A Traitor's Tears (33 page)

‘Doing terrible damage to Walsingham,' I said.

‘Indeed it would! Jarvis I think was a simple man in many ways. He was flattered and not suspicious. The scheme might have worked – except for Mistress Cobbold and you! Jane Cobbold had heard too much and he was right to think she'd never keep quiet. He followed her home, on foot, leaving his horse tied in the woods. The gardeners who arrived just then to climb their tree could see most of the track and he noticed them and knew he couldn't attack her there. But he saw her go into the garden. He ran round to where the shrubbery is, keeping out of sight of any windows, and slipped through that little door between garden and shrubbery. No one was about. When she came round to the back of the house, which isn't overlooked by any of the main rooms, well, you saw what he did.'

‘It's horrible,' said Dale. ‘Poor woman. We didn't like her but to have a thing like that happen to her! She must have been terrified, in those last moments when she realized what he was going to do.'

‘We can only hope that she had no more than seconds to realize,' Brockley said. ‘No one heard a scream, and screams carry. I know – I've been a soldier. I hope she had no time.'

‘And then, Mistress Stannard,' said Ryder, ‘you went and identified Jarvis's body. And Wyse panicked.'

‘And he did intend to murder me when he broke into Hawkswood?' Brockley asked.

‘Yes. He had a worrying time with your dogs,' said Ryder. ‘He really wanted to poison them both, for safety's sake, but he intended Brockley's death to be taken for suicide. Two poisoned dogs would have suggested an intruder. So he trusted that Hero would just bark softly at him once or twice in her usual way, so that he need only kill Sandy. He hoped you'd think Sandy had got at something noxious while running in the woods.'

‘And he intended it to look as though my husband had killed me as well,' said Dale bitterly. ‘He'd have had to kill me too, after all.'

‘It would have been said that I wanted to save you from disgrace – or that you tried to stop me and I struck at you in a rage,' said Brockley. ‘We had a narrow escape.'

I said, ‘And now we can go home.'

‘By way of London,' Ryder said. ‘A report must go to Walsingham. He will have to issue instructions to Heron, to get him off your scent!'

We came home to Hawkswood on an early September day. It was cloudy, but with the high, marbley, pale grey cloud that doesn't bring rain. The air was mild, the visibility good. The horse chestnuts were beginning to change colour but all the other trees were still in heavy, dark green leaf. I was more thankful than I can say to be back. I had also been thankful to get away from Dover and that looming, menacing castle with its eccentric deputy constable. Captain Yarrow was obviously highly competent and a loyal servant of the crown, but he made my skin crawl just the same.

As we drew near the house, Brockley said: ‘There are the chimneys. A happy sight. There have been times, this year, when I thought I would never see them again.'

‘It's Roland Wyse who won't,' I said. ‘God knows what's happening to him now. He was a strange mixture. He really was charitable and generous in his way, you know, even if he
was
trying to buy popularity. Oh well, I've met other people who were strange mixtures, too.'

‘I'd say you were that yourself, madam,' Brockley said, amused. ‘So fond of your home and your son, and yet, with that longing for adventure that has got us into so many dangers. We've all feared for you, often.'

‘None of us need be frightened now,' I said.

We rode on, our horses beginning to jog because they had recognized their surroundings and knew they were returning to familiar stables. Walsingham had sent an escort with us, including a queen's messenger with a letter for Sir Edward Heron. At my invitation, he was to dine at Hawkswood before riding on to find Heron. They all good-naturedly let their horses jog as well, to keep up with ours.

Adam Wilder and Sybil Jester met us in the courtyard. Adam had no cap and his grey hair was blowing about his head and both of them looked harassed. ‘Madam! Everyone!' Wilder sounded quite distracted. ‘I am so sorry, but I have to tell you that Sir Edward Heron is here!'

‘He's been here for days,' said Sybil. ‘We couldn't say no to the Sheriff of the county. But he has a warrant to arrest Master Brockley and …'

Sir Edward Heron himself now came marching out of the house, with four liveried men at his heels. ‘Welcome home, Mrs Stannard. Wherever you have been.' He looked, I thought, more like a tall, predatory bird than ever. His long, faintly yellow nose seemed to be quivering with the desire to stab home. ‘You, Roger Brockley, don't trouble to get off your horse. We'll be taking you off straight away. We've waited long enough! There'll be no more shilly-shallying. There's no doubt in my mind that you are the murderer of Mrs Jane Cobbold and you'll answer for it.' He stepped aside to let his companions advance on Brockley. ‘Secure him!'

‘But you can't! It isn't true! We've proved it isn't true!' Dale was terrified, and Brockley had gone so white that I thought he was actually about to fall from his saddle in a faint. It was for a moment as though everything we had heard and seen in Dover had been wiped out of existence.

Then the queen's messenger, who was a cheerful, wind-reddened young man with a most engaging smile, rode forward, whisked his feet out of his stirrups, swung a negligent right leg over his horse's mane and slid to the ground. He put hand inside his doublet and produced the letter that Walsingham had provided.

‘Let us not be hasty. This is for you, Sir Edward. It is important. Observe the seal. Please read it at once.'

Heron stared at him, but took the letter, examined the seal and tore the missive open.

I have to say that I much enjoyed the expression on his face, as he absorbed the information that there was no case against Roger Brockley, but that Roland Wyse had been arrested for the murders of both Jane Cobbold and Jack Jarvis, and also for conspiring with a Jesuit to blacken, falsely, the name of Walsingham.

Gracious things were said on both sides. We could afford to be gracious, after all, and Sir Edward Heron could not gainsay Walsingham's letter. Brockley and Dale magnanimously forgave Heron for his suspicions. I invited him to join us for dinner. He congratulated Brockley on his deliverance from a mistaken suspicion. He declined my invitation. He then ordered his men to saddle up and mount, and soon after that, he and they were gone. We all went inside and I went straight to the nursery to renew my acquaintance with Harry. We were home, and at peace.

It was not, in the end, as simple as that. I had not known, and I don't think even Dale knew, just how deeply fear and hopelessness had seared into Brockley. He was clearly thankful to be home and free of dread, but for the next few days he was nevertheless very quiet, not happy and serene as I – and probably Dale, too – had expected. Dale told me he was sleeping badly again.

Then one morning, he woke with a fever.

It was bewildering, because we had never known Brockley to be ill before. Dale looked after him, leaving his side only to fetch fresh sheets, or the medicines that Gladys brewed for him. For a long, unhappy week, he was constantly delirious and kept talking wildly of Lewes gaol and the horrors of imprisonment there, and sometimes cried out in protest as though he were having hallucinations of men coming to hang him. He did have lucid intervals but during these he seemed utterly listless and as if he were turning away from the world, even from Dale.

We kept Harry away from him, of course, for fear of contagion, but finally, it was Harry who turned the tide. He was becoming lively and extremely mobile and more than once evaded both me and Tessie and slipped into Brockley's room when Dale was absent.

The second time he did this, he got into the room during one of Brockley's lucid patches. He somehow climbed on to the bed and sat there, attempting in his infant's manner to talk to Brockley. Dale, coming in with a bottle of herb medicine, exclaimed in horror and went to lift him down, but Brockley gave her a faint smile and raised a hand to check her. ‘Let him stay. I like him here. He's nice. Wish he was ours, don't you, Fran?'

‘Roger always said he didn't mind us not having children,' Dale said to me after she had told me of finding Harry on the bed. ‘But I think he did, perhaps. Under the surface, though he'd never say as much to me.'

‘You're welcome to share Harry,' I said. ‘But I don't like him going in there while Brockley's still ill.'

‘No one else has got it, ma'am. I don't think it's catching. And Roger does seem to like the little boy being there.'

After that, we let Harry go into the room whenever Brockley was in his right mind, and within two days, his fever had dropped and the delirium was gone. A week later, he was back on his feet. Then he asked to speak with me alone.

I saw him in the Little Parlour. He had lost a great deal of weight but that, I hoped, would soon be put right. I told him to be seated. ‘You shouldn't do too much too fast, after such an illness,' I said.

Brockley said abruptly: ‘I was ill partly because I had been afraid for so long and when the fear was taken away, I felt as if something inside me had crumbled. But it wasn't only fear that caused it. I was so ashamed.'

‘Ashamed? What in the world were you ashamed of?' I said, astonished.

‘When we talked in the courtyard of the White Hart, in the moonlight, madam, and you wanted to leave me and Fran behind and I said no … Do you remember?'

‘Of course I remember – and why ever should you be ashamed of that? You insisted on doing your duty even though it was dangerous for you. I can only admire you for it.'

‘But I agreed that Fran and I should stay outside London while you finished the journey alone. I knew that to enter London would be to ride into danger, but it was my duty to escort you all the way to Walsingham's presence and I … couldn't face it. I dared not. I was too afraid. What would your husband, Master Stannard, have thought of me, letting you go on alone like that? I am sorry. I have told Fran all this, of course, and she says I was right, because staying behind at The Boar was what you had ordered us to do, but I can't agree. I did wrong.'

‘I was never in the slightest danger in London! I've ridden alone many times – and done other, more risky things, alone as well! Brockley, put all thought of being ashamed out of your mind
now
! And forever.'

‘I won't be able to do that,' said Brockley. ‘But I will do my best never to fail you in such a way again.'

‘You won't have the opportunity,' I said. ‘I have finished with wild adventures. Now, find Dale, and let us all walk out into the rose garden. It will hardly be at its best, but the fresh air will be good for you.'

In the garden, the roses did indeed look sad, as they often did at summer's end, when there were few blooms left and the topmost twigs looked stringy. Dale considered them with obvious regret and said: ‘It's been an unhappy year altogether.'

‘One of the worst,' said Brockley with feeling.

‘It's odd,' said Dale thoughtfully. And then, taking me by surprise as usual, she had one of her perceptive moments. ‘I mean,' she said, ‘it's odd how it all began. It all started, didn't it, with that woman in Norfolk, Agnes Wyse, taking Henry Howard away from her maidservant – that's Cat Spinner now. I think she was born that kind of woman, you know. She wasn't made that way by a harsh husband; if you ask me, she made
him
harsh because of her queen of the hive ways. Didn't that sensible young man Gilbert Shore call her that? If Mistress Wyse hadn't insisted on being queen of the hive over Cat and Henry Howard, the way she tried to be with Blanche and Gilbert and probably was with Blanche's first suitor – that farmer, Goodbody – then Roland would never have been born and none of this would have happened.'

Brockley looked at her with respect. ‘I never thought of it that way. But yes, you are perfectly right. That
was
where it started.'

I thought, though silently, of where it had led. To Jane Cobbold, stabbed to death in her own garden; Jack Jarvis, dead on the Dover Road. And Roland himself … where was he now?

I didn't want to know the answer to that, nor did I want to know the fate of Gilles Lebrun. I had even written to Sir William Cecil, Lord Burghley, who I knew would understand, to say as much.

Tessie appeared, carrying Harry. ‘Madam, he's becoming that heavy. Soon he'll have to do all his own walking, so he will.'

‘Give him to me,' said Brockley. ‘I'm not too frail to carry a lad his age. He fairly called me back to life again and I've got fond of him.'

We walked on, with Harry seated on Brockley's shoulders. There was a sense of closeness. Harry, by helping Brockley back to health, had in some way bonded us together. From now on, I thought, we would be a family, happy and united, without dubious undercurrents of desire. And without danger or dread. For I would have no more to do with crimes or plots or perilous assignments. Not ever.