked at me. ‘I think he was murdered, madam. There has been nothing I could do about it and when I got back from Warwick, there was something I didn’t tell you. I didn’t want to frighten you. But …’
I listened, horrified, as he told me how he had paused to look at a thatcher on the roof of a black-and-white house, and actually seen a man shift the position of a ladder, and only learned when he found himself at Ashley’s funeral that Daniel worked alone, so that the man who moved the ladder was not his assistant, and therefore …
‘If they suspect that Ashley helped Harry, they would be very worried about how much he knew and how much he might talk. And even if they didn’t suspect Ashley of helping Harry, they might still have feared that he had noticed Harry and might talk about him,’ Brockley said. ‘We can’t know what they thought or how much they suspected or how far they might go to stop his mouth or be revenged on the poor fellow.’ He turned back to his work but said, very grimly indeed: ‘But if they do suspect that Harry managed to get a message out, then I wonder how they found out.’
‘You said you may have seen Harry at a window. If you did, he’s still there. They haven’t moved him.’
‘I pray they still haven’t,’ said Brockley. ‘Though I wonder why, if they had any inkling of the message that Harry managed to send.’ He straightened up with a grunt. ‘But I am as sure as I can be that Ashley was murdered. I think I saw it happen and didn’t realize it.’ His fists clenched. ‘I saw it happen and could have stopped it if only I’d known! It sickens me to think of it. I try to hope that what I saw wasn’t sinister but I’m so sure in my heart that it was.’
‘I wonder,’ I said, ‘if we’ll ever know the full truth.’
TWENTY
Three Times Is Too Many
We reached Warwick Castle halfway through the morning of the third day. George Talbot’s advance message had been received safely, so we were expected and were made welcome. Sir Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick and his countess Lady Anne had indeed returned from their recent visit to court, and they greeted us in the great hall, amid a wealth of elaborately carved furniture and glittering silver plate and a wide paved floor in a red-and-white chequered pattern and wondrous wall-hangings.
These took the form of costly tapestries and Oriental carpets, alternated by weaponry arranged in patterns. There were two dozen spears arranged like a lethal fan, and four swords used as a frame surrounding a portrait of Sir Ambrose’s father, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, beheaded long ago for treachery, but clearly still respected by his son. There were also numerous pairs of antlers, mostly red deer. One set, I noticed, had sixteen points, a rare achievement for an English stag, though I had seen such heads in France.
Ambrose was the brother of Robin Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Elizabeth’s beloved favourite (though not her lover, whatever rumour might say), and there was a resemblance. Sir Ambrose had the same height and the same long, dark face as his brot
her, though not the same presence. He was said to be a quiet, conventional man, which the flamboyant Robin certainly was not, and reputedly shared many of the views of the Puritans, who had lately become quite a force in the Anglican Church. His clothes were made of expensive cloth, but they were all brown and grey. He did not adorn himself with bright colours or jewellery, and he greeted us without effusiveness.
His lady was also quietly dressed and she was calm and smiling as she enquired about our journey and gave orders for wine to be served.
All the same, there was still a certain air of suppressed excitement about the two of them and my lord’s dark eyes did have something of Leicester’s adventurous sparkle. After his courteous speech of welcome and the distribution of refreshments, he drew me aside and said: ‘I am fully apprised of your purpose here, Mistress Stannard. The message Sir George sent me was explicit. This is a terrible situation for you. To have a child in such peril … I can hardly imagine what it feels like!’
He had no living children, that I knew. There had been a daughter once, by a previous wife, but she had died young and there had never been any more. He said: ‘I agree with Talbot that it would be best, for your boy’s sake and indeed, politically, for this affair to be dealt with quietly and privately. I have agreed to lend another ten men for the purpose; that will give you a force of thirty, apart from any other companions you have brought. I think that like Sir George, I would do best not to come with you in person, much as I would like to.’
‘I have my man Brockley, a former soldier,’ I said, ‘and a Master Woodley, of Sir George’s household, is also with us.’
‘Thirty-two, then. It should be enough to overwhelm one house and a handful of people! I will see that the men I send are trustworthy and well armed though it would be best to avoid bloodshed.’
That gleam of Dudley wickedness strengthened. ‘Wounded men, let alone bodies, are so difficult to hide, or to account for if they can’t be hidden, don’t you think?’
The Reluctant Assassin Page 19