A Traitor's Tears

Table of Contents

Cover

The Ursula Blanchard Mysteries from Fiona Buckley

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Chapter One: Tower Hill

Chapter Two: Gifts from a Queen

Chapter Three: Spiteful Tongues

Chapter Four: The Season of Abundance

Chapter Five: Summons to Court

Chapter Six: A Name for a Dead Stranger

Chapter Seven: The Elusive Beginning

Chapter Eight: The Faint Spoor

Chapter Nine: Kenninghall

Chapter Ten: The Last Hope

Chapter Eleven: Unwanted Opportunity

Chapter Twelve: Terror by Night

Chapter Thirteen: The Missing Piece

Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Cats

Chapter Fifteen: Encounter in a Second-rate Inn

Chapter Sixteen: Wild and Impossible

Chapter Seventeen: A Trap for a Dangerous Mouse

Chapter Eighteen: Beyond Reason

Chapter Nineteen: A Trace of Fragrance

Chapter Twenty: Untimely Sunset

Chapter Twenty-One: The Living Tool

Chapter Twenty-Two: Queen of the Hive

THE ROBSART MYSTERY

THE DOUBLET AFFAIR

QUEEN'S RANSOM

TO RUIN A QUEEN

QUEEN OF AMBITION

A PAWN FOR THE QUEEN

THE FUGITIVE QUEEN

THE SIREN QUEEN

QUEEN WITHOUT A CROWN *

QUEEN'S BOUNTY *

A RESCUE FOR A QUEEN *

A TRAITOR'S TEARS *

 

*
available from Severn House

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

First published in Great Britain 2013 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

First published in the USA 2014 by

SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

110 East 59
^th
Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital
an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

Copyright © 2013 by Fiona Buckley.

The right of Fiona Buckley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Buckley, Fiona

A traitor's tears. – (An Ursula Blanchard Elizabethan mystery; 12)

1. Blanchard, Ursula (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Murder–Investigation–England–Surrey–Fiction. 3. Great Britain–History–Elizabeth, 1558-1603– Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

I. Title II. Series

823.9'14-dc23

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-057-7 (cased)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-543-5 (trade paper)

ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-479-9 (ePub)

Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

This ebook produced by

Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

This book is dedicated to my family in Kent:
Pat and David, Derek and Val

I
t is possible to dislike someone quite heartily, without actually wishing them dead, let alone murdered. When in the July of 1573, a group of ladies walking in a sunny garden came suddenly upon a flowerbed with a corpse lying in the middle of it, the horror was not less because one of the sauntering group had every reason to detest the victim.

I was that one and the sight burned itself into my brain. It was the contrast that added the final edge to the shock; the contrast between the couch of bright gillyflowers on which the poor thing lay, and the hard glitter of the silver dagger hilt that jutted from its heart. The blade had been driven in viciously, all the way to that hilt, and the blood had spread in a wide stain across the cream silk bodice and run down to darken the pretty pink blooms below. I can see it now, and I still recoil from it.

But I am getting ahead of myself. The events of 1573, which caused so much trouble to me and to people I cared for, didn't begin in that garden in July. They began more than a year before, on 2 June 1572, on Tower Hill in London, when Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, met his end.

No one could say he hadn't courted it. He had harboured wild dreams of marrying Mary Stuart, the dethroned former Queen of the Scots, and becoming her consort if ever she regained the Scottish crown or – as she and her many supporters hoped – she managed to snatch the English one from the head of our own Queen Elizabeth. Norfolk had become involved in two successive plots concocted by a Florentine banker called Roberto Ridolfi. He was forgiven the first time. He was Elizabeth's cousin and she had a family feeling for him. But when he became entangled in a second such conspiracy, even Elizabeth's patience ran out, and besides, her advisers, especially her Lord Treasurer Sir William Cecil (by then Lord Burghley) and Francis Walsingham, who was her Ambassador to France but had come back briefly to help with the crisis of this new Ridolfi plot, would not agree to let him live.

She couldn't execute Ridolfi, who was safely abroad, and she refused vehemently to execute Mary Stuart, though Mary had known about the plot. Dethroned or not, Mary was an anointed queen and her person was sacrosanct. But when it came to signing Norfolk's death warrant, Elizabeth had no choice.

She didn't want to witness his death yet she seemed to need to know what happened, to be able to picture it, not for pleasure but, I think, because in some way she wanted to feel she hadn't abandoned her cousin but had tried to be with him at the end, if only in her imagination.

There were others, at court, who could have been witnesses on her behalf, but instead, she chose to call me from my quiet home at Hawkswood in Surrey, to attend the execution and report on it to her. It sounds like a curious choice, but it was not as strange as it may seem. Although it wasn't widely talked about or all that widely known, I was her half-sister. Her father, King Henry VIII, had had a roving eye. Elizabeth trusted me and I had carried out a number of secret assignments for her. But as a result of such an assignment, it was partly due to me that Norfolk's latest attempt at treason was foiled and her feelings about that were mixed, a tangle of gratitude and bitterness. I knew that perfectly well. She knew I would give her an accurate account but perhaps she also wanted me to see for myself exactly what I had done. I think so. I wasn't so very surprised when, at the end of May, her summons to London arrived.

I wasn't so very pleased, either.

‘I don't want to go,' I said, standing in the small snug room that had once been a private parlour for me and my dear late husband, Hugh. ‘I don't want to see Norfolk die. I can't!'

I then discovered that the three principal members of my household who were with me at the time were unanimously embattled against me.

Roger Brockley, my reliable manservant, who had been my resourceful companion in many times of danger, had a high forehead, lightly strewn with pale gold freckles, a receding hairline and very steady grey-blue eyes. At the moment, he was looking at me as one might look at a small child who was being difficult.

My tirewoman – who was Roger's wife although I still called her Dale as I had done before they married, when she was Fran Dale – had slightly prominent blue eyes and a scatter of pockmarks from a childhood attack of smallpox. The pocks became more noticeable if she was tired or frightened, and they were noticeable now. The idea that I might refuse a request from Elizabeth clearly alarmed her.

Also, I thought, looking at her with compassion, she wanted to agree with Brockley, whatever his opinion might be. They had recently been at odds with each other, and I was the reason. Dale was not a highly intelligent woman, but she had moments of perception and when she had become jealous of the friendship between Roger Brockley and me, it was not quite unjustified. He and I were not, never had been and never would be lovers, but we had come near it once and, more recently, during a time of shared danger, had formed a mental bond which was rare. Dale had sensed it, and that had caused trouble.

The third member of the trio was my gentlewoman Sybil Jester. Sybil had an interesting face, which looked as though it had been slightly compressed between chin and scalp, so that all her features were just a little splayed. The result, though unusual, was quite attractive but when she was worried or displeased, she would frown and then her somewhat elongated eyebrows drew together like a storm cloud. Glancing at her now, I could almost hear the thunder rumble.

I surveyed the three of them in exasperation. I felt outnumbered.

Brockley cleared his throat. ‘It isn't wise to ignore the queen's requests, madam. Besides, I think that she has need of you. This will be a bitter business for her.'

‘Roger's right, ma'am,' said Dale nervously. ‘Saying no to the queen … it wouldn't be safe!'

Sybil said, ‘I agree. But we'll all come with you. We'll soon be home again, and then it will all be over.'

‘Oh!' I said exasperatedly. ‘If only I could be let alone and allowed to stay
here
! With my little Harry.'

‘If you're away at court for a while,' said Sybil, ‘it might help the gossip to die down. I'm tired of it. Last time I went to Guildford – you remember, I went to buy linen from the warehouse there – some other customers came in and one of them must have recognized me, because … well, I overheard a comment. And it's not the first time things like that have happened. They've happened twice in Woking. I know where it starts from, too.'

‘So do I,' I said. ‘Jane Cobbold. Well, I knew it would be like this. It will die down on its own, eventually. I just have to see it through. Running away won't help.
I want to stay here with Harry.
'

I knew I sounded petulant.

Harry was my baby son, born the previous February, a good twelve months after my husband's death and the cause, therefore, of much ill-natured gossip, largely inspired by my conventionally minded acquaintance, Jane Cobbold of Cobbold Hall, near Woking. She was all the more offended because she wasn't allowed to ostracize me. Her husband, Anthony Cobbold, believed in cultivating people who were in high places or had relatives there.

He was proud to be a friend of the county sheriff, Sir Edward Heron; he had lately made friends with one Roland Wyse, who at the moment was working for Lord Burghley; and he also knew that the queen was my sister. He clearly hadn't been able to silence Jane's gossip-mongering, but he had compelled her to maintain social contacts with me – had indeed quarrelled with her on the subject. Their butler was the cousin of my chief cook, John Hawthorn. We had heard all about it.

Jane was not, obviously, mistaken when she went about saying that Harry couldn't be my late husband's son, but her assumption that during a visit to the Continent the previous year I had misbehaved myself as no lady, certainly not a recent widow, ought to do, was wrong. It hadn't been like that at all.

Now, though, her spiteful tongue was a nuisance, even worse than I had expected. It was true that a brief absence due to being invited to Elizabeth's court
might
do me some good. And could I, really, say no to the queen?