To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (8 page)

When she had gone, I kissed Meg, told Bridget to see her into bed, promised to come soon to say goodnight, bade Dale find the Raghorns and see if we could all have some mulled wine to help us sleep, and asked Rob to excuse me, as I wanted to talk to Mattie alone. Then I led Mattie into my bedchamber and shut the door after us.

“How could you?” I said. “How could you?”

Mattie sat down slowly on the edge of my bed. She did not waste time in asking me what I meant. Her round face still had that unfamiliar expression of seriousness.

“Ursula, my dear, what choice had we? We were under Cecil’s orders. Meg has enjoyed it all; the journey and the stay in a castle.”

“You talk as if Cecil were God.”

“He is in Elizabeth’s service,” said Mattie.

“Elizabeth isn’t God, either.”

“No. She’s the queen of England,” said Mattie.

“I know,” I said, collapsing onto a settle. “I
know
. I understand that. But all the same … I thought Meg had been stolen away. I was terrified. And you knew I would be, and so did Rob, and the queen, and Cecil. They gambled on it.”

“Ursula, there was no help for it. I did my best to see that Meg was happy and safe. I insisted on coming with her for that very reason. And now,” said Mattie, “I’m going to urge something else on you. I know that you haven’t seen Meg for so long that you’re parched for her company …”

“Yes, I am.”

“But you’re hoping to take her back to France, are you not?”

“Yes. You have cared for her wonderfully well and she has been happy with you, but she wants to be with me and I want that too. Will you mind very much?”

“Rob and I will both mind but we have been prepared for it for a long time. But listen. If she goes with you to France, you can look forward to spending any amount of time together. Will it matter all that much if she isn’t here for the two weeks or so that you’ve agreed to spend in Vetch?”

“Not here? But she
is
here.”

“Quite. But I don’t think she ought to be,” said Mattie. “I don’t think this castle is a good place for her. You would do better to say that you wish me to buy her new clothes for her journey to France, and send her off with Rob and myself while you continue with your visit. Say that we are going to London. We wouldn’t really, of course. We wouldn’t want to leave you here without support. We might go back to the Woodwards’ in Tewkesbury, and wait there for you. You could get word to us in a day if you needed us. I’ve already made opportunity to speak to Rob, and he agrees.”

“But … what do you mean? What is it that’s wrong here? You’d better tell me, Mattie. It might have a bearing on the mystery I’ve come to solve.”

“I don’t think so. And it’s difficult to discuss. You’ll see for yourself presently. Let me put it this way. Our home at Thamesbank is very orderly, as you know. There’s no laxness among our servants. I may sometimes giggle like a girl,” said Mattie, “but I know right from wrong and how to run a household. If I were running
this one, there would be some drastic changes. Sooner or later, Meg will have to learn about the world but as yet she’s too young. Now that you’ve come …”

“Now that the donkey has caught up with the carrot, yes. Mattie, what on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m simply saying,” Mattie informed me, “that I want to take Meg away from here as soon as I possibly can.”

At eight o’clock next morning, a handsome and well-dressed youth, with smoothly combed dark hair, presented himself at the guest lodgings and inquired for me.

“Lady Thomasine asked me to show you the way to her room, Mistress Blanchard.” His bow was most courtly. “The castle is confusing until you know it. You are breaking your fast with her this morning, I believe.”

“Yes, that’s so.” I had dressed in readiness, complete with a fresh ruff and a farthingale, and had been waiting for a servant to collect me. This young man, though, did not give the impression of being a servant. His full brown eyes were too direct, his voice too frank, and his clothes too good. He wasn’t Welsh, either, and most of the castle servants were, except for the Raghorns, whom I had now met (and didn’t much like, as they were dour, middle-aged, and far from clean).

In the days when Wales was a likely source of attack, I wondered if the border castellans had had to forbid the Welsh language in their castles. How undignified it would be to learn, too late, that the serving men you thought were just gossiping in their own speech were blandly discussing, in your presence and in your hearing, how best to take your fortress.

“And your name is … ?” I said to the young man as we set off across the courtyard.

“I’m Rafe Northcote, Sir Philip’s ward. Until next year, when I shall be twenty-one, that is. My father and Sir Philip were good friends. Father died a couple of years ago and left me a manor in Shropshire, but he took the view that a young man should not have to shoulder full responsibility for an estate until he had turned twenty-one. He himself inherited at nineteen, and found it difficult. For myself,” Rafe confided, “I wish things were otherwise. I am not even allowed to live there until I take over though I know Rowans is being well administered by its present steward. Sir Philip takes me there often and we look into everything.”

“I didn’t see you yesterday,” I observed.

“No. I was out moving sheep.”

“Ah, sheep. The wealth of the Marches?”

“Well, so they are,” said Rafe. “And I need to learn to manage them. Yesterday, I was helping to shift the Vetch flock to higher ground in case we had more rain.”

“Tewkesbury was full of sheep when we came through it,” I said, interested. “They were being moved off the river meadows in case the Severn flooded.”

Rafe glanced up at the sky. The sun was out, but wisps of cloud were blowing from the west. “It well
may. It often does. There’s more rain on the way, the shepherds say.”

“Tell me about the castle,” I said. “Where are Lady Thomasine’s rooms—where we’re going now?”

“All the family’s bedchambers are in the Mortimer Tower.” He pointed to where the battlements of the tower in the northeast corner of the courtyard were just visible above the red-brick building. “The servants mostly live in the northwest tower behind the kitchen, and the retainers—I mean the guard—in the gatehouse tower.”

“What about that one?” Pausing, I pointed back toward the tower in the southwest corner, which he hadn’t mentioned. It was the only one that didn’t have another building in front of it, but it had an oddly deserted air and its door was solidly shut, with no key in its stout iron lock.

“Oh, that.” Rafe was amused. He gave me a sidelong grin, which undid the impression of courtliness and made him look mischievous. “That’s the haunted tower. Every castle worth its salt has a haunted tower, you know.”

Hampton Court was said to be haunted, in particular by the shade of King Henry’s fifth wife, Kate Howard, who was arrested there before she was taken to the tower and then beheaded at Henry’s orders. Elizabeth didn’t stay there often but occasionally she did and once, when I was still serving as one of her ladies, I had found myself alone, at dusk, in the gallery where Kate’s screams were still said to echo. I had heard nothing, seen nothing, but I had been uneasy, as though I were being watched from the shadows. I was not as inclined as Rafe to laugh at such things.

“What kind of ghost is it?” I asked.

“There are two. They’re supposed to be the phantoms of a medieval castellan’s lady and the minstrel she fell in love with. The husband caught them, and he shut them in the tower and left them to die for lack of food and drink. Not a pleasant end. Imagine it,” said Rafe, and to my surprise gave me another sidelong glance, as if to see if my efforts at imagining it would produce some tenderhearted feminine vapors.

“Nasty,” I said coolly.

“It’s said,” Rafe informed me, “that sometimes you can see their faces at the window and that if you go inside, even in daylight, you may hear them moaning, or hear the sound of the minstrel’s harp. The place is disused now but Sir Philip has it swept out once or twice a year and the servants who do the sweeping go in all together and look over their shoulders all the time. I went in last time it was cleaned and nothing happened, but I admit,” said Rafe more seriously, “that I wouldn’t care to spend a night there.”

“Has anyone, ever?”

“Not that I know of. It’s kept locked most of the time. It’s virtually empty, except for a few bits of furniture that no one wants. If you will come this way …”

It was a polite reminder that Lady Thomasine was waiting. The way to her apparently led through the modern red-brick house. “This is called the Aragon Wing, or sometimes just Aragon,” Rafe said. “Lady Thomasine’s father, Sir Thomas Vetch, had it built. He liked modern building styles—not like the Mortimers. They prefer things to be ancient and hallowed. Lady Thomasine says that Aragon was completed on the very day when King
Henry married his first wife, Katherine of Aragon. A great party was held in the wing, as a housewarming and to celebrate the royal marriage, both at once. Careful as we go in; the entrance is rather dark and there’s a step.”

Courteously, he offered me a hand, and steered me over the threshold with a firm grip. We passed through a shadowy little entrance lobby and then through an inner door into a pleasant parlor with windows overlooking the courtyard on one side, and the tiltyard on the other. A staircase at one side led to the floor above and an ornamental clock, with a pale blue enamel surround rimmed in turn by gilt sun-flames, hung on one wall. The wall tapestries and the cushions on the settles were all in shades of blue.

“The blue parlor, for obvious reasons,” Rafe said, leading the way through to where the parlor abruptly narrowed, because a corner had been walled off to make another room. “That’s Sir Philip’s study. It looks out onto the courtyard, so that he can keep an eye on the life of the castle. The stairs lead up to a music room. I enjoy music. I sometimes play my lute for Lady Thomasine.”

“I hope I shall hear you play during my stay,” I said civilly.

Beyond the blue parlor was another room of similar size but more masculine, with a bigger hearth and a lot of antlers on the wall. Still trying to map the castle in my head, I worked out that the door to the left must lead into the great hall. But Rafe, explaining that this was called the tower parlor, because it was at the foot of the Mortimer Tower, made for a spiral stone staircase in one corner. “This leads up into Mortimer. The steps are narrow, but there’s a handrail.”

He offered me his hand again but I declined it. The wedge-shaped steps were not unduly steep. After two flights, we came to a door on which he tapped. Lady Thomasine called to us to enter.

“I’ve brought Mistress Blanchard,” said Rafe, opening the door and then flattening himself against it to let me go in first. I had to turn sideways to get my farthingale past him and as I did so, I had momentarily to press against him. It occurred to me, uncomfortably, that he had placed himself against the door for that very purpose. I could still feel in my right palm the pressure of his thumb when he took my hand at the door of Aragon. I caught his eye with a reproving frown, and was answered by an amused and knowing glint. Drawing my stomach muscles in, I eased myself and my farthingale safely by and turned my back on him.

“Here I am, Lady Thomasine. Good morning.”

“Good morning, Mistress Blanchard.” Lady Thomasine was sitting at a toilet table, examining her face in an antique silver hand mirror while her pale-faced maid put finishing touches to her mistress’s hair.

“Very well, Nan. That will do.” Lady Thomasine held up the mirror, sighed, and regretfully fingered the very faint lines at the corners of her eyes. “If only I could pull these out, or dye them, as I do with gray hairs. Thank you for bringing Mistress Blanchard across, Rafe. I’ll see you later. Nan, go and tell Olwen to bring breakfast.” Rising, she moved over to a window seat. “Come and sit beside me, Mistress Blanchard. We have much to talk about.”

I would have liked it to include Rafe’s behavior but after all, what could I say? That he had given me a challenging
look when talking about the haunted tower, had held my hand too closely as he helped me over a step, and that it had been difficult to squeeze past him in a doorway? I pushed Rafe out of my thoughts, and joined my hostess on the window seat.

The window, which looked down toward the courtyard, was no dismal arrow slit, but was large and handsome with diamond-leaded panes and decorative mullions. No doubt it had been put in by the up-to-date Sir Thomas Vetch. It shed rather too much light on Lady Thomasine, though. She was beautifully dressed, in a loose gown of oyster damask, with a fresh pair of slippers, high-heeled and very pretty, of tawny velvet embroidered with roses in gleaming cerise silk. But although her skin had been powdered, I could see a cobweb of lines not hitherto visible, and the amethyst and agate rings on her fingers could not quite conceal her thickening knuckles.

She wasted no time on small talk. “You know why I have asked you here,” she said. “Cecil has sent you to help me, has he not?”

“Yes, Lady Thomasine.” I studied her gravely, and then put into words the problem that had been worrying me since I first agreed to undertake this inquiry. “But I must say I am puzzled as to how I can help. I believe you are anxious to learn what is going on in your son’s mind but if you, his mother, are not in his confidence, how may I hope to do better? I have said I will try, and I will, but all the same …”

“How much did Cecil tell you, Mistress Blanchard?”

“He told me that Sir Philip wishes to get back the
property and honors which belonged to his Mortimer ancestors, or at least their equivalents, and that he seems to think he can persuade the queen to give them to him. Do I have it right?”

She nodded. “Yes. Quite right. And yesterday, at supper, you heard my son hinting at these plans of his. Did you understand?”

“When he talked of Vetch Castle becoming a center for good society and noble company?”

“Exactly. You heard the way he said it, too. With such
assurance
. Do you wonder that I am worried? I can’t get him to tell me how he means to go about it. But Luke Blanchard told me that you have some skill at learning secrets.”