A Pawn for a Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court) (6 page)

Edward had stayed with them, but only for one night.

“As though we were an inn,” said Master Elkinthorpe disapprovingly as he showed us into his hall. Here, as at Faldene, the life of the household was still lived in communal fashion in one big, raftered chamber going the height of the house. Elkinthorpe was a large man with a bulging middle and his quilted winter doublet made him look enormous. “It isn’t the way we expect our guests to behave,” he said, in tones of hurt self-importance.

“But he did say he wanted to get on as fast as he could.” Mistress Elkinthorpe had a plump figure but not the placid countenance that so often goes with it.
She was very lined and had an air of enduring patience. I suspected that she spent a good deal of time and effort in soothing a husband who took offense too easily. “He was weary of the road and wanted to put it behind him, and he was on an errand of some importance, I believe,” she said anxiously.

“And wouldn’t say what it was even when I asked him outright. In my day, young men showed more courtesy to their elders,” said Master Elkinthorpe. “You need to get him back, you say?”

“Yes. A family matter in Sussex,” I said.

“And the family sent you, instead of a proper courier?”

“I have an errand to the north as well,” I improvised hastily, and although his thick white eyebrows rose inquiringly, I didn’t enlarge, leaving him to surmise that I wasn’t going to explain my purpose any more than Edward had, and take offense at me as well, if he chose.

I think he did choose, because he then became very silent, not to say huffy. The hospitality at the Elkinthorpes’ was good in a fashion, with plenty of food on the table, and comfortable bedchambers, but it couldn’t be called an agreeable visit and we piled on further offense when we expressed a wish to leave the very next day.

“But it’s a Sunday. You can’t possibly travel on the Sabbath,” said Mistress Elkinthorpe, scandalized. “You’ll surely want to join us in our chapel!” Master Elkinthorpe also made it clear that in his view, it was unthinkable for us to leave. I got the impression that he was almost prepared to bar his gates to stop us. I was
passionately against delay, and then, to my exasperation, found that Brockley supported Master Elkinthorpe, though not for the same reason.

“The horses are very weary again, madam. We’re pushing them too hard. We might be wise to give them a day’s rest.”

“But we’ll lose ground!”

“Master Edward must have a tired horse too, madam. Very likely, when he reaches friends who are—er—more easygoing than this household is, he will give his animal a rest as well. It may not make that much difference.”

“That’s nothing but guesswork!”

“You could call it experience, madam!”

“Oh, for God’s sake!”

But I knew Brockley in this mood, and for all my impatience, I also knew that he was highly skilled in the care of horses and that his advice shouldn’t be ignored. Reluctantly, therefore, I yielded, but slept badly that night. We had lost our chance of catching Edward up before he got to Northumberland; and now I was beginning to fear that even our chances of coming up with him before he crossed the Scottish border were melting faster than snow in rain.

“I just hope his Edinburgh contacts are all away from home!” I said snappily to Brockley. “Because if he gets to them before we get to him, I’ve wasted my journey!”

I asked Mistress Elkinthorpe, whom I rather liked, how far it was to the Scottish border. “Oh, no more than fifty miles,” she said.

We would leave at first light on the Monday, I said.

• • •

The Wright family were Edward’s next objective. Helene had told me that they lived at a place called Holtby House. When we inquired the way at an inn, however, we learned that the house was empty. The Wrights apparently had another home in the Midlands and had gone south for the winter. Edward could not have stopped there.

The landlord was an active, well-informed man, though rough in his speech, and was at least able to give us some information about the whereabouts of Grimstone hamlet and Bycroft House, and also of St. Margaret’s, the home of the Thursbys. What he told me gave me an idea.

As we journeyed on the next day, I said: “We could reach the Bycrofts tomorrow, but I think we should pass them by. It would mean turning aside from the direct road—there’s a left fork, apparently—and going about three miles out of our way. We’d do better to go on to the Thursbys at St. Margaret’s. Just past the fork, there’s supposed to be an inn called the Holly Tree where we could get midday food, and we might well reach as far as St. Margaret’s tomorrow afternoon. If Edward has gone roundabout to see the Bycrofts, we might arrive at St. Margaret’s the same time, or even find him there!”

“Oh, I do hope so!” said Dale wistfully.

I glanced at Brockley, who was riding beside me, while Dale, who had the quietest horse, was lagging behind. His face was impassive as a rule, but glancing at him, I saw that he was looking worried. “Traveling
in such weather isn’t good for Fran,” he remarked in a low voice.

I didn’t answer. I felt guilty about Dale myself. I nodded, pulled my hat farther down over my ears to protect them from what was now a sharp east wind, and rode on.

We had stayed at inns of varying standard in the course of our journey, but I have to say that the one where we spent the next night was easily the nastiest of them all, being dirty and drafty with a landlord who seemed to be permanently drunk, and whose slattern of a wife produced dreadful food. Dale and I, after repeated demands for hot water, obtained a pailful that was more or less warm and washed some underlinen, but the sorry fire in our bedchamber hadn’t dried it by morning and we had to pack it still damp and ignore the fact that the linen we were wearing now smelled. We asked about Edward, but he hadn’t been there. “Too much sense,” muttered Brockley.

That morning, we also woke to find ourselves in the midst of an interesting new weather phenomenon: fast-flowing fog.

Fogs are frequent enough in the south, of course, but they usually go with windless weather. Here however we were evidently amid cloud blowing in from the North Sea. We set off determinedly enough, scarves around our faces to keep out the clammy mist. “We’ve got to watch for the fork,” Brockley said. “We need the right-hand road. Take heart, Fran. Even at this sluggard’s pace we should reach the Holly Tree in less than three hours and perhaps we’ll find a good fire there.”

Keeping a lookout was harder than it sounded. The
fog was as blinding as the blizzard. As far as we could tell, we were riding over bleak uplands, along a track edged with heather and coarse grass, but even the verges kept on fading into the vapors. “We ought to have found this place the Holly Tree by now, surely,” Brockley said, when rather too much time had gone by.

We pulled up and listened. There was no sound but the hiss of the wind. We rode on a little way and then stopped again, also in vain. Not until the third halt, when we were all becoming very worried, did a faint clank come to our ears. “Ah!” said Brockley, and spurred on. A moment later, the blowing mists parted enough to show us a cluster of cottages. They were miserable places, made of gray stone, which seemed to be piled up rather than built, and roofed with a mixture of slate and thatch. They seemed to be huddling together for protection from the elements, like a flock of sheep. There was a well in front of them, and this was the source of the clanking, for a couple of shawl-wrapped women were hauling up water. Brockley urged his horse forward and hailed them.

Communication was difficult because they spoke in such broad northern voices that he could barely understand them, while his southern voice was just as bewildering to them, but he managed in the end and rode back to us, shaking his head. “I asked where the Holly Tree was,” he said. “But it seems that we missed the fork and took the left branch without knowing it. This is Grimstone. Either we go on to Bycroft, which is another mile, or else go back.”

“Can’t we go on to Bycroft?” pleaded Dale.

“No,” I said firmly. “We go back.”

What happened next was not Dale’s fault. She could not possibly have engineered the accident when her gelding stepped into a pothole, almost fell, and threw her over its head, and then, when we had picked Dale up and made sure she wasn’t really hurt, turned out to be lame.

“It’s Bycroft for us, madam,” said Brockley, feeling the animal’s foreleg. “This poor beast can’t be asked to limp farther than that. I’ll have to lead it and Dale must ride behind me.”

I swore, realized that this was pointless, and tried to make light of the disaster. “It’s fate. Some unknown providence doesn’t want us to catch Edward up. Did you know, Brockley, that the ancient Greeks saw fate as a woman spinning the inescapable pattern of our lives on a loom?”

“My education didn’t have the Greeks in it,” said Brockley. “I was taught my letters and numbers and a tiny bit of Latin by the vicar in the village where I was born and that was it. I don’t see fate as a woman with a loom, madam. I see it as an unshaven fellow with uncut hair, wearing patched brown fustian, and crouching in ambush with a crossbow.”

When Brockley made jokes he nearly always did it with an expressionless face. This was a perfect example. As usual, there was a brief pause while I worked out that he was jesting. Then I laughed and saw the answering glimmer in his eyes. And then I saw Dale’s face.

I could have kicked myself. I was always doing it. No,
we
were always doing it. We so easily let ourselves slip into these moments of intimacy, when we shared
an allusion, a joke, that Dale hadn’t grasped, shutting her out, hurting her, poor Dale, who loved us both and would never never have hurt us in return.

Dale had said I should marry again. I had said I would think about it, but the truth was that even Gerald’s memory had not quite ceased to haunt me and Matthew was alive in me still. But Dale was right. Sooner or later, I must face it. Oh, dear God, if only Matthew were still alive, so that I could go back to him and leave the Brockleys in peace together at Withysham.

“Very well,” I said resignedly. “Come along, then. Bycroft it is.”

• • •

The fog was clearing when we arrived at Bycroft. It was a harsh-looking place, for like most border manor houses it was built for defense, with a lookout tower at one end, complete with arrow slits, and a stout encircling wall. When the gatehouse porter led us into the cobbled courtyard, we saw that the living quarters of the house were on an upper floor, for a flight of steps led up to the main entrance. The ground floor, to judge by the wisps of hay blowing around its one low door, was an undercroft used for storing fodder and probably for housing livestock as well.

Our welcome was friendly enough, though formal. As we dismounted, the door at the top of the steps opened, and a steward in black velvet livery, with a gold chain of office, came down to meet us, to bow in respectful greeting and ask our names. He recognized mine and his stiff manner unbent somewhat.

“Madame de la Roche will certainly be most welcome
in this house. Master Bycroft is with his bailiff at the moment but will join you shortly as will the mistress when she has finished hearing her chaplain’s daily reading from a devotional work. Mistress Bycroft is a most pious lady and ours is a pious household, but we are also hospitable as you will find. Here are the grooms to see to your horses. Come in!”

The steward no doubt thought he was telling the truth when he said that Bycroft was hospitable. So it was, in a way. Dale and I were shown to a bedchamber with a crimson-hung four-poster bed, and a maidservant came to conjure a fire into life for us. There were, however, no fur or sheepskin rugs to welcome one’s toes on freezing mornings, as I had at Withysham and Mattie had at Thamesbank. Even the Elkinthorpes had had rugs. Here, there was just the floor, with an old-fashioned strewing of rushes.

The ceiling was ornate, with painted and gilded crisscross beams, but the walls were bare gray stone, unadorned except for one small wall hanging depicting the Last Supper. A plain toilet stand held a simple earthenware set of basin and ewer. Far more noticeable—beautifully carved, in fact—was the priedieu for private devotions. The housekeeper who showed
me and Dale to the room pointed it out immediately, as something that I would most certainly wish to use.

“The mistress spends perhaps three hours a day at hers, madam.”

“Most admirable,” I said, and was thankful that Dale, who was ardently Protestant, had the self-restraint not to make any acid remarks about popish practices until the housekeeper had gone.

“I do say private prayers sometimes, Dale,” I said mildly. “You know that.”

“You do it decently, ma’am; just a few quiet prayers, kneeling by your bed as a Christian should. Not making a show of it like this.”

“Well, we must keep up the pretense. We were told that this was a pious household. I can trust you, I hope.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Dale, and I knew she would keep her word. In France, failing to guard her tongue had once landed her in a dungeon and she had never forgotten it.

Hot washing water was brought and Dale, after going to investigate, found a drying room where our damp linen could be aired. Brockley reported that the stabling was satisfactory, that the horses were being properly rubbed down and fed, and that he had been offered adequate accommodation among the other grooms in the stable loft. “You’d best stay with the mistress tonight, Fran, but I shan’t sleep cold, don’t worry.”

The hospitality, in fact, was there, but it had an austere tinge. The steward’s statement that this was a pious household, though, was entirely true. Piety suffused
the place. The priedieu and Mistress Bycroft’s hours at it were merely details in a bigger pattern.

We dined an hour after our arrival, in a hall with more bare stone walls, except for some coats of arms and one large crucifix. Master Bycroft, tall, dark-bearded, and grave of mien, presided at one end of the table. At the other end sat his wife. Her hair was hidden under a matronly cap but her pale complexion and huge gray eyes suggested that she was probably fair. She had a disconcerting habit of fixing you with those great eyes when she spoke to you, as though she were trying to read your soul.