The Doublet Affair (Ursula Blanchard Mysteries) (39 page)

“Most prisoners are ’igher rank and get tower rooms and servants. We bring ’em down ’ere to scare ’em into answering questions—that’s what the basement’s mostly used for. It’s not that usual to ’ave the likes of this one down ’ere, all the time, like.”

“That’s true,” said the gentleman gaoler. “The Tower is supposed to be for men of position. A dishonest clockmaker is not,” he added in tones of fastidious disapproval, “what I am accustomed to.”

“He’s in the Tower because of the stature of his crime,” said Cecil. “It’s the crime that entitles him to be here, not his social standing. Take heart. He won’t be with you for much longer.”

“Oh, ’e’s no trouble,” said the turnkey cheerfully, pausing to light us round a corner. “Except that ’e seems to ’ave lost ’is appetite. Can’t get ’im to eat, nohow. Pity. ’E’ll be too weak to last long when ’e goes on show.”

I shuddered, wishing I hadn’t come, and knowing, too, that I couldn’t have lived with myself if I had stayed away.

We went on to the foot of the steps, turned left and came to a massive, iron-studded door with a torch in a wall sconce above. Our guide selected a key and pushed it into the lock.

“I shouldn’t think,” said Cecil in my ear, “that your lock-picks would have much effect on that. It must be ten times bigger than anything they’re meant for.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” I said, feeling instinctively at my hidden pocket and its contents. I was in no mood for pleasantries.

The turnkey swung the door open and stepped in.
“Visitor for you, Mew! A pretty lady, too. Ain’t you the lucky fellow?” He moved aside and beckoned me forward. “ ’Ere you are, then.”

“We’ll all be just here,” said Cecil, “but take care.”

I went in. The cell was small and it reeked, of ordure and sweat. A barred grating, high up in one wall, cast a faint daylight into the room. Against the wall furthest from the door, Mew was curled up tightly on a straw pallet, his knees drawn up to his chest as if in a desperate attempt to protect the vitals which must soon be exposed to the executioner’s blade. When the turnkey announced me, the only response was a moan.

“Mr. Mew?” I said, hesitantly. I went over to him and stood there nervously, longing to get this over, to get away. I put my hand on his shoulder. He shuddered under it, but then looked up at me. His eyes were feral with fear. He was more like an animal than a human being.

“You!”

He sat up slowly, as though movement were difficult. Despite the gloom, I could see the untrimmed hair hanging limply round his ears, and when he put up a hand to push it out of his eyes, a chain clanked. He was very thin and his bony wrists were shackled to chains which hung from the wall above the bed. He could move a few steps from the bed but no more. He had adequate clothes and rugs—he was clearly not going to be allowed to die of lung congestion—but everything was filthy and he smelt.

I had wanted to dress plainly for this visit, but I could hardly go about with Sir William Cecil and the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, looking like a beggar-woman.
My gown and kirtle were unpretentious, thin summer-weight wool, brown over pale yellow, but there was embroidery on my kirtle and sleeves, and my farthingale was quite wide. I felt tastelessly overdressed.

Mew was waiting for me to say something. I must speak.

“Mr. Mew, I . . . I had to do as I did, but I grieve to see you or any man in this state. I came . . . I came to say that I crave the mercy of God for you, and a swift end to your pains. I will pray for you.”

“Am I supposed to thank you?” Mew enquired. “Well, I’ll need prayers. That’s true enough.”

“You shall have them, I promise.”

I hesitated, and then I held out my right hand and grasped his, just for a moment. My skin crawled at the feel of his cold, damp palm, and the healed burn scars across my own palms momentarily throbbed at the pressure. I released him, trying not to be too quick about it.

With a faint attempt at sangfroid, he added, “Sorry I can’t offer you anything in return. You don’t need
my
prayers.”

“You could tell me something,” I said. “You could tell me what it was that Dawson overheard at Lockhill. He listened at doors, didn’t he?”

“Oh, him. Yes. Damned, prying, snooping . . . Jennet saw him. Putting his ear to the door of that back room where they used to hear mass. She told me. She was just gossiping. She didn’t know I was one of the people in the room. Crichton was the other.”

“So she heard
you!
What were you saying? I’d like to know—to understand.”

“Does it matter?” He shrugged and then answered anyway. “I was trying to make Crichton see that the scheme was stupid. It all depended on Wilkins believing in it, but sooner or later he’d see it was no good and realise how we’d cozened him into it. Wilkins is a fool, but he’d be a bad enemy if Mary Stuart ever did get on to the throne and he had power again. I wanted to
stop
the idea, but they wouldn’t listen. I prayed Mason would kill himself in that gliding thing and then I wouldn’t have to be afraid of him finding out about the music box any more. I encouraged him to build it.”

“I expect I’d have felt the same,” I said. “Thank you for explaining. I really will pray.” I began to back away. His voice stopped me.

“Mrs. Blanchard.”

I paused. “Yes?”

“The music box I gave the Queen. Does she still have it? Does she ever play it? It was exquisite.” In Mew’s tremulous tones were an echo of former pride. “I’ve never made anything so pleasing. Does she listen to it?”

“No,” said Cecil, from the door, cutting across the lie I was about to tell. “She does not. Your box has been destroyed, Mew, and no other like it will ever be made. It was a fair invention, but you have tainted it for ever.”

“But I did take a music box for my daughter,” I said. “You remember? She still has it and plays with it.”

“Does she? Thank you, Mrs. Blanchard,” Mew said.

Cecil almost pulled me out of the cell. “That man,
if you recall, is a murderer. He nearly got rid of you! And Dale! I wish,” said Cecil, “that I knew what all this was truly about. Were you really so anxious to know what Dawson discovered?”

“I was curious, yes. And I have been clearing my conscious, Sir William.”

“And is it now clear?”

“As much as possible, yes.”

“You make very little sense,” said Cecil crossly.

• • •

On a bench under a sycamore tree overlooking the river, I sat with Cecil. Thamesbank House lay behind us, and in front of us the grass stretched down to the sunlit river. It was a windy sunshine: there were wavelets on the sparkling water and the tree above us tossed in the gusts. On the grass, Meg played with the Henderson children. Bridget was watching the game and sometimes joining in. It was a pity, I thought, that the Mason children could not share this well-ordered household. When I had made my farewells to them, the girls had all cried, and so had I. I missed them.

Meanwhile, Cecil was talking to me.

“I came to tell you something, Ursula. You were aware, of course, that Mew was to be executed a week ago?”

“Yes.
Was
to be executed?” I enquired. “I have not heard the latest news, I’m afraid.”

“Had you been at court, you would have heard. The Queen has been generous with her leave of absence.”

“I fell ill, Sir William, while visiting Meg. Today is my first day up.”

“Indeed? What was it? A fever?”

“A fever and a series of sick headaches. I am prone to them, unfortunately. But what of Barnabas Mew? You said he was to be executed—does that mean that the execution didn’t after all take place? He was reprieved?”

“No. He died in convulsions, possibly from fear, before he came to Tyburn. Shortly after your visit, in fact.”

“Really? A merciful escape, I suppose.”

“Yes. Something strange,” said Cecil, “was found when Mew’s cell was cleared out. I was informed of it this morning. Hidden among the rugs on his bed was a little glass phial, empty except for a drop or two of some dark liquid. According to the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, who passed the information to me, a single tiny leaf was stuck at the bottom of the phial—a little needle-shaped leaf such as the yew tree bears. The inference is that the phial contained yew tree poison. One wonders how Mew could have come by it.”

“Indeed yes. How extraordinary,” I said.

“You believed, did you not, that the poison which was meant to kill you and nearly did kill Dale, was a brew made from yew foliage?”

“I think it possible, yes. Yew twigs were found in Crichton’s room.”

“The means to make the poison would be easily come by, of course. Anyone might have done it. Mew had various visitors. You were one. There were also different gaolers at different times, officials who came to question him, chaplains bringing religious comfort.”

“And gaolers,” I said, “are notoriously willing to be bribed.”

“Quite. It’s a mystery,” said Cecil, “and I daresay it will never be solved.” He rose to his feet. “Are you returning to court soon? There will be work for you. Lady Catherine Grey, the Queen’s cousin, has been behaving oddly. She is very often not where she ought to be, and has been seen in places—rooms, courtyards, gardens, here and there in the royal residences—where she has no business to go. If challenged, she always has an excuse, but she had been involved in intrigue before, as you and I know. We thought you might like to undertake the task of watching her.”

“I shall return to court tomorrow, Sir William,” I said.

“Does her musical box still amuse Meg?” Cecil rose, brushing a few sycamore leaves from his doublet.

“No,” I said. “Meg is a child, after all. The box lasted a fortnight and then she broke it.”

“And you told Mew she was still playing with it, to comfort him? You really are the most extraordinary creature,” said Cecil. “Until tomorrow, then. I hope your recovery continues smoothly. Take care of yourself.”

He disappeared into the house, and I remained sitting on the bench, hoping that I really would feel equal to taking up court life again in the morning.

It was true that I had had a sick headache after my visit to the Tower, but it had only lasted a day. I had woken, the day after that, to another kind of pain.

At Lockhill, I had had one night with Matthew, just one night. During our brief married life the previous autumn, I had guarded against conception, with the
aid of a vinegar-soaked sponge, but at Lockhill I had simply never thought about it. And one night had been enough, or too much.

Not that it mattered now. The shock of seeing Mew in his condemned cell, which had brought on the blinding headache the following day, had also brought on the miscarriage the day after.

Matthew’s child would have been a considerable complication in my life, but the strength of my grief surprised me. How I would endure the court, how I would hold up my head and smile when I felt as though the world had ended and my spirit had been torn in pieces, I did not know.

I could do nothing, I thought, but rest against whatever satisfactions I had. I had penetrated the Lockhill plot, and I had done what I could for the pitiful Mew. My hidden pocket had that day contained more than just my lock-picks: I had used my body and my wide farthingale to hide my movements from the watchers in the doorway, and when I took his hand, I had pressed the phial into it. It had been more effective than prayer, although I had kept my word about that and spent an hour on my knees for him, that same evening.

I rose from the bench and strolled down the path towards the river, moving carefully. I was still bleeding, although it was lessening now.

What could Catherine Grey be up to? She had been caught out in serious delinquency in the past. It ran in her family. Her mother, a niece of old King Henry’s, had been as ambitious a schemer as the world had ever seen. Catherine’s sister, Lady Jane Grey, had been their mother’s pawn and her end on the blcok should have
discouraged any ideas Catherine might harbour, of plotting against the Queen. However, I had reason to know that the warning hadn’t been entirely effective.

Catherine had had a good, sensible friend in Lady Jane Seymour, but it was that same Jane Seymour who had lately died. She had always been frail. Catherine now had no one to give her good advice.

If I were to shadow Catherine Grey at court, though, I would have to be careful. She didn’t like me. It would be quite a challenge, but I ought to take it up, not just for the pay, but for Catherine’s own sake. If she were really doing something stupid, I might, if I were quick enough, be able to deflect her before she put her neck at risk.

Smiling at Bridget and the children as I passed them, I made my way to the landing stage and stood looking down into the water. Here, close to the bank and sheltered by the jetty, it was calm despite the wind, and I could see the reflection of my own face. I did not really resemble Elizabeth, for she had light red hair and golden-brown eyes, while my hair was black, and although my eyes were hazel, they often looked dark. However, my face was pointed, like hers, and like her I had a naturally pale skin. As I gazed at my gently rippling reflection in the water, it struck me that my face, like Elizabeth’s, resembled a shield. It was certainly no guide to its owner’s nature.

No one, I thought, would see in me a woman who had picked locks and hunted criminals. They would not see the woman who only recently had secretly plucked foliage from the Henderson’s topiary, and then asked to spend the night at Thamesbank, and sat
up into the small hours, stewing the green yew needles over the hearth in her bedchamber.

I had that night done violence to something in myself, even though my purpose was not murder, but mercy. Even then, something else had been at work. In asking to see Mew, I had made an opportunity to satisfy my curiosity over what, precisely, Jackdaw had overheard at Lockhill. Thinking of that, I recoiled from myself with distaste.

It wouldn’t do. If I were to pursue my curious calling further, I must make what terms I could with its darker side.

Elizabeth had called me tender hearted, but was I? Perhaps Matthew was right: perhaps deep within this heart of mine, there was a point of ice.