A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court) (20 page)

Indeed, it was positively domestic. Gatherings very like it were no doubt going on, at that moment, all over the land, in manor houses and town houses, and on a smaller scale in cottages where neighbors were making a little music and encouraging a courtship or two, and the visiting housewives had brought pies or dishes of stew to help the hostess out.

There was Queen Mary, in a dark gown as usual, seated at a card table and playing a hand with Bothwell, John Stewart (whom I identified from his resemblance to the queen’s other half brothers), and his betrothed, Lady Janet Hepburn, her dark, vigorous handsomeness wonderfully set off by a gown of crimson damask. A tall triple candlestick on the table lit up their game, and by the hearth on the other side of the room, for all the world as though Holyrood didn’t
contain manservants enough to form an army and maidservants enough to do the chores for one, Rob Henderson was on his knees with a pair of bellows, encouraging the fire.

To complete this civilized picture, Sir Brian Dormbois was standing by a spinet, turning the music while Darnley played a gentle melody, and David Riccio, seated on a stool close to the queen, accompanied him on a lute.

A page announced me. I came forward, murmuring an apology for my lateness, but Queen Mary, looking up from her cards and giving me her lovely smile, said: “No need for apologies, Madame de la Roche, or can I just say Ursula? There is no formality this evening; this is just a party of friends. The supper will not be served yet, though there is wine on the little table near the fire, if you wish for some.”

An echo of nausea clenched at my stomach and I said: “I think not at present, ma’am.”

“As you will. Do you play any musical instrument, Ursula? The spinet or perhaps the lute?”

I told her that I could play both and she called to Rob, “Master Henderson, there is a spare lute there on the settle by the hearth. Let Ursula have it. Would you play it for us presently, chérie? And then perhaps you would enjoy a hand of cards.”

I said yes to all this, and as Henderson rose and went to the settle, I joined him. Casually, and not in the tones of one who cared whether or not we were overheard, I said: “Rob, I have some letters to give you for Barker. Is he still leaving tomorrow?”

“Yes.” He held out his hand and I gave him the
packet, which I had tied with a length of twine. “I’ve something for you, too,” he said, also casually, and in turn passed a package to me. It seemed to consist of several sheets of paper folded together to make a small, thick pad, sealed at one side with wax. Moving so that my back was to the rest of the room and my wide farthingale could mask what I did, I took it and slipped it into my hidden pouch. “The list?” I asked, and this time I did not speak aloud but mouthed the words instead.

Rob picked up the lute and pointed to a scratch mark on the edge. “Yes. Mine and a copy of the one the queen now possesses. Rokeby says there was no sign of any other, either older or newer. He has copied the one filed among her papers as the present working list.” He spoke softly. Then, stepping back, he added more loudly: “It won’t affect the music, and I think you’ll find it’s tuned.”

It was as easy as that.

• • •

The evening went pleasantly on. The music smoothed away the unease left by the migraine. I played the lute, once by myself and once along with Darnley. We chose English tunes that were not familiar either to Mary, with her French upbringing, or to the Scottish guests, and I was pleased to see that the melodies were well received.

Then Bothwell gave up his place to me and I played cards with Mary, John Stewart, and Janet Hepburn, and saw the gentle, playful fashion in which Mary encouraged the two of them to admire each other’s
skill in the game. They were a dignified couple and no doubt behind their forthcoming marriage lay any amount of careful calculation about the value of their respective possessions and prospects and the advantages to be gained by their two families in the intricate pattern of feud and alliance that formed Scottish society. But they did seem to like each other, and Mary, clearly, wished to cast a gloss of romance over them.

She was kind to me, too, making light of my mistakes—this particular game was unfamiliar to me—and asking after Dale, whose illness had been reported to her. To be in her presence was to be warmed and comforted by a feeling that one mattered.

When supper was served, I ventured a little food and drink. I knew I must choose plain items but I was beginning to feel hungry, which was a sign that my illness had truly passed. Mary had meant it when she said the evening was informal, for the servants who had brought it in left us to help ourselves. As I stood by the table, selecting hot chicken drumsticks, I found Dormbois at my side.

“And have you changed your mind in any way, my charming Madame de la Roche?” he whispered.

“I have not, I thank you, Sir Brian. Will you tell me who led the authorities to Adam Ericks?”

“Would it win your sweet love if I did?”

I sighed. “No, Sir Brian. It wouldn’t.”

“Alack. Alas,” said Dormbois, aping the air of a strolling player, and glancing at him, I saw that the ice-green eyes were dancing. “How can ye be sae hard of heart?” he inquired, exaggerating his accent. “Will ye no’ tak pity on a poor, rough Scots laddie?”

Here in the crowded supper room, I felt safe enough to exchange banter. “It isn’t difficult,” I told him. “My heart may be hard by nature. Have you thought of that?”

“Aye, I’ve given it some thought and I canna believe it.” He dropped the histrionic air. “Or would be it be,” he inquired, “that you are a truly honest woman and would hold out for marriage? Well, now, I might be prepared to consider that. Do you no’ have property in the south? So you said, when we talked before, and I hear you have served at the court of Queen Elizabeth. We’re in the same level of society. A match between us would be fair and equal.”

“But not a match I wish for, Sir Brian.” I seized on a possible means of repelling him. “Sir Brian, I think I should tell you that I have a dubious background. I was brought up by my mother’s family because, well, my mother wasn’t married. And she never told me or anyone else who my father was.”

“But you were made welcome at the English court and have been made welcome here; you were wed to a man of position in France and you have a good house in England. And in yourself, you are . . . well, put it this way, lassie, I dinna care who your father was.” He looked at me with eyes suddenly narrowed and full of genuine and sympathetic inquiry. “Do you, though? Is it a trouble to you?”

I shook my head. “I rarely think about it. I suppose I would like to know, but I suspect that the truth is commonplace enough. I think he was a court gallant, but a married one. If I knew who he was, I might well be disappointed in him. I have never inquired, though I suppose
I could have done—I mean, I could have asked questions of older people at court, who might remember something useful. But I never have. And now,” I said, “if you will excuse me, I think I’ll take a bowl of that wholesome smelling pottage. If you could let me get near enough to it . . .”

He was preventing me from moving along the table. He didn’t stir.

“I wonder what would change your mind towards me?” he said softly.

“Nothing, I assure you,” I said. I waited, looking pointedly at the pottage and avoiding his eyes. I was finding his physical nearness uncomfortable, not because it was unattractive but because it wasn’t. There was no doubt that Dormbois had it, that indefinable thing that calls to the opposite sex like a deep calling to a deep and will not listen to cries of protest from the rational mind or even the moral sense. It can be defied but it can’t be silenced. At a range of a mere six inches, it was deafening. I wanted to back away, and the only thing that stopped me was resentment. I knew very well that he was as conscious of his power as I was and was trading on it. I would have liked to kick him, hard.

I would have liked to dissolve into his arms, too. I stood rigid.

“Are you really interested in that pottage?” Dormbois was inquiring. “Dull stuff, I call it. And why no sauce for your chicken? There’s a fine hot sauce here that has a name for warming up other parts of a lad or a lass than just their tongues and their gizzards.”

“Then I assuredly don’t want to put it on my chicken,
and besides, it might not be good for me. I had a headache this afternoon.”

“No, no, lassie,” said Dormbois insinuatingly. “Headaches are what a woman suffers
after
the honeymoon.”

“Sir Brian, please let me pass.”

He stepped back. “My time will come, lassie. You’ll see.”

I edged by, warily, but he didn’t try to touch me or hinder me further. I filled my pottage bowl and withdrew, quickly, to Queen Mary’s side. I had discovered that even with a whole crowd of other people in the same room I didn’t after all feel safe anywhere near to Dormbois. I went to Queen Mary as to a refuge.

After supper, Dormbois and Bothwell joined Lord John and Lady Janet at the card table, while Darnley, Henderson, and Riccio took turns at providing music and Mary beckoned me to sit beside her.

“I have given my Maries some time off this evening. Will you take their place for a while and talk to me? I am surrounded by people here, as one always is at any court,” said Mary. “But sometimes I am lonely. Scotland is so wild a place, compared to France. Did you know, Ursula, that there were even schemes to abduct me when first I came here? Some of my nobles would like to make themselves king.”

“I had heard that, ma’am. I was very shocked.”

“Nowhere near as shocked as I was, I assure you,” said Mary sadly. “There was bloodshed and I was compelled, once, to attend an execution in person. Only thus, my brother James said, could I make it plain that I had no knowledge of or will toward the marriage which
others would have forced on me, but the executioner was clumsy and . . . oh, I wept to see such butchery.”

Her voice shook and so did her hands, as the memory came back. I opened my mouth to say something calming but she controlled herself without my help and said: “But this is no kind of talk for a happy supper party. Tell me, Ursula, how does my land of England fare? How were last year’s harvests and do the people flourish? I think of them as my people, you know.”

I was practiced at dissembling but I found this difficult. My mother had served Anne Boleyn and loved her. To us she was as true a queen as any, and Elizabeth her lawful issue and our true queen as well, which meant that Mary had no business to think of the English as her people. With an effort, I said: “England is prospering, I think. Of course, the climate is milder, farther south.”

“Oh yes. How I long to set foot there myself. I have many friends there and I keep in touch with them, but I often wonder—will I ever see them face-to-face as their acknowledged queen?”

I sincerely hoped not, and for several reasons, some of them quite unconnected with religion or legitimacy. She was so very young and somehow so innocent. So
unwary,
I thought. Elizabeth, though still quite young in body, had a mind that I think was mature when she was born, and she was well aware of the world and its perils, and that makes for good government. She would never have talked as confidingly as this to anyone she had not known long enough and well enough to be sure she could trust them, and probably not even then.

Instinctively, I tried to make use of Mary’s simplicity.
“How do you keep in touch with your English supporters, ma’am?” I asked ingenuously.

“Oh, Ursula, and you the widow of Matthew de la Roche, who toiled so long and honestly for me? There are priests, in my employ, who travel in England in other guises. They go from one Catholic house to another, holding mass, hearing confession, ministering to the faithful—and with them they carry, always, my kind good wishes and assurances that those who have honored me with their friendship are never forgotten and one day, if God wills, may be rewarded.”

“Isn’t that dangerous for them?” I asked. “In England, they would be considered lawbreakers.”

“You think I am sending good men into peril?” Mary’s smooth white brow wrinkled. “Perhaps. But I send no one against his will, and after all, in the end, to die for the faith is the noblest of deaths.”

It was also apt to be one of the nastiest. I was about to suggest as much, but Mary’s golden brown eyes had begun to sparkle, and she had more to say. “One day, it will happen! One day, God will show the way, and I will ride to London, leading my army, sleeping in the fields as we journey, perhaps, as the men do, sharing their hardships, gathering my people to me. When God wills.”

“What of Queen Elizabeth?” I asked. “If all this comes to pass, what of her? She is loved, you know.”

“I would not harm her,” said Mary. “Oh, Ursula, of course not. If ever God leads me to the throne of England, she shall be my beloved sister. She shall live in dignity, privately, as King Henry’s fourth wife Anne of Cleves did when theirs was declared no marriage. Or I
will find her some noble husband among the great men of Europe or, if she truly does not wish to marry, then a refuge in some French abbey.”

I tried to envisage Elizabeth in any of these roles, and my mind reeled. A warning stab of pain struck above my left eye, as exasperation rose up in me. Here it was again, the rose-tinted innocence I had glimpsed in my own family at Faldene, and the thing that most of all had come between myself and Matthew. It was a malady of sentimental, blind faith which was simply unable to confront the horrors that would come about before England could become a Catholic land ruled by Mary.

I looked at my hostess’s charming young face and her bright eyes, and thought of Elizabeth’s face, that watchful shield that guarded her thoughts and her dreams—and, yes, her fears too—from the world around her. Elizabeth, I thought savagely, understood executions too and not merely as a weeping bystander. Her mother had died under the ax before Elizabeth was three, and her young stepmother had died under it when she was eight, as though King Henry actually wished his daughter to understand the matter thoroughly. Later, when her sister Mary Tudor was on the throne, Elizabeth had feared death on the scaffold for herself. A prisoner in the Tower, she had for a time not known when she woke each day whether she would see the evening.