To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (16 page)

I raised my lantern and played the light over the room. A partly used candle stood in the candlestick on the desk, and around the wick, the wax was still liquid. I moved the light again. There was no fire in the hearth this time, no pile of cushions. But on the floor, halfway across the room, I caught the gleam of gold. I lowered the lantern to look.

Once more, the study was occupied, but not, this time, by a pair of lovers. Only one person lay there on the floor, a rug pushed awry under his twisted body. He was half on his side, and half on his stomach. His head was turned sideways and I could see his face. And the glaze in his blank and open eyes.

I knelt down beside him and felt for the pulse in his wrist but although he was still warm, there was no throb there and I was not surprised. I knew already that he was dead.

It was also clear how he had died. The gleam of gold was the golden hilt of the dagger from the desk, the slim-bladed gadget for opening sealed letters. It was sticking out of his back. He wore no doublet, only shirt
and hose, and there was a scarlet patch on the shirt, from which a red rivulet had run down to make a small stain on the floor. There wasn’t much blood, though. He must have died quickly. The point of the dagger must have gone straight into Rafe Northcote’s heart.

I said: “Brockley,” in what I thought was a low, calm voice but he came into the study so quickly that something in my tone must have warned him. He looked down at Rafe. Brockley never swore except under desperate circumstances but these undoubtedly qualified. In a heartfelt whisper, he said: “Ch … rrr … ist.”

“What do we do?” I said.

“Call for help, madam. We can say we saw a light down here.”

“But who … why?”

“Never mind that now, madam. The first thing is …”

“What’s happening here? My God, it’s true! Someone
is
creeping about in my study in the middle of the night. Mistress Blanchard? Brockley?”

Light flooded across the room as Mortimer, on silent, slippered feet, stepped into the study with a branched candlestick in his hand. He saw Rafe and froze.

I realized then that he was not alone. Lady Thomasine was just behind him. She came into the study on his heels, her oyster pink wrapper huddled around her, her eyes enormous in the candlelight. She too caught sight of Rafe and her mouth opened. She clapped a palm across it as if to hold back a scream. Then she pushed Sir Philip aside and ran forward. At the sight of the blood, she halted for an instant and gasped with revulsion, but with
a movement both fastidious and swift, she avoided it, threw herself on her knees beside Rafe, and shook him as though he were asleep. Her son pulled her back.

“Don’t, Mother! He’s dead. Look at his eyes … no, perhaps you’d better not. Sit down on the settle.”

“Rafe, oh, Rafe!” Lady Thomasine let Mortimer guide her to the settle. She huddled there, her knuckles at her mouth. She stared at us and her eyes narrowed. “Did you do this? You must have done! You wicked creatures! Why? Why?”

“Us?” I was bewildered. “We found him, that’s all. I saw a light and we …”

“You were found beside him. What happened?” She stared at me fixedly in the candlelight. “Was it you, mistress? Did you lead him on and then say no, and make him angry so that he frightened you and you killed him out of fear? I suppose you’ll pretend you were defending yourself. But my son,” said Lady Thomasine unbelievably, “has told me how you led him on when you asked him to supper. I know all about it.”

I gaped at her, unable to credit my own ears. Brockley said coolly: “I think, Lady Thomasine, that you must know better than that.”

“Do I? I suppose she fetched you when she saw what she had done. You were going to help her throw him into the moat or some such thing, I imagine.”

My head was whirling as though I had drunk a gallon of canary. “Lady Thomasine, you can’t believe that I stabbed Rafe … you can’t … !” Clutching at my sanity, I reminded myself that Lady Thomasine had sent me to search the study but that Mortimer mustn’t know it. This performance was probably for his benefit.
“We saw a light down here in the study,” I repeated, “and we came to find out what it was, that’s all. We …”

“Oh, did you indeed?” There was no sign that Lady Thomasine was acting, not so much as a conspiratorial glance at me, or a flicker of an eyelid. “Do guests commonly take so much upon themselves? Does my son not have the right to work at his desk at any hour, day or night? You killed Rafe; I know you did. Philip, what are we to do with them?”

“For the time being,” said Mortimer, “lock them in here and fetch Evans and Pugh. We can trust them.”

He drew his mother to her feet and then, stepping up to me, he jerked my lantern out of my hand. “You can stay in the dark with what you’ve done,” he said. Then he took his mother’s arm and they went out. We heard the key turn in the lock. I turned instinctively to the window but this too was locked. We were, as Mortimer had said, imprisoned in the dark with Rafe’s dead body.

Brockley was close to me, a steadying hand on my shoulder. “Don’t be too frightened, madam. Lady Thomasine knows all this is nonsense. She knows why we’re here, and she knew why you asked Mortimer to supper. She’s pretending, to keep all that from him. But she’ll find a way to put it right.”

“But why did she accuse us of killing Rafe? She had no need to do that and she can’t possibly believe it. It’s mad. I feel as if I’m going mad myself. Why should anyone want to murder Rafe anyway?”

“God knows, madam. I suppose,” said Brockley, “that Alice could be the cause. We know that Mortimer was angry and Owen Lewis may be more resentful than he seems.”

“This angry? This resentful?”

“I know. It doesn’t seem likely,” Brockley agreed. He was speaking very calmly, probably in an attempt to make me calm as well. “Unless … it could have been Mortimer himself, madam, but not on Alice’s account. Suppose he caught Rafe in here, searching his papers—looking for the same thing that you were? Maybe Lady Thomasine asked both of you to look. Now, of course, Mortimer is acting as though he were innocent.”

“Deceiving his mother as well as us, and meanwhile, she’s deceiving him?” I said shakily. “But I still can’t understand why she accused me—or us. And what’s going to happen to us now?”

I sank onto the settle, where Lady Thomasine had been. My foot slipped a little on the floor and touched something soft and heavy. I jerked it back with a gasp, knowing that I had kicked Rafe’s body. “How long will they leave us here?” I whispered. “With that?”

“He can’t hurt us, madam.” Brockley sat down at my side and again put a comforting hand on my shoulder. “The dead can’t hurt anyone.”

“So people say,” I whispered back. I kept whispering because I had an unreasonable fear of waking the thing on the floor. In the darkness, the body was no longer Rafe, the boy who had stood defiantly hand in hand with Alice only that morning. And if it were to stir, to wake, then the life in it would not belong to Rafe but to some demonic trespasser. Mortimer, I thought, had understood very well the horror he was inflicting on us, or at least on me.

At least Brockley was there, his warmth and common sense a blessing beyond price. We sat together, not moving, and did not talk any more, until the lock clicked
again, and into the room, candlestick in hand, came Mortimer, followed by the tall figure of the butler Pugh, and the hefty bulk of the falconer Evans, both dressed in dark breeches and doublets.

“There’s a useful dungeon under the keep,” Mortimer said to us. “That’s where you’re going to spend the rest of the night. On your feet!”

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “We’re guests here. I’m one of Lady Thomasine’s kinswomen. All we did was see a light and come to see what it was. You can’t seriously suppose …”

“Mistress Blanchard is perfectly right. If she is mistreated in any way, you’ll answer for it!” Brockley backed me up. No one, however, deigned to answer us. In silence, Mortimer closed steely fingers around my upper arm and pulled me off the settle while Pugh and Evans seized Brockley’s elbows and hustled him backward to the door. Once, Pugh and Evans had been slightly comic figures: Evans the falconer, who presented hares to his lady at dinner; Pugh the luckless butler, who was forever failing to introduce arrivals properly. But now, as they hauled us into the courtyard, they were impersonal and frightening. As we were dragged into the open, we stopped either resisting or shouting, out of a sense of dignity, for it was obvious that we could not escape and none of Mortimer’s servants were likely to come to our aid.

Mortimer put the candlestick down in the parlor, but in the entrance lobby, we found Lady Thomasine waiting with a lit torch. The rain had stopped and the torch burned steadily, lighting our way as we were haled across the courtyard.

We were taken back to the keep, but not to our
rooms. Just inside the entrance of the keep was an inner door which I had noticed only vaguely before, supposing that it led to a food store or wine cellar. Through this we were thrust. It opened onto a flight of dank stone steps leading down to a heavy oak door, which Mortimer unlocked. Beyond that was a short stone corridor with another stout door on each side and a third one at the far end. This was open and we were shoved through it, so roughly that I fell on all fours, landing amid a scattering of fresh straw. Turning as I picked myself up, I found my nose an inch from Lady Thomasine’s pretty slippers with the cerise roses and I saw with satisfaction that the dirt and wet from the rain-swept cobbles had done them no good. In desperate circumstances, one takes pleasure in sadly petty triumphs.

“You’re a lady of standing, Mistress Blanchard,” Mortimer said, none too accurately, considering that I was on my hands and knees at the time. I got up quickly, in order to look him in the eye. “And by marriage,” he said coldly, “you are a member of my family. I have not forgotten. I have, therefore, ordered that you be treated accordingly, and your companion may share in this. You will spend the rest of the night here, but we’ve put straw down for you. You can pile it into bedding and sleep, if you
can
sleep. In the morning, you’ll be fed. But you will then be handed over to the authorities. I shall send to Hereford for the sheriff tomorrow. As a justice of the peace, I do of course have full authority to incarcerate you, and I can have you brought to trial for murder at the Midsummer Sessions in Hereford. Good night.”

They went out, taking the torchlight with them. The door shut with a hollow echo and the bolts were shot. I stood in the rustling straw and said: “Dale will be anxious by now.”

“She was probably watching from a window. I told her to sleep but she said she couldn’t, not until we got back. She saw us being brought across the courtyard, as likely as not,” Brockley said. “But we can rely on Fran. She’ll get word to Tewkesbury.”

“If they let her,” I said pessimistically.

“If they don’t, we’ll get word ourselves, through the sheriff. You’re a lady of standing, madam; even Mortimer said so. Don’t worry.”

The darkness had seemed absolute at first but as my eyes adapted, I saw a faint gray patch in one corner, above our heads. There must be a grating in the courtyard, to let in air. I moved toward it and immediately
stepped into a puddle, which splashed my ankles. The grating had let the rain in as well.

“It seems to be dry over here,” said Brockley, moving in a different direction. “We can pile the straw up just here and make a bed of sorts. We may as well rest if we can.”

Fumbling in the gloom, we gathered up the straw and put it in a corner that, as far as we could tell, was free of water. Then we sat down, side by side. “What o’clock is it by now?” I wondered.

“Not one in the morning yet, I fancy,” Brockley said. “Things have happened fast. There’s time to sleep.”

“I’ve never been farther from sleep,” I told him. In the study, with Rafe’s body lying invisibly but horridly at our feet, we had wondered feverishly who had killed him. Now the question seemed to ask itself again. “Brockley, who
can
have done it?”

Brockley rustled the straw as he settled himself more comfortably. “If you ask me, I reckon it’s between Mortimer and Lewis, like we said back there in the study. Unless it’s Alice.”

“Alice?”

“She and Rafe were lovers,” Brockley pointed out. “They could have had another secret meeting and quarreled. She seems to be turning toward Owen Lewis now. Maybe she told Rafe so and it made him angry. Maybe he grew violent and she stabbed him to defend herself. Or perhaps she’s pretending, with Lewis, to please her family and it was Rafe who wanted to end their affair, and she attacked him in a temper. It’s possible.”

“I can’t believe any of it,” I said flatly. “I can’t imagine a well-brought-up young girl like Alice stabbing
anyone for any reason, even if she is a trifle headstrong by nature. And I can’t really believe that other suggestion, that Rafe was caught searching the study. Why should he be searching it? If he can open a locked strongbox, Lady Thomasine would have told him to do it long ago. As for Mortimer killing the boy in a fury merely because he’d been trifling with Alice … it’s just not reasonable.”

“I think I agree with you, madam. That leaves Lewis, but …”

“Lewis
is
getting somewhere with Alice. I’d swear that’s genuine. He can’t have thought that murdering Rafe would further his courtship. Unless he caught them together and he and Rafe started fighting, but in that case … It had only just happened,” I said slowly. “I could smell the candle and Rafe’s body was warm. If there had been a fight, it would have made a noise. We would have heard something as we crossed the courtyard. And what about the Haggards? They were sleeping upstairs. If there had been a noisy quarrel, or a fight, they’d have got up to investigate. And if Alice had been there, they’d have found her. We’d have found her! No. It wasn’t a quarrel between Rafe and Lewis at an interrupted lovers’ meeting. It can’t have been.”

“It
is
possible to quarrel quietly,” Brockley said. “Especially at a clandestine meeting, with people sleeping nearby. If Lewis somehow came to suspect that they had an assignation and went to interrupt it, he might not have wished to compromise Alice. He might have told her to get out of sight—scared her into it, maybe. Except … no, it still won’t do. Rafe was stabbed in the back. That doesn’t fit with Lewis, not if I’m any judge of men. Mortimer’s
more likely, whatever his reason and however it came about. It would explain why Lady Thomasine turned on us, you know.”