To Shield the Queen (24 page)
Read To Shield the Queen Online
Authors: Fiona Buckley
Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective
“Good,” said Matthew. “Tell me, Ursula, what do you propose to say to Brockley?”
Presently, when Brockley had been summoned, I cleared my throat and declared to him that for the last few days, I had been under a dreadful misapprehension. “I’m thankful to say that it has been proved to my satisfaction that my old servant John Wilton was not murdered, and I can only conclude that he was set upon by footpads as we at first supposed.”
“I’m glad to hear it, madam.” Brockley was searching my face and I saw him also glance aside at Dale. Dale looked down at the floor. “I’ve been asking to see you, madam,” Brockley said. “I was told you were unwell.”
“Were you? It was nothing—just a passing indisposition.” I smiled to reassure him. “I have news of much greater importance. Here with me you see Master Matthew de la Roche, with whom I was acquainted at the court, and who visited me at Cumnor Place.” I held out my hand to Matthew and he took it. “He is my uncle’s neighbour, from Withysham, only a few miles away. He called today and we met again. My quest, mistaken though it was, has brought us together. We are to be married.”
“The day after tomorrow,” confirmed Matthew. “At Withysham. We leave for Withysham in the morning.”
This came as a shock to me. So soon! I ploughed determinedly on, speaking now to both Dale and Brockley, saying that I hoped they would both go on serving me as always and would be as loyal to Matthew as they had always been to me.
Dale murmured, “Of course, ma’am, of course,” but addressing Brockley was like talking to a stone. I never saw disbelief so clearly displayed on a human countenance as it was on Brockley’s just then. However,
he commanded himself, offered his congratulations and promised fidelity to us both in time to come.
“Then,” I said, “as Master de la Roche has said, we set out for Withysham in the morning.”
“Directly after breakfast,” said Matthew.
• • •
However, we didn’t set out for Withysham in the morning directly after breakfast, or even after dinner. During the night, within the bedcurtains, I told Dale what I intended, and listened to her staggered exclamations. “Oh, ma’am! Oh, dear. Yes, of course it’s what you must do but oh, dear, how will you ever manage it? I can see how it is between you and Master de la Roche. Oh. ma’am!”
She was a conventional soul, was Dale, but so was I, at heart. Her reactions mirrored my own. Not only could I not see how to manage it; I was afraid I couldn’t bring myself to try.
By dawn, the malady of the sick headache which had vanished during my marriage to Gerald, but shown signs of reappearing at Cumnor, had pounced. I woke in agony, with the worst headache I had ever had in my life.
• • •
It was as though my brows had been bound in iron and someone was hitting me rhythmically over the left eye with a very large hammer. Aunt Tabitha, marching into the room to fetch me down to breakfast, found me still lying in bed. Being Aunt Tabitha, she wouldn’t believe I was ill, and tried to pull me out of bed, whereupon I was violently sick at her feet, and partly on them, which gave me a certain amount of savage satisfaction.
She went away in stockinged feet, leaving her contaminated shoes behind, and uttering exclamations of disgust, and called Matthew. He had stayed overnight,
intending to escort me to Withysham himself. He came to my bedside and looked at my furrowed brow and green-tinged face with consternation.
“Ursula! What is it, what’s the matter?”
“It’s a sick headache,” I said. My eyes were half closed because the light hurt them. “It’ll pass. I have them, sometimes.”
“What helps it? There must be something!” He rounded on Aunt Tabitha. “Did she have these turns when she lived here? What did you do for them?”
Aunt Tabitha had never done very much for them, but at Cumnor, Dale had tried with some success a remedy which she had learned with a previous employer who had a similar affliction. “An infusion of camomile might help,” she said.
“Do you have camomile?” Matthew demanded of my aunt.
“Yes, we grow it,” Aunt Tabitha said.
“Then go to the kitchen and get a draught made up!” Matthew snapped to Dale.
As Dale went out, I said weakly to Matthew, “Has Bridget been sent for?”
“Yes, she has.” It was Aunt Tabitha who answered, in a very angry voice. “It seems that we must let your child go back to that hovel and that woman. Your uncle insists.”
She meant that Matthew had insisted and that Uncle Herbert was doing what he was told. I found some pleasure in that.
“When Bridget comes,” I said weakly, “I must see her. I wish to tell her about us and give her instructions for looking after Meg. There are clothes to be made up for Meg before she comes to Withysham, and a lot of other things I want to point out, too.” I didn’t want to sit up, because the slightest movement, even the effort of raising my voice, set the hammers pounding at my skull, but I put out a hand and
clutched Matthew’s doublet sleeve. “However ill I am, I must see Bridget.”
“I can tell her to wash, if that’s what you’re worrying about,” said Aunt Tabitha with a sniff.
“Other things. A lot of things. I’m Meg’s mother,” I said, persisting as best I could through pain and fragility.
“Surely we could ride to Westwater later, after the wedding, and you can tell her then,” Matthew said. “I assure you that she will take Meg back there today, as you asked.”
“I must see Bridget!” I whispered frantically.
“Hush, hush!” Matthew turned once more to Aunt Tabitha. “We must humour the invalid,” he said. “If she wants to see the nursemaid, she shall.”
Dale was back before long, with a steaming goblet. She also brought a basin, which was just as well, for as soon as I had swallowed the draught, I brought it up again.
It went on, hour after hour of pain and retching. Bridget arrived and was brought to me, and I explained matters to her and gave her her instructions, and now, looking back, I wonder how I did it, through those waves of pain.
Meg was brought in to say goodbye, and I kissed her and told her that although I wasn’t well, I would soon be better and that meanwhile, she was going back to the cottage with Bridget and must be a good girl, and I would soon send for her. Then Bridget took her away, and I lay back and suffered.
Aunt Tabitha and Dale stayed with me. My uncle never put in an appearance, and Matthew left the room, saying that I needed to be quiet, but looked in now and then, obviously worrying about me. I was beginning to be worried about myself. By afternoon I had nothing left in my stomach and was bringing up only a thin, watery stuff, and my stomach muscles
were aching as though I had been repeatedly punched in the midriff.
Finally, Aunt Tabitha went away too. She had stayed, it soon became clear, because she kept on hoping that I would recover, get up and leave the house. She had made a few acid remarks about undutiful nieces who didn’t want their guardians at their wedding, but I don’t think she really cared. She wanted to be rid of me. I would have been equally thankful to be rid of her but it was well after noon before she finally left me and Dale alone.
Then Dale, sitting on the edge of the bed and holding the basin for me through yet another spasm of retching, sighed with relief and said, “Now I can talk to you freely. Mistress Blanchard, when I went down to get that draught for you, I saw Brockley. I talked to him.”
“What did you say? I want him to know everything and as soon as possible.”
“Well, ma’am,” said Dale doubtfully, “I’ve told him all I can. You said last night, after we were left alone, that he’d got to know, whatever you’d pretended to him when Master de la Roche was here, but all the same, I hope I did the right thing, just telling him myself instead of leaving it to you. Only, the chance was there and . . . ”
“Of course you did the right thing! Oh, bless you, Dale. How did you manage it?”
“Why, I saw him out in the yard and just stepped out to speak to him. No one stopped me. Master de la Roche was in too much of a fuss over you to think of keeping an eye on me! Brockley was grooming Bay Star and he came straight over to me to ask how you were. He’s very kind. I like Mr. Brockley, ma’am . . . ”
“Never mind that! What did you say to him?”
“Why, ma’am, I told him, as quick as I could, everything I could remember of what you’ve told me,
about what these men we’ve been following are really about and how your uncle’s mixed up in it, and Master de la Roche too. Ma’am, Brockley says it’s a terrible thing you’ve set yourself to do, but likely you’re doing right and he’ll help if he can. We agreed we’d both help, not just because you pay us, but because we think it’s right.”
“Thank you, Dale,” I said.
It was Dale, I think, who cured me, although with words rather than camomile. Presently, the headache and the nausea eased and I found that I could sleep. In the morning, I was well.
An Eye for Country
“Y
es,” I said to Dale when we woke. “I can get up.” The headache had disappeared completely and I was slightly hungry. I felt a little weak, but I knew from experience that it would pass. My mind now was calm. I remembered Gerald telling me how he had chosen loyalty to Gresham and the queen and to his family, above the interests of those he conscripted into helping him. He had had to choose his loyalties and hold by them. So must I.
When Aunt Tabitha came with a dish of bread rolls and a bowl of thin meat broth, and enquired sarcastically if I felt equal now to taking some breakfast and setting out for Withysham, I said yes. In due course I came downstairs to find Matthew waiting for me in the hall. The gladness in his eyes when he saw me on my feet was very touching.
“Meg is safe at Westwater and the three of whom we spoke the other day have left on their errand to the midlands,” said Matthew quietly. “You need not fear an encounter. Are you all right? You’re very pale.”
“It’s the aftermath of yesterday,” I said. “I shall soon be myself again.”
Normally, this would have been true, but I knew that my wan looks today were partly fear. The risk I faced was a risk not only to me but to Dale and Brockley as well. The responsibility was heavy.
Poor Matthew. If I did bring it off, it would be because I had taken advantage of him. Although he seemed so sophisticated, such a man of the world, he nevertheless had in him that curious simplicity, that childlike streak. I saw myself as he would see me, cold and unwomanly. The image was not pretty.
However, there was no turning back. Our horses were ready, Bay Star, White Snail and Brockley’s fleabitten cob, Speckle. Matthew, concerned for me, made us ride slowly. Just once, Brockley managed a few words with me, unheard by anyone else.
“You truly mean to go through with this, ma’am?”
“Yes, Brockley.”
“God guide you,” he said sincerely. And then, in a practical tone, he said, “When we’re at this place Withysham, we’ll have to survey the country. We must use what we find.”
“Thank you, Brockley,” I said.
• • •
The place which had once been Withysham Abbey was encircled by a ditch, with a ten-foot stone wall on the inner rim, and the entrance was through an elaborate gatehouse, with a short tunnel under the porter’s living quarters and an office to one side, where he sat when he was on duty. The gate was open because carts were going in and out and we rode through behind a load of wine barrels. I looked keenly about me. The place had stood empty when I was a girl and I had been inside the walls before, as a trespasser, climbing over a fallen stretch of wall, but I
could remember no details and now I needed to take in as much as I could.
Inside, the space was quite large. To either side of the gatehouse was a paddock, one harbouring a dozen placidly grazing cows. The path led between these and on across a stretch of grass to what had been the old abbey buildings, now altered to make a house. There was an archway leading presumably to a main courtyard, but a second path branched off to the right and apparently went round to the back, probably to a stableyard. Beside the house, a garden was being laid out, with men digging over beds and putting up trellises, and beyond that were a few ruinous arches and the bases of stone pillars which marked the site of what had been the abbey church.
“The stone was taken to build the village church, over there,” said Matthew, riding beside me. He pointed to a tower visible beyond the outer wall. “In the old days, the villagers shared the abbey church and had their own entrance. Now they have St. Thomas’s in Withysham village. I keep the law on church attendance and go to the services regularly, but I’ve had a small chapel made inside the house—it’s in what used to be the guest parlour, in the oldest part of the building—and that’s where we shall take our vows later. I arranged the ceremony for today, as I said I would, hoping and praying that you would be well enough in time. Oh, Ursula, I am so thankful that you are better. I prayed for you again and again yesterday. Everything is ready for us. As far as the vicar of St. Thomas’s is concerned, by the way, we were married quietly at Faldene.”
“I take it that you hear mass in your chapel?” I said.
“I do indeed. I have a resident priest in the house, an elderly man, who is also an uncle of mine: Armand de la Roche. He celebrates mass for me. Ursula, believe me, before long you will love it as I do.”
Brockley led the horses away, while Dale and I were taken indoors. I was introduced to Uncle Armand, who was an aged Frenchman in a black cassock; to a tall, quiet Englishman with stooped shoulders, who was the steward, Mr. Malton; and to the housekeeper, French like Uncle Armand, and known as Madame Montaigle. She was hard of feature, with greying hair and a brisk, businesslike manner, except when she looked at Matthew. Then, the hard lines of her face softened and her pale eyes became sentimental. She clearly adored him.
I was going to hurt these people, dreadfully.
• • •
There certainly had been some comings and goings. The wine barrels I had seen being delivered were for the wedding feast, and a room had been set aside for me in which I could be dressed. Madame Montaigle had found, sponged and pressed a very beautiful gown, which she said had belonged to Matthew’s mother. It was pale blue satin, embroidered with little golden flowers, opening over an underskirt of cream with more embroidered gold flowers. I would be appropriately fine for the occasion.
Madame’s attitude towards me was a mixture of the doubtful (will this girl make my wonderful Matthew happy?) and the anxious to please (you are Matthew’s bride and I welcome you for his sake). I wondered how he had explained his hurried nuptials to her but
suspected he had simply given orders without explanations. Dale regarded Madame with suspicion at first, but Madame just gave my waiting-woman a little push and said, “Silly one—” she pronounced it
seely oo-unn
—“I am not going to steal your place! But a bride should have more than just one woman to prepare her!”
Dale thawed after that, and between them they gave me a bath, dried me and dabbed me with rosewater, and then I was carefully pinned into the dress and some essential stitching was done. Matthew’s mother had been bigger than I was. We were short of time and some of the pins had to stay.
Since I was a widow, it wasn’t correct for me to wear my hair loose, but while I was in the bath, Matthew sent a maidservant to the door with a jewelled net for me to wear. “He says to tell you, ma’am,” said the maidservant, peeping round the screen and dropping a curtsy, “that this sort of headdress suits you and he’d like you to have this for the ceremony.” It was a gold silk net very like the one I had worn at Cumnor, but the net was much thicker, and it was studded not only with pearls but with red rubies and green peridots. I looked at the glittering thing, thinking that it was like a symbol of my marriage: jewelled and beautiful, but a net all the same, like a spider’s web, in which, unless I were very careful, I would be caught.
Part of me wanted to be caught, but then I thought of the three men who had killed John, moving along the roads of England, suborning people like the Westleys and the Masons into treason, spreading a web of their own across England. The gems in that web were false, the glitter a meretricious bait. Matthew did not think so, but Matthew was wrong. I must not turn back.
I wonder how many brides, as they don their
wedding gowns, constantly let their gaze stray to the window and scan the view, taking in the detail of what lies outside with the eye of a general planning a campaign, and looking for features of strategic advantage?
Dale, folding my hair into the shining mesh, said how pretty it looked, better than loose hair by far. I agreed with her and noted secretly and with regret that the outer wall had, as far as I could see, been completely repaired. Trespassers would find it hard to climb in now; and getting out would be just as difficult. I couldn’t even see any convenient trees.
Madame Montaigle fastened a small linen ruff round my throat and admired the embroidery on my sleeves, and I agreed with her too, while wondering whether I could create a diversion by starting a fire.
My eyes returned most often to the paddocks. Their gates, both of them, opened on to the path from the gatehouse, and the gatehouse was probably not shut at all during the day. Matthew was not only having a garden made; he was having new outhouses built, and cartloads of this and that, plants, stones, timbers, were constantly coming in.
There were possibilities there, I thought. I found an excuse to ask Madame if she had any hartshorn, since I had been unwell the previous day and did not want to feel faint during the ceremony or the feast, and when she went to look for it, I took the opportunity to mutter a few instructions to Dale.
“Oh, ma’am!” said Dale.
“It’s important!” I said tersely.
• • •
I was married. In the tiny chapel of Withysham House, a low, dark room with a floor sunk several steps below the level of the ground outside, I stood beside Matthew and declared before Uncle Armand and the assembled household that I took Matthew de
la Roche to be my lawful wedded husband. “I never did give you a betrothal ring, but let this make up for it. It belonged to my mother, just as your dress did,” Matthew whispered as he slid a thick gold wedding ring on to my hand. “This has the right kind of history,” he said.
Then I took part, for the second time in only a few days, in an entirely unlawful mass. Dale and Brockley were present as well, although they did not take the sacrament and I could see the words “I can’t abide this” written in Dale’s indignant eyes.
I sat beside Matthew through the ensuing feast, held in what had once been the abbey’s refectory and was now the household dining hall, a long, light first-floor room with windows on both sides, opening out from the top of a flight of wide, shallow stone steps. I smiled, laughed, ate, drank. I dined in privileged fashion, from a silver dish, and salted my food with a silver spoon. I remember that one of the pins which was holding my gown in place suddenly ran into me, causing me to let out a yelp, and how I then amused the company with a description of how we had struggled to make the gown fit.
Matthew’s was a musical household. Mr. Malton—he preferred to be addressed as Mr. rather than Master, he told me—played the harpsichord expertly. Uncle Armand could perform on pipe and tabor both at once, and a lanky young man who was introduced to me as a fulltime music instructor, played a spinet. They all played dance music together, and I led the dance with my bridegroom. I felt as though I were splitting into two, for part of me really had the emotions of a bride.
And now, here I was in Matthew’s bedchamber, which had been strewn with sweet herbs, and Dale and Madame Montaigle were preparing me for my nuptial night.
It was very different from my first marriage. The friends who had sheltered Gerald and myself had given us a wedding feast, with quite a gathering of their own friends as guests. I had thrown my garter to the guests, and Gerald and I had been escorted to bed amid a hilarious chorus of advice and encouragement, until Gerald pretended to be angry and threw his shoes at them to chase them out of the room.
This time there were no guests apart from Matthew’s own household, and even the dancing had been decorous. Madame Montaigle and Dale drew back the bedcovers for me and I slipped in, and then they left me. Presently, Matthew entered, alone, candle in hand. He put the candle down on a chest and said, “Well, here I am.”
“And here
I
am,” I said, shakily. I had known this moment would be shattering but I hadn’t quite bargained, even so, for the sheer reality of him. This was my husband. This was our wedding night. And I wanted him; oh God, how I wanted him. The sensation that I was splitting in two was growing worse; my mind was being riven from top to bottom like a tree struck by lightning. A faint hammer blow of pain over my left eye warned me that I was in danger of another sick headache. I thrust it away by a fierce act of will. No. I would have this.
I would have this
.
He slipped under the sheets with me and we came together at once, easily and naturally, arms and legs entwining, body enfolding body and mouth joined to mouth. For one brief moment I remembered Gerald and then he was gone. There was only Matthew. I had been hungry so long and he was, as he had promised to be, a banquet. He smelled sharp and spicy both at once, like a mixture of sweat and leather and cinnamon; beneath my hands his body was both hard and pliable, his strength reassuring.
We longed for union too much to delay it at first; it took only a little while to have me groaning with desire and Matthew too hard and eager to hold back. He slid into me, and we grappled fiercely, urging each other on: go deeper, climb higher, go faster, grip harder, go
on,
until we exploded together and fell apart, breathless and exalted.
To rest, and caress, and drowse, and rebuild our longing, and at length to come together again, this time slowly and delicately; satisfying ourselves even more intensely and falling, afterwards, into sleep as deep as an ocean.
I woke at dawn and slipped out of the bed. Beyond its curtains, out of sight, I stealthily renewed the sponge and vinegar. Then I crept back to Matthew and he stirred as I put my arms round him. He woke and we were together again.
I was being drawn away from my intent as though in the powerful undertow of a breaking wave. I can’t do this, I said to myself, I can’t go through with it.