Queen Without a Crown (20 page)

‘I guessed it,’ said Ulverdale, addressing Lady Anne. ‘The minute I saw you, my lady, come on to the minstrels’ balcony and noticed that Mistress Stannard had not, I thought: this is a ploy. A ploy to create a diversion – to divert whom? Who else but my lady? She has been tempted out of her quarters. Why?’

‘You were perfectly right,’ said Lady Anne harshly. Standing there, tall and angry, her hood thrown back and her pale gold head high, she was an intimidating sight. ‘You did well to fetch me so quickly. Well, well. When Ulverdale told me that a Mistress Stannard had arrived, I wondered where I had heard the name before. I have remembered now. You used to be Mistress Blanchard, and you did secret work for that red vixen you call the queen – except that in time it ceased to be much of a secret. I suppose something has woken her suspicions of this house and she sent you here to poke and pry. Give me that!’

She strode forward and seized the chest, examining it keenly. ‘You are a fool. I would never leave my private papers anywhere but in a locked container. I doubt if you would find it very easy to open this padlock. Have you tried?’

Evidently, some of the details of my secret career still remained secret. ‘I’ve only just found it,’ I said in a sullen voice. I looked down at the padlock. ‘No, Lady Anne, I don’t think I could get through that.’

‘You know who I am?’

‘I’ve visited the north before. You were pointed out to me once,’ I said untruthfully. On no account must she know of our eavesdropping the previous night.

‘I see. You don’t deny that you were prying in my rooms.’

‘Are they yours? Mistress Blanche Winthorpe is the lady of this house. Everyone thinks you are in Scotland.’

‘Lady Westmorland has fled north with her husband, but I remained behind,’ said Anne of Northumberland, ‘to salvage what I could of our unhappy situation. I am in this house because my own husband is the landlord. Blanche is merely a tenant.’

‘Well,’ I said, wondering what Brockley and Trelawny were doing and whether they knew I was in danger, ‘what now?’

‘I think that she and her henchmen had better disappear,’ said Ulverdale grimly. ‘It’s the best thing, though disagreeable. You need not be concerned, my lady. I will take this impertinent intruder away and deal with her and her companions.’

‘You mean murder them?’ said Lady Anne, though not at all as though the idea scandalized her. She sounded as though she were merely considering alternative methods of cooking a chicken (
would a fricassée be best?
) or deciding on the most convenient route to a friend’s distant home (
there is a short cut, but only in dry weather
).

‘What else can we do with them?’ said Ulverdale reasonably.

‘I think,’ said Lady Anne, considering me with dislike but also with assessment, ‘that we would do better to keep them close for a while. You may not know it, Ulverdale, but now that I realize who this lady is, I can tell you that she is something more than a rather too loyal servant of her majesty Queen Elizabeth. She is also her half-sister.’

‘Half-sister!’

‘Bastard half-sister,’ said Lady Anne calmly. She gave me a grim smile. ‘Yes, my dear, that too is now quite widely known. The queen has an affection for you. You would make quite a useful hostage, I think, and the same could even apply to your friends. The queen might well wish to protect them for your sake. No killing yet, Ulverdale.’

‘My lady, I feel sure that—’

‘Don’t argue with me!’ It came out like the crack of a musket. ‘Shut Mistress Stannard in her room for the time being. I’ll order Hankin and the other men to disarm those two lunatics in the hall and similarly lock them into theirs. Then I will consider how best to make use of them. It may be,’ said Lady Anne, once again with that grim smile, ‘that we have a very pretty hand of cards to play with now.’

Fight for Freedom

I
had my lockpicks. Once shut into my room, I thought, I could escape. I couldn’t escape from Ulverdale’s grip on my arm, and I didn’t try. He marched me back to my room, and only when we got there did I notice something I hadn’t taken in before, which was that although the door had a keyhole, it had no key. Instead, like the door to Blanche’s bedchamber, it had bolts on the outside. Two of them, at top and bottom, and now, glancing swiftly round as Ulverdale thrust me forward, I saw that other doors along the passage were similarly equipped.

It was a curious arrangement, but grimly comprehensible to me. Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert, who had brought me up, had had bolts on the outside of my door, so that I could be locked in when I annoyed them, which was frequently, since my mere existence annoyed them. At that time, far from being recognized as the queen’s half-sister, I was the embarrassing love-child of Uncle Herbert’s sister, who would not name the father of her child. Had she told them it was King Henry, I sometimes thought they might have been kinder to us both.

No doubt some previous owner of Ramsfold had also been in the habit of locking his children and possibly his wife into their rooms when they provoked him, and found bolts more convenient than keys. Ulverdale bundled me over the threshold and slammed the door after me. I heard the bolts shoot home. My lockpicks wouldn’t save me this time.

I went to the window and looked across to the hall. I could still hear the sounds of swordplay and shouting, but even as I stood there, the sounds changed. The clash of blades stopped and then started again, more violently, while the shouts acquired a different note, one of genuine fury.

Then the main door burst open, and out of it, in partnership now, going backwards and fighting as they did so, came Brockley and Trelawny, followed by Hankin and a young stable boy, the gatekeeper and the three men I had seen playing cards, whose names I did not know except that one was called Robby. Several had swords; the others all had daggers. As I watched, Ulverdale appeared, running across the courtyard, drawing a dagger as he did so, and joined in.

I knew what must happen. Brockley and Trelawny were hopelessly outnumbered and tired, too; they were not young, and they had been performing, as it were, in the hall for a long time. They couldn’t . . .

No, they couldn’t, though they tried. Brockley cut the gatekeeper down in the hall doorway, while Hankin, a moment later, fell to a slashing blow from Trelawny’s sword and collapsed on his face, a red stain spreading round him and soaking into the snow.

The stable boy cast himself down beside Hankin, shaking his fist at Trelawny. My two men were stumbling backwards, running out of strength. Then they were overwhelmed and disarmed, and standing helplessly at my window, I saw them being dragged across the courtyard to the door below our rooms.

A number of women, including the maidservant Annet who had been inflicted on me and also Lady Anne – though not Blanche – now appeared in the hall doorway and stood surveying the scene. Brockley and Trelawny were hustled in at the entrance below me, and turning from the window, I heard them being hauled up the staircase to the passage, presumably to be shut into their chamber. My quick glance along the passage had shown me that their door, too, had bolts on the outside. Unless the resourceful Trelawny could invent a way of undoing the damned things from within, I thought bitterly, we were all trapped.

Then I heard the footsteps skid to a halt; heard a startled grunt and an anguished shout; heard Brockley bark what sounded like an order; heard Trelawny laugh and then swear.

Then came some thuds, followed by sounds of scuffling and spluttered curses, and then Brockley, breathlessly gasping: ‘Heave ’em through. No, not through
our
door. The one next to it!’

Trelawny snarled: ‘Oh, no you don’t, sod you!’ I didn’t think he was addressing Brockley.

A door banged shut, and bolts crashed home. Muffled shouts and sounds of hammering followed.

My own bolts were drawn, and Brockley, sounding out of breath, said: ‘Mistress Stannard, are you there?’

‘Yes! I’m all right! I’m not harmed!’

The door was pulled open, and there they were, dishevelled, in their shirtsleeves, but grinning broadly. Trelawny had a bloodied dagger. There was no sign of their captors, but their whereabouts was obvious, for the pounding on a door some yards away continued.

‘We let them think we’d given in and then attacked at the right moment – when we were here, close to you,’ Trelawny said. ‘We’re a good partnership. We learned a trick or two in France. Listen. We have to get out of this house.’

Catching up my cloak, I joined them in the passage. ‘Get some more clothes!’ I said. ‘You didn’t shut those bullies into your own room, I think. You two have only your shirts between your top halves and the weather.’

Without speaking further, they plunged together through their own door, to reappear in a moment, struggling into doublets and clutching mantles. ‘But they took our weapons,’ Brockley said.

Donning my cloak, I pointed at Trelawny’s red-stained dagger.

‘Oh, this is Ulverdale’s,’ said Trelawny airily. ‘I snatched it off him. Luckily, we only had three of them to deal with.’ He made it all sound simple. ‘One each holding us from behind in an armlock and that damned butler prodding me in the back with this.’ He flourished the dagger. ‘Brockley here rammed his man in the chest with an elbow – you saw him do that to me when we met at Windsor—’

‘And kicked backwards at the same time, to get him on the kneecap,’ said Brockley. ‘It weakened his grip. I wrenched free, turned round and punched him on the nose.’ Our captives increased their battering on the door of their makeshift prison, and Brockley eyed it dubiously. ‘What a din they’re making. Let’s get down to the stable!’

‘Brockley’s efforts,’ said Trelawny, grinning, and leading us towards the stairs, ‘distracted my two so well that I broke loose too. I twisted round, grabbed the dagger, put an armlock on Ulverdale and stuck the blade into the other fellow. Only into his forearm, though, so I hit him on the jaw for good measure. Down here, quick.’

We were on the stairs. They led down into the stable, close to the door that led out to the courtyard. I was doing a headcount in my mind. Hankin and the gatekeeper were certainly wounded and possibly dead. Ulverdale and two others were locked up. There remained one of the unnamed men and the stable boy, but there didn’t seem to be many other men in the house. Most of them had answered Northumberland’s summons and were now in Scotland, presumably. We might be able to fight our way out. We had two daggers, for I had a small one in my hidden pouch. If we could find our saddlery and our horses . . .

Shouts had broken out outside. Looking warily out, we realized that the captives had stopped assaulting their door and were bellowing for help from their window. Over by the kitchen, a couple of women servants were staring, and a boy who had apparently just come in by the side gate with a donkey cart, bringing supplies of some kind, was standing beside his vehicle, gaping at the scene. But others were more active. We had been seen, and a menacing phalanx was advancing across the courtyard.

I had been foolish. I am a woman myself, yet in my calculations I had sadly underestimated my own sex. Leading the reinforcements, striding masterfully, was Lady Anne. Close behind her were five women servants, Annet and Joan among them, together with the stable boy and the unnamed man. Both the males had swords, but Annet and two other women had brooms, Joan had a businesslike meat-chopper and Lady Anne had armed herself with a terrifying whip.

We were facing superior weaponry, and we were outnumbered.

‘The donkey cart,’ Trelawny said. ‘If we can get to that, I’ll deal with the boy and I’ll make that donkey move . . .’

‘Keep together,’ said Brockley. ‘
Keep together
!’

‘Here they come!’ growled Trelawny.

Here they came indeed. They rushed us, and the scrimmage was over in moments. Brockley was downed by the men and two of the women. I tried to reach for my dagger as Lady Anne’s whip struck at me, but I wasn’t quick enough. Having thrown back my cloak in order to get at my pouch, I took the force of the lash across my right side and heard myself cry out as a broom handle crashed into me from the left. Annet, who for all her tiny stature was remarkably strong, seized hold of me, aided by a powerful capped and aproned kitchen wench, and between them they threw me to the ground, whereupon Lady Anne’s lash landed again, the pain cutting through my clothes like a knife blade.

Trelawny was the only one who evaded them. Through a haze of anguish and tears, as I struggled uselessly against Annet and her sturdy colleague, I saw him knock Joan’s cleaver arm up, seize her bodily and throw her at Lady Anne, which made that ferocious noblewoman stagger backwards before she could use her whip on me again, and then he ran for it, making for the gate and the donkey cart.

The boy in charge of it sprang to meet him, met Trelawny’s fist instead and went down. My captors turned me over, ramming me nose first into the snow, but from the corner of my eye I saw Trelawny leap into the cart, and I heard the clatter of wheels and little donkey hooves as he fled, pursued by a chorus of curses. I wondered how far he would get and if he would come back with help.

My cap had fallen off. Someone seized me by my hair and hauled me to my feet. I found that Annet was doing the hauling and that Lady Northumberland now stood before me, glaring. I tried to get free of Annet, and my skirt, with its hidden pouch inside, struck against her knee.

‘What’s this?’ she said, reaching down with her spare hand, and a moment later, my dagger and my lockpicks had been pulled out and tossed on to the snowy cobbles.

Lady Anne stooped to pick them up. ‘You carry strange objects about with you,’ she said. ‘A dagger, for fear some man should press his attentions on you, I suppose. But what are these?’ She held up the slender lock-picks with their hooked ends.

I tried to think of a convincing explanation other than the truth. Lady Anne ran her thumb ominously along the handle of her whip. I wouldn’t withstand much of that, and knew it. ‘Lockpicks,’ I said in a sulky voice. ‘I’d have got into that locked box of yours if I’d had more time,’ I added, snatching the chance of a convincing lie. Better, I thought, if Lady Anne felt quite sure that I hadn’t read her Vatican correspondence.