The Fugitive Queen (13 page)

“Mistress Stannard,” said Pen, rising, “this is Mistress Adeliza Holme and her five daughters.”

 • • • 

We could hardly avoid asking them to dine. Agnes coped, augmenting the capons she had been roasting with a cold chicken pie and offering a custard as well as almond fritters. Adeliza Holme was full of neighborly assurances that she knew that Tyesdale had been sadly neglected and that if we needed anything, any help getting the house or land into good order, we had but to send to her and she would do her best. Like Mistress Moss, whom she believed we had met, she was a widow, her dear Thomas having been called to God two years since.

“Leaving me in fair circumstances, though with five girls to find portions for, I've still not much to spare. Luckily I think Kate and Mabel, my two eldest, are settled . . .”

She had come, undoubtedly, to inspect her daughters' opposition, meaning Pen. She was well mannered enough not to look relieved that Pen was comparatively plain, and Tyesdale rundown, but I guessed that she was. I understood. Five girls are a heavy responsibility. They were pleasant wenches, well spoken
and lively, and I had no designs on the Moss boys. I wanted someone better than that for Pen.

I liked the family, even if it had, in the father's lifetime, featured on a list of Mary Stuart's supporters. That had probably faded out since Thomas's death. Mistress Holme had other things to worry about now. As with the Mosses and the Thwaites, I asked the Holmes for ideas about who might have attacked us in the mist, and like the Mosses and the Thwaites, they were horrified, full of commiseration for the poor young man who had died, and completely puzzled. “But grateful to be warned,” Adeliza said. “My girls will be staying close to the house until the mystery is solved.”

They rode off after dinner. In the evening, John Ryder came back from Bolton bearing a missive from Sir Francis Knollys. I was welcome at the castle whenever I chose to come. As requested in my note, he had told Mary Stuart that I was in Yorkshire, and explained that although I was now called Stannard, I had formerly been Ursula Blanchard. Lady Mary (he did not refer to her as a queen) remembered our meeting in Edinburgh three years ago and would be delighted to see me. I and any companions I brought were invited to spend two nights at Bolton.

I'd go the next day and take Pen with me; I decided. Meg could stay quietly at Tyesdale with Sybil. “You can go on with the account books. I think it's Meg's turn for instruction in interpreting such things,” I told Sybil. “Keep looking out for any sign that Master Whitely has been up to something.”

While I was delivering messages to Mary and trying to coax secrets out of her, I thought, I would also ask Sir Francis's advice on how to pursue the matter of Harry Hobson, and furthermore, I would explore the circles of society in which Sir Francis moved. I was more likely, I thought, to find someone suitable for Pen there than at Tyesdale.

I've made other mistakes in the course of my life but I doubt if I ever made a worse miscalculation than that.

Bolton Castle was lonely, well away from the town of the same name. Close to the castle, there was only a small hamlet. The castle itself had four square towers and a cramped courtyard and a curiously irrelevant air, as it frowned out across a landscape that no longer needed either its protection or its control and was mainly peopled by flocks of cud-chewing sheep and cattle.

However, it was bustling and lively enough inside. Sir Francis Knollys, grave, courteous, and neat, with a little pointed beard, came out to the courtyard in person to greet us and escort the ladies indoors and up to a sizable, well-appointed bedchamber.

Hot washing water, towels, a smoothing iron, and a tray of refreshments appeared shortly afterward. I had made sure that Pen and I had brought gowns suitable for calling on royalty. Dale unpacked our hampers, found a maids' room where there was a fire for heating the iron, and saw to the creases. Soon, we were ready to attend on Mary.

I was in satin, cream and tawny, a color scheme I have always liked. Pen was in dark blue summer-weight velvet. Pen, I had discovered, could wear colors that most young girls could not. The shades that suited Meg, such as white or crimson or apple green, somehow made Pen plainer than ever. Put her in the colors more commonly worn by older women, such as black, lavender, or dark blue, and an astonishing new Pen was revealed, a
grave and intelligent young woman in whom an austere beauty was beginning to emerge.

The operative word, though, was
beginning.
Before that beauty could come fully into the light, she still had some maturing to do and I thought to myself that only marriage would achieve it. However, a little courtly gloss would help meanwhile, and since Pen had been ejected from Elizabeth's entourage, maybe Mary Stuart would provide it instead.

“Now,” I said, “I'll find out if Queen Mary is ready to receive us.”

On the way down to the hall to inquire, we met a young man in a clerk's dark gown, hurrying up the staircase toward us. He stopped, looking up at us, and asked if we were Mistress Stannard and Mistress Mason. If so, he said, Sir Francis had sent him to take us to the Lady Mary. “The Lady Mary knows you are here and is eager to see you. If you are ready, I am to take you both to her at once. Sir Francis has been caught up with a business matter. I am Tobias Littleton, undersecretary in the service of Sir Francis Knollys, at your service,” he added, bowing.

“Thank you. Please lead the way,” I said.

It was a complicated journey, to a different floor on the other side of the castle. As we went Littleton talked to us, particularly to Pen, for it appeared that he knew her brother George. George, it seemed, had been sent away to school for a couple of years and had made Littleton's acquaintance there.

“We still write to each other now and then. He will be most interested to know that I have met you,” Littleton said.

Then, politely, he transferred his attention to me and talked about the remoteness of Bolton Castle and the difficulties of obtaining supplies of necessities. “We bought up all the local chandler's stock of candles in the first week we were here, and had to send to Bolton town, and as for getting silk thread for the Lady Mary's embroidery . . .!”

“
Lady
Mary?” I remembered that Sir Francis had referred to her in that way. “But surely—she's a queen.”

“Sir Francis's orders, Mistress Stannard, on account of the fact that she has had to abandon her realm. She is to be known only by the title of lady. As I was saying, buying the right sewing
silks for her is a challenge.” He laughed, though in an indulgent fashion. “Embroidery is a pastime she much enjoys and she needs occupation, but she is so particular! When she first came here, we had to send nigh on seventy miles to York to get what she required. But I can understand her. This is a strange way of life for a woman who was once a monarch. Sir Francis does what he can and spends much time talking with her—about religion, as often as not. He has ambitions,” said our guide, “to convert her to the Anglican church but she defies him. She is always gentle and sweet-mannered, but beneath that, she is as resolute as steel.”

As we neared our destination, Littleton went ahead to speak to the guards outside Mary's door. “What a charming young man!” whispered Pen, as he receded out of hearing.

“Keep a watch on yourself,” I muttered back. I too had been observing Littleton with attention but of a different kind. I had noticed that he had the indoor man's pale complexion, but that he was tall and well made, a personable young fellow. If he had been at school with George Mason, he was presumably from a similar level of society, as well. I saw why he appealed to Pen. Very likely, he appealed to Mary, too. “I fancy,” I whispered, “that Queen—or Lady—Mary has made a friend of Master Littleton. Sir Francis may also be under her spell, even if he won't address her as royalty. Queen Elizabeth had some doubts about him.”

“Oh, Mistress Stannard! Sometimes you are so . . . so down-to-earth!” Pen protested.

“Better than having your head in the clouds,” I told her brusquely.

The brusqueness was because I was uncomfortably aware that I must keep my own head out of the clouds. I knew very well how easy it was to fall under Mary's spell. I had come here partly to find out what, if any, part she had played in the death of her husband and I was hating the task because I was so unwilling to think that perhaps she had.

A few moments later, I was even more unwilling. Over three years had gone by since I last saw Mary Stuart and much had happened to me during those years. I had never forgotten the
effect she had had on me, but all the same, time had blurred it somewhat. Now, as I came face-to-face with her, it returned in a flood.

When we were shown in to her, she looked almost as she had the first time I met her, at Holyrood in Edinburgh. She was sitting in a good light, talking with another lady while they both worked at embroidery, and on a table beside them were two workboxes and a book and a scatter of bright silks. As Littleton announced us, Pen and I sank into curtsies, but at once, Mary was on her feet, casting her work aside, coming forward with hands outstretched, leaning down to us from her willowy height, raising us, exclaiming: “Come now, no ceremony. I am so glad to see you!”

And as I had been at that first meeting at Holyrood, I found myself bemused and enchanted. As I tried to reply, I stammered.

Mary laughed. “Oh, my dearest Ursula! Don't be tongue-tied! You are Mistress Stannard now, I believe; I have it right, have I not? And this is your ward, Penelope Mason? Sir Francis told me that Mistress Stannard was bringing you. You are so very welcome. Be seated, both of you. Marie, do you remember Ursula?”

She had lost not one whit of her old magic.

It was not just her musical voice, speaking in the mixture of French and Scots-cum-English that I had grown used to at Holy-rood and found rather charming. Nor was it her beauty, for now that I saw her at close quarters, I realized with a pang of sympathy that some of that had been worn away, probably forever. She had seen trouble since we last met. Her golden-brown eyes were tired and new lines marred the once flawless complexion. The red-gold curls in front of her dainty pearl-edged cap were duller than I remembered, and very short. Cecil had said that she had cut her hair when she escaped from Scotland. It looked as though it hadn't grown very much.

What she retained, however, and in a greater measure than ever, it seemed, was that gift of making you believe when she spoke to you that you were the only person in her world or in her
thoughts—that she had been waiting patiently for you, and you alone, to come to her.

In moments, we were all seated. The girl she had called Marie, using the French version of the name they both shared, greeted us as well and I remembered her as one of the ladies who had been with Mary at that first meeting in Edinburgh. She was a soft-voiced young woman whose real name was Mary Seton. She was one of four girls called Mary who had formed the Queen of Scotland's entourage of ladies, but the only one still with her, for the other three were now married.

“My last Marie has come to share my exile and these quarters,” Mary told me as she settled into her chair again. She looked around the room, which although comfortable and well lit by mullioned and leaded windows, was sadly cramped. “We make the best of what little state I am allowed. She instructs my other maids—local girls, well meaning but untrained, mostly. We sew together, as you see, and Marie attends to my toilette. She has a great gift for dressing hair, even hair which has been roughly hacked short and soaked in seaspray. She has ordered some wigs for me, too. And now, Ursula . . .”

Then she was asking how my marriage had come about, and what my new home was like; what had brought me to the north, how long I expected to stay before returning home, and how had Mistress Mason come to be my ward?

For fifteen minutes, I talked with her, answering her questions, and admiring her needlework. I brought Pen into the conversation now and then, talking of Tyesdale, of my hopes of finding Pen a husband, of the merlin that Pen's mother had sent me. I did not mention Harry to her, for I knew that, being a sequestered prisoner, she could offer me no help there and would only be saddened. As it was, she seemed charmed with everything I told her, and I, Ursula Stannard, life-worn, experienced, and on occasion ruthless, found myself sinking into her kindness as though it were a feather bed.

Presently, a maidservant arrived with cakes and sweet wine. When she had gone, Tobias handed the tray around, remarking that he might as well make himself useful, since strictly speaking,
he shouldn't leave the room. “I'm supposed to supervise your conversation,” he said apologetically.

“I have few privileges, as you see,” said Mary. “Even a peasant has the right to private talk, which I have not. I am not even allowed to be addressed as a queen!” She met my eyes sorrowfully. “But in my own eyes, I am still Queen of Scotland and, indeed, no one has ever said that I am not still a Queen Dowager of France. I am and will remain a queen even if I live a thousand years in captivity.”

“Is it a very severe captivity?” I asked. One at least of my ulterior motives in coming here was nothing to be ashamed of. I felt no reluctance to pass on Elizabeth's message, but to do so, I needed more privacy than this. Master Littleton was horribly in the way. I looked toward the window and said: “There is open country out there. Are you not allowed out at all—to ride or to hawk? I am teaching my daughter to hawk at the moment—I have presented the merlin to her. Pen also likes falconry.”

“I have been permitted a little such exercise. Sir Francis was concerned for my health. But he seems to be afraid to let me ride out often. As though I might suddenly sprout wings like one of the falcons, and fly away!” said Mary with asperity.