Queen's Ransom (38 page)

Bitterly, I told him the whole story of the invented errand.

“Matthew knew he was in danger,” I said. “He’d been taking care. Cecil and the queen hoped that if I passed close by, it would bring him into the open and so it did, and I helped it to happen because I couldn’t forbear to ask after him. I played their game, Brockley, but unknowingly. And so we all came into peril, Fran most of all. I am so very sorry, Brockley.”

“You were hardly to know, madam.”

“No. I didn’t know. I never thought Elizabeth would use me so. Never! Cecil, perhaps—but not Elizabeth.”

“She is the queen, madam. To her, perhaps, England must always come first.”

“I know. I understand that; at least I think I do. But all the same, to use what is between man and wife; to exploit that!—shouldn’t some things be sacrosanct; even if a realm requires them?”

“I don’t know, madam. You see it one way and Elizabeth sees it another, perhaps.”

“All right.” I closed my eyes. I was coming to the point now and in my head the pain crescendoed. “Brockley, I have to decide what to do. When I parted from Matthew, he said that when the war was over, when France was safe again, then I must decide finally whether I wished to come to him or part with him for good. Until I learned the full story of how I had been used as bait on this journey, I was going to go home to England and wait, and think. By the time peace was restored here, I thought I would have made up my mind. But now, I don’t want to go home at all. I want to stay in France, to let Matthew know, and let him decide where I should live until the war ends and I can join him at his home. At least,” I added, “it won’t now bring me into contact with Wilkins.”

“I see,” said Brockley. He hesitated and then said: “You have been caught up in a dirty business, madam. I for one would be glad to see you out of it.”

“I’d be glad to be out of it, too, but . . . oh, Brockley, what am I to do? I am not compelling you and Dale to stay with me; you are free to do whatever you wish to do. But if I stay in France, what of Meg? What of my daughter? She’s in England. I can’t abandon her! But I can’t bring her here in the middle of a war either, and what if I can’t get her out of England even when it’s over? What if Cecil won’t allow it? What shall I do? I can’t look Cecil in the face; I can’t go back to Elizabeth, not after what they’ve done to me! I want to stay with Matthew. I want to be with Meg. And I worry about you and Fran. Brockley, I think I’m losing my mind.”

In speechless sympathy, Brockley handed me the basin. I lay back afterward, empty and exhausted but with the pain, at last, beginning to recede. “I can’t go back to my old life,” I whispered. “But Meg is with foster parents arranged by Cecil. What if he goes back on that?”

Sickness makes the voice husky. There was well water in a jug by the bed, and a cup next to it. Brockley poured me some water and held it for me. “Just sip a little, enough to cool your throat. Why shouldn’t you stay with your husband, madam? That’s where a wife should be. Whether Fran and I stay with you or go home will be up to Fran, I think. I shall ask her. She has been through a terrible time here, but we owe you much and we shan’t forget it. Your only real worry is Meg. Isn’t that the truth of it?”

I nodded and at once wished I hadn’t, but the bolt of pain through my skull was a little muted this time. I looked at Brockley, screwing up my eyes to make them focus on him, but at least, this time, managing to focus.

“Sir Henry Sidney is a decent man,” Brockley said. “And he seems friendly toward you. Would he not carry your message back to England and safeguard Meg’s interests for you if necessary? It may not be. I wouldn’t think, madam, that Cecil would want to harm a small child. He is not a fool; he must know why you feel ill-used and in the past, has he not himself told you that your proper place is with your husband?”

“Yes, he has.”

“Then try Sir Henry as your emissary, to explain that you are staying here, and to watch over Meg. Tell him that you want Meg to stay with the Hendersons. I’ll go with him if you wish, and report back to you. The Hendersons are fond of her; they will have her interests at heart. If you will let me advise you . . .”

“Please do. It’s why I called you in.”

“Don’t tell Sir Henry that you want to bring Meg over when the war ends. Say that you wish her to stay in England and be brought up there. That should please Cecil and when the time comes, it will be easier to spirit her away. You can’t be refused permission if you never ask it!”

“Just in case Cecil chooses to use her as bait, to get me back?” I said.

“Something like that, madam. Madam, how do you mean to get in touch with Matthew de la Roche? Do you know where he is?”

“No,” I said. I leaned back on my pillows. My headache was receding, receding, like an tide ebbing down a beach. Brockley had done his office. He had cleared my muddled thoughts. I could release myself from a way of life that was harming me. No more men should take poison or drown or face the gallows because of me. Instead, I would be with Matthew; in time, I would have Meg as well. It would be all right. And I would make the Seigneur de Clairpont help.

The Seigneur de Clairpont, unlike Dr. Wilkins, had not actually tried to stop me from rescuing Dale. But in return for the treasure of St. Marc’s Abbey, he had connived at her destruction. I remembered the golden candlesticks in the abbey, and the golden Virgin and Child. Pretty things, precious things, and perhaps other treasures had gone with them, but they were not worth Dale’s life. If De Clairpont thought they were, then I didn’t want to set eyes on him ever again. The mere idea of it made my head throb anew. But I could use an intermediary.

“The Seigneur de Clairpont is in St. Germain,” I said. “I think he may know where Matthew is and if he doesn’t, I’m fairly sure he can find out. I don’t wish to talk to him—but Nicholas Throckmorton could make the inquiry for me. I shall be better by tomorrow. Here’s a task for you, Brockley. Get word to Sir Nicholas, and ask if he will come to see me, on an urgent private matter.”

Château Blanchepierre

It was winter when I first saw my husband’s home, the Château Blanchepierre, the January, in fact, of 1564. In the spring, it would be two years since that white night in St. Germain. War had raged across France. Catherine had refused Elizabeth’s offers of mediation; Elizabeth had sent a force to help the Huguenots and been driven back by losses and bad weather and disease. Peace did come in the end, an uneasy peace that was more like a truce, but still, it was calm of a kind. And Matthew, who had been in the fighting while I waited and worried in lodgings in Paris, thankful that I still had Dale and Brockley for company, came at last to take me home to the valley of the Loire, and Château Blanchepierre.

There were many greater houses in France, but Blanchepierre was beautiful. Though its crenellations and turrets and towers were meant for practical use, they were designed with such artistry that they were decorative rather than stern. The name of the house meant White Rock and it was apt, for like Douceaix, it was built of pale Caen stone and it changed color with the sky. When I first saw it, standing on its bluff above the river, under steely winter clouds, it was as white as frost, but a week after we arrived there, the weather grew mild and there came a glorious sunset that turned the whole building to rose and gold.

The small dining chamber, where breakfast and supper were usually served, had a door out on to the wall overlooking the river. I stood there, looking over the battlements at buttresses below, and the cliff below that, and then the narrow riverbank and the river itself, where the château was reflected. The tinted walls and turrets wavered as the current rippled, lovely and insubstantial as the palace of a fairy princess.

“Are you looking at the reflection?” Matthew came out on the walls to join me. “I know, it’s magical. I’ve brought you a cloak. You must not take cold. This is warm for January, but there’s still a chill in the wind. Have you given orders for supper?”

“Yes. Soup, rolls, fish in the herb sauce that you like. The herbs are only dried, of course, at this time of year, but I inspected the herb garden today and we shall have good fresh flavorings as soon as spring arrives.”

“Excellent. I gather you have also been making yourself familiar with the account books. That is as it should be. Are Dale and Brockley learning to be at home?”

“Gradually. Madam Montaigle is not fond of any of us, but she has not been difficult, only distant.”

Madam Montaigle, who was the housekeeper, looked on me as someone who had once failed Matthew to the point of endangering him, and I knew it would be years before she softened, if she ever did.

“She is growing older,” Matthew said. “Next year, I shall invite her to retire to one of those cottages beside the vineyard. She has served me well, but you will be more comfortable without her, my Saltspoon. In the spring, I will show you the vineyards. You must learn how wine is made.”

“I would like that,” I said.

Practical matters, because Matthew, who harbored such unrealistic dreams of leading the benighted English back to the true faith, was in domestic life an entirely practical man. Here in his home, I had been given a new view of him.

I had known him, on and off, for years. We had been lovers, and enemies. I had seen him as a leader of men, as a conspirator, as a fugitive. But never before had I seen him clearly, for never before had I seen him in his proper context. I had glimpsed the complete Matthew, perhaps, at Withysham, the house he had briefly owned in England, but it was no more than a glimpse for his heart had not been there. It was here, in France.

Here, he was himself: a Frenchman of means under his own roof; concerned about his vineyard and the retirement cottage for his loyal but cantankerous housekeeper. This was the life that from now on, I would share. I would organize meals, welcome guests, get to know his relatives, make sure the herb garden was all it should be. I would rear the children. We would be a happy French family, just as Henri and Marguerite were at Douceaix. We had stayed with them on the journey from Paris to Blanchepierre. Matthew had said that one day they must come to stay with us.

“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Matthew said. “Do you feel well enough to come to early Mass? It would look well in the eyes of my household; that is, if it won’t be too much for you. The welfare of my child comes first, most decidedly!”

“The journey was no trouble,” I said. “I was a little tired afterward, but that’s all. You took such care of me. A litter all the way and only a few miles each day. I scarcely noticed I was traveling.”

“I’m glad. I wanted to get home but I did wonder if it was wise. You have only three months to go, after all.”

“I’m sure no harm was done,” I said with a smile.

“Saltspoon, is anything wrong? You are being so polite to me. It isn’t like you.”

“I am getting used to my new home, that’s all. This is where I have to put down roots. But it’s so very different from anything I’ve known before and even you seem—different—here. It will pass,” I said.

Below us, the broad river flowed westward, toward the distant sea. If one were to travel to that sea and then sail northeast, the ship would come at last to the English Channel and then to Southampton. To England.

Somewhere in England, Helene was making her life, happily or miserably (I wondered which) with my cousin Edward Faldene. Somewhere in England, Sweetapple was eating like a gannet and Ryder and the Dodds (Brockley had reported that the Dodd brothers were safely home) were serving in Cecil’s household. Somewhere in England, Elizabeth was strolling in a garden or dancing or sitting in council with Cecil and her other lords, inventing Machiavellian schemes for the protection of her realm.

And at Thamesbank, a little way up the River Thames from Kingston, Meg was studying and playing in the company of the Henderson children, being cared for by Bridget, her nurse, and wondering, perhaps, why her mother had gone away to France and had never, in two years, once come back to see her.

For all my rage against Cecil and Elizabeth, they had treated Meg fairly. Sir Henry Sidney had taken my message home and Brockley had duly gone with him, and brought a satisfactory answer back. I would be much missed at court but it was accepted that my place was with my husband. They would all pray for my safety in war-racked France. The Hendersons would gladly go on fostering my daughter, and would send me news of her growth and progress.

Both the queen and Cecil had to realize that I knew what they had done. Luke Blanchard would have made a report to Cecil and he had surely told them. But they did not mention it. My message had not mentioned it, either. I sighed, a little, faint sigh, but Matthew heard.

“Are you thinking of your daughter?”

At times, he read my mind. “Yes, I am. I was wondering how she was. I get letters, of course.” Meg wrote to me herself sometimes; with dutiful reports of her studies, and formal expressions of affection. If she had ever included wistful inquiries about when I was coming to see her, then the Hendersons had made her leave them out on the fair copy, no doubt meaning not to worry me. I wished I knew. The Hendersons themselves had written that she was well and happy and so had Jenkinson, who had promised, when I said good-bye to him, to watch over her when he could, and keep me informed. But I longed to see for myself. “It’s so long,” I said, “since I last saw her.”

“The war is over now. Do you want to bring her here? She would be very welcome. She would be the eldest child of the house. I would treat her as my own, you know.”

I thought of Meg with such powerful longing that I felt it must go out of me like an arrow, or a bird released from a cage, to fly over all the miles between the Loire and the Thames, to descend in Thamesbank and bear my love to my little one.

It was growing cold. I ought to go indoors. I should go to bed early, too, if I were to be up in good time for Mass in the morning.

And with that, my longing for Meg came up against a solid rock. She was Gerald’s child, not Matthew’s, and she was growing up now where Gerald would have wished her to grow up, in England. It was her proper home, just as Blanchepierre was Matthew’s. She was safe with the Hendersons. I could go to Mass, and it did not matter because I knew very well what I believed and what I did not believe; I could go through the motions to please Matthew and still remain myself. But Meg was young and if she came here, she would be changed.