To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (2 page)

“You’re alive,” Matthew said. “But there is no child. It was one or the other and I chose you.”

I smiled. I thanked him. I held his hand.

I had rarely been so angry in my life.

The anger wouldn’t go away and mingled with it was a bleak misery that refused to lift and which did not even seem to have much to do with my grief for the lost baby, although I did indeed grieve. I was glad when Matthew told me that Uncle Armand had managed to baptize him, and that he had been laid in consecrated ground. He had been called Pierre, after Matthew’s father. Physically, I got better, and I let Matthew think that my silences, my inability to smile, were all on account of grief. I knew I was hurting him but I could not help myself. My mind was sick and would not heal.

But by the fourth of April, Matthew was growing worried because I was so remote from him, and over that momentous dinner table, he said so.

We were not alone. Uncle Armand was dining with us as he usually did, and the butler, Doriot, was waiting on us. So was Roger Brockley, my English manservant. Fran Dale was actually married to Brockley although I still called her Dale, because she had been in my service before Brockley joined me.

They were both well into their forties, solid people, very English—Dale a little too given to complaining and slightly marked by childhood smallpox, but handsome in her way and very much attached to me; Brockley,
stocky and dignified, with a high, polished forehead, a dusting of pale gold freckles, a slight country accent, a gift for expressionless jokes, and a knack of combining respect with criticism which over the years had inspired me with trust and exasperation in roughly equal proportions.

Brockley had originally been my groom, but when we came to Blanchepierre, the stables were full of grooms, and he had carved out a highly individual niche for himself, acting as my personal messenger and serving me at meals. Doriot didn’t like it, though Brockley tried to be generally helpful and not usurp the butler’s authority.

Brockley was at the sideboard, spooning wine sauce over my fish steaks, when Matthew said: “I have asked the physician to call tomorrow, Ursula. You are not recovering your strength or your spirits as you should. We’ve had a sad loss, but it’s not the end of the world, you know.”

I gazed down the table, past the silver dishes and the very beautiful silver salt and the matching candlesticks. The day was bright and the candles weren’t lit, but they were there as decoration. We always dined in this formal fashion, with the length of the table between us. Blanchepierre was a very formal place.

There he sat, my husband, Matthew, whose dark, diamond-shaped eyes and dramatic black eyebrows, whose tall, loose-jointed frame and graceful movements, had captivated me long ago. He was good-hearted, too; essentially kind. In the end, after a long struggle, I had chosen him and Blanchpierre over a life as a lady of Queen Elizabeth’s Presence Chamber and an agent in the employ of her Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil. I had
been willing to live with Matthew as a Catholic, here in France, even though I remembered all too well the cruelties wrought in England by Mary Tudor in the name of that same religion.

Matthew loved me, and I had thought I loved him, but at this moment, he looked like a stranger.

“I don’t like the physician,” I said. “I’d rather not see him.”

“That’s a little ungrateful, isn’t it? He saved your life, after all. I’m sure he can prescribe something for you—a tonic, perhaps.”

“Dale can make a tonic up for me,” I said. “She is quite skilled in such things. Even I have a little knowledge of herb lore.”

“The physician surely knows more than either you or Dale. Why don’t you like him?”

Doriot and Brockley brought the fish steaks to the table and began to serve them. I tried to think of a way to answer Matthew, but couldn’t.

“Well?” he said. “Ursula, I’m worried about you and these silences of yours are one of the reasons. What is the matter with you? If I ask you a question, why can’t you reply?”

Sometimes, I knew, it was because I was too lost in depression to hear him. But at other times, and this was one of them, it was because I knew he wouldn’t like the answer. I stared at him and then, without speaking, started to eat.

“What is wrong with the physician? Ursula, I mean to have an answer. So will you say something, please?”

He had never pressed so hard before, and in any case, the answer was festering in me. I set down the
piece of bread with which I was mopping up the sauce.

“Very well,” I said. “The last time he came here was to my lying-in chamber. He said there was a chance of saving me or the child, but not both, and he asked you which he should try to save. He asked
you
. But I was conscious. I was crying out that I didn’t want to die. Why didn’t he ask me instead? He never even spoke to me. I might have been just a log of wood.”

“Ursula, for the love of God! A physician would always ask the husband in such a case. Naturally.”

“I’ve just said, I was crying out that I didn’t want to die. Why didn’t he just set about saving my life without further ado?”

“And leave me with no say in the matter?”

“It was
my
life! I was terrified of dying—terrified!”

“That was needless,” said Uncle Armand. “You had heard Mass and been shriven only an hour or two before your pains began. You had nothing to fear.”

“Yes, I had!” I snapped at him. “I wanted to live!”

“I know,” said Matthew. “And I wanted you to live too. I told him to save you. You know that. The child was a son but believe me, I cared nothing for that, if only I could have you back, safe.”

“But where would I be now if you had chosen otherwise?”

“Ursula, what is all this? I saved your life!” Matthew thundered. “You’re completely unreasonable.”

“And unwomanly, I fear.” Uncle Armand shook a reproving head. “What you should have done, my child, was declare that you wished your infant to be saved. Your husband would still have chosen your life instead, of that I feel sure. The very purpose behind asking the
husband is to free the woman from the burden of choosing between her child and herself. But …”

“I didn’t ask to be freed of it!”

“The last time you saw the physician,” said Matthew, “you were delirious. I think, Uncle Armand, that Ursula cannot be blamed for anything she said at that time.”

“Blamed!” I shouted.

“Calm yourself. I also think,” said Matthew, “that you spent too long dancing attendance on that redhaired heretic queen in England. She used to raise her voice quite often, if I remember aright, and you are talking the kind of nonsense that she might very well talk.”

“It isn’t nonsense.” I tried to speak more quietly. “I still greatly admire Elizabeth,” I added.

“But you left her service because she and Cecil between them had betrayed you.”

“It felt like that at the time. But since then, I’ve come to understand them better. I’ve had time to think.”

“I would have expected,” said Matthew, “that now you are here in my home, you could have left the thinking to your husband, as other women do. It is not a feminine occupation. But since you have been thinking—to what conclusions have you come? Do you regret staying with me?”

“It would be most shameful if you did,” said Uncle Armand, signaling Brockley for a little more fish. Doriot and Brockley were continuing to serve as imperturbably as though we were all discussing the weather. “When one considers, after all, that the Seigneur de la Roche is of an ancient, most respected French family while you, madame, although you have
served at a royal court, were penniless when you were married to him, and furthermore, cannot put a name to your father.”

There was a breathless silence. I felt as though I had been kicked in the stomach. Brockley froze in midfloor, the serving platter in his hands. Even Doriot looked embarrassed and became very anxious to make sure there were enough clean spoons ready for the next course.

“My wife’s family history is of no importance to me,” Matthew snapped, but if he was glaring at Uncle Armand, he was still glaring when he turned to me.

“I am beginning to think,” he said coldly, “that perhaps, Ursula, you are once more planning to abandon me—as you have done in the past. Are you? Do you want to go back to England? If so, in God’s name tell me. I’d rather know.”

It was too much. It all hurt far too much. I had sat down to dine, not happily, but at least in the belief that my domestic world was secure around me. It had fallen to pieces in the space of a few minutes and I didn’t know how it had happened. What I did know was that grief for my dead child and the memory of those horrible hours in the lying-in chamber had flooded over me together, reviving the fear and pain and helplessness, the sense of loss when I called for Matthew and he would not come to me. Even now, he was at the far end of a long table; I could not reach out and touch him.

I had no words, only a surge of emotion: nameless and wordless but too huge to contain. So I picked up the nearest candlestick, threw it at Matthew, and then leapt from my seat and fled headlong from the dining chamber.

*

I went straight to my own bedchamber, collapsed on the bed, and thereupon fell victim to one of the sick headaches which have plagued me for most of my life. When Matthew came after me, as he did before long, he found me groaning in semidarkness, and had the good sense not to try to talk to me, but to send Dale to me.

Dale did her best for me, but the chamomile potion which sometimes eased the symptoms this time had no effect. The malady ran its usual unpleasant course, and the headache did not subside until late that evening. Then I told Dale to let Matthew know I was better, and once again, he came to me. He sat down on the side of the bed and looked at me gravely, his face a blank mask. He waited for me to say something first.

There was only one thing I could possibly say. “I’m sorry I threw the candlestick,” I whispered. “But I couldn’t bear it—oh, Matthew, how could you believe I was plotting to leave you? Of course I’m not.”

“I shouldn’t have said that,” Matthew told me quietly. “I too am sorry. And Uncle Armand shouldn’t have made those comments about your family, either. As for the physician at your lying-in, he asked me a question and I gave him the answer I knew you wanted. I had heard you crying out for your life. It broke my heart to hear you.”

“I didn’t want the child to die,” I said. “How could I? I was praying that somehow we could both live. But I was so afraid, Matthew, so afraid, and I felt so helpless.”

“It’s in the nature of women to feel helpless, but you should know that you can trust me to look after you.” He paused and then said steadily: “But now you are longing
for the child you already have, I think. In your delirium, you cried out for your daughter, and for England. You are missing Meg very badly, and you’re homesick.”

I nodded, with caution. The remains of the headache still throbbed.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, miserably. Matthew and I had quarreled before, more than once. We had shouted into each other’s faces and I had wept with rage and despair, and once, when we tried to settle our differences with passion, even our lovemaking had turned savage. But never before had any quarrel gone as deep as this. I wanted no more of it. In venting my rage with that candlestick, I had lanced the worst boil in my unhappy mind. Now, I longed for peace between myself and Matthew. “This is my home now,” I said. “I know that. I ought not to be homesick; women aren’t supposed to be. Aunt Tabitha told me that,” I added. “You know—Aunt Tabitha, who brought me up.”

“You must be really out of spirits if you’re quoting your aunt Tabitha. I remember her well, and I didn’t care for her at all. What did she say, exactly?”

“It was when my eldest cousin, Honoria, was betrothed. She was afraid of leaving home because she thought she would be homesick. Aunt Tabitha told her that a woman’s home is where her husband is, even if it’s Cathay or Ultima Thule.”

“That sounds very like your aunt Tabitha. Poor Honoria.”

“But most people would agree with my aunt, wouldn’t they? The only one I know who might not is Queen Elizabeth. Her feelings for England run deep.”

“So do yours, it appears. Oh, Saltspoon.” We both
smiled involuntarily, at the sound of the nickname he had given me, years ago, because he said I had such a salty tongue. “It seems long since I last called you that,” he said now. “Dearest Saltspoon, why can’t you love France in the same way as you seem to love England? Would it be easier, I wonder, if we fetched Meg over? I have always said she would be welcome. Didn’t you once say that she should come after—well, after your confinement? Suppose I arrange it? You might feel more settled, then.”

“I don’t know,” I said restlessly. “She is happy with the Hendersons. They are good people. They write quite often, and so does she. It’s not that I don’t have news of her.”

I was choosing my words with care. I had spoken my mind at the dining table, but if I wanted peace with Matthew, I must not speak it now. I had hesitated to bring Meg to France because I did not want to separate her from England. I wanted England—the land, the language, the religion—to be hers by right.

If I said that to Matthew, he would be hurt anew, and he would begin to doubt me once again. He had been surprised to hear me quote my aunt Tabitha, but if my aunt were here now, much as I disliked her, I knew what advice she would give me and she might well be right.

She would tell me to repair my differences with Matthew by pleasing him, even if it meant hiding my own opinions. (Not that my aunt ever needed to hide hers, since they usually chimed to perfection with those of Uncle Herbert. My uncle and aunt were a pair of righteous bullies who worked together like a team of flawlessly matched coach horses.)

But Matthew and I were very different from Aunt
Tabitha and Uncle Herbert, and very different too from each other. Yes. I would be wise, I thought wearily, to hide what I was thinking. I said no more, and then Matthew made up his own mind.

“You need more than news of your daughter,” he said. “You need Meg herself.” He stood up. “No more arguments, Ursula. I am sending Brockley over to fetch her.”