To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (37 page)

“You may not call that wisdom,” he said. “But I do.”

Silence fell, except for the sound of Dale’s difficult breathing. We sat there beside her, waiting, waiting, until at length a trace of dawn appeared at the window. Then Brockley said, “Her breathing’s fainter.”

I nodded sadly. It was true. Even as the light strengthened, the harsh sounds from the bed were fading away.

“My poor Fran,” Brockley said. He reached out and took her hand again. “My poor, poor love. I …”

He stopped. His eyes turned to me, widening. “What is it?” I said. “Brockley? She hasn’t … oh no, please …”

“No. Her pulse is still beating … and she’s cooler.”

Dale sighed. She stirred, turning to press her face
against Brockley’s hand. She sighed again and for one heart-stopping moment, I thought it was a last gesture of farewell. I could no longer hear her breathing. Then I understood that this was not because the breathing had stopped but because the roughness had almost gone. Her eyes had closed properly. She seemed to be in a natural sleep.

“Told you so,” said Gladys, coming into the room and crossing it to stand by the bed and look down at Dale with an air of triumph. “Pity you think that because I’m old and ugly I must be daft as well. I knew that draft ’ud loosen the knot, if anything could.”

I rested during the morning on a truckle bed in the same room and woke at midday to find that Dale had been conscious for a while and had taken some meat broth. She was now sleeping again, with Mattie and Joan sitting by her. “If she’s carefully nursed,” Mattie whispered, “she should pull through.”

Joan and I went on with the vigil, to give Mattie a rest. Dale woke once and smiled at us, and I fetched her a little more broth. Presently, however, Mattie called me. Rob had returned, and wanted to talk to us both, and at once. “You go. I can manage alone now,” Joan said, and I hurried off to the Hendersons’ chamber with Mattie, to find Meg there, sewing with Bridget, and Rob slumped on a settle, his chin unshaven and his face drawn with tiredness.

“Have you come from Vetch?” I asked.

“I have indeed. The inquest is over. What a farce! I’m worn-out. I’ve told the landlord to send up some
wine.” He glanced at Bridget. “Best take Meg out of the room. Here.” He got out his purse and handed some money to Bridget. “Take her out into Ledbury and buy her some material for a new gown or something like that. I need to talk to my wife and to Mistress Blanchard in private.”

Bridget removed my daughter and Rob turned to me again. “My God,” he said with feeling. “The lies I’ve made people tell—and on oath, at that!” He rolled his eyes toward heaven. “I ought to take to writing plays. I never want to live through another few days like the last few. And I wish the landlord would hurry up with that wine.”

The wine arrived at that moment. While the maidservant was pouring it, Mattie helped Rob off with his riding boots. Then the maidservant went away and finally, with his feet at ease and a full goblet in his hand, Rob told us what he had achieved at Vetch.

“And
achieved
is the right word. I never thought I’d manage it,” he said. “So much to be concealed, not only now but for all time.”

“The castle is painted white?” I said.

“The castle is as snowy as the robe of an angel. The raddled face of truth has been creamed and powdered to the likeness of innocent maidenhood. I’m sure Lady Thomasine would have been full of admiration. Those who work for Elizabeth and Cecil,” said Rob, “need to be resourceful!”

I remarked that I knew that. He gave me a shrewd look.

“I daresay you do. But this! You wish to know how I did it?”

“Yes.” Mattie and I said it simultaneously.

Rob took a heartening gulp of wine. “When I got back to Vetch,” he said, “I found that William Haggard had arrived in answer to my summons. He’d demanded to see Mortimer and since I didn’t leave any orders to the contrary, he’d been allowed to. The two of them were up there in Mortimer’s chamber, having the great-grandfather of all quarrels. When I walked in on them, they were on the point of blows. I gathered that Mortimer had told Haggard everything—I do mean everything: all about Rafe and Lady Thomasine and how they really met their ends—and William was so furious, he was gibbering. He was shouting that he’d not only been dragged into treason, he’d been half-drowned in a cesspool as well, and what if his daughter had been contaminated … ?”

“Er …” I said.

“Well, Mortimer didn’t tell him
quite
everything because Mortimer himself doesn’t know it all. Neither he nor William Haggard know you found Alice and Rafe in each other’s arms in front of the study hearth. They have no idea the two younglings were meeting clandestinely after dark. I saw no need to inform them, either! I broke in on the dispute, ordered it to stop, and then had Mortimer and Haggard marched down to the dungeon. I decided that the sight of stone walls and dirty straw would be good for them. I had Pugh and Evans brought down and put in another cell too. Then I talked to both pairs separately.

“I didn’t waste time asking Mortimer and Haggard
any more questions. I just told them that I now had official orders for them, issued by Elizabeth herself, and reminded them that they were in no position to argue. At the inquest they would say what I told them to say and they would never, never speak either of the letters or of Rafe’s murder, all their lives long, or … well, I described a few things that might happen to them in the Tower if they didn’t cooperate. Mortimer had heard most of it before, of course. Down in the dungeon, it was even more effective! Then I left them shaking and went to deal with the other two.”

“That was surely easier,” Mattie said sympathetically. “After all, Pugh and Evans don’t know about the letters—do they?”

Mattie herself knew because when we first arrived back from court, Rob had told her. They had no secrets from each other. But bubbly Mattie was actually as discreet as a tomb.

“No,” Rob agreed. “They don’t, and never will. What they did know, of course, was that Rafe was stabbed, and it appears that they genuinely believed that Mistress Blanchard and Brockley had done it. It took me a long time to convince them that you hadn’t.”

“So pleasant to know that one has made a good impression,” I murmured.

“They told me most earnestly that Lady Thomasine didn’t want you arrested because you’re a family connection of hers. They believed what she told them about protecting the honor of her family. She told them that she meant to conceal the fact that Rafe was murdered, but that you were not going to get away with it, all the same. She ordered them to take you to the shack in the
mountains and leave you there and they did as they were bidden.”

“Had they no sense at all of what a serious crime they were committing?” Mattie asked. Rob shook his head.

“Do you know, I don’t think so. You don’t understand them, and nor does Ursula, I fancy. They have lived all their lives at Vetch Castle; they look on its owners as their authority, their law. They know the sheriff of Herefordshire exists but he is not real to them. They know that Queen Elizabeth exists but she isn’t real to them either. Vetch, its castle and lands, makes up their world and Lady Thomasine was their queen. They took her orders. If she wished to protect her family’s good name from ruin and in the interests of that, told them to do away with a disgraceful relative—that’s you, Ursula—and her entourage—which means Dale and Brockley—then they took her orders. Their horizons may be somewhat broader now. I told them the truth—about Rafe, I mean, not about the letters. I informed them that their beloved Lady Thomasine had killed Rafe, and why. They wouldn’t believe me at first but I told them that it didn’t matter what they believed. I had orders, from a royal level, that since Rafe’s murderer was now dead, the matter was never again to be mentioned.”

“How on earth,” I asked him, “did you explain why the queen should wish to hush up Rafe’s murder? After all, it was hardly a matter of state!”

“I didn’t,” said Rob candidly. “I couldn’t think of a convincing explanation so I told them that her reasons
were
matters of state, which I was not obliged to explain
to such common persons as themselves. They had obeyed Lady Thomasine as though she were the queen, I said; now they must obey the real queen. And I made my description of the consequences if they didn’t,
very
graphic. I convinced them of Lady Thomasine’s guilt in the end. After all, they’d both been her lovers in the past. Perhaps they’d had a glimpse of the strength of her passions. I think they accept the truth now.

“To be fair,” Rob said, after pausing for another heartening draft of wine, “all concerned wanted to protect Lady Thomasine’s good name. Even Haggard did—after all, she was Bess’s mother. They came to the inquest like lambs and said exactly what they were told. Oh, my God, that inquest!” Rob said, and actually moaned faintly like a woman coming around from a swoon. “Have you ever tried to fix an inquest? Have you the faintest idea what it means?”

“Bribing the coroner and packing the jury?” I offered, intrigued, because now that Dale was mending, I really did feel interested.

“Impossible,” Rob said. “The coroner was a yeoman farmer from near Hereford, barely literate, accent broad as the Severn pastures, and so respectable that if he found a single penny lying in the street, he’d take it to the local constable and ask him to look for the owner. Offer him a bribe and he’d take
you
to the constable. The jury was mostly the same type: farmers and a couple of merchants from Ledbury and Hereford. None of them knew much about Vetch except for one—and that was the foreman of the jury. He was Hugh Cooper! Still, even he doesn’t know more than most of the others in the castle—that Rafe and Lady Thomasine were both found
lying at the foot of the Mortimer Tower, and that you and I burst in unexpectedly, took over the castle in an aggressive manner and stopped Gladys from being charged with murdering Rafe by witchcraft.

“I,” said Rob, counting on his fingers, “had three things to explain. It wasn’t originally supposed to be an inquest on Rafe—after all, there’s been one—but the whole locality knows now that the possibility of murder has come up, thanks to Mortimer’s wretched dramatic performance when he had Gladys dragged in front of him in his hall. I gathered from the coroner beforehand that because the word
murder
had been mentioned in connection with Rafe, he had had instructions from the sheriff of Herefordshire to include Rafe’s death in his inquiries. There was no avoiding our confounded little lust-crazed minstrel! I wanted him to be just the cause of Lady Thomasine’s grief, but no, instead he had to be one of the central characters!”

“In death as in life,” I said thoughtfully. “He was like that.”

“Evidently! So there it was. First, I had to reinforce the verdict of the original inquest on Rafe and quell all whispers about murder. Second, I had to explain why you and I returned to the castle and burst into it as we did. And third, I had to explain the suicide of Lady Thomasine.”

He leaned back, still grasping his goblet, and closed his eyes. “When the proceedings started, the coroner wanted to deal first of all with you, me, and Gladys, to clear us out of the way, as it were. So I stood up there before them all, in my widest ruff and my best blue doublet slashed with silver, the picture of a
courtier, and declared that I was in the employment of Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State—well, that part was true!—and had recently accompanied you on a family visit to Vetch, and then returned later on a confidential court errand concerning the Mortimer family; nothing at all to do with Rafe. I said that you had come back with me because you were Lady Thomasine’s kinswoman and thought she might be glad of your company. I regretted that my position required discretion and said I was not able to give details …

“And then,” said Rob gloomily, “I found myself in trouble. The coroner said that this here was a special case and the dignity of a crowner’s—that’s how he pronounced
coroner’s
—court was the equal of any in the land, and he’d got to ask me to enlarge. So I appeared to yield, and said that out of respect for the dignity of the occasion, I would go so far as to explain that it concerned the genuineness of Sir Philip’s claim to be a legitimately descended member of the Mortimer family.” At this point, Rob opened his eyes and briefly grinned. “I gave Mortimer a sympathetic look, as much as to say that alas, his legitimate descent hadn’t been proved, and he looked at me as though he’d like to kill me, which I daresay he would, and the whole court sniggered and I’m thankful to say that the coroner seemed satisfied.

“Then I said that you and I were shocked to find Gladys being charged with witchcraft because we had some acquaintance with her—and then I had to rephrase that because the coroner had never heard of the word
acquaintance
and wanted to know what it
meant. I said that I meant we had got to know her on our first visit to Vetch. I told him that we couldn’t believe that she was a witch. I said we had then taken it upon ourselves to question Mortimer and Lady Thomasine and others in the castle and that it soon became perfectly obvious that the first verdict was the true one and that Rafe could most certainly have had reasons for killing himself, and no need of witchcraft to help him to it.”

“I wish I could have been there,” I said.

“I wished myself at the ends of the earth,” Rob said grimly. “After I’d testified, it was Mortimer’s turn. He said that he had arrested Gladys in good faith after rumors began that Rafe had been murdered, but now agreed with my view of the matter and marveled that the rumors had ever arisen. He explained about Rafe falling in love with Alice, and gave some colorful detail about Rafe moping in his chamber after Owen Lewis appeared and more or less snatched Alice’s affections away from him. He also said that he now knew he’d been too harsh with the boy—he implied that he’d beaten him. He was convincing, I must say. A born liar!”

Rob took another deep gulp of his wine. “Dear God, I’m exhausted. I was on edge throughout, afraid someone would say the wrong thing or ask the wrong questions and there were some bad moments. The coroner wanted to call some of the castle servants and settled on the Raghorns because they had served in the guest keep—served you and me, that is—and he was very persistent in some of his questions. He got rather too much out of them. Jack Raghorn said that the rumors had started because Rafe hadn’t bled enough,
and Susanna Raghorn repeated the gossip about you having killed him.”