The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (37 page)

We set off at last, glad to have Master Haywood with us, because the throng had some respect for his livery. We saw unfriendly glances aimed at Gladys and it was possible that we might have had trouble had he not been there. She did, alas, look so very much like a witch.

As we went, thankful to leave the gallows tree and its pitiful fruit behind us, Hillman remarked: “Tomorrow, when Dean dies, it will be all over. I hear that the Scottish lords refused even to consider Mary Stuart’s reinstatement and that Leicester has confessed his part to the queen and had a good cry in her lap . . . ”

“All that’s true,” Haywood said. “It seems that you have other contacts at court besides myself.”

“Yes, Cecil told us about Leicester. I wish I’d seen it,” Hugh remarked. “As for Norfolk . . . !”

“He had a chance to confess and be forgiven, during the Progress,” I said. Having been in Hampshire, I knew this part of the story firsthand. “Did you know about that, Master Hillman? Norfolk lost his nerve and fled, first to London, then back to Kenninghall, in Norfolk. He’d already tried to encourage the northern earls—Westmorland and Northumberland mostly—to gather their followers and be ready to rise on behalf of Mary and the Catholic religion, and then sent them messages warning them not to, but he didn’t know what they’d decided to do and he was frightened. He was summoned back to court to explain himself and in the end, he sent really desperate messages north, telling the earls to stay at home and take matters no further, and then he set out for court—but he’d dithered too long.”

We were beginning to leave the horror of Tyburn behind us. We at least had Gladys safe. We hadn’t had to leave her in that dreadful place. “Norfolk started out from Kenninghall,” I said, “but as soon as he came within reach, he was seized and taken to the Tower.”

“Signor Ridolfi’s in the Tower, too,” Hugh added. “I am sorry for his wife; it must be unpleasant for her, marooned in a foreign land with her husband in prison. I take it that you’re not still in the Ridolfi household, Master Hillman?”

“No, I left it in July. That man Walsingham wanted me to stay at first—he was very anxious for me to take up where my cousin Julius left off—but after Ridolfi was arrested, there was nothing to spy on and besides, as I said that day in Cecil’s study, I don’t want to be a spy! I’d be a very bad one. I was looking for another post, but as it happened, just then, my circumstances changed. My late father had a manor house and some land in Buckinghamshire, which my elder brother, William, inherited. But at the beginning of August, William died—unmarried and childless. I’ve lost my brother, but I’m now the proprietor of the house and lands.”

“I’m sorry about your brother,” I said. “I suppose the inheritance is welcome, though.”

“Yes, it is. Mistress Stannard . . . ”

“Yes, Master Hillman?”

“That day in Cecil’s study—your daughter Meg was there. Margaret Stannard, that will be her full name?”

“No. Her full name is Margaret Blanchard,” Hugh said. “I’m not her father.”

“Her father was my first husband, Gerald Blanchard,” I explained.

“I see. Well, it doesn’t matter. May I ask—what plans have you in mind now for her?”

“Not marriage,” I said. “Another year or two of study at home; a year at court. Then she will be seventeen and we can consider marriage plans for her again.”

“I thought,” said Hillman sincerely, “that she was beautiful, and wise beyond her years. I have never been so impressed by a young girl. If, when she is seventeen, I come to you and ask permission to pay court to her, will you agree?”

I looked at him, thinking once more what a very likeable young man he was. “In three years, you will meet other marriageable ladies, and perhaps you’ll decide on one of them, instead,” I said.

“Perhaps. But if I don’t?”

“I think we might look on you favorably,” Hugh said gravely.

“Provided you continue to keep away from plots and spying,” I added, equally gravely.

He smiled at me. “Do you know, I think I can promise that,” he said.

I said: “We shall have to find out what Meg thinks,” but there was a warm certainty within me that Meg would like young Master Hillman, and that he might well be her future, and a happy one.

We reached the inn and collected our horses. We were returning to Cecil’s house. Hillman arranged his hireling, remarking that he was in London to see the lawyer who was untangling some of his brother’s affairs, and was staying at the tavern owned by the father of Bessie, whom Walt was to have married.

“She’s getting over it,” he said. “Her father has his eye on another match for her, a nephew of the landlord of the Green Dragon, where you stayed for a while, I believe. It may work out well. From all I’ve heard, Walt wasn’t any kind of paragon. Keeping quiet about a murder so as to wring money out of the murderer! Good God! I wouldn’t want a daughter of mine to marry anyone who did that. Bessie herself realizes it, I think. Though Walt didn’t merit the way he was treated after death. Dean is an abominable man. I am so thankful to know that Meg is well out of it!”

“There,” I said, “you have our most heartfelt agreement!”

We parted courteously, exchanging details of Hillman’s home, and our addresses at Hawkswood and Withysham, so that the households could correspond in future.

We would remain with the Cecils until Gladys was fit to travel. Then we would leave for Hawkswood. “I’ll be glad to go,” I said to Hugh as we helped Gladys into the house. “I’m homesick.”

 • • • 

“Ma’am,” I said, kneeling.

I had once more been passed through Elizabeth’s array of guards and gentlemen pensioners, to be led into her presence, eventually, by Master Haywood.

“We have been expecting you,” Elizabeth said, and glanced at Haywood and the ladies who had been with her. “Leave us with Mistress Stannard,” she added.

They went out. Elizabeth had received me in a private room once more, though seated in dignified fashion in a thronelike chair and formally dressed in her favorite white and silver, all glittering embroidery and wide-open ruff. Now, however, she leaned forward to take my elbows and lift me to my feet.

“We are private together at this moment,” she said. “We may call each other sister.”

“I always feel that that’s presumptuous.”

“Not with my permission and when no one else can hear, and no one hides behind screens or tapestries in
my
apartments,” Elizabeth said. “I was spied on when I was only a princess, but not since I became a queen, believe me. I think I know why you have come.”

“To thank you. For saving the life of Gladys Morgan.”

“I understand,” said Elizabeth, in playful mood, “that she is a truly dreadful old woman. Haywood says you virtually compelled him to carry her in front of his saddle and that he has had to burn the suit of clothes he was wearing and ask an apothecary to sell him a preparation to get the nits out of his hair.”

“He may be telling the truth,” I said reluctantly. I too had had to resort to an apothecary, for the same purpose, and I had thrown away the cloak I had been wearing on the day that Gladys was rescued.

“But you care for her,” Elizabeth said. “And when you came before, to plead for her, you reminded me that she had been the victim of spite, and that I had commanded the law in order to break your marriage to Matthew de la Roche. I myself am very doubtful that the curses of foolish aged women can kill. There are sicknesses and accidents enough in this world to account for most deaths. I was troubled, Ursula; troubled that your Gladys was going to her death unjustly; that you were defending her not just because you love her but also because she was not a witch. I hoped the law would find the truth, but the law—is not like that. It can make errors. I know
what it is to live in fear of errors on the part of those who are in power. I learned that when I was a princess—and was spied upon.”

She left her thronelike seat and drew me to the window, to share its wide, cushioned bench with her. “I kept saying to myself: I cannot interfere with the law. In Hampshire, I turned aside whenever I saw that you wished to speak of her again. But time went by and the day of the execution came near. I had insisted that I should know when it was to be carried out. The night before . . . ”

I said gently: “You didn’t sleep?”

“Not for one moment. I kept wondering whether your Gladys was asleep in her prison, or lying open-eyed in the darkness, as I was doing, waiting for her last dawn to break. By the time dawn did break, I was exhausted and I still did not know what to do. I broke my fast. I walked in the open air. An ambassador sought an audience and I talked with him. And then I could bear it no more. I called a clerk; I dictated the pardon; I cut through the law as though it were soft butter and I a heated knife blade. I ordered Master Haywood onto his horse and hoped, in God’s name, that he would reach Tyburn in time. He was just, barely, in time, I understand. He told me about it on his return. Then I summoned Cecil and instructed him to see to what other documents were required; to inform the court so that its records could be amended.”

“Ma’am, I am so grateful.”

“Call me sister.”

“Yes, Sister.” I told her how it had been from our point of view.

“The rope was already on her, then?”

“Almost. She was resisting, crying out . . . ”

“All right. Tell me no more of it. At least I—and Haywood—moved quickly enough, though by a very narrow margin. And now, Ursula, what do you wish to do? To go home?”

“If you will permit. As soon as Gladys is well enough, that is. She is still very weak and shaken. I think,” I said, “that she will be better behaved in the future. She had a fever for two days after we
brought her back to Cecil’s house, but it went down and now she is different, much changed, in fact—gentler, more amenable. And,” I added, “much more willing to wash.”

Elizabeth laughed. “I will miss you, Ursula, but if you wish to go home, I will not keep you. Go, when you are ready. I may call on you to join me for my next Progress, but otherwise, you are free.”

 • • • 

Gladys gained strength, but slowly. Meanwhile, the news from the north was uncertain. Norfolk’s first response from the Earls of Westmorland and Northumberland had been poor but all the same, he had stirred up a degree of unrest, and his panicky letters calling the scheme off hadn’t quite succeeded in doing so.

However, the Earl of Sussex, the Lord President of the North, was in negotiation with the earls and reported that he thought the situation would quieten down. Everyone hoped he was right.

The weather turned raw and foggy as November got under way. Gladys was by this time just about capable of sitting on a donkey and we began to think of setting out for home, but then Dale, as so often, caught a cold. It was nearly the middle of the month before she was better and we were really ready to ride for home. We had started to pack on the day that Haywood arrived, once more as a royal messenger.

It was a summons from Queen Elizabeth, to the Cecils and to me and to Hugh, not to leave for Hawkswood or Withysham but to join her immediately, in the well-defended castle of Windsor. There was a separate letter for me.

“. . .
as my half sister, I look on you as precious and I feel responsible for your safety and that of your husband. I have also sent for your daughter and her gentlewoman to leave Hawkswood and come to Windsor. You may bring your Gladys and the Brockleys too. I ask you to set out forthwith. Make no delay.”

That was the closing paragraph. In the first one, the letter explained the nature of the emergency. Norfolk, before his plots and schemes dissolved around him, had roused the Earls of
Westmorland and Northumberland far more thoroughly than anyone could have supposed. They had begun lukewarm and then, apparently, heated up. When he tried to countermand his request to them, it was already too late. Probably, they felt he had betrayed them; perhaps, having summoned their tenants and armed them, they felt they had gone too far to retreat.

Like Gladys with her curses, Norfolk had started something that was going to take a great deal of stopping. It was moving, like a landslide. Lord President Sussex had tried to halt it but in vain.

The northern earls were in arms and on the march. The first reports said their combined armies were fifteen thousand strong.

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