Queen's Ransom (3 page)

I pushed it away. I would not try to see him and I didn’t imagine he would want to see me. Matthew was gone forever and the sooner I accepted that the better.

Jeweled Manacles

I returned to Greenwich with the queen, by river, and found my two servants busy packing for our journey.

Fran and Roger Brockley were a married couple, although they hadn’t married until they had joined my service, and I still called Fran by her maiden name of Dale. They were in their forties, both of them—a solid and reliable pair, though Dale did have a tendency to grumble and I had never been able to stop Brockley from hinting that my way of earning a living was unsuitable for a lady and he wished I would settle down to a more becoming (and safer) way of life.

At least, if not precisely safe, the journey for which we were preparing was quite private. It was an errand of mercy, connected with my first husband’s family. This was Blanchard business.

Gerald and I had married against the wishes of our respective families and when I was first widowed, and applied for financial help to his father, I was coldly refused. But that was before I joined the court and rose in the favor of the queen. My former father-in-law, Luke Blanchard, somehow got to hear that his son’s despised widow was prinking around the court in expensive damask dresses, had been seen in friendly conversation with Elizabeth, was on visiting terms with the Secretary of State and his wife, and that Meg, my daughter, was being fostered by a family who were friends of the Cecils. At that, his attitude abruptly changed.

The next thing I knew was that he and Ambrose, Gerald’s older brother, were presenting themselves at court, dressed in their best doublets, asking to see me, and, in a piquant reversal of the previous state of affairs, appealing for my assistance.

“We feel,” said Luke Blanchard, as persuasively as a man can who is six feet tall with an arrogant aquiline profile, is austerely dressed in black velvet, and has glacial blue eyes and a voice so deep that he sounds portentous even when he is only remarking on the weather, “that although France is a perilous place just now, someone like yourself, my dear Ursula, highly regarded by our queen, could visit it with a degree of safety. Your presence in my party would amount to protection for me.”

I never thought the day would come when I would hear Gerald’s father call me his dear Ursula. I gazed at him in astonishment.

“A well-equipped escort and the countenance of Queen Elizabeth, who is maintaining normal diplomatic relations with the court of France, should work wonders,” Ambrose agreed. His tawny doublet and hose were more attractive than Luke’s black velvet, but physically he was just a younger version of his father and his attempt at an ingratiating smile met with only limited success.

Gerald had been short and dark and friendly, and had told me that he resembled his long-dead mother. I was sure that this was true. Certainly he was nothing like his father or his brother. Gerald was also in the habit of coming to the point. These two seemed to prefer rigmaroles. I had been allowed to see them in a private room, and to offer refreshments. I poured wine for them and cut the preamble short by saying: “But what do you want to go to France for, precisely?”

It was simple enough. Luke Blanchard’s mother had been the sole heiress of her father’s Sussex manor of Beechtrees, and she had married a Frenchman. “That was when the name Blanchard came into the family, as no doubt you know,” Luke said. “Before that, the name was Fitzhubert.”

Luke had had a sister who married back into France, taking as husband a distant cousin, another Blanchard. He had died young, leaving his wife to bring up their daughter, Helene, and now his wife had died as well.

“Under my sister’s will,” my father-in-law said, “I am appointed as Helene’s guardian. She is about sixteen. She is with her father’s relatives at the moment, perfectly respectable people, and I would be happy to leave her there but for the state of affairs in France. Civil war between the Catholics and the Huguenots could break out at any moment.”

“Quite,” I said, amused. As one of the queen’s ladies, often present when she received messengers and ambassadors, I knew more about the shaky state of law and order in France than he did.

“Helene,” said Luke Blanchard, “is living at a place called the Château Douceaix—the name is said to mean Sweet Waters—which is not far from Le Mans. Not that it matters where she is; if trouble breaks out, all France could be equally dangerous. As a responsible guardian, I am bound to feel concerned. I wish to fetch her home. But I think she should have the company of a gentlewoman on the way—and I am very nervous about the risk to myself . . .”

His voice tailed off at this point. Then, shamefacedly, he said: “I’m not so young anymore. Ambrose is willing to go, of course . . .”

“Yes, I am,” said Ambrose, quite pugnaciously.

“. . . but I have lost one son and I can’t spare the one I have left.” It was the only reference he had so far made to Gerald. There was the faintest note of accusation in his voice, as though marriage to me had somehow made Gerald vulnerable to smallpox. But he went on without pausing.

“Also, I am the one who is Helene’s guardian. And you, Ambrose, have a wife and young children. I prefer you to stay in England. If we can get Helene safely out, I have a good marriage in view for her. Now, Ursula, will you, if you can obtain permission, come with me to fetch her? I don’t think the danger will be nearly as great if you are there.”

I didn’t like either Luke or Ambrose very much but it would get me away from the court, and carry me to France, and it was true that for me, a member of Elizabeth’s household, the risk would be much reduced. And so I decided to set out for France in March, equinoctial gales notwithstanding, and help my father-in-law, even though he had no shadow of a right to expect it.

I had hoped to come back from the Tower to find all the packing done, but although, when I entered my quarters, Brockley was on his knees beside a hamper, grunting with effort as he tightened the straps, the lid of the biggest hamper was still open and the contents were in confusion because Dale had just pulled a gown out of it and was busy erasing creases with a damp cloth and a hot iron.

“Dale, what on earth are you doing? That rose damask was packed yesterday!”

“There’s word that you’re to go to the queen after she’s supped. I expect she wants to say a formal good-bye,” Dale said. “Just let me finish this, and then sit you down, and I’ll put your hair right. That wind on the river’s pulled half of it out of your cap. Then I’ll get you dressed for an audience.”

“Dale, I’ve been with the queen all afternoon. She never mentioned this.”

“Well, those were the orders, ma’am. It was Mistress Ashley told me.”

Kat Ashley was the queen’s principal lady, though she hadn’t come with us to the Tower. If the orders came from her, then there was no mistake. “Very well,” I said.

I worried, though, as Dale got me ready. What if Elizabeth had changed her mind and decided to forbid me to go? In due course, a page came to fetch me and I followed him to Elizabeth’s study. Evening had fallen and the room was lit by lamps and candles, plenty of them, for Elizabeth, though in many ways careful about expense, would not stint on light when she wanted to read. She had more respect for her eyesight. She was reading now, seated at her desk, with Sir Thomas More’s
Utopia,
that fanciful description of an ideal state, open in front of her. When the page brought me in, she said: “Welcome, Ursula,” but she finished the paragraph she was studying and a few seconds passed before she looked up.

For a moment, therefore, I stood by the door, looking at her bent head, with the delicately curved profile outlined against the paneled wall beyond. The candlelight glinted on the silver threads in her loose cream gown, on the rings that encircled her slender fingers, and on the crimped waves of light red hair in front of her pearl-edged cap. She had grown older, even in the two years that I had known her. A crown is a heavy weight. But one thing was unchanged, and that was the curious mingling of power and fragility that was essentially Elizabeth, like a snowflake made of steel.

I was a little afraid of her, like nearly everyone else at the court, but I had affection for her, too, and I knew that she had affection for me. Not just because of the secret work I did for her, although that perhaps was part of it, but also because, long ago, my mother had served her mother, poor Anne Boleyn, who had been beheaded.

She slipped a marker into her book and turned, signing to me to move to where she could see me clearly. “Come in, Ursula. I will not keep you long. You leave early tomorrow, I believe?”

She hadn’t called me here to withdraw her permission, then. I made my curtsy and said: “Yes, ma’am. We set out for Southampton at first light. We shall be quite a large party. Master Blanchard is taking five manservants with him.”

“He’s nervous?” Elizabeth said.

“Yes, ma’am. He has worried over how many men he should take. He said that too many would attract attention and look provocative, but to travel with too few felt unsafe. In the end, he settled on five.”

“He will have eight,” Elizabeth said crisply. “Cecil is providing you with an additional escort of three of his own men, wearing his livery. They will present themselves in the morning and will ride with you to Southampton.”

“Three of Cecil’s men?” I said. “Master Blanchard will surely be pleased. But . . . is there any particular reason?”

“Oh yes. Ursula, do you know what a white night is?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Seeing her now, at close quarters, I noticed what she had managed to conceal during our visit to the Tower: how very tired she looked. “A white night,” I said,“is a night without sleep, no matter how you may long for rest.”

“Yes. You sound as though you speak from experience,” Elizabeth said. “Last night, I had no sleep. I have just received news that has made me very anxious. We have, I think, demonstrated to De Quadra that England is not to be trifled with but Spain is not the only cloud on the horizon. France is in an alarming condition. In Normandy, at a place called Vassy, there has been a massacre. Five hundred Protestants at worship—in France they call them Lutherans or Huguenots—were recently attacked by Catholic forces. The news reached us yesterday. About forty people were butchered. Civil war has come several steps closer. I was wakeful last night, Ursula, because I was wondering if I should let you go to France. I would forbid it, except that there is an extra errand I wish you to carry out for me—an important one—and this dreadful news makes it more important than ever. But it will keep you in France for at least an extra week, since it involves traveling on to Paris before you return home. Both Cecil and I felt that his men should go with you as an added safeguard—just in case.”

There was silence. This was the very last thing I had expected. As the seconds slid by, I realized how very badly I needed to escape, for a while, from the tasks set me by Elizabeth and Cecil. Above all, I wanted to recover from certain changes that the work had wrought in me. I had relished it once and part of me still did. But I could not forget the day I had tricked my way into a prisoner’s cell and given him a phial of yew poison, so that he could evade the disemboweling knife.

In effect, I had put him in that cell, had thrown him to the executioner. I had saved him as best I could. But brewing the poison and passing it to him, looking into eyes that were staring at death because of me—all this had warped something in me. Sometimes, when I visited my daughter at her foster parents’ home, and held her in my arms, I feared she might sense something amiss with me and recoil; I even feared that I might in some way corrupt her innocence.

I believed that I had failed in my last task because something in me had simply turned away from my work. I would—I must—get over it. But I needed time to heal myself. Now, escape seemed impossible.

“If you will undertake this,” Elizabeth said, “you will be doing me a great service.”

I said what I was expected to say. With Elizabeth, one had little choice. “Of course I will serve you in any way I can, ma’am.”Though I couldn’t forbear to add dryly: “Although I am not always successful.”

I was referring to my failure. As well as watching Dudley, I had been told to keep an eye on Lady Catherine Grey (another of Elizabeth’s cousins but nothing at all like the wise and kindly Katherine Knollys). Catherine Grey had been acting oddly—turning up in places where she shouldn’t have been, and failing to arrive at places where she was expected. I had prowled after her for months, in vain, until she solved the mystery herself by confessing to a secret marriage and a pregnancy. She was the foolish girl at whom Dudley had been laughing, in the Tower. But foolish or not, she had managed to deceive me.

“If you mean my silly alley cat of a cousin,” said Elizabeth, who didn’t mince her words when annoyed and had been very annoyed indeed by Catherine,“I regard that matter as insignificant. This is very different. I don’t wish you to find anything out, but only to deliver a message. I hardly need to describe the situation in France to you, Ursula. I did hope, you know, that after the Catholic government ceased its persecution of heretics, peace would prevail. Now I fear that it will not. Both factions have leaders from the great houses of France. The Huguenot leader is the prince of Condé, who is distantly related to the royal family. But I hear from Ambassador Throckmorton that the regent and queen mother, Catherine, is doing all she can to bring about a settlement. I wish to tell her that I am willing to help in any mediation between the two sides, but I want to tell her privately, as it were. Some maneuvers have more chance of success if they remain in the shadows. For one thing, other people have less chance of interfering.”

A square wooden box lay by her right hand. Opening it, she took out a sealed cylinder of parchment and held it out to me. “This is a letter to Queen Catherine. When you and Master Blanchard have taken charge of his ward, I wish you to go on to Paris and place it—personally, Ursula—in the hands of the queen mother.”