To Shield the Queen (20 page)

We emerged from the woods at a point where paths crossed. One led on to the gatehouse; others ran left and right to the fields which quilted the valley’s sides. The corn had been cut and the cattle had been turned in to the stubble. I saw village women gleaning, baskets on their arms, moving here and there and stooping to collect the leftover grain.

“This is your family home, madam?” Brockley asked respectfully.

“Yes. It’s supposed to have been given to one of my ancestors by King Harold, before the time of William the Conqueror,” I said. “In fact, before Harold himself became king, if the legends are true. I shan’t be particularly welcome here, though, I fear.”

At the gatehouse, Harry Fenn the porter, white haired ever since I could remember, square, muscular and completely unsmiling, stepped out of his doorway and into our path. Harry Fenn never had been one of my favourite people, nor I his. He was a devoted servant of the house but his devotion had been to my grandparents when they were alive, and was now given to Uncle Herbert and Aunt Tabitha. He regarded me, as they did, as a stain on their pure escutcheon.

“Ah. Mistress Ursula. Well, this is a surprise.”

“Is it?” I said. I had no doubt at all that he knew that Meg was here, in which case my arrival couldn’t be as surprising as all that.

“No, thank you. We’ll ride straight up.”

“I’ve had my orders, Mistress Ursula.”

I was right. He knew all about Meg. I glanced at Brockley.

“You heard my mistress,” said Brockley, and raised his riding whip. Harry, scowling, snatched his hand off the rein.

“I prefer to make this a surprise attack,” I said, and spurred on.

There had been changes since I was last there. Someone had introduced topiary into the formal garden, shaping the yew bushes there into cockerels and horses’ heads. The ivy which had once covered the walls of the house, climbing almost to the top of the crenellated towers which stood at each end of the frontage, and tapping against the mullioned windows, had been stripped away. The house would be lighter inside, I thought, but outside, the grey stone walls, bare of creeper, seemed harsh.

On impulse, I led us round to the back, where there was a stableyard and courtyard combined, lying between the two side wings of the house, with the stables forming the fourth side. Doors into the yard were often left open. On the way, I had worked out how I might compel my aunt and uncle to hand Meg back to me, but it would save much unpleasant argument if I could simply dismount, run into the house, find her and whisk her away.

The entrance was an archway through the stable block. We clattered under it, to find the yard busy. Horses were outside, being rubbed down in the open air where the men could see what they were doing, and one horse was having a front fetlock carefully bathed in cold water.

In the last few days, I had once or twice thought that if I had committed a murder, I would prefer not to make my escape on a horse as conspicuous as the piebald apparently was. But of course, William Johnson and his friends had no idea that they were being chased, and if the famous piebald looked like this—and could there be two of them?—then no wonder its owner wanted to keep it.

“Piebald” is an irritating word. It makes one think of foodstuffs—a parti-coloured egg, perhaps, or a pie with a very smooth crust. Nothing in that word came anywhere near describing the sheer beauty of this animal. Its coat was glossy raven black splashed dramatically with snow; the fine head, held so proudly, and the long sloping shoulders spoke of desert blood and effortless speed. It was a gelding, but had been gelded late, judging from the crest on its strong neck, and its jaunty tail was a waterfall of mingled black and white like foam glimpsed in shadow. It was quite superb.

I stared and stared and I heard Brockley gasp. The grooms had all paused and looked round at us. With no attempt at finesse, I pointed to the piebald and demanded, “Who owns that?”

I didn’t know its groom and he didn’t know me but I spoke so peremptorily that he was startled into answering. “It belongs to a Master Johnson, from Withysham.”

“Withysham?” I was nonplussed and then remembered that Withysham had been taken over as a country house. Alice Juniper had told me, of course, when I stayed with her before I went to court. “Oh, yes. It’s occupied now. By a . . . a Master Johnson?”

“Ursula!” said Aunt Tabitha’s voice behind me. “To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”

She had appeared suddenly, from a back door. I swung Bay Star round to face her. I was dazed. The pursuit of John’s assailants and the desire for reunion with my daughter had till a few moments ago been two different things. Now they had collided, and I was seeing stars, as though I had dashed my head against a stone wall.

However, at the sight of Aunt Tabitha, I found myself concentrating once again on Meg. I had lost the advantage of surprise. I had no hope now of snatching my child away before I was caught. I opted instead for a direct challenge. “Good day, Aunt Tabitha. I have come to fetch my daughter. Will you bring her to me, please?”

• • •

It was a brave attempt and of course it failed. Aunt Tabitha wasn’t to be impressed by any high-handed tactics on my part. She was, as ever, thin and active, with a fastidiously disapproving twist to her mouth as though she had just eaten a particularly sour crab-apple. Except when in a temper, she believed in the proprieties.

“Harry Fenn had no choice, Aunt Tabitha. I was prepared to ride him down. I repeat: I have come for my daughter. How did you find out where she was?”

“I saw her with you once, if you remember, when you came to see Anna’s grave, though you did not care to call on the people who supported both you and your mother, only to be rewarded with base ingratitude, and who offered to take you back when your husband died, in spite of everything.”

To answer that would have taken a long time and done nothing to improve family relations. It was better ignored. Slowly, I dismounted and signalled Dale to get down as well. We handed our horses to Brockley. He was emanating unspoken outrage in Aunt Tabitha’s direction in a way which I found comforting, but my aunt, of course, was unaware of it.

“Are you telling me,” I asked her, “that you chanced to go to Westwater, and saw Meg and recognised her from that one brief glimpse?”

“No. You wrote to that stupid woman you left her with, and she went to the vicar in Westwater to get help with reading the letter. Some weeks later, he was dining with dear Dr. Bryant, who is still our vicar here at Faldene, and mentioned the matter. Dr. Bryant realised at once that it concerned you and your child. There was some further delay because Dr. Bryant considered for a while before he came to us, and we in turn considered before making up our minds. We called at the cottage to see it for ourselves, and we were shocked to see the child in such a place. I can tell you, Ursula, that we did wonder if we should simply leave her there. After all, you have disowned us; why should we not disown you and yours?”

“No reason at all,” I said candidly.

I didn’t thank her. I stood there choking at her effrontery, and silently, unjustly, cursing Bridget for being unlettered and too simple and honest to understand things like family feuds and clerical grapevines. The Junipers had been right. Vicars did all know each other.

I cursed myself for leaving Meg in Westwater, so near Faldene. Stricken by Gerald’s death, I had rushed to a familiar place, even though it was infested by Faldenes. I had been a fool, and now Meg was paying for it.

“I repeat,” said my aunt, “we cannot hold a discussion of this kind out here. Come inside.”

I beckoned to Dale and we followed my aunt into the great hall, which was still the centre of Faldene life, just as the hall always was in medieval days. It was a big room, decorated in somewhat boastful fashion with the swords and pikes of forebears who had fought at Crécy and Agincourt. My mother had once told me that when she was sent home from court in disgrace, carrying me, her parents marched her into the hall and pointed at these relics, and told her that she had betrayed all those noble names.

The hall was handsome, though, and well lit, with big windows looking out to the front and a row of narrower ones to the yard at the rear. A maidservant—a stranger, new since my day—came at once with cups of wine on a tray. I sat down and nodded to Dale to take a seat and a cup of wine as well. She did so warily. She had heard enough about Aunt Tabitha to be nervous of her and was now eyeing her as though she were a keg of gunpowder in dangerous proximity to a bonfire.

I sipped my wine grimly and repeated that I wished to see my daughter. “Where is she, Aunt Tabitha?”

“At her needlework. She is sharing your youngest cousin’s governess, who just now is teaching them embroidery. She is perfectly well and far better off here than in that cottage, grubbing in the ground and feeding hens like a peasant’s child. How could you leave her with that idle, dirty creature Bridget?”

“Bridget is not idle, Aunt Tabitha.”

I could hardly deny the charge of dirtiness. Aunt Tabitha noticed the omission and her blue eyes flashed triumphantly.

I gulped at my wine. I had spent the most of the first two decades of my life under my aunt’s control. I had come here borne up by fury and fear for Meg and by the new independence I had learned with Gerald and at court. Now, old habits of mind were closing me in again like tight stays. I had to force myself to speak firmly.

“You need not be so abrupt. Naturally, you can see her. But,” said Aunt Tabitha, her eyes snapping anew, “make no mistake. You are not taking her away with you. She isn’t going back to that cottage. You were always wilful, Ursula, and not prepared to accept the place to which God was pleased to call you, or to accept the teaching of the true Church. Well, you may destroy your own soul if you choose, but we shall save Meg’s. You were the fruit of sin but she at least is not, and she is after all our great-niece. We brought her here so that she might be reared in clean conditions and properly educated, and taught the true faith instead of being condemned to eternal damnation as a heretic. We shall not let her go.”

I opened my mouth to say, “No, you hypocrite, you brought her here to hurt me. You want to humiliate her and turn her into the unpaid servant that I refused to be. Give her back at once, or I’ll report you for having had mass said in this house.” That was the ploy I had thought of on the way to Faldene from the cottage and I believed it would work. The Masons were getting away with it, but if the authorities received a formal complaint, they were duty bound to act.

She looked at me with those chilly, righteous eyes, and my body cringed, remembering other passages of arms with Aunt Tabitha, and how they had so often ended. I wasn’t even sure I was physically safe from her even now. I was in her house, and Brockley was out of hearing. If she called a couple of strong servants and made them hold me while she “brought me to my senses” with a birch as she had so often done when I was a girl, I couldn’t prevent her.