Queen of Ambition (28 page)

“No,” said Mistress Jester. “No, I cannot. I only know that the mere idea terrifies me, for my daughter’s sake, and yes—because although I fled from my husband, he is still my husband and I would not like to think of him … facing a traitor’s end.”

“Did you know of the secret room or the stairway in the buttress tower?” Rob asked her.

“No,” said Sybil. “Athough my father—who had the house built—did tell me that he had built hidden ways of escape into it. He wanted them in case he had to flee from a charge of heresy. He was terrified of that. He had … seen a burning once. He told me that it haunted him; that he couldn’t forget it.”

“I heard a description of it once,” I said. “The uncle and aunt who brought me up forced me to listen. It gave me nightmares.” Of all the things I had against Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert, that hideous incident, when they held me so that I could not stop my
ears while they poured horrors into them, was and always would be among the most powerful.

“When my mother was alive,” Sybil said, “she told me once that my father used to have nightmares, too. He was a good Protestant. And so is my husband—it was one thing on which he and my father agreed. I can’t believe that my husband is caught up in a plot against the life of the queen. That is what you fear, is it not? As for Master Woodforde, he has little interest in politics or religion. I think,” said Sybil with unexpected, dry humor, “that he worships a goddess called Lady Lennox.”

“Lady Lennox wouldn’t care if the queen were killed,” said Henderson bluntly.

“Lady Lennox isn’t fool enough to risk her neck on the block,” said Cecil. “If you mean that she is paying Woodforde to act as an assassin on her behalf, I find it difficult to believe. There was nothing at all in the letters you saw that might help, Ursula?”

“Not overtly,” I said. “But I think they may be in cipher. I found …”

“They weren’t in cipher. We tested several of them, from both men, and there was no sign of such a thing,” Cecil cut me short. “I told you that.”

I opened my mouth to persist but Sybil was quicker. “But my husband and Giles Woodforde
did
correspond in cipher!”

Cecil turned to her. “Did they? But my expert clerks insisted … What kind of cipher?”

“Oh, a very clumsy one. They had to write letters a hundred miles long in order to exchange quite short messages. It was a game between them. They started it
as boys. They kept a note of the key, in the form of drawings.”

“Drawings?” Cecil frowned.

I reached into my hidden pocket and drew out the set of sketches that I had stolen from the chest in Jester’s attic.

“Like these?” I asked.

Mistress Grantley took hold of her stick and levered herself to her feet. “I have learned all I need to know. I have not only been lied to by Dr. Barley, whom I trusted, and led into giving my countenance, unawares, to an errant wife and mother, but it seems that the family she comes from is less than respectable. They correspond in cipher and are suspected of treachery. I will take my leave. Will someone be good enough to assist me to the street? My groom is waiting there for me.”

“I saw him as we came in,” I remarked politely. “By the way, Brockley, where are our horses?”

“I paid a college serving boy to take them back to Radley’s,” Brockley said. “I will help you, Mistress Grantley, if Mistress Blanchard permits.”

“Certainly,” I said.

Mistress Grantley gave me a cold glare. “I will accept his aid, but it would have been more courteous
to ask me first whether it was agreeable to me. I fancy, however, that he is simply your servant and is obedient as servants should be. I will overlook his impertinence in taking it on himself to decide that we should be brought here. It was the right place, after all.” She turned to Sybil and Cecil together. “There is no question, of course, of Mistress
Jester
returning to Brent Hay. She is dismissed. My charitable gifts to the university will, however, continue as before; I do not blame the university for any of this. With Mistress
Jester
I will have no more to do. I am a woman of standing and of moral standards. You must fend for yourself, my lady. Your
friends
perhaps will help you.”

“I must ask you, before you leave, to give an undertaking not to discuss this matter with any other person,” said Cecil smoothly. “It is state business.”

Mistress Grantley, not in the least impressed either by Cecil’s position or his air of gravitas, shifted her chilly blue stare to him. “No one has ever challenged my discretion in the past and I trust will have no cause so to do in the future,” she informed him, with awe-inspiring dignity. “On that you may depend.”

“Thank you. And if there are outstanding wages due to Mistress Jester, I trust they will be paid?” Cecil added.

“I am also an honest woman. The wages, and her personal belongings too, will be dispatched to her if Mistress Jester will send word of where she is staying.”

“Show Mistress Grantley out, Brockley,” said Cecil. “When you return, you and Wat may go to the buttery and ask for some food. You must need it. My clerk out there will show you the way. You are not to leave the
college, however. My clerk will also arrange for you to have somewhere to sleep. Don’t look so frightened, Wat. You are not under arrest! I merely don’t want wild talk spreading all over Cambridge. You will go home when the queen’s visit is safely over. For the moment, go and wait in the anteroom till Brockley comes back. Master Henderson, take Ryder and Dodd and go to the pie shop. If Woodforde and Jester are still there, though I doubt it, fetch them in. If they’re not there, give chase. They may have made for Norwich or Lynn in the hope of getting away by sea.”

Rob went quickly out. Brockley took Mistress Grantley’s arm and helped her from the room and Wat, looking like a worried ox, followed them. The rest of us regarded one another with raised brows. “You have been living with Mistress Grantley forwhat? Five years?” I asked Sybil.

“She isn’t—wasn’t—such a bad mistress,” Sybil said calmly. She seemed to have a calm temperament altogether. “While she believed I was a widowed relative of Dr. Barley—that was the tale we told her—she treated me quite well. She is autocratic, but as long as I did her bidding and was respectful, I had nothing of which to complain. She keeps her tenants’ roofs in good repair, dresses cuts and burns if her servants hurt themselves, gives them generous presents at Christmas. But—there are things she doesn’t understand.”

“Obviously!” I said.

Cecil had been looking at the drawings I had stolen. “There is a cipher to break. It looks as though you were right, Ursula. As it happens, because I brought a number of document boxes with me in order to carry
on with various items of business, I also have with me copies of the letters we intercepted at Richmond. I didn’t expect them to feature in the business but nevertheless, they’re stored in one of the boxes, so they’re here. Would you put your head out of the door and ask the clerk out there to bring in box number three?”

I did so, and after leafing through the box for a moment he had found what he wanted. He handed me a sheaf of papers. “Here they are. Since I have clerks who are skilled at deciphering codes, I would normally call on them to deal with this, but they are still in Richmond. However, it seems that you and Mistress Jester between you may in any case have the edge on them as regards this one. Are you feeling quite better now?”

“Yes, thank you, Sir William. It was only—I’d had a fright,” I said candidly. “I am sorry I was so foolish.”

“I wouldn’t call it foolish. Where on earth is that wine I sent for? Nanny, go and hurry them up, will you? And ask for some food as well, for the ladies. Now, Mistress Jester and Mistress Blanchard, can you make a start on the deciphering? I, alas, must see the Fellows. I can’t keep them waiting any longer, and Dudley is supposed to be coming with them, so I am expecting him as well.”

Cecil’s quarters included a writing room, to which Sybil and I, attended by Dale, now took the letters and drawings. There was a desk, placed in front of the mullioned window for the sake of a good light, and equipped with inkstand, prepared quills, sander, and
paper. There were a couple of side tables too, and several padded stools. The wine and food arrived, and Dale, still subdued, filled glasses for us. “Fill one for yourself,” I said gently. “And eat something as well. Brockley has forgiven you now, you know. Was he so very angry with you?”

“We were riding along together, coming back to Cambridge, when I told him, ma’am. He couldn’t say much because Mistress Grantley and Mistress Jester were there, but, oh, what he did say … !”

“It will be all right now,” I said. “I promise. Most men are pleased enough to know that their wives love them, you know. Think no more about it.” I paused and reinforced what I had said to her in the lodging that morning. “If I have ever seemed to be too friendly toward Brockley, please excuse me. I am sorry if it gave you pain, but truly, there was no harm in it.” That was a lie, but I said it for Dale’s sake, and from now on it must become the truth I had sworn that it was.

We set out the food. Dale ate at a side table, while Sybil and I sat down together at the desk with our platters, wineglasses, and documents all arranged before us. I thought with a touch of amusement that to anyone glancing into the room, we would present a most misleading picture. Such an onlooker would see two women quietly taking refreshments while reading letters and looking at drawings. No doubt the onlooker would have smiled fondly, assuming the letters to be from husbands or friends, full of affectionate phrases, dignified pious sentiments, and instructions about family or household business; the drawings to be
examples of our feminine pastimes, probably inexpert, but a source of innocent amusement.

The notion that we were a pair of code breakers, hoping to decipher proof of a treacherous plot against the queen, would never have entered such a person’s head.

Although he might have been surprised at the lack of feminine chatter and laughter. We had no inclination for either. Sybil, spreading the drawings out on the table, said: “It looks as though they have extended the code since I last saw it. It was clever of you to suspect that these might contain a key, Mistress Blanchard …”

“Ursula,” I said to her. “Since we are to work together.”

“Well, it was very sharp of you, and sharper still to seize your chance and bring them away.” Sybil’s dark eyes, so like her daughter’s except for their gravely tranquil expression, scanned my face. “I must say I admire you. I suppose you have guessed at the principle?”

“I think so. There are twenty-six sheets here. That was what made me so certain. I take it that each is a key to a letter of the alphabet, and each letter must be”—I paused, rubbing my forehead—“am I right? Each letter is represented by a word, or sometimes by alternative words, and these drawings are to help anyone using the code to remember what the words are. The parts of the drawings that … that illustrate the words, are very clearly shown, while the rest isn’t. Is that it? This first one, which would be the letter A, has an apple clearly drawn, and the dapples on the
pony, and a church or perhaps a chapel. Is that it?”

“Yes, and either
chapel
or
church
could be used as code words for
A
,” Sybil said, “along with
apple
and
dapple
. In the days before Roland and I began to quarrel, I used to help him write and read the cipher letters—I was allowed to take part in the game, as it were. That’s how it all started; just as a game between Roland and Giles. I enjoyed it! At first, when they were just boys, they used words that began with the letter of the alphabet they represented, and only one for each letter. Then they decided that this was too obvious—the same words would keep on reappearing and it was difficult to write anything that read like an ordinary letter. So they decided to have a choice of words for each letter, and not all with the same initial letter. They said let’s use words which rhyme with the original code word as
dapple
rhymes with
apple
—as you seem to have worked out.”

“It’s a clever device,” I said. “Very hard to come at, without the key.”

“It changed over the course of time,” Sybil said. “To start with,
weather
was one of the words for
W
, and
rain
was one of the words for
R
, but they found that they wanted to use those words freely sometimes, so they took them out of the code. They settled that R should be
river
or
ring
, and
W
should be
weal
or
wander
. Then, in my day, they thought of going a step further and employing words that were linked to the original ones or were more or less synonyms, like
church
sometimes instead of
chapel
. That was Roland’s idea. It made the text much less repetitive. One of the words they used to represent
T
was
time
—but they might say
timepiece
,
or
clock
or even
sundial
as well! Those two know each other so well that they can manage like that. I’m not sure it would work between people who aren’t so close.”

“Dear God,” I said, looking in despair at the letters on the table in front of us.

“We have the drawings,” said Sybil. “And I was quite good at this, once on a time. Let’s just try. Roland and Giles had ways of making things easier for themselves by little secret signals. Just before a code word, they would write something carelessly, sloping upward a little instead of on a level. When you were used to it, you could recognize the signal at once. But these letters are copies and I don’t suppose the clerks copied little quirks like that …” She picked up one letter and then another and sighed. “No, they didn’t. Well, we must do without. Let’s to work.”

“They’ve added to the words for
T
,” Sybil said, examining the sketches, which we had laid out carefully in rows, in the right order, with the letter each sheet was meant to represent noted in the top left-hand corner. “And to some others, I think;
I
and
J
for instance, and also
T
and
M
. The letter I was always
eye, ink
, or
ivy
. It looks as if
island
has been added and from the people skating, I would guess that
ice
has, as well.
J
always had
jester
or
jest
and
jay
or
popinjay
—that’s the sketch of a jester with a popinjay on his shoulder. But why there’s also a picture of a man asleep, I don’t know. The drawing for
T
always used to be a sundial—that was the reminder for
time, clock
, and the actual word
sundial
as
well. But now there’s a woman at a table, combing her hair. The table and the hair are clearly emphasized …”