To Shield the Queen (15 page)

I
n my room at Cumnor, or what had been my room, for I would not sleep there again, Fran Dale was folding clothes neatly into panniers, ready for the packhorse, while I went through drawers and cupboards to make sure that we had left nothing behind.

Amy was in her tomb, and the inquest on her death was all over. The jury had been sober and honest; made up of men who had Amy’s interests at heart. Two of her half-brothers were on it: one of them her mother’s son by a previous marriage; the other Arthur Robsart, dressed in black without ornament, his face serious as I had never seen it before; no sign now of either the fashionable gallant or the careless lover.

The inquest was a farce. Since only I (and possibly Mrs. Odingsell) knew that horsemen had come to Cumnor on the day of Amy’s death, and only I had heard Amy say she wished to be alone to give any intending murderers their chance; and since loyalty to the queen kept me (and probably Mrs. Odingsell too) from repeating what we knew, there was no trace of evidence that Amy had died through foul play.

Instead, they examined with great care the theory that Amy, grieving over her husband’s neglect and mortally ill, and in pain as well, had deliberately sent us all away so that she could commit suicide by throwing herself down two flights of stairs.

Mr. Hyde, Forster’s tiresome brother-in-law, stated in evidence that Lady Dudley was deeply unhappy, citing as proof the fact that he had often called and tried to cheer her, without success. Inquests are hardly entertainment, and I didn’t expect that anything in the course of this one would amuse me. However, when I heard that and recalled Mr. Hyde’s tasteless methods of cheering people up, I found it quite hard not to laugh, until it occurred to me to wonder if Forster had covertly encouraged Mr. Hyde’s damaging visits, knowing how they would upset Amy, because he was looking ahead to a possible inquest. A suspicion of suicide might suit him very well. I was angry then, but there was nothing I could do.

It was the only time I ever saw Bayly. He was one of those big, opinionated men with too many chins, and I didn’t take to him, but he did something to keep Amy from the horror of burial in unblessed earth. The jury’s final conclusion was that she had simply slipped, or felt dizzy, as sick people often did, and had fallen, and been unlucky (or lucky, some would say, since she had at least not had to die of her disease) in the outcome.

Perhaps that was the truth. I did not think so, but I had lain awake, turning everything over in my mind, for many a night now, and still the wary, glittering, powerful and yet curiously vulnerable figure of Elizabeth blocked the road to candour. England needed her, and her name must not be smirched.

Now the verdict was given I could set it all aside. Amy no longer concerned me. I had attended the huge and elaborate funeral in Oxford and I had wept genuine tears for her, but I was free of her now, and of Cumnor. Dudley, who had been exiled to his house at Kew and banned from the queen’s presence until the inquest was over, had come to Oxford for the funeral, solemn of face and dressed in mourning, head to foot. There he had given me my outstanding pay plus something extra and also given me a letter in which he formally made me a present of Bay Star “because,” said the letter, repeating what he had said verbally, “I hear from Bowes and Cousin Blount that you did all you could for my wife and performed your duties most admirably, and I would reward you for this.”

In Sussex, I might even hear news of Matthew, whose house was in that county. If I could learn where he lived, I might venture to send him a message, although I wasn’t sure about that. His total silence since he left Cumnor was not encouraging. He had thought it over, I said to myself dismally, and decided that after all I was too difficult a woman for him, or perhaps he had met someone else.

Well, I had sent him away myself and would do better not to brood. When I went back to court at the end of my leave of absence, I would if necessary approach Arundel and learn through him how matters stood. I might even find a message waiting for me!

For the moment, I had much to think about. I had missed John’s funeral, but on the way to Sussex, I would visit the grave in the little churchyard of St. Anne’s, near the Cockspur Inn. Dudley’s party had left for London direct from Oxford, but I had had to return to Cumnor to clear my room. I had arranged an escort for myself and Dale. Taking Dexter’s advice, I had asked Brockley to enter my service in place of John and he had agreed. He was not John, who was part of my lost past, and I knew, with some irritation, that he thought I needed watching over and guiding, but I also knew too that like John he was honest, and I was glad to have him.

There was a tap at my door, and Pinto came in. She too had been generously paid off by Dudley and she was going to Norfolk to rejoin Amy’s mother, who was taking her on as an extra lady’s maid and had even sent an escort for her.

“Goodbye,” said Dale stiffly. She had never forgiven Pinto for being so suspicious of me.

Pinto glanced at her doubtfully and then said to me, “I want to say again that I’m sorry I made a mistake about you, Mrs. Blanchard. I see now you meant no ill to my lady. Only I did love her so and she was so good to me and . . . ”

“If there’s one thing I can’t abide,” remarked Dale to the pannier she was filling, “it’s jealousy.”

“Stop it, Dale. It’s all right, Pinto. I’m glad you’re provided for and I hope you’ll be happy.”

“I hope you’ll be happy too, Mrs. Blanchard.” She did not include Dale in her wellwishing. She held out a folded sheet of paper to me. “One of the maids says she found this, lying under the hangings of the bed in the guest room Mr. Blount was using till he went to Oxford. I don’t know if it’s important. I can’t find Mr. Forster, so can I leave it with you? I have to go now.”

“Yes, of course.” I took it from her. “Well, good luck, Pinto, and a safe journey.”

Her suspicions had been hurtful and although I said the right things, I couldn’t quite manage to kiss her goodbye. Fortunately she didn’t seem to expect it. She took her leave, and Dale went downstairs after her, I rather think so that she could watch Pinto ride out of our lives.

Once alone, I stood for a moment, looking at the letter in my hand. Then I unfolded it.

I can’t say what I expected to find. I had no suspicions of Blount, and the letter had probably been written to him. I think I was clutching at the vague possibility that it might turn out to belong to Forster, who after all lived here and had often been in and out of the room even when Blount was occupying it.

Even so, I could hardly have supposed that Dudley would put down in black ink and his own handwriting detailed instructions for doing away with Amy or helping Verney to do so. However, if the letter did belong to Forster, there might be something, I thought: an oblique reference, perhaps, a cryptic phrase which would have meaning for a partly informed person such as myself; some revealing slip . . .

I read the letter through and then sat down on the bed, holding it in my hand, shattered. Some revealing slip. Oh yes, indeed, but what it had revealed was not at all what I expected. Quite the reverse.

The letter was most certainly the property of Thomas Blount. In fact, it was the missive containing the strict instructions which Blount had mentioned, to arrange an inquest and find out the truth.

It was most unpleasant reading. It made me hate Dudley more passionately than ever. All right, Amy had had her limitations. She had had some native shrewdness, but little education and her health was poor. However, she had been good, and she was beautiful when Dudley married her, and if he had let her, I think she would have loved him truly always. She deserved better of him than this. I looked at the first paragraph again.

“My wife.” Just “my wife.” Not
Amy
and certainly not
poor Amy
. No anxious hope that she might at least have died quickly and not lain helpless for a long time first. No hint of grief. I remembered how when he first asked me to come to Cumnor, he had spoken of Amy with underlying exasperation, and said that their marriage hadn’t prospered. Very well, they were estranged, but couldn’t he, I said to myself furiously, just have
pretended
that he felt sorry for her? Even if you had quarrelled with someone, or become bored by them, wouldn’t you still be distressed to learn that they had suffered a fatal accident when they were ill and alone? In all decency he should at least have put up a pretence!

Instead, his sole reference to “misfortune” read as though he considered the misfortune to be his, because he was afraid that people would say he had arranged it.
Considering what the malicious world will bruit . . . the malicious talk that I know the wicked world will use . . .

The letter breathed fear for his reputation, and behind and beyond that, I smelt fear for his career and even for his neck. These were the words of a man taken by surprise, and too horrified even to counterfeit suitable feelings about his own wife. I looked through the disagreeable missive again. Amy’s name wasn’t mentioned anywhere at all. In the second paragraph, there was an impersonal recommendation that “the body be viewed and searched.” “The body.” Just “the body.” Not Amy, not a woman he had been married to for ten years, not someone to whom he had once made love.

If he had arranged her death, the news of it would not have frightened him into near-incoherence, and one might reasonably suppose that a husband who has just done away with his wife and wishes to cover his traces would put down a few conventional phrases of regret for her passing.

However, he was too upset to think of anything beyond the harm that scandal could do. Harm to him, that was. Elizabeth’s reputation didn’t mean much more to him than Amy’s neck, judging from what I had just read.

Amy had died by accident or else flung herself downstairs, trusting that the fall would kill her, and it had obliged. I need never have written to Cecil in that panicky fashion, need never have sent John to London.

I folded Dudley’s letter again and went to give it to Forster, to send to Blount in London.

If I hadn’t written to Cecil, if I hadn’t sent John to London, he would still have been alive.

• • •

The funeral for Lady Dudley, held in the Church of Our Lady in Oxford on 22 September, was all pomp and ceremony, the church hung with black cloth, and a long, slow procession with a choir solemnly singing as they came, and the coffin itself borne by eight tall yeomen.

John had had no family at hand. His burial two days later beside the small grey church of St. Anne’s had been very quiet. There were yew trees along the fence at one side of the graveyard, but the path through the middle was bordered with cherry trees. John lay near to one, and I was glad to think of the blossom tossing above his resting place in springtime and blowing down to make a coverlet of petals when their hour was gone.

We had brought him flowers; sprays of late roses, for summer was dying. We tied the horses to a tree outside the churchyard and we all went in together, Dale, Brockley and myself, to put the offering on the newly heaped mound.

I was riding Bay Star, and had used some of Dudley’s gratuity to buy a packhorse and a cob, a sturdy fleabitten grey, for Brockley. For Dale, I had somewhat high-handedly borrowed the wretched white gelding. At least she wasn’t likely to fall off it.