A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court) (3 page)

“I expect so,” said Helene. “It was in May.” I nodded. “Anyway, your husband was pleased to see Edward. Seigneur de la Roche wished to set the work going again and to prepare a new, up-to-date list.”

“The list would certainly have altered during the interruption of the civil war. Some people would have died and others would have changed sides,” said Uncle Herbert.
“Very often,” he added sourly, “those are the ones who are living in what used to be abbeys. They are afraid that if Mary Stuart were to come to power, she would want to restore the stolen buildings to the Church. I daresay you understand, Ursula. After all, Withysham was once an abbey.”

Aunt Tabitha rolled her eyes and I found myself giving her a reassuring smile. “It’s all right,” I said. “I am not going to take offense. Please go on.”

Edward had apparently agreed to communicate with some of Matthew’s sources of information in England. He would write to some and visit others personally. He had been educated in Northumberland and was acquainted with a number of the said sources in that district. He had agreed to visit these himself in order to coax worthwhile offers of support out of them. Having obtained as much information and as many promises as he could, he would send a report to Matthew, who would meanwhile have collected extra details from various other people with whom he was directly in touch. He would complete the updated list and dispatch it to Mary. “For the time being, we put off looking for a house of our own,” said Helene. “Edward had much to do. He had many letters to write and he had to take great care in choosing trustworthy messengers.”

“He dismissed his valet,” said Aunt Tabitha. “He found the man reading his correspondence and suspected that the man was a government spy. A shocking thing. Such a betrayal of trust.”

“There is more than one kind of treachery,” I said, and saw them flinch. “What happened next?” I asked.

“I became frightened, because of the valet,” said
Helene. “It looked as though Edward might be under suspicion . . .”

“To begin with,” said Aunt Tabitha, “Edward didn’t tell us of his meeting with your husband in France. We didn’t at first know that he had begun the work again or realize why he had sent the valet away.” She beckoned to the hovering servant girl. “The wine jug needs refilling. And go and make sure that my guest’s manservant has had proper refreshment.”

“Please, madam, do you wish for any further cakes or pasties?”

“Yes, yes, by all means.” Aunt Tabitha waved the girl impatiently away. “What was I saying? Just after the valet was dismissed, Edward traveled north to see his contacts there in person as he had promised to do. He told
us
—his parents—that he was simply going to see old acquaintances in Northumberland. But while he was away, we saw that Helene was very anxious over something. She was pregnant at the time and she was so worried that it made her ill.”

“I kept fainting,” said Helene miserably. “And weeping.”

“At length,” said Aunt Tabitha, “we persuaded her to tell us what was wrong and then we learned why he had really gone to Northumberland and also that he intended to visit Scotland as well—and that before he left, he had had reason to think that his valet was spying on him. We agreed with Helene that this must mean that someone somewhere suspected Edward. We were greatly alarmed. That was when we first considered coming to you—except that we were afraid to trust you.”

“I had never been easy in my mind about Edward’s work for Mary Stuart,” said Uncle Herbert. “But he was so eager . . .”

“And I encouraged him,” said Helene, sniffing. “As I said, I was so proud of him. But not after the business with the valet! I tried to dissuade him from going north and I was so thankful when he came safely back. I implored him to take no more risks. He said he wouldn’t. He said that he had learned some very useful facts. He had only to put them together with the reports he had asked for, from other people in different parts of the country, and then he could prepare his final document for Matthew and his task would be done. The other reports had mostly come while he was away, so he was able to get on with that without delay. And then . . .”

I interrupted. “How did Edward communicate with my husband? Or indeed, with his contacts elsewhere in the country?”

“We have reliable servants here,” said Uncle Herbert. “They carry messages within the country. For keeping in touch with Matthew de la Roche, in France, we used Matthew’s own couriers. There were two regular ones. They even kept to their normal schedule throughout the time of the civil war. They traveled back and forth between France and Scotland. One was an itinerant tooth-drawer and the other was a peddler. The tooth-drawer went on foot; the peddler had a mule. They were excellent couriers because they were so ordinary. They were the sort of folk no one ever notices.”

I said nothing but inwardly I sighed. Matthew and I
had disagreed about so much, but I had truly loved him, and curiously, one of the most endearing things about him had been a kind of innocence. Matthew genuinely believed that Mary Stuart ought to be queen of England, and that if she became so she could simply tell the English to return to what he called the true faith, and that would be that. The truth was that Mary would never gain the throne without a vicious and gory civil war, and if she won it, then England would be wide open to emissaries of the Inquisition with all its attendant horrors. I could never make Matthew see it. When I tried to point these things out, it was as though my words just slid off from him, turning away like beggars from a closed front door.

Now, I thought, my uncle and his family were displaying the same streak of innocence. From working with Sir William Cecil, I knew very well that ordinary men making commonplace but frequent journeys were the likeliest bearers of treasonable messages and that they were far from unnoticed. Cecil had a payroll on which literally hundreds of harbormasters, innkeepers, and ships’ captains were listed, and they kept him informed of who traveled on what routes and how often. I had no doubt that the journeys of the tooth-drawer and the peddler had been noted long since. What Helene said as she resumed the story confirmed it.

“I was afraid that Edward would be angry when he knew that I had told his parents what he was about, but when he came home, he just shrugged and said that he had expected them to guess, anyway, since he had used Faldene servants to carry messages back and
forth,” she said. “He made his report—it was in the form of a list of families and what each family had offered—and waited for one or the other of your husband’s couriers to arrive. The peddler usually came back from Scotland in early August and the tooth-drawer perhaps a week or two later. But they didn’t come, and then a messenger brought word of your husband’s death to Withysham, and as a matter of family courtesy, the news was passed to us by your steward, Malton. Edward was upset. He didn’t know what to do. He had no idea who had replaced Matthew de la Roche, if indeed anyone had! But soon after that, another messenger, a stranger from London, came to tell us that the tooth-drawer and the peddler had both been seized on their way south and were in prison in London. And then . . . then . . .”

“Edward became so anxious about his new list,” said Aunt Tabitha. “De la Roche had intended the information eventually for Mary Stuart in Scotland—in Edinburgh—but De la Roche was dead . . .”

“And Edward decided not to worry about the extra items of information that Matthew had collected and to take his own list to Scotland himself,” I said helpfully. “Am I right?”

“The man from London refused to carry it,” said my uncle. “He said it was too dangerous, that the arrest of the other two couriers showed that too much was known. But Edward left yesterday, despite all the pleading of his womenfolk.”

“Father-in-law, you yourself begged him not to go!” said Helene.

I glanced toward the tall windows that looked out
to the front of the house. The sky beyond was iron gray, and the ride from Withysham had been bitter. “Why so much haste? If it’s as cold as this in Sussex, the snow in the north is probably six feet deep.”

“It wasn’t haste, precisely. He didn’t mean to travel
ventre à terre,
” said Helene. “He said that if the weather slowed him down, it couldn’t be helped, but go he would, just the same, simply to be done with it. He promised to take care, and to call on his friends in the north, as before, as though he were just making social visits . . .”

“Such a likely thing to do, in January!” snorted Aunt Tabitha.

“. . . and just make a brief visit across the border, deliver the list, and come back,” Helene finished. “But . . .”

“The valet,” said Aunt Tabitha, “and the two couriers who were arrested, all this has made us sure that Edward is most likely being watched, has perhaps been followed. We did indeed argue against it, but he wouldn’t listen and set off yesterday, as your uncle says. We were up most of last night, fretting and worrying, and in the end, we decided. Someone must go after him, catch him before he crosses the Scottish border if possible—and make him see that it’s too perilous; he must come back and . . .”

“Tear the list up,” I said. “That is my price. On that, I insist. If necessary, I’ll steal the list and tear it up myself. I’ll probably have to. If he won’t listen to you, why should he listen to me?”

“He knows what you did to me in the past, for Queen Elizabeth’s sake. You can threaten him,” said my
uncle candidly. “None of us can because he knows we would never carry the threat out. You, on the other hand, might. You might also be better than any of us at such things as stealing lists. You’re our only chance, anyway. I can’t go. My gout won’t let me. My elder son, Francis, as Edward once did, is gaining experience of the world in an ambassador’s entourage and is in Austria. I can’t even inform him, let alone call on him for help. Your aunt isn’t strong enough and Helene has her children to care for.”

“One barely a year and a half old and little Catherine not yet three months!” said Helene. “If anything happens to Edward now, they won’t even be able to remember their father! Madame, he is not, as I told you, traveling in great haste, and he means to linger a day or two with more than one household in Northumberland. If you tried, we think you might be able to catch him up. Will you try? Will you?”

“It’s your kind of task, isn’t it, Ursula?” my uncle said. “I never thought I’d see the day when I had to ask you to use your curious and frankly, in my opinion, your dubious skills for us . . .”

“Herbert!”
wailed Aunt Tabitha.

I looked out of the window. The winter dusk was already gathering. I said: “Today is nearly over. But I can leave at first light tomorrow morning.”

I had better reasons for agreeing than they knew. I knew a good deal about the current political situation. A young man called Henry Lord Darnley, a Tudor descendant and a cousin of both Queen Elizabeth and Queen Mary, was due at any moment to start out for Scotland, ostensibly to see his father, who was visiting the family
estates there, but in reality to present himself to Queen Mary as a potential husband.

He was being allowed to go only because he was a slightly less lethal prospect than a marriage between Mary and some Catholic prince with armies at his command. Even so, a Mary Stuart reinforced by a Tudor-bred consort could be very interested indeed in having up-to-date details of people who might help her to raise an army on English soil. It was my duty to get my hands on that list if I could and destroy it.

And I had another reason for agreeing. I didn’t say yes simply because it was my duty or even because Edward was family (though I did have a glow of satisfaction over my own good-heartedness).

It was the excitement that drew me. I did not have the kind of nature that could be satisfied forever with well-planned dinners and linen rooms full of faultlessly folded sheets interleaved with dried lavender. Plenty of people considered that wrong in a woman—there were times, indeed, when I thought so as well—but it was the way I was made. Queen Elizabeth and Cecil had recognized it and made use of it.

This particular opportunity had come to me in a time of grief and loneliness like a summons back to life. It was like the call of the wild geese in the cold, wide sky, a sound that I loved.

Or so it seemed when I was sitting by the hearth at Faldene. The mood didn’t last through the cold early start next morning. Then, as I rode reluctantly through the gatehouse arch of Withysham, I wondered
at myself. On more than one occasion in the past, I had determined to give up my perilous way of life. Every time I made such a resolution, I seemed to break it five minutes later. A new task, a new set of challenges, would call to me, like the siren voices of the wild geese. It seemed that I would just never learn.

“I can give you money,” said my uncle Herbert. “A hundred and fifty pounds in sovereigns.”

An anguished spasm, which had nothing to do with gout, crossed his face as he spoke. My uncle hated broaching his coffers. His anxiety about Edward must be intense. “A horse could go lame,” he explained. “You might need to buy another. Or you might get into some kind of trouble and . . . need to bribe someone.”

Edward, annoyed at being pursued and alarmed at being threatened, might arrange for me to get into trouble, he meant. We both knew it but neither of us spelled it out.

“I’ll take it and return what I don’t need.” I was thinking rapidly. “I’ll have to make arrangements for Meg,” I said. Aunt Tabitha started to say that Meg could come to Faldene but I looked at her, and she fell silent.
She knew that I would never consign Meg or any other child to her.

“What I do need,” I said, “is all the information you have.
All.
Everything that you can tell me about Edward’s journey and the people he intends to visit in Northumberland and Scotland.”

My cousin, it appeared, had not been indifferent to the risk he was running. His sense of duty had sent him northward but he too had been alarmed by the incident of the valet and the fate of the two couriers. His decision not to travel fast was partly because he wanted to be unobtrusive. For the same reason, he was riding his own horse rather than attempting to hire as he went along.