Queen Without a Crown (26 page)

Beneath the fury, I detected a great hurt. It is hurtful, to strive hard to give justice and protection and to have these things dismissed as worthless, and that by a man who had never set foot in England and yet apparently considered himself more its ruler than its own queen. I looked at my half-sister with compassion, and she looked back at me with a small half-smile.

‘You have done well, my Ursula. You have carried out, excellently, the errand on which I sent you. I will give you your reward personally. I have it ready.’

There was a box on the table, and from this she took a purse. ‘Four hundred pounds, in sovereigns,’ she said. ‘It will be useful, I hope.’

I curtsied and thanked her. It was not a disappointment, for though I knew that I had earned a good fee, I also knew that she had had to break into the assets in her treasury to finance the campaign in the north and the preparations to defend the south, and that my careful sister would probably be only moderately generous to me.

We had made sure that she did not know about Hawkswood. I wished for a moment that we had told her, but at heart I knew it would have made no difference. Hugh had said she would not be sympathetic towards someone who had been as unwise as he had been. This payment wouldn’t save us. It would be useful, of course. We would not have to open our coffers to pay for Meg’s portrait, and we could use the rest to improve her dowry. For that, I could be grateful.

Elizabeth, saying that she wished to confer with those of her Council who were to hand, dismissed me with a kiss. I left her and went to our rooms. Brockley and I had arrived at the castle only an hour before. As yet, I had done no more than greet my household, see with thankfulness that Hugh was safe and indeed seemed better than when I saw him last, and let Dale help me change my dress. I hadn’t even looked at the finished portrait of Meg, though Hugh said it had been delivered.

I found them all anxiously awaiting me. ‘Brockley has told us nearly everything,’ Hugh said as he drew me in. He closed the door with one hand and hugged me with the other arm while the Brockleys tactfully gazed out of the window, Gladys poked the fire with great attention, Dr Lambert drew Meg’s attention to something in a book he was reading and Sybil sat serenely smiling. ‘What a time you have had! Thank God you are safely back!’

I looked thankfully round at them all. I had never been so relieved to see Hugh, never so glad to be safely among my own again. Meg, I could swear, had grown a little, and from Dr Lambert’s cheerful and approving mien, she had been attentive to her studies in my absence.

‘I’ve been paid for my work for the queen,’ I said. ‘For eavesdropping on treason, being beaten and locked in a cellar and riding for my life through the snow.’ I handed Hugh the purse.

He examined it with a sigh, but then laughed. ‘We expected no more,’ he said. ‘Well, we needn’t look on
that
as an extravagance now!’

He pointed. Against the wall at the far side of the room, standing on wooden legs but with a cloth cast over the top of it, was what looked like some kind of frame. Hugh went over to it and whisked the cloth away.

‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Oh! That’s . . .!’

Arbuckle had performed a wonder. However strange his methods, with his screens and mirrors and his extraordinary lenses, they produced astonishing results.

There was Meg, seated at a desk, quill pen in hand, face grave. Behind her, an open window gave a glimpse of green trees and distant hills, but it was Meg herself who commanded one’s gaze. Unquestionably, the portrait was that of a girl of fourteen, untouched and vulnerable as only the young can be vulnerable, and yet with a latent maturity. I already knew that Meg possessed it; I had recognized something similar in Jane Mason. But Arbuckle, lacking my knowledge of my daughter, had nevertheless sensed her unusual quality and illustrated it in paint. The woman that Meg would become was there, her petals folded in the bud but revealed through the wealth of fine detail: the tiny lines and mouldings; the light and shade of her face; the subtle shape of the young body beneath the orange-tawny material of her gown.

Her betrothal to George Hillman had never been made formal, but Hillman had asked for her and Meg herself had said that she liked him, the little she had seen of him, and would be glad to know him better. Hugh and I approved of young Hillman and would gladly welcome him as our son-in-law. He lived in Buckinghamshire, but when we could, we meant to invite him to visit us and further his acquaintance with Meg. When he saw that portrait, I thought, he would see for himself not only what Meg was now, but what she would be like when she was his wife.

And he would surely be delighted with the prophecy. I hoped he wouldn’t change his mind because the loss of Hawkswood had made Meg’s family poorer, and I was thankful that her dowry, at least, would now be more than adequate.

‘It’s . . . beautiful,’ I said. ‘Hugh, whatever you paid Jocelyn Arbuckle, you should pay him extra. We can afford that, thanks to the queen! I can hardly believe it. It’s Meg, and yet it’s more than Meg. What do you think of it, sweetheart?’ I added, turning to my daughter herself.

‘I scarcely recognize myself, Mother, and yet it
is
me! I think it’s wonderful, too, and Stepfather has already paid Master Arbuckle extra. We thought of that ahead of you!’ said Meg, laughing.

We were all still admiring the picture when a tap on the door interrupted us. Sybil opened it, and Brockley said: ‘Madam, while you were with the queen, I went to the kitchen and asked Sterry to come here. He was busy but said he would come shortly. I think he’s arrived.’

‘John Sterry?’ I said. ‘You asked him to come here? Why?’ But then Brockley’s eyes met mine, and it seemed that the extraordinary linking of minds which had taken place that night in the hall of Ramsfold House was still there.

I knew the answer to my question even before he said: ‘We have to trace Susannah Lamb, madam.’

Then John Sterry was standing before me. ‘I believe, Mistress Stannard, that you want to ask me something?’ His voice, as ever, was brisk and clipped. Sterry, I thought, was a man who disliked wasting time. He would go on being brisk until the day he died, and he would probably do that with despatch, as well.

‘I . . . yes.’ After that audience with Elizabeth, it was a wrench to make my mind concentrate on Gervase Easton and his son’s thwarted romance. During the last month, indeed, I felt as though I had been bounced like a tennis ball between the very public crisis in Elizabeth’s realm and the private ones in the lives of Mark and Jane and ourselves. ‘Master Sterry,’ I said, pulling myself together, ‘you remember that before Christmas, I asked you questions about the death of Peter Hoxton, and asked who the women were who saw a man put an extra dish on the tray intended for him.’

‘Yes, Mistress. Madge Goodman and Susannah Lamb.’

‘You said that Susannah Lamb had left five or six years ago.’

‘Yes. So she did.’

‘And you’ve no idea where she might have gone? Surely she had plans of some kind and told someone? One of the other women? I know you said she wasn’t popular, but even so . . .’

Sterry said slowly: ‘After you came to the kitchens, Mistress Stannard, I did some thinking. It’s odd. When you really try to think about the past, you do find yourself remembering things. Since you came to my kitchen to talk to Madge, mistress, I’ve often called Susannah to mind, and I’ve talked further to Madge myself. She’s the only one who was here in Susannah’s day. All the women who worked with Susannah have left, same as she did. People come and go, at jobs like the pestle and mortar. We often find ourselves short-handed. That’s how we came to take Susannah on. She was big and strong, and I’d have employed her even if I’d known that there was talk that she’d left her last employer because she’d been caught out in some sort of dishonesty. I didn’t know – not then. Madge told me that two days ago. It was women’s gossip, you see, that I don’t listen to, but Madge did, of course.’

‘Dishonesty?’ I said. ‘What kind?’

‘I don’t know. Nor does Madge. Madge said it maybe wasn’t true, that Susannah was big and noisy and enough to make any employer tire of her. According to her, Susannah had a sharp tongue as well as a loud one and it was likely enough that people might gossip unpleasantly about her. None of the gossip need be true – it could be just spite repaying spite. She left here of her own free will, anyhow.’

‘And when she left, she never said where she was going?’ I persisted.

‘No, she didn’t. Madge says she never heard a word about that, but she does have an idea about where Susannah came
from
, if that’s of any use. She says Susannah came from Abingdon. She was widowed, and the story among the other women was that she had to find work after her husband died and came to Windsor as a servant in the household of some well-to-do family who moved about between one home and another. According to Madge, once Susannah was in Windsor, she left that family and found another post but was dismissed – perhaps for dishonesty, perhaps not – and then her next post was here.’

‘Abingdon . . .’ I said thoughtfully. ‘That’s not far . . .’

At almost the same moment, Meg, who had not been listening but had been gazing at her portrait, suddenly said: ‘Mother – why has Master Arbuckle painted me as left-handed? Look, in the picture I’m holding my pen in my left hand, but I never did that in my life!’

Light-Fingered Servants

I
t was too late that day to call on Arbuckle, and in the morning, Hugh admitted to feeling tired and disinclined to go traipsing through Windsor.

‘In any case, madam,’ said Brockley, when I explained the situation to him, ‘you and Master Stannard are Arbuckle’s customers; his patrons. It is for him to wait upon you. I’ll fetch him.’

Brockley told us afterwards that Arbuckle had taken a good deal of fetching because he didn’t seem to be aware that an artist is the subordinate of his customers. Brockley apparently arrived at the painter’s premises to find him in the midst of a sitting, which he refused to interrupt, and even when it was over, he said he wanted to go on adding fine detail to the work. He had done with Meg’s portrait. He had handed it to Hugh and been paid and that was that . . .

‘If I’d pulled a dagger on him, he’d have shouted for his landlady to fetch the constable,’ said Brockley wryly. ‘So I pointed out, madam, that you were influential in the court and that a good word from you was most likely worth a couple of commissions, while a bad word might wipe them out. And then, instead of a dagger, I pulled out my purse, madam, and I’m grateful for the good rate of pay that you give me. The sight of three gold angels in my palm clinched the matter. He’s a man of business.’

‘I’d better reimburse you!’ I said.

The three gold angels, at any rate, enabled Brockley to return to us at the end of the morning with Jocelyn Arbuckle at his side: paint-stained, untidy and irritable, but there. We calmed his annoyance with a glass of wine and then led him to the portrait of Meg.

‘It’s beautiful,’ I assured him. ‘We’re so very pleased with it. But we have noticed a strange thing, and there is a link between that and a very serious affair which I have already mentioned to you. It concerns the good name of Gervase Easton, whom you once painted, and whether or not he was right or left-handed. How does it come about that you show my daughter as left-handed, when she is not?’

‘Ah. That.’ Master Arbuckle was quite unconcerned. ‘That’s an effect of the lens I use to obtain an image which will give me precise and accurate detail. You saw the equipment. You did not observe that the image appears in reverse? I never think of it as important, myself.’

I said: ‘No, quite. But how long have you been using such lenses? For instance, when you painted Gervase Easton, over twenty years ago, did you use lenses then?’

‘Gervase Easton. He was the fellow, was he not, whose brother wanted a portrait of him. How do you expect me to remember, so far back? I was experimenting with various methods of working at the time – mirrors and lenses of different types. But lenses weren’t as well made then as they are now, and I found it difficult to get a clear image. I gave up experimenting with them and worked with a particular type of mirror, until a year or two ago, when I found that much better lenses could be bought.’

‘Please try to remember,’ said Hugh. ‘Did you try out a lens when you painted Gervase Easton?’

‘I may have done,’ said Arbuckle, almost pettishly. ‘Does it really matter?’

‘Yes, it does,’ I said. ‘We asked you once before whether Easton was left or right-handed, and you didn’t know. But I’ve now seen the portrait you did of him, and it shows him with a pen in his left hand. Master Arbuckle, Easton died because he had been accused of a crime. If he were right-handed, then he is probably innocent, and his son badly wants to know.
Needs
to know! Please!’

Arbuckle frowned. He turned to gaze at Meg’s picture, as though he thought it might inspire him. ‘I didn’t use a lens for the miniature of Mistress Easton, which was shortly before I painted her husband. Ah! I think I remember buying a lens just after I’d finished painting her, though! Yes! Yes, you’re right. I did try the lens technique out with Master Easton! And with one or two others as well.’

‘So . . .?’ I said.

‘He was probably right-handed. I suppose he must have been. I misled you when we talked of this before – I’d entirely forgotten that I used the lens technique when I painted him. Yes, it would have reversed his image.’ He spoke quite casually. Even now, the dedicated portrait painter had clearly not grasped that, to us, this testimony was vital; that enormous emotions were involved. Arbuckle lived in a world of light and shadow, facial planes, pigments, mirrors, lenses. He could lay bare the human soul, but he needed a brush in his hand first. He would probably stay in that world all his life, like a walled-up anchorite. He did dimly realize, however, that he had caused confusion. ‘I’m so sorry, Mistress Stannard,’ he said.

After that, tracing Susannah Lamb seemed to be more vital than ever. Her testimony contradicted that of Arbuckle. Also, something had begun to nag at my mind: something which I could not identify, but which I knew was important.