To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (26 page)

“I tell you,” I said, “that Mortimer is a thoroughly evil man. I don’t want to stay another hour within these walls.”

But Brockley wouldn’t have it. Brockley, in fact, put down his foot with such a thud that it was a marvel the tower didn’t shake.

“It’s raining again out there, it’s the middle of the night, and Fran’s still exhausted, if you’re not. No matter what you’re carrying in your pocket, madam, no matter if the master of this castle is the devil himself, we
sleep until cockcrow. Then we’ll go as quickly as we can, I promise.”

“You address me as madam, but you talk to me like a tutor,” I snapped at him.

“No, madam. I talk to you as a loyal companion with your best interests at heart. We’ll all be ill if we go out in that weather without sleep or food first.”

Again, I didn’t expect to sleep but I was more tired than I knew and I slid into the depths quite easily. I woke, however, at the first tentative notes of a blackbird outside, and as I sat up, I heard the letters crackle in my hidden pocket. The noise brought me instantly out of my coverings to shake the others awake. “It’s time we went. Come on.”

Brockley, of course, forced us to gulp bread and cheese down first. There wasn’t much left when we’d finished, and on top of everything else, I grew anxious about Gladys. “Why don’t you come with us?” I asked her. “You can rest in the inn at Ledbury where Master Henderson’s man is waiting. It’s not so very far.”

“I don’t want to go to Ledbury. It’s farther from home and my old bones are aching that bad. I wanted to know what ’ud happen to Mortimer, but if you’re goin’ away, then it’s different. I want to get home. I’ll get that goose girl Blod to fetch Hugh Cooper to meet me. I told you, Cooper’s not a bad fellow when he’s not trying to keep a mob in order. Two donkeys, he’s got, and three young sons. He can lend me a donkey and send a lad with me to see me safe home. I’ll be all right. A silly old woman, that’s what he’ll think I am, comin’ back to Vetch for nothing and then goin’ all the way back, all over again, but what of it? I found out what lies they’ve been
telling about Rafe, anyhow. I’ve been some use, ain’t I?”

“Yes, Gladys, you have. But …”

“You’ll send me word what comes of it all?”

“Of course we will, but …”

She wouldn’t be moved, however, so we left the last of the food with her, and all the bedding, and then I kissed her in farewell. She had earned it.

We finally left the tower in a drizzling daybreak. Everything underfoot was soaking wet. We slithered down the path from the castle and I was afraid all the time that someone would hear us, that at any moment a head would peer over the watchtower above and shout a challenge at us but nothing happened. We found our saddlery safe and dry in its hollow tree and found the hobbled ponies too. The daylight was still pale and young when we started for Ledbury.

It took nearly all day to get there. It was a good twelve miles and the storm had turned the tracks to quagmires. Again and again we had to ride out of our way to avoid patches of floodwater like small lakes, and because we didn’t know the district, we were repeatedly hindered by hidden rivers, or found tracks doubling back on themselves. The drizzle persisted. As the day wore on, we saw that to the east, the sky was night-black with a flicker of lightning now and then. We could only hope that the storm wouldn’t come in our direction. Shelter would be hard to come by. There were cottages and farms here and there, but they were widely scattered.

We did find one farmstead along our route, where a hospitable farmer’s wife was willing to provide three
damp travelers with food and ale, but by the time we reached Ledbury, in the late afternoon, we were all hungry again, not to mention tired and wet. We hadn’t been caught in the storm, but the fine rain was bad enough. Mercifully, when we inquired for the Sign of the Feathers, we were directed to it at once. Then I found that, for once, my good memory had failed me and I couldn’t remember the name of the man Rob said he had left there as our contact. Fortunately, although she was sagging with weariness and was complaining of a sore throat, Dale’s memory was better.

“Geoffrey Barker, ma’am,” she said wanly, from her perch behind Brockley.

“Whether he’s here or not, we’re staying the night,” Brockley said grimly, as he helped Dale down in the stable yard. “You’re all in, Fran, I can see it.”

For once, concerned about Dale, he left our mounts to the care of the grooms while he hurried her inside and asked for bedchambers. Entering behind him, I looked through a doorway into a public room, where there were benches and a fire and a pleasant smell of ale, and there, with an ale mug in his hand and his feet stretched out toward the warmth, was a lanky man whom I recognized at once as one of Rob Henderson’s retainers. “Barker?” I said.

“Mistress Blanchard!” He came to his feet at once, and then looked at me sharply. “Is something the matter? Your pardon, mistress, but you look distressed.”

“I have to join Master Henderson and get back to the court as fast as possible. It’s a matter of the greatest urgency … what is it?”

The moment I spoke of joining Henderson, Barker
had begun to shake his head. His expression had become grave. “Mistress, urgency or no urgency, it’ll be days before we can get across the Severn pastures to Tewkesbury.”

“Days? It’s only half a day’s ride!”

“Didn’t you know?” said Barker. “With all these storms and heavy rain, the Severn’s overflowed. Remember, people were thinking it might, when we were on our way to Vetch? They were moving the sheep to safety. We heard the news yesterday. The river burst its banks the night before last, in all that downpour. The pastures are deep in water for half a mile, on this side of Tewkesbury.”

Then we’d get hold of a boat and row, I said. There must be boats! Not that we could use, said Geoffrey Barker and the landlord of the Feathers, backing each other up. Boats, yes, but they were all out rescuing stock and people.

“There’s a good many folk have ended up sitting on their roofs,” the landlord said. “Got chicken coops up there with them, some of them have, and pigs and calves sticking their noses out of top floor windows, and those folk are calling themselves lucky. Some have been drowned. Whole houses went that night when the river first burst out. I rode over there yesterday—a lot of Ledbury folk have gone to help relatives and I’ve a cousin lives by the pastures. My cousin is all right but he and I saw six bodies brought out of the water. Cattle and sheep are gone that the farmers thought were on safe ground. And it’ll be worse by now! I came home through another storm this morning. Everyone’ll be out rescuing what they can. No one’s interested in running ferry services just now.”

We could go no farther that night, anyway. We all needed warmth and hot food and to sleep in decent beds. Fortunately, Barker had money. Mine had been left behind with my belongings in Vetch and we had spent most of Brockley’s. But Barker said he could cover the bill so we took a good supper and retired. I slept soundly, although I dreamed yet again of the dungeon at Vetch, and of lying on the dirty floor with my nose almost on Lady Thomasine’s wretched slippers. When I woke, I decided that when all this was over, I would make Meg a pair of slippers with roses on, although they wouldn’t be cerise roses on tawny. That was a color scheme I never wanted to see again. Meg should have fat golden roses on emerald green or azure. What bliss it would be, I thought, to have a life quiet enough for embroidery!

Dale, when she woke, was obviously unwell—another worry. I left Brockley with her while I rode out through the hills with Barker to see for myself the floods that lay between us and Tewkesbury. It was a long ride and a desolate spectacle awaited us at the end of it. The water, gray like the sky it reflected, was full of mud and debris, with trees and posts and the tops of dwellings sticking up here and there. On the current of some swallowed-up stream, I saw four dead cattle slowly floating along, bellies distended and feet jutting upward. There were boats, but all a long way off, on the far side of the water.

“But surely we can find a way round!” I said. I wasn’t surprised when Barker shook his head yet again. He was the kind of man, I concluded, who rather enjoyed saying that things couldn’t be done. It would be a long, long ride, he told me, northward, to get
around the floods. “I don’t know the area well, mistress, but I thought you might say that, so last night I spoke to the landlord. It’ll be twenty miles at least with the roads hock-deep in mud and no guarantee that the way won’t still be barred when we do come in sight of Tewkesbury. There’s no knowing how far the water extends. We’d do better to wait till it goes down.”

“And when will that be?” I said tartly.

It wasn’t raining just then but a rumble of thunder informed us that another storm might break at any moment. Barker shrugged and smiled. “A little patience, mistress. That’s all you need.”

“Patience! You don’t understand, Barker, and I can’t explain exactly what the urgency is because there’s such a thing as discretion. I trust you; it isn’t that. The news I’m carrying, I haven’t even shared with my own servants, whom I would trust with my life. I shall have to share it with Master Henderson but apart from him, it is for the queen and Sir William Cecil only. As it is, there are too many people already who know about it.”

“As serious as that?” said Barker, looking at me quizzically. I ground my teeth. I could read his mind. This sort of thing was always happening to me. In the eyes of men like Barker, I was a pretty young woman, a dear little thing, to be protected and guided, but it was of course quite impossible that I could be the carrier of any kind of news that actually mattered. I was sweet but trivial and any knowledge in my possession must therefore be trivial too. Rob knew better; Cecil knew better; but they weren’t here and Barker was. I felt like hitting him.

Restraining myself, I turned my pony’s head. “We must get back to the Feathers,” I said.

At the inn, I found Dale up and dressed, though pale and rather hoarse. She was taking some food with Brockley. I went up to my room alone, locked myself in, and took out the letters to look at them by daylight for the first time. I had hoped, I think, that if I read them calmly in a good light, they wouldn’t seem so lethal.

I had been too optimistic. They seemed deadlier than ever.

The most horrific things about them were the dates. One was dated the eleventh day of November 1532, and the other the tenth day of January 1533.

The November one began:
My dearest love, once again, I cannot help but put my passion down on paper, for though we often meet and even speak one to the other, we can so rarely say the words we wish or even let our eyes speak for us. When can we hope once more to be lovers? I was so touched by your poem …

The January one began:
My heart’s joy, I know that to write to you thus is perilous, but I am so full of love, I cannot always keep it within me. Oh, to relive our Christmas revels. How I wish that moments such as that, when we can be wholly together, could come more often. Yet, my sweeting, what does the future hold for us? I cannot turn back now from the course on which I am set. It gives me pain to tell you that my letters, my unwise letters which I know I should not write but which come unbidden to my pen, must be destroyed when you have read them but …

January 1533. Christmas 1532. November 1532. God Almighty. Elizabeth was born early in September 1533.

If by any dreadful chance these odious epistles were real, then it was clear that others like them had
existed and might still exist. And if so, where were they now?

I had likened these letters to a handkerchief dipped in pus from a bubo and that instinctive, horrified response had been right. Whether they were real or not, knowledge of their contents, if it were to travel, would be a terrible infection which might ruin the queen. Elizabeth could be destroyed and with her would go all who loved her and believed in the England that she wanted, the England she was trying to make solvent after the expenditures of her predecessors; the England in which heretics were not hunted to their death.

And the knowledge had spread at least to one other person besides Mortimer himself. One other person had certainly read these loathsome things, and that was William Haggard.

He lived at a place called St. Catherine’s Well. I wondered how far away it was.

I stared out of the window at the gray sky and came to a decision. I had no certainty that what I now planned to do was the right thing, but I had to do something. Impatience and fear were a fever in my veins. The landlord seemed to know his local geography. I put the letters safely back in my hidden pocket and went downstairs to find him.

We set off for St. Catherine’s Well the following morning.

This track was not flooded, for it wound uphill onto the flanks of the Malverns, that long range of hills which stands proud of the lower lands to east and west of it, like a huge, petrified roller in a sea otherwise calm. There was a gale blowing, with fierce rain squalls, but they were not like the savage cloudburst which had imprisoned us in Isabel’s Tower and the thick mantles with which Lady Thomasine had so obligingly presented Brockley and myself were an adequate protection. The previous afternoon, Brockley and I seized the chance to buy things in Ledbury and we had at last acquired some genuinely sturdy boots. I had also bought some leggings to protect myself from the stirrup leathers while riding astride. Barker was already well equipped. We kept our heads lowered, and rode resolutely on.

I might have forgotten Barker’s name when we first got to Ledbury, but I could recall what Lady Thomasine had said about St. Catherine’s Well. It was on the Malverns, a few miles north of a landmark called Herefordshire Beacon. The landlord of the Feathers had heard of St. Catherine’s and gave us further directions, though he was a loquacious man and his instructions were inclined to ramble.

“My cousin’s wife worked there when she were a young wench. There’s a track goes off north, just at the foot of the beacon. That’ll take you straight to St. Catherine’s. Used to be a shrine, in the days afore we all changed our ways. Folk still come there to drink the water. My old dad tried it when his bones started giving him trouble but it didn’t help him. The water tasted funny, he said, and his aches just went on aching.”