To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (39 page)

When we finally set off for Thamesbank, Gladys came too. Gladys was determined to remain in my service somehow. When I tried to persuade her to go home, she pleaded, cried, said it was because she was ugly and was that her fault? and then took to sulking and scowling and threatening to put a curse on me. But her misery at the idea of going back to the hermitage was obvious, and besides, but for her we might well have lost Dale.

For these reasons, and not for fear of her curses, I finally did as she asked and sent word to her family in the Black Mountains to say that she was not returning. Since I was to become the mistress of Withysham, the problem of what I was to do with her was solved. I had already decided that when I went back to France, Brockley should stay at Withysham as my steward, with Dale to help him. Gladys could go there as well, to give general help in house and kitchen, as far as her age allowed. Brockley would look after her. That way she and the Brockleys could remain in my employ but need not come to France with me.

I would spend the summer at Withysham. Meg
could stay with me. My heart lifted, thinking of that. I would hire a tutor who would instruct us both, for here was my chance to begin the serious study of Latin and Greek. Whether or not I lived to be old was in God’s hands, not mine. But if I survived the business of producing a son for Matthew (I was afraid of childbirth now and ashamed of being afraid), I would build myself a life of the mind, so that in the years to come, I would not need to hide wrinkles and gray hairs; nor would I need to pretend to be a witch to gain some respect from my fellow creatures.

A little more learning might even be useful while I was still young. Lack of authority had often been a nuisance to me. Lady Thomasine’s remarks on that subject had hit home. But my looks had never helped me to the kind of authority I needed. I would see what using my brains could do.

Making these plans helped to keep me in good spirits as I contemplated the months ahead. I wrote affectionately to Matthew, and the act of writing to him seemed to bring him nearer.

At Thamesbank I found a message that I was to attend court as soon as possible. Arriving at Richmond, I learned that I had been summoned to be officially presented with Withysham. I was called to the queen’s private apartments and the presentation was made in one of the smaller rooms there, with Sir William Cecil and his wife, Lady Mildred, and a few other ladies as witnesses. When it was over, and I had curtsied my thanks, and the deeds of Withysham had been placed in my hands, Elizabeth took my arm and led me aside into a deep bay window. The others stood back, recognizing
that she wished for a few minutes of private conversation.

“So, Ursula, you are a woman of property now, and I hear that you will not be leaving England until the summer ends. I take it you intend to visit Withysham?”

“Yes, ma’am. Well, naturally.”

“Naturally,” Elizabeth echoed. “But it is only June. You will perhaps be in England until October. You have some months still to spend here. Will you spend them all in Sussex? Or could we interest you in visiting another part of England?”

“Another part of England?” Had she found me something further to investigate? I wouldn’t have been surprised at it. But she was smiling.

“We are going on Progress to Cambridge in August. It may be a more peaceful journey than if Mortimer had been allowed to intrude on it. We are grateful to you, Ursula. If you would like to join the Progress as one of our suite, you would be more than welcome.”

With Elizabeth, kindly invitations and royal orders were indistinguishable and I knew I must say yes. But the idea was attractive. I had no wish to object.

“I shall be happy to come to Cambridge, ma’am. And no one is more relieved than I am that Mortimer has been stopped.”

“Just in time,” Elizabeth said calmly. “We only wish we could stop the Lennox ambitions too. You have heard the rumor that Lady Lennox would like to marry her son to Mary of Scotland?”

“I had heard something about it, yes, ma’am.”

“A most objectionable idea,” said Elizabeth. “Darnley
and Mary would be a diabolical combination, with two links to our royal house. Well, Mortimer will not help her, not now. Perhaps he will help us instead. He has some curious skills which we may be able to use and he is hardly in a position to refuse us. However, I didn’t take you aside to discuss the Lennoxes or Mortimer or Mary Stuart’s marriage plans. I wanted to talk to you about your marriage.”

“My
marriage?”

“Yes. I have taken further advice. You were certainly married to Matthew de la Roche under duress. It should be possible, I think, to get the marriage set aside if you would agree. We would so much like to keep you in England.”

There was a dreadful moment when dishonorable and faithless words took shape in my head.
Stay in England, and be safe. Stay single and avoid death in childbed.

Stay in England and be free. Beneath my fear of childbirth was another fear—of the stifling formality of Blanchepierre and of Matthew’s loving protectiveness, which I ought to appreciate but couldn’t, because its roots lay in a belief that women were lovable things but in constant need of guidance because they were unable to think for themselves. Ever since Matthew’s letter came, telling me not to return to Blanchepierre yet, I had been expecting to suffer one of my sick headaches, out of disappointment, but I had not done so. Why? Because England meant freedom and safety?

There, at that moment, in Elizabeth’s presence, I felt my spirits unaccountably lift, and I was shocked at myself. Matthew loved me so, and I had missed his desirable body and kindly heart so much. Generous
Matthew, who did not mind that I should own Withysham, which had once been his.

No. I would not listen to the treacherous whispers in my mind. I was Matthew’s wife and I longed only for the autumn, and my return home.

“Ma’am, I would be so sorry to displease you. But …”

It was never easy, with Elizabeth, to talk about love between men and women. Her father had had her mother beheaded, and later, he had done the same thing to her young stepmother Katherine Howard. The first man to court her, Admiral Seymour, had died for his presumption. To Elizabeth, love and violent death were two faces of one coin.

This time, however, she spoke of it herself. “You would say you love him?” she asked. “And yet I hear that shortly before you came to England, you were quarreling with him.”

“Who … ?”

“Your servants are discreet but I have eyes and ears in many places. At Blanchepierre, the whole village knows that just before you left for England, you were throwing things at your husband.”

She was obviously amused. “We did have one dispute at table, ma’am,” I said stiffly. “I threw a candlestick at him, yes. I was … not myself at the time.”

“Did it hit him?” Elizabeth inquired with interest.

“No, ma’am. And, ma’am, it meant nothing, not … not fundamentally. Couples do—quarrel sometimes. It doesn’t mean … well, it doesn’t always mean …”

“I know,” said Elizabeth, taking pity on me. “It is like being two people in one body. One burning hot,
the other icy cold. Don’t think I don’t understand, because I do.”

She understood, I think, far more than either of us had put into words. Years later, she did find words for it.
“I am and am not, freeze and yet I burn; since from myself my other self I turn.”
When I heard that, I remembered that talk in the window bay at Richmond. I thought too of the strange relationship between her and Robin Dudley.

Time and again, she had refused him, and once, she had even offered his hand to Mary Stuart though no one ever believed she meant it and neither he nor Mary showed any enthusiasm for the notion. I have sometimes wondered why he didn’t pursue the chance of being king of Scotland. If he still had hopes of melting Elizabeth’s core of ice, I could have told him that he was wasting his time. And yet, for all that, I was certain that she loved him.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, was signaling that our little audience was over. “Let it be,” she said. “We will not pursue the matter, nor mention it again. Come to us if you change your mind. And come with us to Cambridge, if you will.”

“Certainly I will, ma’am,” I said.

I was dismissed. Carrying the precious scroll which contained the deeds of Withysham, I rejoined Dale and Brockley, who were waiting for me, and we set off upstream to Thamesbank in a hired ferry.

Now that I had the deeds in my hands, I could reveal my plans for the stewardship of Withysham, and as we sat in the ferry, I did so. Dale and Brockley were not sure how to respond.

“I’ve got to admit,” Dale said, “that I didn’t like France. But I can hardly abide the thought of not being with you all the time, ma’am.”

“I’ll be sorry too, Dale, but I think attending on me has worn you out. You’ll be happier, staying in England.”

“It’s a grand opportunity and we have to thank you, madam,” Brockley said. “Though I hope you’ll get along all right, without me to look after you.”

“My husband will look after me,” I told him. The ferry splashed on, carried on the last of the Thames tide before its influence faded away inland. “Brockley,” I said, “I don’t think I ever congratulated you on that wonderful lament you played on the lute at Vetch Castle—that third melody, I mean. I meant to, but what with all the drama over Lady Thomasine, and Dale being so ill, somehow I never have. I’m sorry. Let me do so now. You probably don’t realize it, but it was that lament that broke Lady Thomasine and got her to confess. Where did you learn it? You played it beautifully. It wasn’t familiar to me but it sounded like a very ancient tune.”

Brockley regarded me with surprise. “What is it?” I asked.

“Madam, I played only two melodies, and neither was a lament. I played Rafe’s song, which was a straightforward tune that I could pick out quite easily—I did a little quiet practice beforehand in our quarters—and then I played an old folk song I learned as a boy. I was somewhat fumble-fingered with both, but perhaps not too badly. After that, I stopped. It would have been unsafe to go on. People were coming out into the courtyard with lanterns, playing hunt the minstrel.”

“But, Brockley, I heard you. We all did! You played a third tune, a very sad and plaintive one, and as I said, that was what finally broke Lady Thomasine.”

“No, madam,” Brockley said in definite tones. “I finished the folk song and then I slipped away before the lanterns came any nearer, for fear I should be caught. I kept in the shadows and got back to the porch of the Aragon Wing. I meant to wait there but when I realized how thoroughly the courtyard was being searched, I didn’t feel too safe even inside the porch, so I took the liberty of coming right into Aragon.”

“But we heard it! We all heard it!” I was bewildered. “After you had finished playing the first two tunes, there was a pause and then you began again and played that lament! It was such a very sad, yearning air. Lady Thomasine …”

“No, madam,” said Brockley, very firmly.

It is usually cold on the river, even in summer. I had a cloak to keep off the breeze. But the cold which fingered my bones then came from another source.

Dale felt it too. Her face had whitened. “It’s all right, Dale,” I said quickly. “We’re here on the Thames. Vetch Castle is miles away and so are any ghosts that happen to be haunting it.”

“I did see footprints in Isabel’s Tower, ma’am,” Dale said in a low voice. “They were faint but they were there; footprints in the dust. You said I was imagining them, but I wasn’t, truly. Some bigger than others; like a man’s and a woman’s. I saw them.”

“I heard no other lute, after I stopped playing mine,” Brockley said. He put a hand over Dale’s.
“Perhaps we would do well not to talk about this any more. It’s all over now. Madam, can you tell us whether … ?”

He asked a question about Withysham. I let him change the subject. So did Dale.

Do I really believe in ghosts, or not? I am not sure. I found that I didn’t want to think about it. What I wanted then was normality, an ordinary life, a life of reason. I wanted to get my hands on a Latin grammar. Latin is such a clear-cut, logical language. And I wanted to take Meg home to Blanchepierre, and to be with Matthew.