The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries)
Read The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) Online
Authors: Fiona Buckley
Praise for Fiona Buckley and Her Premier Ursula Blanchard Mystery
“A lively mystery series kickoff set in 1560 . . . . In her first mystery, former journalist and editor Buckley shows a deft hand with strong characterization and creates a plot that spins merrily and wickedly through palace, manor house, and intensely beautiful countryside. Ursula is a force to be reckoned with . . . . Her relationship with the young Queen is just one of the elements that makes this a promising series debut.”
—
Publishers Weekly
“
To Shield the Queen
is an exciting historical mystery that brings alive the early reign of Queen Elizabeth I . . . . The cast brings color and pageantry to the exciting story line . . . . With the first Blanchard novel, Fiona Buckley has opened up an auspicious new series.”
—
Feminist Mystery Corner Reviews
“The debut of Ursula Blanchard, young, widowed lady of the Presence Chamber at Elizabeth I’s court, combines assured storytelling and historical detail to present a credible interpretation of the events surrounding the 1560 death of Lord Dudley’s neglected wife at Cumnor Place . . . . A terrific tale most accessibly told.”
—
The Poisoned Pen
“A lively debut that’s filled with vivid characters, religious conflicts, subplots, and power plays . . . . High suspense throughout.”
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Kirkus Reviews
“Buckely achieves the difficult effect of working historical detail into the action smoothly.”
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The Charlotte (NC) Observer
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Chapter 2: Delicate Mechanisms
Chapter 5: Ferry to the Future
Chapter 7: Intelligent Conversation
Chapter 10: Tapestries and Angels
Chapter 12: Variations on a Spinet
Chapter 15: A Man Called Lenoir
Chapter 17: Saddling a Unicorn
Chapter 19: Ill-Assorted Conspirators
Chapter 20: A Candle in the Dawn
Chapter 21: Engaging a Craftsman
This book is for Gwyneth Rowlands with affection and gratitude.
My thanks go to Selfridges Ltd., who kindly allowed me to visit their gift department and peer into the insides of the musical boxes on display.
Unlocking Secrets
“G
ently, now, gently. That’s the way. Let’s take our time. Let there be nothing rough or crude, but only care and delicacy. Let us
see
with our fingertips. Aah! The word one might use,” said Master Alexander Bone, creased face rapt, eyes closed, “is
exquisite.
”
His movements were all finesse, his hands as tense and sensitive as a pair of pricked ears. Those same hands were also old and worn, with liver spots and prominent veins. Alexander Bone was old and worn altogether. His dust-coloured woollen gown was mended in several places and deplorably marred by foodstains, and the grey hair which straggled round his ears was in sorry need of trimming. He smelt musty. I didn’t like being so close to him. Not for the first time, I asked myself what I was doing here with the likes of Master Bone. I would so much rather have been somewhere else. With somebody quite different.
There was a faint click from inside the little pewter casket he was holding, and he opened his eyes. Carefully, he drew out the wire device with which he had been picking the lock, and raised the domed lid.
“There!” he said. “There you are, Mistress Blanchard. Sweet as you please. You can lock it again—” he demonstrated—“as if nothing had ever happened.” Master Bone gave me a grin which went further up one side of his face than it did the other. He handed me the wire lock-pick. “Try again. Remember: feel your way and go slow. You can’t see the mechanism with your eyes, so close them. Work through your fingers. They’ll make pictures in your head if you let them. They’ll know when the lock-picks find the spring. Then you push it aside. It should resist first, and then yield to pressure. Press against it, steady and smooth.”
It was February, and cold. Beyond the window, the Thames flowed sullenly under a leaden sky. The little room off Sir William Cecil’s study in Whitehall Palace had thick curtains over the doors to keep out draughts, but although they made the air stuffy they didn’t make it warmer. My waiting woman, Fran Dale, who was sitting in a corner of the room, had mittens on. My fingers were chilled and slow and I paused to rub them before I slipped the wire into the keyhole and made a fresh attempt to coax the lock to turn.
It would be interesting, I thought, to know where on earth the highly respectable and well-bred Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State to Queen Elizabeth, had found Alexander Bone. The man clearly had some education, and was an expert locksmith who, according to Cecil, had a shop in the City of London near London Bridge, yet Bone’s acquaintance with wire lock-picks strongly suggested criminal connections. As I came to know Cecil better, however, I had learned that he had contacts in many unlikely places, acquired
over the years as a provident farmer might acquire useful tools—not despising battered third-hand items but repairing and burnishing them for future use.
I couldn’t imagine why a skilled man like Alexander Bone should ever have sunk into the underworld in the first place, but he might well have been offered a financial leg-up back into the realms of virtue, in exchange for teaching Cecil’s growing network of agents and informers how to get at the private correspondence of people suspected of plotting against the Queen.
It was a fact that there were those who wanted to end our peaceful Protestant days and turn back the clock to the time when all must be Catholic, or die most horribly. Some of them believed that Elizabeth was not legitimate and that Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland and also of France until her husband’s recent death, should be on our throne instead. There was also one who wished to marry Elizabeth, and who was willing to invite a foreign army on to English soil to support him if the people of England rose against a king consort they disliked.
Thinking of that almost made me lose my grip on the wire because it made me so angry. Angry enough, in fact, to forget for a moment that if I had my way, I would be far away from here, in the company of my husband, sharing his home, leaving matters of state and the welfare of the Queen to men like Cecil, whose natural business such things were. Well, I had little choice about that. I had given up hope of hearing from Matthew again. I must perforce continue to make my living in my curious and unwomanly profession.
As it happened, I was the one who had found out
what Sir Robin Dudley, the Queen’s Master of Horse, was up to. I hadn’t needed any illegal wire keys, either. While attending royal functions, the Spanish ambassador, Bishop de Quadra, sometimes changed his clothes at court and left his portable document case in the robing room, not realising that it had an unreliable attendant. Unreliable as far as Spanish ambassadors were concerned, that is. The attendant was loyal enough to England, and besides, I had arranged for him to be well paid to let me have a glimpse of that case whenever it was in his care. Usually, its contents were harmless and dull, but there came a day when the bishop was careless enough to leave something more interesting in it: a memorandum, in fact, of Robin Dudley’s quite incredible plan.
Quadra’s seeming carelessness probably meant that he didn’t take the notion seriously, but Cecil and I were sure that Dudley himself did. The very thought of it gave me wild fantasies of seeing Dudley led to the block; even of wielding the axe myself, which was absurd. I, Mistress Ursula Blanchard, aged twenty-six, was no more than middle height, and slender, even though I had borne a child. I probably couldn’t even lift a headsman’s axe, let alone make an accurate swing with it. Private rage was replaced for a moment by private amusement.
Laughter, even when silent, is no more of an aid to efficient lock-picking than indignation. The wire in my hand shook, scratching uselessly at the invisible entrails of the lock, and Master Bone clicked a disapproving tongue. I steadied myself. Concentrating with narrowed eyes, I at last felt the firm resistance I sought
and pressed against it. Despite the cold, I was sweating, and the linen ruff at my neck prickled annoyingly. Which way did the invisible assembly inside want to move? As bidden, I tried to picture in my head the mechanism which Master Bone had shown me. Then, softly, satisfyingly, came the click I was waiting for. I relaxed. “I think that’s it.”
“Not bad, Mistress Blanchard, but you got flustered, didn’t you? It’s no good, getting flustered. As I said last week, you need practice. I’ve brought you some boxes, with various kinds of lock. You can keep them to practise on. Here they are.” He picked up a leather sack from the floor and put it on the table. “I advise you to work with them for an hour each day. Keep the lock-picks, too. I brought this set for you.”
I thanked him, and he gazed at me wistfully.
“I’ll come again if I’m wanted,” he said in hopeful tones. “Any time. You tell Sir William. I’m always ready to help. All this must seem very strange to a lady like you.”
“It certainly wasn’t in my education when I was a child,” I agreed, wondering what Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert, who had brought me up, would have said if asked to include this unusual subject in my curriculum. My aunt’s remarks would have been especially interesting. There was no more upright and virtuous woman in the realm than my Aunt Tabitha Faldene.
Bone was being paid by Cecil, but I realised that he was probably hinting. “Dale,” I said. “My purse, please. Have a drink or two on me, Master Bone. Something to keep the cold out.” I gave him a silver crown, which he seized gratefully.
“That’s kind of you. Money never goes as far as it ought. Things were better long ago, when I was a boy. My thanks, Mistress Blanchard. Though drink’s not my demon,” said Bone. He looked round for his cloak, which Dale took from the back of a spare chair and handed to him. He wrapped it round him, over his disreputable gown. “There’s a cockfight planned this afternoon, near where I live. I’m a man who just can’t say no to a wager and that’s the truth. That’s where your crown’ll go, and I’ll hope to double it.”