A Traitor's Tears (9 page)

I stared at him. ‘Why didn't Master Poole come to you at once and warn you that Jarvis was planning to run away? Didn't he realize how it looked?'

‘Poole said that Jarvis was on his donkey, with a pack on his back and said he was setting off at once. He supposed that Jarvis had had a message from someone – a family crisis, perhaps. He doesn't know Jarvis well and he isn't very quick-minded,' explained Anthony. ‘He knew he would see me the next day and he imagined that Jarvis had told me, anyway.'

‘Does Sir Edward know about this?' I asked.

‘Yes, I went myself to tell him. But he seems inclined to discount it. I said, he questioned the gardeners hard, but they both tell the same tale, about seeing Jarvis in his garden at the time when Jane must have been …' He swallowed. Then he said: ‘Heron believes the gardeners, and he is obviously sure Roger Brockley is his man. Sir Edward tends to get fixed ideas and doesn't like them disturbed.'

‘Quite,' I said. ‘I have, er, experienced this side of Sir Edward Heron myself.'

‘Mistress Stannard, I wanted you to know. About Jarvis, I mean. I thought … you have powerful friends and a great knowledge of … of life. I hoped you might think of something you could do, or someone who could help. I want my wife's murderer to be caught, but I want it to be the real murderer, not Brockley. I can't believe it's Brockley. I know him well enough to feel convinced of that.'

I said, ‘I'm glad you came.' I looked at Dale's woebegone face and gave her an encouraging smile. ‘I leave for London tomorrow, Master Cobbold, and I'm going to see Lord Burghley. He knows the law, all its ins and outs. And he owes me favours. If anyone can help, he can. I feel that Brockley's arrest has summoned me to court as well – in a different sense. Dale and I were packing when you rode in. When I ask my lord for help, the fact that Jarvis has vanished could be a very useful piece of extra evidence on Brockley's side. Thank you for bringing it to me.'

Afterwards, I said to Dale: ‘Do you know, I came within an inch of refusing to see him, and just sending him away! Why do churchmen so often say that curiosity is a sin? It can be an admirable virtue!'

W
hen we did finally set off for London, it was without knowing where we might find Lord Burghley. He was usually with the court but Elizabeth was forever on the move between her string of palaces along the Thames, from Greenwich to Hampton Court. I didn't know where she was at that moment.

I therefore began by taking us to the Cecils' house in the Strand, where Burghley's wife, the dignified and intellectual Mildred Cecil, greeted me and Dale without surprise. ‘We know all about it, Ursula,' she said. ‘As you know, my husband keeps himself informed of the events in your life.'

I nodded. The informant had probably been Dr Fletcher, the Hawkswood vicar. It was mainly Fletcher, on Cecil's behalf, who kept a quiet, benign eye on me, and had done so for years.

‘William and I wondered if you would come to him,' Lady Mildred said. ‘He's with the queen at Richmond just now. You are in time to see him – just. Her Majesty hasn't yet set off on her summer progress. He'll go with her, of course.'

Cecil had gone to Richmond by river, in his own barge, but there was a smaller one that his wife used for her own purposes. ‘The tide will be right in half an hour,' she said. ‘You dined on the road, I take it? Good. Then you just have time to change into a suitable gown for the court. I suggest you use my barge and the team of rowers I make up from our menservants. Our steward Thomas Mellot can go with you.'

I smiled. Mellot was as elegant and haughty as any prince and would certainly make an impressive escort. Mildred Cecil smiled back. ‘He'll smooth your path to Lord Burghley,' she said.

‘Will it need smoothing?' I asked.

‘The court has changed in the year since you last visited it,' Lady Burghley said.

I left Arthur Watts behind, looking after our horses, and embarked with Dale and Mellot. It was a splendid afternoon. On land, it was hot, but out on the river it was delightfully fresh and the sunshine sparkled so brightly on the water that our oars seemed to drip molten gold. We would have enjoyed the journey, if only Dale and I had not been so anxious. We sat tensely under Lady Burghley's white canopy, wishing the barge could travel faster, and were very glad to see the turrets of Richmond Palace appear ahead of us.

I liked Richmond, for it was light and graceful, most of it four or five storeys tall, with slim windows and wind chimes that sang softly to us across the river. From some angles, the palace looked like a collection of slender towers, and it was surrounded by gardens where herbs and vegetables were grown as well as flowers, and by orchards that in spring were filled with blossom and in September were laden with fruit. Much of the food served at the tables of Richmond Palace was grown on the premises and taken fresh-picked to the several kitchens.

Usually, the very sight of it gave me pleasure. This time, I hardly noticed its charm; it was just a place where I might find help for Brockley. I could hardly wait to step ashore.

The guards at the river landing were new. None of them had ever seen me before and none of them recognized my name, either. I doubt if I would ever have got past their crossed pikes if it hadn't been for the presence of Thomas Mellot, and for the Burghley arms displayed on the side of the barge. The shield, which had six divisions, rearing lions on either side, an elaborate crest and a Latin motto, which in English meant
One heart, one way
, in clear bold lettering, would have impressed even raw guards who didn't recognize it, and these men were not quite as uninformed as that. They knew Mellot, too. One of them went to consult a superior somewhere within, and came back to say that yes, anyone who arrived with such obvious Burghley credentials could be admitted and taken to him.

‘It used to be easier,' I said to Mellot as an usher led us through the palace.

‘The Ridolfi plot, and the way the Duke of Norfolk was entangled in it, upset Her Majesty a good deal, I believe,' he said. ‘There are stricter rules now about who can and cannot enter any palace where she is.' He dropped his voice so that the usher couldn't hear him, and added: ‘She has grown distrustful. Norfolk was her cousin. If you have a source of peril within your own family, then who
can
you trust?' He went on: ‘This is my private opinion; I do not repeat what my master says. But I shouldn't wonder if he thinks the same.'

It was a long walk through galleries and passages to the suite that Cecil used as offices when he was at Richmond. Its main room was octagonal and spacious with slender beams criss-crossing a high ceiling and paintings of angels and cherubs between the beams. While we were walking through the palace, the sun had gone in but silvery reflected light from the river still came through the tall windows to ripple over the beams and the paintings and the elegant linen-fold panelling on the walls.

It was a place of work, however. Cecil was there at his desk, studying a reference book while two clerks with ink-stained fingers were copying documents at a long table. And beside Cecil, leaning over his shoulder and pointing to a passage in the book, was Francis Walsingham.

They both looked up as I was announced, and to my surprise, the look of anxious care that Cecil's long, bearded face usually wore, broke into a delighted smile, while Walsingham's dark countenance also brightened, though I noticed that his eyes seemed sunken, as though he were unwell. Cecil rose and hurried round the desk to take my hand, while Walsingham muttered something to the usher, who at once dragged out chairs that had been set against the wall, and put them in a semi-circle.

‘Ursula!' said Cecil. ‘My dear Mistress Stannard. You are manna from heaven.'

‘Am I?' According to his wife, Cecil had half-expected me to seek him out, but I hadn't been sure that he would be pleased about it. This near effusiveness took me aback.

‘Take seats, all of you! You too, Mellot. I suppose my wife sent you as escort to Mistress Stannard.' Cecil suffered greatly from gout and his usual walking stick was propped against his chair, but just now, he seemed to be free of pain – indeed, almost vivacious. ‘Very wise of her; I can always trust Mildred to do the right thing.' He nodded a dismissal to the usher, and then said: ‘Dale, are you well?'

‘I …' Dale began, and stopped, confused at being addressed directly.

‘I know all about it.' Cecil glanced towards the door, which the usher had closed behind him as he went out. ‘No doubt my wife explained that I partly expected you and Mistress Stannard to come to me. I know that your husband has been arrested for the murder of Jane Cobbold. I imagine that you seek my help.'

‘Yes. We're turning to you because you know us all and because of your knowledge of the law.' I didn't add
and because of the risks Brockley and I have taken for you and the queen, and because I am her sister.
There was no need. He'd hear the words I hadn't spoken. ‘I take it that Dr Fletcher informed you?' I said.

‘Yes, but Sir Edward Heron got in first. He felt he should report the matter to me, in view of your link to the queen.'

‘That didn't stop him from taking Brockley in,' I said acidly.

‘He thought it his duty. Really, Ursula,' said Cecil in a positively rallying tone, ‘can you not pay a visit to a neighbour and go for a walk in the garden without stumbling over a body in a flowerbed? It's the sort of thing that causes talk.'

Walsingham let out a bark of laughter. I didn't know him well, but I had always found him intimidating. Tall, dark and invariably dressed in black, he was even more saturnine than Anthony Cobbold and, in his case, his looks reflected his nature, which Anthony's did not. Walsingham did not mind attending interrogations in the dungeons of the Tower. It was said that at home he was an affectionate family man, but I found it difficult to imagine him down on all fours, playing with his children as I sometimes played with Harry, and still more difficult to imagine what he was like in bed. I would as soon have snuggled up to Old Man Death himself, with his skull face and the scythe under the mattress.

I believed the rumours that the queen disliked him as much as she valued him. I corresponded sometimes with friends who were at court and, according to them, she sometimes threw things at him.

‘Mistress Cobbold's death has been a disaster for us,' I said, not responding to his amusement. ‘And we
know
that Brockley didn't do it. There is a Cobbold tenant, Jack Jarvis, who was suspected at first, and who has now disappeared …'

‘We know that,' Cecil said. ‘Anthony Cobbold reported his disappearance to Heron, who sent us word of that, too.'

‘Though it is possible,' said Walsingham, ‘that he has been found. But we can't be sure.'

I looked bemused and so did Dale. Mellot also raised surprised eyebrows. Cecil said, ‘Well, Francis. It's your story. So tell it.'

‘When I left France earlier this year,' Walsingham said, ‘I had some unfinished business. I had ordered a set of new furniture, that should have been ready to travel to England with me, but was not. It has only just been completed, and had to be sent from France. I was informed of the ship that was to bring it and sent some of my men to Dover with a wagon, to collect it. Yesterday, on the way home along the Dover Road, not far outside London, they came upon a dead man at the roadside. He had been stabbed. He was dressed for riding and there were a horse's hoofmarks – but no horse.'

‘You think it's Jarvis? He didn't own a horse, only a donkey. He apparently left his home riding it,' I said.

‘Indeed? There was no donkey around, either. My men examined the body to see if there was anything to tell who the man was. There wasn't, but they did find a sealed letter stowed in an inner pocket of his jacket. They broke the seal and found that the letter was in cipher. That was no help in identifying its carrier, but letters in cipher are highly suspicious and because of that, they put the body on top of their wagonload of furniture and delivered it here before taking the furniture on to my house. At the moment, the corpse is in a side chapel here in this palace, and I have clerks trying to decode the letter, though not, as yet, with any success.

‘But,' said Walsingham portentously, ‘one of the men in the group had recently accompanied Roland Wyse on a journey into Surrey. He takes messages to Sir Edward Heron at times. He did that on my lord Burghley's behalf while I was still away in France; now he does the same for me. When he's in Surrey, he usually takes the opportunity to visit Anthony Cobbold, who is a friend of his. He has met Jack Jarvis and so, of course, have his companions. This man says he thinks the body is that of Jarvis. Only he isn't sure because he didn't know Jarvis well enough. By the time the body was brought here, we had learned that Jarvis had disappeared from his cottage, so, yes, the corpse could be his. You knew him quite well. That is why we're pleased to see you. If the dead man is Jarvis, you may be able to identify him.'

‘What about Roland Wyse himself?' I said. ‘He would know. I suppose he's one of those working on the cipher. Isn't he your best codebreaker?'

‘Wyse isn't here. He's in Norfolk on compassionate leave,' said Walsingham. ‘That's where he comes from – his home is somewhere near Kenninghall, quite close to what used to be the Duke of Norfolk's country house, I believe. I don't know exactly. Wyse had word that his mother was gravely ill and asked permission to visit her. I let him go. I approve of dutiful sons. But he may be gone for some time and we can't wait for him. The weather's too warm.'

‘I was about to send someone into Surrey at a gallop, to fetch Anthony Cobbold,' Cecil said. ‘But as I said when you arrived, Ursula, you have come to us like manna to the Israelites.'