Queen's Ransom (21 page)

He made no reference to our previous meeting, however. Instead, he added coolly: “I am responsible for the safety of Her Majesty’s person. I must examine anything you wish to present to her.”

I drew my two letters out, and selected the privy message from Elizabeth. “Here it is. But my instructions were to present it personally,” I said.

I could feel Nicholas Throckmorton bristling with indignation at what, after all, was an implied insult to Queen Elizabeth. But he held his tongue and Catherine remarked that De Clairpont was doing his duty most admirably, but that Madam Blanchard did not seem to be afraid to touch the letter with ungloved hands.

“That being so, we are sure that we can do the same. We do not suspect our sister of England of wishing us ill; in any case there is no need to quarantine the letter until you are sure it has not poisoned you.” De Clairpont bowed gracefully and Catherine once more gave me that astonishing smile. “We will receive the letter,” Catherine said. “He will hand it straight to us, madam. You may give it to him.”

De Clairpont, bowing again, and positioning his feet as precisely as a dancer, took the letter from me. I handed it over willingly enough, glad to be rid of the responsibility.

Catherine broke the seal at once, remarking that she could recognize her royal sister Elizabeth’s elegant hand. She read, frowning. “Strange. Normal diplomatic channels would have sufficed, I would have thought. But no matter. We will peruse this at length, later.”

It seemed a careless answer to something that Elizabeth had thought so important. But perhaps Catherine did not wish to reveal its importance in public. I studied that ugly, intelligent, curiously vital face and realized just how well earned was that serpentine reputation. She had used subtlety when conveying to me that she knew the significance of my ring; now she might well be employing it again.

Power and subtlety: an intimidating combination. But then, it must take guile to wield power in this disturbed land and keep the court so orderly.

“I am also,” I said nervously, “to present the compliments of Queen Elizabeth and her hopes that you are in good health, and that France may soon know peace once more.”

Yet again, she smiled. “We thank our royal sister for her good wishes. Her hopes reflect our own. You are welcome to Paris, Madame Blanchard. And so are you, Seigneur Blanchard, and you, Demoiselle Helene. While you are here, we must show you that despite the troubled times, life here still goes on and there are happy events to celebrate.

“The day after tomorrow, one of our ladies is to be married in the chapel here and a banquet will be held for her. You shall attend. You shall send for your belongings and servants, and lodgings will be found for you at St. Germain. Then, we trust, you will have joyful memories to take away with you and a good report of France to carry back to your home.”

It was an order, not an invitation. And the audience was at an end.

We were guided back through the galleries and anterooms and shown to a chamber where refreshments were offered to us. A number of court dignitaries accompanied us, and we found ourselves engaged in polite conversation. Throckmorton busied himself with pointing out the tastiest delicacies to Helene and answering her questions about the court. Helene seemed to be impressed with it. She had also been impressed with the Seigneur de Clairpont.

“Who was the young man who passed the letter to the queen mother? He was very handsome.”

Good God, I thought. The girl is human after all. I didn’t think highly of her taste, but although De Clairpont was too cold-featured to be what I would call handsome, he was certainly elegant. I wondered if Cousin Edward had turned out to be elegant but doubted it. He had my uncle’s lumbering build. Helene might well be in for a disappointment.

Throckmorton obviously knew a good deal about De Clairpont, and his position at court. He began to explain it to Helene. My stomachache had faded away now but I still felt tired. I moved away to sit in a window embrasure and found my father-in-law beside me.

“I have just heard Helene asking about De Clairpont,” he said. “She should not be taking any interest in any young man other than her betrothed. All the same . . .”

During the journey to Paris, I had regained the trick of normal conversation with Blanchard. “She’ll soon forget De Clairpont when she’s home in England and preparing for her own wedding,” I said. “At least we know now that she notices young men.”

“You may be right,” Blanchard said. “I admit I had begun to fear that all she ever thought about was religion.”

“I know. Perhaps the wedding we are to attend will help to turn her mind toward her marriage.”

“Perhaps, though I wish we could set out for England tomorrow,” said Blanchard restlessly. “I am not interested in delaying to attend a stranger’s marriage party. Well, we can make our plans, anyway. I think if we can get a ship down the Seine, we should do so, and forget about the
Chaffinch.
Ryder advises it and says he has already told the Dodds to make for Nantes independently as soon as they can.”

“I’m sure that would be wise,” I agreed.

“The weather’s good,” said my father-in-law. He sighed, and gave me a wry look. “My visit to France hasn’t been all I hoped. I didn’t bargain for so much disturbance. Well, well. With luck, we’ll be home within a week.”

The Marriage Party

Throckmorton sent word back to Paris to summon the rest of our party. Jenkinson and Longman came, too. My father-in-law, observing several ships anchored at St. Germain, had quickly made inquiries and found one which was shortly sailing for England and could give us passages. We agreed to tell Jenkinson that he was welcome to travel with us and should join us at St. Germain with the others.

He arrived looking pleased. “Another move will help to cover my trail,” he said. “I must not let myself become complacent, just because of my success at St. Marc. Poor Silvius Portinari,” he added thoughtfully. Head on one side, dark eyes gleaming, Jenkinson really did look just like a cock robin who had just swallowed a juicy worm. “What a situation for him! Either to wait for reinforcements, without being sure they would come, which would give me a chance to slide out of sight and cover my tracks; or else be prepared to get his own hands dirty—or bloodstained. How hard it must have been for him to decide what to do!”

He sounded almost sympathetic, as though for a suitable consideration he might have tried to help his frustrated fellow-creature to overcome his troubles.

“Well, he tried taking part himself,” Jenkinson said, “and lost his life for it. But the reinforcements remain a possibility. That fellow in Marseilles seemed sure that they were coming. I hope to keep ahead of them but I had better remain vigilant.” His expression now became rueful. “I’ve been thinking it over,” he said, “and I fear that I have indeed been guilty of complacency. If Portinari hoped that reinforcements would follow him, he presumably did what he could to make that possible. Very likely, he left a trail of messages behind him to help any further pursuers keep on the scent. If he found me, then they can. They may also augment their numbers with local help. They probably have contacts in major cities, and may be able to lay their hands on local assassins, though that isn’t always so easy. One can’t just go out and hire a killer as though he were a saddle horse.”

John Ryder, who was with us, let out a snort of laughter and my father-in-law agreed in a staggered voice that yes, the two things were a little different.

Jenkinson, however, was shaking his head quite gravely. “I disapprove of carelessness, including my own,” he said, “and I may have made some errors. If I am traced to St. Marc, my pursuers will soon learn what befell Portinari and his companion, and Portinari’s message trail—I’ll be surprised if there isn’t one—may have told them that I’m using the name of Van Weede. If they then learn that a man called Van Weede went to the abbey guest house after the fire and left for Douceaix next day, the danger could be close on my heels. Well, Henri Blanchard knows the situation and won’t help any inquirers, but servants and villagers can be pumped or bribed to talk. I should have changed my name again. Why didn’t I? I curse myself.”

“I’m relieved to hear that you’re fallible!” said Blanchard, quite sardonically.

“But I can’t afford to be fallible,” Jenkinson said. “It’s too expensive a luxury. It could cost me my life! I am very glad of the chance to come to St. Germain and I thank you for it. You have found a ship, you say? When does she sail?”

“Two days after the wedding,” I said. “And the wedding’s tomorrow. It isn’t long to wait.”

Throckmorton had a rented house in the town below the castle, and was able to give advice about finding good lodgings. Jenkinson and most of the men took rooms in the town accordingly. Harvey, though, stayed with Blanchard, sharing his master’s room in the suite we had been lent in one of the towers at the palace. It was empty because the court official who had occupied it had gone to join the marshal of France and the Catholic army, and sent his family out of the country until peace was restored.

With the suite went the right to eat in a dining hall reserved for guests or else to send our servants to fetch food from the kitchens, and it provided us with three good-sized rooms: two bedchambers, one for my father-in-law and Harvey; one for the women to share, and in between them, a sitting room with a writing desk in it as well. Most of the windows overlooked the river, but the women’s chamber also looked north, over the forest.

I wanted Brockley to remain at hand and he found a bed in a stable loft among other grooms. When he discovered that there was a great to-do among the palace servants because the preparations for the wedding banquet were behindhand, he offered his help, and later on, he came to me with a highly entertaining report on the preparations.

“Quite astonishing, madam. The bride is only a lady-in-waiting. I can’t think what they’d do for a princess. There are satin ribbons and silk banners all over the place and the cooks are going mad in the kitchen, because there’s to be a giant pie with live singing birds in it that’ll fly out, tweet-tweeting, when the crust is lifted, and the first try at making a crust big enough all fell into a heap of crumbs. There will be garlands of spring flowers, too; the maidservants will be out at dawn on the great day to fetch them in.”

“It all sounds very pretty and charming,” said Dale, going misty-eyed. “Jeanne and I must peep in if we can.”

“If you do, there’s something I’d best warn you about,” said Brockley in a prim voice. “Up on the top table where the bride and groom will sit, there’s a clockwork toy.”

From his tone, he might have been saying giant slug or pile of manure. I raised my eyebrows at him.

“It’s clever in its fashion,” said Brockley. “It’s two bronze horses, a couple of feet high, and when they’re wound up, I’m sorry to say that they do what horses have to do if there are ever to be any more horses, but as a table decoration at a wedding party—or anywhere else for that matter—I don’t call it respectable.”

“I’m glad you told us, Brockley,” I said, strangling a desire to laugh. “I’ll try not to be too shocked.”

“Shocked is what you ought to be, madam. You’d never see a thing like that at Queen Elizabeth’s court. I’ll be glad to see the back of this place.”

“We’ll be sailing in two days’ time,” I said. “Even if the winds turn contrary, we should be home in a week.”

Jenkinson wasn’t going to the wedding, but he supplied us with a gift for the bride. It was a golden brooch, in the shape of a bird, with a spray of turquoise for a tail, and a ruby eye. “I got it from a Persian jeweler,” he said. “I buy such things whenever I get the chance. On long journeys in foreign lands a few small valuables can be as useful as money, or more so. If my voice isn’t sweet enough to talk me past border guards or into houses I want to visit, maybe a little golden bird with a ruby eye and a jeweled tail will do the talking for me, and I don’t even have to worry about local coinage.”

Brockley was right to be impressed by the splendor of the occasion. The chapel ceremony the following morning was lengthy, dignified, and crammed with guests in such a magnificence of silks and velvets and jewels, ruffs and farthingales, billowing sleeves and flowing mantles, that the congregation seemed to consist more of clothes than of people. The bride and groom were if anything the most simply dressed of all; the groom in red velvet and the bride in blue and cream brocade.

The service was followed by a long parade to the banqueting chamber, and an interminable reception, before at last trumpeters announced the arrival of Queen Catherine, who came in accompanied by the young King Charles, to take her place at her own separate table. When the food was served, I was not surprised that the cooks had, in Brockley’s words, been going mad. They had been required to work miracles. And they had succeeded. There were astounding subtleties of spun sugar; a complete model of St. Germain in marchpane; and the promised pie full of singing birds had been made successfully at last. The birds duly flew out, piping and twittering, to perch on lamp stands and banners and the tops of the exquisitely molded and gilded pilasters around the walls of the chamber.

There were a few untoward moments. The clockwork horses that had scandalized Brockley jammed at a point in their performance that drew whoops and whistles from a gathering by this time more than a little flown with the excellent wine, and some of the singing birds, probably frightened, misbehaved.

And although it looked as though the entire court had been wedged into the banqueting hall, this was not the case. I saw messages brought now and then to guests, including Nicholas Throckmorton, who was seated near the dais. At one point, too, a party of drunken young gentlemen tried to gate-crash, and I saw the Seigneur de Clairpont, who was also among the guests, leave his seat and go to help the guards deal with them. He came back presently but within five minutes had been summoned out a second time. The man in charge of the royal security was never off duty, it seemed.