To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (22 page)

“We can’t,” I said. “Of course we’d like to know who did it, but …”

“I’d reckon it was Mortimer,” Brockley said. “It could have been Owen Lewis, but Mortimer’s most likely, judging by the lengths his mother went to, to hide the fact that there’d been a murder at all.”

“I agree,” I said. “We don’t know why but I can think of reasons. Perhaps Rafe and Lady Thomasine
were
lovers and Mortimer resented it.”

“He never resented Pugh or Evans,” snorted Gladys. “Why Rafe?”

“Maybe it was the other way about,” said Dale unexpectedly. We looked at her questioningly. “I mean,” said Dale, “that perhaps that’s why he was so very angry with Rafe for making advances to Alice. Maybe he felt that Rafe was betraying Lady Thomasine!”

“It all sounds quite unreasonable to me,” I said irritably, “but then, the Mortimers seem to be unreasonable altogether. I can’t unravel them! But of course we shall report Rafe’s death to Master Henderson, and he can decide what to do. One thing’s certain—we can’t go round the castle waking people up and questioning them. We’re ghosts—remember?”

“So’s Rafe. They say murdered men walk,” said Gladys horribly.

“That’ll do, Gladys,” said Brockley. “Mistress Blanchard is right. No doubt we’d all like to go into this business of who killed Rafe. It could even be mixed up somehow with Mortimer’s plans for getting his hands on a fortune. I can’t see how, but when you’ve got two mysteries close together, it seems natural to wonder if they’re parts of just one mystery. But we can’t do it ourselves. We have to leave it to Master Henderson. And trying to scare us with talk of Rafe walking won’t help.”

“He won’t walk,” I said. “If everyone who died by violence walked afterward, the world would be full of wandering spirits.”

“And who’s to say it ain’t?” said Gladys. “Maybe we can’t all see the spirits, but they might be there.”

“Gladys,” I said. “Just be quiet!”

Secretly, I was becoming afraid of lurking in a haunted tower, and creeping back in the dark to the
room where I had all but trodden on Rafe’s body. I was thankful that I need not do it alone.

When night fell, we emerged stealthily from the wood. We couldn’t simply ride to the foot of Isabel’s Tower because the moat was in the way: we had to find the place where we had met our escort when we were brought out of our dungeon. We had to go slowly, for the night was very dark indeed. The cloudy sky had grown very heavy as evening fell and it looked as though more rain was on the way.

When we had forded the stream which fed the moat and found the foot of the path up to the castle walls, we dismounted. The hardy ponies could be left out, but Brockley, who had paid more attention to the castle’s surroundings than I had, took them to a stretch of pasture with an elm copse in it, which would give them some shelter if the rain grew heavy. He hobbled their front feet, so that they could wander slowly and graze, but would be easy to catch in the morning. With luck, he said, we would be away at dawn and no one would ever know they’d been there.

I hoped so. I also hoped very much that Bay Star was not shivering out of doors in this unseasonably chilly weather. She had Arab blood and she felt the cold.

While turning the ponies loose, Brockley discovered that one of the elms was hollow. We bundled the saddles and bridles inside, where they were out of the weather and well hidden, too. Then burdened with our fleeces and blankets, food bags and water flasks, we set off to climb the path on foot.

A watchtower loomed above us and halfway up I brought us all sharply to a halt because I had glimpsed,
between the battlements, the lantern carried by one of Mortimer’s unnecessary traditional sentries. We remained quite still, waiting, and were glad now of the darkness. We were not likely to be detected while we stayed silent and motionless.

Presently, the lantern went away and we could move on again. Gladys and Dale both puffed and panted on the slope and I muttered at them to be quiet. To save their breath, we slowed down, which stretched my nerves to breaking point. It felt as though we were to spend forever creeping up toward that wretched tower.

Once we were up, we turned right and stole along the narrow way between the west wall and the moat, leaving the tower behind. Here we got along much more quickly, which was just as well, for the threatened rain had begun, in big, cold drops. As we reached Isabel’s Tower, we heard a distant rumble of thunder and I had no difficulty in putting my lock picks into the keyhole, for a flash of lightning obligingly showed it to me. I was glad the lightning had held off until now. Earlier, it might have revealed us to the sentry on the watchtower.

Opening the lock proved absurdly easy. I did it in less than a minute. We took our loads inside. Brockley lit a candle and with its help we found our way through to the room on the courtyard side of the tower. Brockley set it down in a corner well away from the windows. Its small circle of light showed us a patch of bare stone wall and a stretch of dusty floor. There was nothing alarming to be seen but Dale at once said, uneasily: “There’s such a feeling about this place, ma’am. I don’t like it.”

I agreed with her. When I came through the tower with Brockley and Lady Thomasine, there had been no time to notice it, but in the dead of night, it was there and inescapable. Darkness is always frightening, but here it seemed tangible. Beyond the circle of the candlelight, it hung like a heavy curtain, which seemed to stir whenever a draft moved, as though disturbed by unseen presences. The gooseflesh rose on my skin and I found myself straining my ears for stealthy sounds beyond the light.

Brockley’s voice, however, steadied me. “There’s nothing to fear. We’re all here together. Are we leaving our bedding here, or going up a floor, madam? Going up might be safer, though we’ll have to be careful that candle doesn’t show. We’ll have to find the stairway and …”

Another flash of lightning came and obligingly if briefly displayed the entire room around us: the courtyard door, the door to the dungeon steps, and a round archway beyond which I glimpsed a steep spiral stair leading upward. The arch was like a dark mouth. I had been on the point of agreeing with Brockley that we should go up one storey, but I changed my mind. A massive crash of thunder followed the flash. As it died away, I said as brightly as I could: “We got into shelter just in time, I think. With luck the storm will be over by daylight. I think it will be all right to rest here, when we get back from Aragon, Brockley. Let’s get straight on to search that study. The courtyard door is over there. I saw it just now. I’m sure that’s the one. If we …”

Lightning came again, showing me the faces of my companions. Dale’s was tired and strained, Gladys’s was
witchlike, and Brockley’s appeared to be listening. “Brockley?” I said. “What is it?”

Another growl of thunder came and went. Then Brockley said: “It’s raining.”

“I know. It was raining when we got here. It usually rains during a thunderstorm.”

“Listen!”
said Brockley.

I listened. But I still didn’t take it in. I had laid such careful plans. It was not possible that a mere rainstorm could overset them. Brockley, however, took up the candle again and led the way back to the outer room and the door by which we had entered. It was still unlocked and he pushed it open. “Madam—come and see.”

I went to his side. “Just try to step out into that,” Brockley whispered.

I had no need to step out. The lightning flickered again and showed me all too clearly what he meant: the glittering rods of the most torrential downpour I had ever seen. It barred our way out as effectively as any bolts or bars.

“That would soak even our thick cloaks through in a moment,” said Brockley. “We should be wet to the skin before we’d gone two yards and we have no change of clothes.” He looked down at his feet. “These shoes that we got in Ewyas Harold are a lot better than the ones we had before, but I wish we could have found some real boots there. These would never keep out rain like this! We’ll have to wait until it stops. If it does stop,” he added ominously.

I understood what he meant. That rain was not only heavy but relentlessly steady. It wasn’t going to slacken for a long time yet. We were not going to spend
a day in Isabel’s Tower, I had said. But I had not taken mountain weather into account.

“Even if we did brave it,” Brockley said, closing the door, “we can’t leave the castle until it stops. Fran can’t ride through such weather and neither can you, madam. I’d as soon not venture it myself. So why risk getting drenched now?”

“But if we can’t move from here until it stops and we can’t move in daylight either—and we can’t—then we might be here all through tomorrow!”

“Quite,” said Brockley.

“It may stop at any moment,” I said hopefully.

“Not it. All my bones are aching and they don’t lie. Set in, that is, till dawn,” said Gladys, almost smugly. “Told you we ought to be ready,” she added. “Now do you see why I said bring plenty of food? I knew something ’ud go wrong. I knew that in my bones, as well. I said, they don’t lie.”

I had a repulsive vision of Gladys consulting her own skeleton, muttering spells and conjuring up a vision of the thing. I shuddered and tried to pull myself together. “Oh, this is ridiculous! The study’s in Aragon, only just across the courtyard. Just because it’s raining …”

“You’ve seen for yourself what kind of rain,” said Brockley.

We made our way back to the inner room, where our bedding lay on the floor where we had dumped it. Dale sank onto it. “Oh, ma’am, I’m so tired.”

I was deathly tired too, but I kept on protesting. “I didn’t bargain for having to hide here for two nights. It’s too risky.”

“We’ve no choice,” said Brockley. “Just listen to it!”

We did wait a little while longer, hoping that the rain would ease and give us a chance to cross the courtyard, but its steady sound did not change and when I went back to peer once more from the outer door, the wind sent it splashing in on me like a sea breaker. Grumblingly, disbelievingly, I gave in. We were all exhausted by that time. We must sleep as best we could and hope for a better opportunity tomorrow night instead. We settled down to rest, absurdly, within yards of an objective which I knew we dared not try to reach. We might well become ill, and it had occurred to me also that we might leave dangerous traces of our dripping persons. We would not want a hue and cry after us.

We made ourselves as comfortable as possible. We each had a fleece, a blanket, and a cloak, and we made pillows by stuffing most of the food into one bag and rolling up the others. We lay pressed together for warmth. Dale slept in the curve of Brockley’s chest; I lay against his back and Gladys lay against me.

Brockley’s nearness was a blessing. Gladys stank.

Outside, the rain went on and on.

I didn’t expect to sleep much, but unexpectedly, I fell into a heavy slumber almost at once, and once again, I dreamed of lying on the dungeon floor and staring at Lady Thomasine’s pretty rose-embroidered slippers. She began to kick me with them and I woke. I knew at once, from the absence of the smell, that Gladys had gone. The windows were brilliant streaks of light and the storm had passed. Gladys’s fleece and blanket lay empty and I could see no sign of her anywhere.

“Brockley.” I shook him. “Wake up. Gladys has disappeared.”

“What?” Brockley sat up, tousled and sleepy. He stared around him. “She’ll have gone up to the next floor to look round, I daresay, or to find a privy. I suppose they had privies in the days when they built this place? Wouldn’t be a bad idea if we all went and had a look. But we’ve got to make sure no one sees us from
outside. We’re trapped here for the day, remember.”

“I could hardly forget,” I said grimly.

We woke Dale up and got her onto her feet. Then we rolled up our bedding and put it in a shadowy corner, and set off to climb through the several floors of the tower, in search of Gladys and a privy.

It was a hard climb, for the spiral stair was not only steep but narrow, with uneven steps. It wound through the thick walls of the tower, with a door at each level, leading into the rooms. We were afraid to call Gladys’s name in case someone heard us, so we searched every floor as we went. They were all much alike, each with two adjoining chambers, largely empty, although we did come across a few bits of abandoned furniture: a couple of old settles; one bedstead with moldering curtains still in place; a bench or two.

Dust lay everywhere and the stone walls were patched with green mold. The courtyard windows were glazed, though some of them were broken, but the arrow slits looking outward had neither glass nor shutters. On the second floor an indignant pair of jackdaws flew out of a nest hole just inside an arrow slit, and we saw a barn owl looking down at us from a ceiling beam, eyes round and unblinking.

On the next floor, Dale, who had been very startled by the jackdaws, suddenly announced that she could see footprints in the dust. “And they’re not Gladys’s prints. Some look smallish, but not as small as her feet are.”

I couldn’t see any footprints at all, of any size, and neither could Brockley, even though Dale pointed insistently and got us to come and stand close beside her so that we could all look from the same angle.

“There’s nothing there. Do control your imagination, Dale,” I said.

“The mistress is right. I can’t even see a rat’s paw marks,” Brockley said. “You’re seeing things, Fran.”

“I’m not.”

“You are,” I said. “Forget it. Come on. We must find Gladys.”

“I expect the ghosts have got her,” said Dale sullenly.

“Nonsense! And,” I added, “I think that little arch over there might lead into a privy.”

It did. The privy, which was hollowed from the outer wall of the tower, showed no sign of having been used by Gladys, but we used it ourselves before continuing upward. At the very top, the stairs led onto the roof but we didn’t venture out, for fear of being seen. We stood on the stairs and risked calling Gladys’s name, just loudly enough, we hoped, to reach her if she was nearby. There was no answer, and in any case I felt that so much climbing was probably beyond her. Feeling uneasy, we made our way down again.