The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (2 page)

His name was Dr. Fleet and Hugh and I didn’t like him. He was a stiff and rigid individual, recently married to a young wife for whom we felt decidedly sorry. He was the sort who keeps rules for their own sake and, as Hugh put it, “If he doesn’t think the existing rules sufficient, he invents a few more. Tiresome man!”

“Just like Aunt Tabitha!” I had said. We were happy to be spared his company now.

There were small trees beside the churchyard, to which we tethered our mounts. Then we went in all together. The place was quiet, or so it seemed at first, until Brockley uttered an exclamation, and pointed.

To the left of the path through the churchyard were a couple of new graves. One, indeed, was not yet occupied. It was freshly dug, with a pile of clods beside it. The other was filled in, but clearly it was recent. For some reason, there seemed to be a pile of furs and blankets on top of it.

Then Meg exclaimed: “Oh! It’s a person!” and I saw that the pile contained a human being, and that a face was peering at us from amid the coverings. We stopped to stare, and the person sat up. The wrappings, damp from last night’s dew, fell away, revealing a middle-aged woman, clad in a thick woolen dress and shawl and a grimy cap, with wisps of gray hair escaping from it. Her plump face should have been good-natured, but her expression now was one of resentment and alarm. She clutched at her rugs as if for protection and stared mutely back at us. Brockley began to say something reassuring, but Hugh cut him short.

“What in the world is this? Mistress, have you been lying out here on that grave all night long?”

He spoke from concern, I knew, not anger, but he sounded a little sharp and the woman shrank into her damp rugs, her eyes widening, her mouth opening as if to speak, but failing to produce any words.

“The poor soul,” said Fran Dale compassionately. “Ma’am, perhaps she’s simple?”

People who are in their right senses are usually indignant if anyone suggests otherwise. It worked on this woman, too. “I b’ain’t simple!” She had a village woman’s accent. “And if I choose to spend my nights out here, where’s the harm? I don’t hurt nothing!”

“But . . .” I began. I got no further, however. There was a sound of angrily striding feet on the path behind us, and there was Dr. Fleet after all, black gown billowing in the breeze, and a scowl on his otherwise quite fresh-skinned and handsome features.

“What is this? I saw you all from my window, gathered about Will Thomson’s grave and I knew at once! So you are here again, woman! Have you no shame, no sense of acceptance of God’s will? Have you once again been here
all night?
”

The woman huddled her rugs around her and looked at Dr. Fleet with hatred. “It’s my business! It don’t harm anyone! I loved my husband and if I want to lie the night on his bed, then you’ve no right to deny me!”

“I’ve every right. I’m responsible for the proper upkeep of this churchyard, and for the proper conduct of all in this village of Faldene, and I tell you, woman, that this is a scandal and a disgrace. If it has pleased God to take your husband to Himself, then it’s not for you to . . . ”

“You don’t know what was between Will and me! Thirty years we was wed! If I choose to . . . ”

“You will not choose in
my
churchyard!” roared Fleet. “Up, woman, up! Go back to your home. You have a cottage; you have a hearth, a bed, the means to live. You have a son in Westwater, down the valley. What would he say if he could see you now? Up, I say!
Up!
”

“Gently, now,” said Brockley.

Hugh glanced at him and suddenly smiled at me. “Brockley’s being Sir Galahad again,” I whispered.

My manservant was a dignified individual in his fifties. He had sandy hair, graying at the temples, a high forehead dusted with pale freckles, calm gray-blue eyes, and expressionless features. He also had a soothing countryman’s voice and as kind a heart as any I have known. He was particularly apt to take the part of beleaguered elderly women. He was eyeing Dr. Fleet with annoyance. “There’s no need to shout at the poor soul,” he said.

“Isn’t there, indeed?” Fleet fumed. “She’s been doing this on and off for two months, since we buried Will Thomson. Any time there’s a night that’s even halfway mild, even in February, she’s out here, sleeping on his grave! Why she hasn’t died herself of a lung congestion, I can’t imagine. But anyway, it’s shameful, a lack of the grace of acceptance . . . ”

“I loved him,” said Mistress Thomson. “If he can’t sleep in my bed then I’ll sleep on his. You don’t understand.”

“Do I not? You reveal your mind very clearly, woman. You are obsessed with the flesh, with pleasure that should only be sought for purposes of bringing forth children. It is that which brings you here, that which you call love but is only lust.”

“Easy, now. Easy!” Brockley protested, and Meg, troubled by Dr. Fleet’s fury, shrank against my side.

“It’s true that you really shouldn’t do it,” said Hugh reasonably to Mistress Thomson. “Or are you trying to kill yourself so that you can be buried with him?”

“Master Stannard is right,” said Sybil anxiously, joining in. “You will become ill, if you go on sleeping out.”

“She won’t listen,” said Fleet harshly. “Do you think I haven’t said all this, a dozen times over? Do you think her neighbors haven’t? I’ve come in here in the evening and found Mistress Minton that has the cottage next to hers, and the Nutleys, who live opposite, all pleading with her to come home and be sensible, and what did it get them but abuse? You might as well talk to a gravestone! Now, listen to me, Mistress Thomson. If I find you here again, I’ll have you doing penance in the church
porch every Sunday for a month. You know what is said of women who haunt churchyards in the night. It’s said they do it to call up demons and worship the devil. Do you want to be charged with witchcraft?”

I might have known it. Up to now, Gladys, though glowering, had held her peace, standing between Fran Dale and Sybil and glancing from one protagonist to the other, taking the situation in. But Gladys was never one to keep her tongue still for long and Gladys knew from personal experience what it was like to face an accusation of witchcraft. Now she stumped forward, planted herself in front of Dr. Fleet, between him and Mistress Thomson, and looked him in the eye.

“Why don’t you leave her alone? What wrong’s she done to you or anyone? What’s amiss with a woman liking her husband’s body?” The words came out clearly and loudly, if in slightly spluttery fashion, due to Gladys’s lack of teeth. “Let her be, can’t you? She’ll come round in her own time and her own way.”

“Who is this?” Fleet demanded, turning to me and Hugh. “Your serving woman? Tell her to mind her manners to her betters!”

“Gladys,” I said quietly, “come away, now. Come here.”

Gladys ignored me.

“There’s ain’t no such thing as witchcraft, look you. There’s just women that aren’t happy and women that are a bit odd.
Leave her alone!
”

“That’s right,” said Mistress Thomson resentfully. “Why can’t everyone let me be? If I want to sleep out here . . . ”

“I forbid it. For the last time, woman, I forbid it. Must I have you locked in your cottage until you learn sense? Come with me!”

“Leave her be!” yelled Gladys again, but Fleet strode forward, pulled Mistress Thomson’s rugs away, and seized her by the arm. Brockley said, “Easy now,” once again, and Hugh half moved to intervene, but Gladys’s volatile temper had flared and she acted faster than any of them. Stooping, she picked up a clod of earth from the pile beside the empty grave, and hurled it at Fleet. It struck him on the chest and broke, spattering earth all
over him, and before either Hugh or I could reach her, Gladys had followed it up with another.

Abandoning Mistress Thomson, Fleet started angrily toward Gladys, who straightened up, dodged behind the pile of clods, and peered malevolently at him around the corner.

“Leave her be, you bully! Leave her be! Cold heart, that’s what you’ve got! You don’t know nothing about men and women. Let her alone! If you don’t, I’ll curse ye!”

“Oh no,” I moaned. “Gladys!
Gladys!
Stop that! Come here!”

“I’ll get her,” said Brockley, and both he and Hugh ran toward her. For a moment, I thought that a most irreverent game of tag was about to begin among the graves. But Gladys, though her walk was something of a hobble, could be surprisingly spry when she wanted to. She evaded them, retreating quickly behind a yew tree. Then, to my horror, she reappeared on the other side of it, pointing at Fleet with the forefinger and little finger of her left hand.

I picked up my skirts and I too ran toward her, shouting: “No, Gladys!” She sidestepped me, however, and then I tripped on the edge of a grave and almost fell. It had a headstone, which I caught at to steady myself, and meanwhile, Gladys, her threatening fingers leveled straight at Dr. Fleet, was well away. “I curse ye!” Her voice cut in eldritch fashion through the spring morning. “A cold curse for a cold heart!”

It struck me that Gladys’s way with ill-wishing was improving with practice, if
improving
were the right word. Even when she quarreled with our physician, she hadn’t sounded so vicious or so powerful. This was actually frightening. “
I curse ye by a cold hearth and a cold bed . . . ”

“Gladys!”
I pleaded aloud, but in vain.

“. . . a cold heart and a cold head, a cold belly and cold breath . . . ”

“Gladys!” wailed Fran Dale and Meg both together.

“. . . a cold life and a cold death!”

“For the love of God!” gasped Brockley. He had gone quite pale. Dale ran up and stood close to him as if for comfort. Hugh similarly hastened back to my side and we gazed at each other, appalled. Meg began to cry, and Sybil actually crossed herself, in the old-fashioned way.

Fleet said grimly: “I think there is unquestionably
one
real witch here in this churchyard. Don’t you?”

 • • • 

My memory of how we got Gladys away from that churchyard isn’t very distinct. I recall that Hugh fetched my uncle Herbert and aunt Tabitha from the house, and while bringing them back to the churchyard, somehow made them believe that Gladys was an old woman who had gone weak in the head, but nothing worse.

Somewhat bemusedly, they added their persuasions to ours and Hugh again resorted to that useful and universal solvent, money—this time in the form of a really large contribution to a fund that Fleet had started in order to put a new stained-glass window in the church.

This conversation took place in the vicarage, in the presence of Fleet’s wife. She was a wispy little thing, who seemed very nervous of him, which I could well understand. At one point she did say: “Poor Mistress Thomson! Shouldn’t we be kind to her?” but her husband glared at her so savagely that she said no more.

Fortunately, Brockley and Dale had already shown Mistress Thomson the recommended kindness, by persuading her to let them take her home. They rejoined us as we left the vicarage, saying that they had made her some broth and found a neighbor to stay with her. We put aside the visit to my mother’s grave and cried off the dinner invitation. Francis would have to be welcomed home without us.

Somehow or other, we got ourselves and Gladys safely back to Withysham. We knew, though, that the news would spread. Dr. Fleet would see that it did. The accusation was serious and no amount of money or talk of weak-minded age could be relied on to stifle it for long. Neither Withysham nor Hawkswood were safe places for Gladys now.

So when a messenger, most opportunely, arrived from a most unexpected quarter, with an invitation to visit London and perhaps consider an early betrothal for my daughter, Meg, we received him with pleasure.

Had it not been for that appalling scene in Faldene churchyard, we might have declined. Meg wouldn’t even be fourteen until June. But the proposal was only for a betrothal, with the actual marriage some years away, and there was no harm in looking at it.

“We can take Gladys with us and get her away from both Hawkswood and Withysham for a while, until the storm passes,” said Hugh. He added dryly: “She’s becoming an expensive luxury! Yes—I think we’d better all go to London.”

“All the same, we’ll have to come home eventually,” I said glumly. “I think Gladys is going a little crazy in her old age.”

“I doubt it,” said Hugh in his dry way. “She’s just getting more ill-tempered, if you ask me. All we can do is give people time to forget about her. She can be useful in London. She can help Dale with plain sewing and so on. Tell her to bring along the herbs she uses for the headaches you get sometimes. Meg will like to have her with us. She’s fond of Gladys. Meg doesn’t believe she’s a witch, or crazy, and I fancy the lass is right.”

“I wish Meg were older,” I said doubtfully. “I don’t like these early betrothals.”

“There may not be a betrothal,” said Hugh easily. “We’re just . . . looking at the merchandise, shall we say? We’re not bound to enter into any agreement, and even if we do, betrothals aren’t as unbreakable as they used to be. We can change our minds if we like and so can Meg. We’re not going to force her into anything.”

“And it’s very kind of the Duke of Norfolk to concern himself with our affairs,” I agreed.

Hugh chuckled. “I rather think the word has got round that you are related to the queen. I don’t suppose he’d trouble himself otherwise!”

It was true. Few people knew it officially, but these things do slip out. The lover my mother had refused to name, when she
came home from court, had been King Henry himself. Queen Elizabeth and I were half sisters. Elizabeth had light red hair while I was dark, and I had hazel eyes whereas hers were golden brown, so we didn’t look much alike, but in private, she acknowledged me as her half sister.

We had other links, as well. At one time, I had been one of her Ladies of the Privy Chamber, and for many years, before I married Hugh (and on one occasion, after), I had undertaken secret tasks for her and for Sir William Cecil, her Secretary of State, as an agent, charged with uncovering plots and traitors.