To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (20 page)

“The lady and the minstrel who were left to die in Isabel’s Tower,” I said, as a statement rather than a question. “Yes. That’s what we thought, too.”

Gladys nodded again. We had all by now settled down on piled-up fleeces by the fire, since the hermitage contained only one stool and Gladys had taken that. She gave the fire a poke and said: “I know the
story. Everyone round Vetch knows it. You want to hear about it?”

It was plain enough to me that Gladys was lonely and eager to talk. Well, we were in her debt. I said yes.

“Lady Thomasine’s descended from Isabel,” she said. “And from her husband, Geoffrey de Vetch—that’s what the family were called then, Frenchified like. Three sons, Isabel gave him, and all he gave her was coldness like winter and jealous cruelties, big and little. She was a beauty, but Geoffrey couldn’t bear her to be admired. They say she once wore a new gown that made her look so lovely that the garrison all turned their heads to look when she walked by. So Geoffrey took the gown off her and cut it up and left her shut in her chamber all night, naked, with no fire, and took away her bedding. December it was, with snow on the ground. She was ill afterward and it was a wonder she didn’t die.

“All that’s in one of the songs that Rhodri made. That wasn’t the only nasty thing Geoffrey did, not by any means. When Rhodri first came to the castle, to be the bard for the household, he wrote a ballad in praise of Lady Isabel’s beautiful hair. So Geoffrey cut all his wife’s hair off, and forbade Rhodri ever to mention her in a song again.

“Only there’s no stoppin’ a Welsh minstrel when the magic of words and melody is on him, so he made his songs anyway, and taught them in secret to a young minstrel, a pupil of his, who’d come to Vetch with him, and they’ve lived on, those songs. We’re still singin’ them hereabouts.”

Gladys, gazing into the fire as she talked, had herself
acquired a singsong-tone storyteller’s way of speech, oddly compelling. When she paused, it was Brockley who said: “Go on.”

“Ah well, you know what happened in the end. She was faithful for years, and Geoffrey made her life a hell. Drove her into Rhodri’s arms, he did. Then he killed them both but did he have the decency to do it outright? Not he. They say he told them he was givin’ them a whole set of rooms to make love in, all nice and private; and then he shut them in the tower and locked and barred every door, even the door to the roof, so they couldn’t even put an end to their misery by jumping. He had bars put at every window they might have got out of. Never took the bars away till long after they were dead,” Gladys said, baring her fangs in another of her awful grins, “and then only because he had to go to war. The king of England was fighting the north Welsh in those days …”

“Edward I?” I asked. “I remember my tutor saying that he had a war with Llewellyn of North Wales.”

“Maybe, maybe.” The interruption irritated her. “The songs don’t say, and all I know, I got from songs—Rhodri’s and the ones his pupil made when he was dead. When he was gone, the young minstrel made ballads in his memory and taught them to others, but he only made them in Welsh. Clever, he was; Geoffrey never realized. But the ballads didn’t mention King Edward. They say that Geoffrey wanted iron in a hurry, for crossbow bolts, so he used the bars. But he didn’t unlock the doors and he gave orders that no one was to do so while he was away…. Anyhow, he went to war, but he came back safe, and no one had opened the
tower. He left the bones in the tower for twenty years all told. Even Isabel’s sons didn’t say anything. They were all born before Rhodri came to the castle, so they were Geoffrey’s, right enough. They knew all about it, but they were just like their da and thought everything Geoffrey did was right.”

“Was it Geoffrey who let the bones be removed in the end?” I said. “Did he soften in his old age?”

“His kind don’t soften,” said Gladys with a snort. “But the old castle chaplain, who was scared out of his wits of Geoffrey, died and a new man came who was bolder and threatened him with hellfire if he didn’t give Isabel and Rhodri Christian burial. So Geoffrey let the bones be brought out, though they say he had a door made, leadin’ out of the castle, to take them out through because he wouldn’t have his wife or her lover come back inside his castle ever again, even just as bones.”

“That must have been the door we came out by,” I said. “I wondered why it was there.”

“Yes, so did I. Every door into a castle makes it more vulnerable,” Brockley agreed. “Though that one’s right above the moat, I grant you. An enemy who got that far would be halfway in already. But all the same, it wasn’t a likely thing to do while the castle was still meant to hold out against sieges.”

“No, it wasn’t.” I thought about it. “That gate into the stable yard,” I said, “where Mistress Henderson and I brought you and Gladys back into the castle; that was made by Lady Thomasine’s father, for bringing in fodder. Lady Thomasine said so. It’s quite a recent addition. In Geoffrey’s time Vetch Castle was still very much a fortress. He really must have hated Rhodri and Isabel.
He put the castle at risk out of sheer vindictiveness.”

“Maybe.” Gladys wasn’t interested in such military matters. “Well, there it is. It’s said that people sometimes see the faces of Isabel and Rhodri in the windows of the tower and that Rhodri’s ghost plays the harp there. They even say the ghosts sometimes come out of their tower into the rest of the castle, and that Rhodri’s harp has been heard in the courtyard and the hall, now and then, and that something terrible always happens afterward.”

“What a hideous tale … I wonder,” said Dale in a horrified whisper, “how long they’d have left our bodies in that hut?”

“Not long,” said Gladys, in comforting tones. “They’d have had to shift you out quite soon. The shepherds use the place in high summer.”

“What I can’t make out,” I said, hurriedly changing the subject, “is what the point of it all was. After all, we’d been arrested. Why take this sort of revenge on us?”

“And how did Lady Thomasine get Evans and Pugh to help?” said Brockley.

“Yes. Such wickedness. And they just did as they were told!” Dale said, appalled and bewildered.

“Oh, that’s nothing. Pugh’s from Vetch stock himself,” Gladys said. “He’s her first cousin—a by-blow, of course. Her father’s younger brother made love to all the castle women under forty and a few who were over it. To him, she’s both liege lady and kinswoman. As for Evans, his family have been at the castle since they first built the mound. She’s his liege lady too. And more.”

She gave her ghastly cackle again and Dale, looking shocked, said, “Surely you don’t mean … ?”

“Course I do. She’s slept with them both in her time, and others, like as not. She likes to be worshiped, that one. Reckon she’s past taking lovers now, but she’s always got a page boy or a minstrel—Rafe Northcote it’s been lately—trotting after her like a little dog. There was talk about her when she was young, before she went to Ireland and married, and after she came back, too—well, Bess is her husband’s child, I daresay, but I wouldn’t put money on Sir Philip being a real Mortimer. He takes after her, so who’s to guess who his father was?”

I remembered the laughter among the Vetch villagers when Brockley and I were rescuing Gladys from them. To them, no doubt, Lady Thomasine was a figure of fun.

“Sir Philip thinks he’s a Mortimer,” I said, “but possibly isn’t?”

“I daresay. It’s a great name. He’d rather be a Mortimer than a mistake. Who wouldn’t?”

“Well,” Brockley said at length. “You’ve told us a tale, Gladys, and we’ve told you ours. But”—he turned to me—“what now? I think, madam, that we’d better get back to Tewkesbury. You should tell Master Henderson what has happened. He will speak for you to the sheriff of Hereford. The sheriff must take control of the search for Rafe’s killer. He can search Mortimer’s document chest as well while he’s about it.”

I looked into the fire. “Madam?” said Brockley.

It had been Lady Thomasine who first wanted me to look into her son’s affairs, wanting discretion, for his sake. I no longer cared about her wishes, or his neck.
But the desire for discretion had not been Lady Thomasine’s alone.

“The queen and Cecil wanted secrecy,” I said. “At least until they knew what Mortimer was really up to. We can put Rafe’s death in the hands of the authorities—with Rob Henderson to back me, I’d risk that—but not Mortimer’s schemes against the queen, if he really has any. If we do that, the secrecy is gone. I wish I could have just one more try at Sir Philip’s study.”

“But you can’t go back to the castle now, ma’am!” cried Dale. “It’s a mercy that you got your daughter out of it.”

“Yes, it is. But I hate to leave a task unfinished.”

“I can’t see what choice you have, madam,” Brockley said.

“No, indeed,” declared Dale with vigor.

Brockley’s inexpressive features were very misleading, and he knew it too. He really did enjoy making jokes with a perfectly blank face. He saw that I was still hesitating, and chose this moment to indulge his little quirk.

“Madam, you can hardly hide in the castle and creep out at night to search the study. Not unless you skulk in Isabel’s Tower like one of the ghosts.”

The scheme I wanted came into my head then, all complete. Brockley, watching my face, said with sudden misgiving: “No, madam! No, Mistress Blanchard, it isn’t to be thought of.”

“We can get into the castle and into that study by night, quite easily,” I said. “Through Isabel’s Tower. Why not? As you say, Brockley; every door into a castle makes it more vulnerable. We go in by the entrance that Geoffrey
de Vetch so obligingly made—the way Lady Thomasine brought us out. Then we walk through the tower and out by the door into the courtyard. Both those doors have ordinary locks. I expect I can open them. We can go straight across to Aragon, carry out our task, and then leave again. If we need to rest, we can shelter in the tower itself until daybreak, and be away before it’s fully light.”

“Sleep in a haunted tower?” said Dale in a hushed voice.

“Well, yes.” I was thinking while I talked. “There wouldn’t be anywhere else. We can’t sleep in the open; it isn’t warm enough. There isn’t any other shelter nearby except maybe for barns belonging to the village and we might be caught if we went near the village. But we need only stay in the tower for a few hours. No one goes there; it should be quite safe.”

“Madam,
no!”
Brockley was horrified. But I refused to heed him.

“Tell me, Brockley, are you carrying any money? You usually have your purse on you. Was it on your belt when we started from the keep last night?”

“Well, yes, madam, it was, but …”

“Is there enough to buy a couple of horses? We’ll need horses, to get back to the castle on.”

“Ponies,” said Gladys. “Good strong hill ponies. The man Griff works for, a landowner he is, he keeps a few pony mares as well as his sheep. He’s generally got something for sale, and with sweet tempers and good mouths. He breaks them in himself and makes a good job of it.” She looked at us wickedly, head on one side. “I’ve a fancy to come back to Vetch with you.”

“There’s no need for that,” I said, but Gladys overrode me as I had just overridden Brockley.

“Like to see Mortimer and his lady mother get their comeuppance, I would. Yes, both of them. I’d wager it wasn’t all her. You think he doesn’t know you were brought up here? Probably it was all his idea. I wouldn’t know why he killed Rafe, but I’d wager he did, and he’s scared out of his wits that you’ll say so to the sheriff if you ever get to see him. Hah! I want to know what happens, and who’s to bring me word if I ain’t there with you? And it ain’t just curiosity. You stopped me being stoned and then Mortimer and Lady Thomasine tried to kill you. I’ll not forgive them for that. Maybe I might even help in some way. I know Vetch well. I ought to. Forty-six years I spent there. I won’t be a trouble to you. I’ll get back here on my own. When you’re on your way again, Hugh Cooper’ll help me. He’s reasonable enough when he hasn’t got a pack of villagers all round him. I’ll tell him I came back because I was homesick but I’ve seen it was a mistake and decided I’ll settle for the hermitage after all.”

She looked around at us and something in the air of the hermitage changed.

On the face of it, we were four most unimpressive people. Gladys was an aging and unlovely crone. I had once been a lady-in-waiting to a queen and wife of a well-to-do Frenchman, but just then, with my dirty gown and tangled hair, I more closely resembled a beggar woman. Dale and Brockley were no better, and as for the hermitage, our refuge, it was a grubby, squalid cell.

Yet something came into it then which was not grubby, not squalid, not commonplace. Rafe, only a day or two ago, had sung a ballad about a knight who, in a
dark and filthy cave, saw the gleam of gold and gems and found a beautiful sword with a golden scabbard and a jeweled hilt. I had a good memory—that tutor had set store by training our memories—and I could recall some of the words. Rafe had used that last, risqué verse to embarrass me, but it was an earlier verse which I now remembered.
The ruby shone amid the mire, with pure and undiminished fire; the gold all damascened remained amid the murk, unharmed, unstained.

My fealty to Elizabeth remained too, unstained either by our grimy condition now, or by the way Elizabeth had once used me. She might have betrayed me, but she had done it for love of her realm. As I had realized, back in Thamesbank, she and it were facets of the same thing and anyone who loved England must perforce keep faith with her queen. Which meant that I must keep faith with her. I would make my future home in France but nothing would ever change my feeling for the land where I was born.

Within my mind, all these things welded themselves together into a single shining shape like a sword. Almost, I could see the golden scabbard; I could draw the blade and behold the blue-white edge of the steel—feel the hard, cool jewels of the hilt against my palm.

And the others sensed the change. I saw it in their eyes, that they too had glimpsed the gold and ruby gleaming through the dirt.

“Brockley,” I said, “and Dale, and Gladys. It may be that Mortimer is laying a scheme which in some way threatens Elizabeth. I hope it is not so, but it is my duty to find out if I can. I think I should try again. It could be done.”