Queen Without a Crown (2 page)

They were alarming. The earls of Westmorland and Northumberland, stirred up by wild ambitions on the part of another nobleman, the Duke of Norfolk, had between them mustered fifteen thousand men, and had now ridden into the city of Durham in the north-east ‘
to raise the standard of revolt
,’ read Elizabeth grimly. ‘
They intend to release Mary of Scotland from her captivity in England and carry her back to Scotland, and then, apparently, they dream of reinstating the Catholic faith in our own country. These are their pretexts for this act of treachery.
So Lord Sussex writes. It turns my stomach.’

She stopped reading aloud, but glanced rapidly through the rest of the letter and then handed it to Cecil. ‘Here. See for yourself, Master Secretary. It appears,’ she said, addressing the rest of us, ‘that Westmorland’s wife, Jane Neville, who happens also to be Norfolk’s sister, has done much to encourage it all by telling her husband,
and
Northumberland too, that after all Norfolk’s urging and his efforts to raise money for this . . . bah! . . . this
exploit
. . . inaction would shame them forever and leave them nothing but to crawl away into holes in the ground. I wonder where Sussex got that item of information from?’

‘He has his spies, madam,’ said Mark Easton. ‘He receives good reports of the enemy’s movements and intentions. A shepherd here, a vicar there; a disgruntled butler who overhears the table talk while he’s handing the sauce; a tenant who doesn’t agree with his landlord’s politics.’

‘All this,’ said Elizabeth, ‘springs from the foolish dreams of that foolish man, Thomas Howard of Norfolk. He wants to see Mary of Scotland rescued, reinstated on the Scottish throne, and he hopes to marry her and make himself her consort. Well, well. His sister wants to help him. The next stage, of course, would be an attempt to take my throne for Mary.’

‘I have been hoping, all this time, that the revolt would fizzle out for lack of support,’ said Cecil bitterly.

‘Courtesy of the delightful Jane Neville,’ said Elizabeth, ‘it has not. I have heard that Northumberland’s wife is as bad. The women appear to be worse than the men. What’s to be done?’

‘Sussex seems to be doing it.’ Cecil had by now read through the rest of the letter. ‘He says here that by the time we receive this, he will have forces mobilizing in the midlands to make sure that whatever happens, the rebels can’t reach Mary.’

‘Where is she now, Sir William?’ I asked. ‘The last I heard, she was at Tutbury Castle. Is she still there?’

‘She is indeed,’ said Elizabeth. ‘On the borders of Staffordshire and Derbyshire. I’ve never seen it, but I’m told it would be a formidable obstacle to them even if they got there.’

‘It stands on top of a hill, and there are marshes below,’ said Cecil. ‘Mary’s been there before, and she doesn’t like it. She says it’s damp and draughty, and it probably is, but it’s certainly secure. I think we have her fast. We’ve also got Norfolk, nicely mewed up in the Tower of London. The important thing now is to have these wretched earls imprisoned too, as soon as possible, in some other castle and preferably in its dungeons. But for the moment, the matter is in the hands of Sussex. There is little to be done here in the south.’

‘Except that Master Easton has asked that Mistress Stannard should be here,’ said Elizabeth. ‘Does Sussex require the services of my Ursula?’

Here it came. I braced myself. No doubt Lord Sussex wanted me for some secret and probably uncomfortable spying task. Probably, it was something at which a harmless-looking woman was more likely to succeed than a man. Presumably, I was about to be sent north, away from Hugh, with orders once again to listen at doors, read private documents and put myself at risk for Elizabeth’s sake.

‘Not Lord Sussex, madam,’ said young Master Easton unexpectedly. ‘It is a private matter. There has perhaps been a little misunderstanding. Lord Sussex knows my business with Mistress Stannard, but it is not official and is not connected in any way with him. I do indeed seek her help, but it’s a private matter – a family affair.’

Old Sins

W
indsor was a royal castle, which meant luxury (at least for the queen and the courtiers, if not for the scullions) and also, when viewed from a would-be attacker’s point of view, an air of grim impenetrability.

The luxury was on a grand scale: mighty fires, velvet-hung beds, carved furniture glossy with beeswax polish; tables draped in valuable carpets or fine white linen; candles galore to drive back the shadows of night (or the grey skies of winter); fine food served on gold plate for formality and gilt for everyday; music, singing, dancing. Out of doors, one had the terrace to stroll on and the gardens to wander in; there were boats on the river, the busy little town of Windsor with its shops and taverns and a vast park with a herd of deer in it to provide sport and exercise.

The impenetrability was similarly impressive. Grey walls loomed ominously; towers commanded views of every approach.
We are more than just mighty walls and towers
, they said.
We represent the power of the crown, the gold in the royal treasury, the queen’s armies and the loyalty of her people. Don’t waste your cannon on us.

In the castle, Hugh and I and our people, therefore, had comfort and security, but privacy and a domestic atmosphere were more difficult to come by. Still, we tried. Because of the link between myself and the queen, we had a good suite of three rooms. They were secluded, at the top of a twisting stair in one of the towers, and were adequate for us all except for Meg’s tutor, Dr Lambert, who lodged at the Garter Inn in the town.

Old Gladys rarely left the suite, because she said (or, to be more accurate, grumbled) that the stairs were a struggle, but if anything, this was an advantage, since Gladys didn’t get on well with other servants, though she was less of a liability than she had been. A narrow escape from being hanged on a charge of witchcraft – I had managed to save her, but only just – had had its effect. She no longer spat curses at people she disliked, and she washed, these days, without being told.

I had at one time feared that old age was damaging her mind, but it was as though the shock of coming so close to death had jolted her back to normality. All the same, I wasn’t sure that she’d stay there, and I felt that the less she mingled with other people, the better.

She did light cleaning and plain sewing for us, for her eyesight was good, despite her age. She slept on a truckle bed in the room where the Brockleys occupied a small four-poster. They didn’t like the arrangement, but could hardly complain, for few servants had a room of their own and a curtained bed. To have an extra person in the room was a minor inconvenience.

In any case, Roger Brockley was responsible for Gladys’ presence in my household in the first place. Brockley, my groom, manservant, steward whenever we were at Withysham and sometimes my invaluable co-agent, had a chivalrous kindness for the aged. Gladys had been charged with witchcraft more than once. Years ago, when we first came across her on the Welsh border, Brockley, seeing her as a helpless, frightened old woman, had intervened to protect her from a similar accusation. ‘So you really can’t object to sharing a room with Gladys now,’ I had told him. ‘She wouldn’t be here at all, but for you!’

Within the suite, Hugh and I had done our best to create the illusion of a home. We had given the second largest room to Meg and Sybil, while the main room was ours. It had a vast four-poster and a deep mullioned window bay with a practical window seat which lifted up to reveal a chest below. By moving a table and a couple of settles into the bay, we had created a miniature parlour, and this was where we talked to Mark Easton, after Elizabeth had sent us away to discuss his mysterious family business in private.

He joined us there after a brief visit to his own quarters for a much-needed wash and a change of clothes, and his first comment was: ‘This is like being inside a private house. How delightful!’

‘We do our best,’ Hugh said, leading him to one of the settles in the bay, where they both sat down. ‘Will you have mulled ale, or wine?’

For purposes of hospitality, we always kept a cask or two of good liquor in our chamber. Fran Brockley (though I still often called her Dale, her surname before she married Brockley) was by the fire with Gladys, mulling pewter jugs of ale and wine with hot pokers. My daughter Meg was next door, out of the way, at her books with Lambert, but I had called Sybil Jester, who had been with them, in to join us. She was partly Meg’s chaperone but very much more my friend. She was in the middle years, and her looks were unusual: her features just too wide for their height, her nose a little splayed, her dark, strong eyebrows stretching towards her temples. Yet there was charm in those distinctive features and in her serene smile. As she came in, following Mark, she gave us that familiar smile, but looked enquiringly at our visitor.

‘This is Mark Easton, messenger from Lord Sussex in York,’ I said, motioning her to the window seat. ‘But he has family news for us, though what it is, I’ve no idea.’

Easton accepted mulled ale, and Brockley, who had been warming his hands at the hearth alongside Fran, brought it to him. ‘I called it family business,’ Mark said, ‘but it’s really to do with friends of Mistress Stannard. One of them, mistress, was formerly your ward, I think. Mistress Penelope Mason, she used to be, I believe, before she married a fellow called Clem Moss.’

‘Pen!’ I said, enlightened. ‘Yes, I was her guardian for a short while. She still writes to me. She had a son not long ago.’ I had been glad to hear news of Pen. I was fond of her, but there was no denying that as a girl she had been both highly intelligent and emotionally unsteady. I was most relieved when she took the sensible, strong-minded Clem Moss as her husband. Taking the settle opposite Master Easton, I said: ‘I hope you aren’t bringing bad news. She and the baby – are they all right?’

‘Indeed, yes, mistress. The baby’s as bonny a little fellow as ever I saw. He’s been named Leonard after his grandfather. No, this concerns a young lady called Jane Mason – sister to Mistress Pen Moss. You’ll have heard of her?’

‘I remember her as a child, when I had occasion to visit the Masons,’ I said. ‘She was about nine, then. I stayed with them for a while and taught the girls embroidery.’

I had also disrupted the household by discovering treason in it. The original Leonard Mason, now deceased, had taken a dislike to me after that, and only his death had made it possible for his wife Ann and myself to become friends.

‘Jane is eighteen now,’ said Mark Easton. He put his tankard down, and his handsome young face took on an anxious look. ‘I met her when I was travelling for Lord Sussex, in Yorkshire, and the Moss household put me up for a few days. Jane Mason was sent to live with her sister some months ago; it seems that the idea is for Mistress Moss to find a husband for her.’

I nodded. I had done the same for Pen. Ann Mason had thought me better placed than herself to launch her daughter into the world and arrange a marriage for her, and an onerous task it had proved to be.

‘Jane is . . . a joy,’ said Mark. ‘I fell in love with her and she with me and there shouldn’t be any impediment, not really. I’m not Catholic, as she is, but I wouldn’t interfere with her private observances. I’m willing to promise that. I have a good house I can take her to. A steward runs it for me now because I want to make my way in public life; that’s why I’m in the service of Lord Sussex. A man needs achievements as well as legacies if he is to amount to anything. My home is in Derbyshire, and I also have a property in Devon. But . . .’

‘But?’ I said. ‘There is a difficulty? Jane’s family feel that for some reason the match isn’t suitable?’

‘They’ve nothing against me personally,’ said Easton. ‘But Mistress Penelope wrote to their mother and their elder brother George in Berkshire, asking their opinion, and when the answer came back it was no, and Mistress Penelope said she agreed, and her husband nodded and said that so did he. I begged time off from Lord Sussex to visit Berkshire, to explain things in person. But—’

‘What things would those be? You haven’t explained,’ said Hugh.

Easton looked at us unhappily. He was clearly a young man of means, and he was in a position of responsibility in the service of Lord Sussex. He should have been full of self-assurance. Instead, he now seemed vulnerable, almost desperate.

‘They say,’ he told us carefully, ‘that is, the Masons say, and the Mosses agree with them, that they are sorry for me, and they don’t hold me to blame in any way, but there it is. They can’t sanction the marriage of the second Mason daughter, my lovely Jane, to the son of a poisoner.’

Dale dropped a poker into the hearth with a clatter. Her protuberant blue eyes were bulging, and the pockmarks of a long-ago attack of smallpox stood out as they always did when she was tired or ill or disturbed.

Even Roger Brockley, who had gone back to stand beside her, let his eyebrows rise, wrinkling his high forehead with its dusting of gold freckles. Which was remarkable, for it took a great deal to shake Brockley. Mark had achieved the rare feat of startling him. He had startled us all. Gladys was gaping; Sybil looked appalled. Hugh had visibly stiffened.

‘A poisoner?’ he asked. ‘Er . . . which of your parents . . .?’

‘My father,’ said Mark miserably. ‘Or so it was said. I didn’t tell Jane or her family about it myself,’ he added in a bitter tone. ‘It isn’t the sort of thing one blithely announces across a dining table or when playing cards with one’s hosts in a parlour! But Mistress Penelope had heard the story before she met me. She was at court before her marriage, and apparently it was a scandalous tale that the maids of honour still tattle about. She recognized my name and then asked my father’s first name and said to me: was he the Gervase Easton who was accused of poisoning a man called Peter Hoxton? He was. I’d have been a fool to deny it – she and her husband could have found out easily enough whether or not I was lying.’

‘I didn’t hear the story when I was at court,’ I said. ‘But I suppose I was never there for all that long at a time, and I didn’t mix much with the maids of honour.’