The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's (25 page)

It had been a moment for which I can scarcely find words, even now, when I am old, my passions turned to cold ashes, and the men I once loved nothing but memories. Matthew’s name had emerged from the welter of the cipher by stages. 52 5 120 60 32 25 138 12 20 60 6 54 60 15 48 15. Those had been the numerals, and I began dividing them—the 52 was in the column for division by 4—quite unsuspecting, and very tired. The candles were burning low and my eyes felt hot and heavy. It was deep in the night, and I ached for sleep.

I was almost in a trance as the name
Matthew
came off the end of my quill, and even then I only thought of it as a name. My second husband had been called Matthew but so were many men. It meant nothing, beyond a slight reminder of days gone by.

Then
de la
also emerged but this too was a commonplace in France. It still meant nothing . . . until I began on the last five numerals, 54 60 15 48 15, and watched the word
Roche,
incredibly, come to light.

Even then, I had thought: it is another man of the same name. Perhaps it is a relation of Matthew’s. But I had known the names of his family members. There hadn’t been that many of them: an uncle and some cousins. There was no one called Matthew among them. And then I went on transcribing and there was no more doubt.
Of Blanchepierre.
That was how the next few numerals came out.

Even
then,
it made no sense. Matthew had been dead for nearly five years. I had laid his memory to rest. But the words were there, and there was only one man to whom they could refer.

Dale and Brockley had been in the room. They saw me pause, and stare, and they came to my side to see what I had
found. Brockley said: “Good God! It can’t be!” Dale said: “Ma’am! Does it really say . . . ?”

“Yes,” I told them. “And when the news came to me in England, I wasn’t allowed to go to France, to Blanchepierre, to weep beside his grave. Cecil and the queen forbade it. I wonder how much they know.”

If he was alive, I thought feverishly, then he was still, surely, my husband. And with that, things I thought I had forgotten came surging back. All that had been between us. Quarrels and tears and laughter and . . .

Lovemaking. The fiercest and stormiest lovemaking I had ever known and the most exultant. Not the vigorous but steady and warm unions I had known with my first husband, Gerald; not the friendly unions I experienced with Hugh. And certainly not . . .

There had been one other, which had had something in it of Matthew’s stormy quality, but which I had, for very good reasons, detested. I would never say that about Matthew’s lovemaking.

His stood alone in my memory. I thought I had put it in the past. I didn’t expect that at the realization that he still lived, the old desire for him would overtake me again like a flood of molten gold.

And then the flood passed, to be replaced by another, which was nothing at all like molten gold; more like a cascade of ice water. I had made a new life. If Matthew were to walk into my bedchamber now, this moment, there would be one moment of ecstasy in which I would run into his arms and after that . . .

After that, a great deal of difficulty, anxiety, and inconvenience. As I sat there in the guttering candlelight, I found the tears running down my face. I had made a new life. I had been happy. I
liked
Hugh. I liked our quiet interests; our domestic occupations. I liked having a husband who didn’t plot against the queen I loved and served, seeking to destroy the peace of my homeland and lay it open to the Inquisition that terrorized Spain and which we had tasted, in a fashion, under Mary Tudor.

My body, which was still young and could not forget, cried out for Matthew, but my mind said no, please, no, leave things as
they are. I don’t want to go back. I
can’t
go back. I can’t leave Hugh, or my life here and I won’t, I
won’t
take Meg to France to be taught doctrines that I reject.

Another memory slid into my mind. A hot, airless, fetid room and a state of pain and fear that were also unforgettable. The day I had given birth to Matthew’s stillborn son, and nearly lost my own life in the process. I didn’t want to risk another pregnancy. With Hugh, childless despite two previous wives and several mistresses, I felt safe from it.

“I must finish this,” I had said wearily to the Brockleys. “And then I must sleep. Tomorrow . . . tomorrow I must report what I’ve found.”

Now I had done so. I had reported it all. Cecil’s quiet blue eyes, so very different from Edmund Dean’s, regarded me steadily. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking.

“You can’t know what you’ve done,” I said. “It is a dreadful thing, to lose—to think you have lost—someone, and to mourn and then to accept and to begin again, with someone else; to undo the past, knot by knot—and then find that it’s still there! That he’s still there . . . !”

Words abandoned me. I could say nothing more. I tried to keep my head up, not to give way before Cecil and the unsmiling, brooding Walsingham. Cecil said something to Walsingham, sharply, in a low voice, and Sir Francis left the room.

“He will fetch my wife,” Cecil said. “And your woman, Dale. Cry if you want to, Ursula. I won’t look.”

He got to his feet and went to gaze out of the window. I put my head down on his desk and surrendered. Presently, Mildred and Dale came to me and took me away. “I’m all right,” I told them, still sobbing, but they led me to a bedchamber and I was made to lie down while a warm posset was made for me, and then they sat with me while I drank it.

“You should rest,” Mildred said. “Sleep if you can.”

“I can’t,” I said, as I drained the cup. “I mustn’t linger. I must go back to the Ridolfis. My daughter, Meg, is arriving today—at Madame Ridolfi’s invitation—and I must be there to take charge of her as soon as I can.”

“But do you feel well enough to . . . ?”

“I must! Meg will feel lost if I’m not there.” I put my empty cup aside and swung my feet off the bed. Exhaustion at once poured over me and my head and throat throbbed with my tears, but for Meg, I could and would ignore them all. “I would like to go at once!”

“We are both sorry for what has happened,” said Mildred. “There were . . . reasons.”

Yes, there were reasons, I thought bitterly. I knew what they were. I even understood them. Always the loyal servant of Elizabeth and Cecil, that was me, that was Ursula. No matter what they did to me, because they represented England, because they were the guardians of England, and England had no others.

Somehow I got myself out of the Cecils’ house and went back to the Ridolfis with Dale and Brockley. The first thing I saw as I arrived were men in the livery of Norfolk, leading horses toward the stable yard. And the first person I met as I came into the entrance hall was Donna.

“Oh, Ursula, there you are! Have you finished your so-secret errand? Your daughter is here. How charming she is! The Duke of Norfolk is here too, to visit my husband, and he has his young secretary Master Dean with him. I believe there has been talk of Dean as a suitor for your girl, has there not? He and Meg were very pleased to see each other. He has taken her into the garden. I’m afraid,” said Donna, sadly, but with regrettably sparkling eyes, “that he is showing her the topiary . . . ”

In that moment, I forgot Matthew as completely as though he had never existed. I also forgot the perfidy of Cecil and the queen, and forgot to go on puzzling over the confused and alarming conspiracy that my host Robert Ridolfi seemed to be fomenting. I forgot the confusion of being an ex-widow and a semi-wife; I forgot to be a secret agent. I became on the instant a protective mother, whose innocent daughter’s heart was under siege by a man I instinctively disliked, in a garden full of erotic images.

“Excuse
me
!” I said to Donna and swept past her, along the corridor, out across the terrace, and hotfoot into the midst of the topiary.

I found them on the seat beside the swans and horses. Edmund Dean’s arm was around my daughter and in his other hand he had a book, from which he was reading aloud to her. He had a good speaking voice, measured and clear. As I came within earshot, I caught a phrase or two.

“. . . and wilt thou leave me thus, that has given thee my heart never for to depart, neither for pain nor smart? And wilt thou leave me thus? Say nay! Say nay! . . . ”

I knew the poem and I knew who its author was. Sir Thomas Wyatt was a favorite poet of mine and I had lately bought a new edition of his collected works. He had been a courtier in the days of Henry the Eighth and he had almost certainly been in love
with Queen Anne Boleyn. He had been narrowly acquitted of being her lover in the physical sense. He was as persuasive and ardent a poet as ever set quill to paper and a suitor armed with his verses was well equipped to beguile older and wiser women than my little Meg.

I bore down on the pair of them, a female Jove, prepared to hurl thunderbolts. “Meg! What are you doing here? Master Dean, I do not recall giving you leave to take my daughter walking anywhere and least of all
here
!”

“I beg your pardon, mistress!”

Dean rose, bowing, full of contrition—outwardly, at least. But as he straightened up and looked me in the face, his intense stare told me that he was not really disconcerted. He had decided to woo Meg, it seemed, and he took it for granted that his wishes would prevail over mine.

Brockley had followed me into the topiary, though not Dale. During our stay at the Ridolfis she had seen the place more than once, but he still preferred her not to enter it. “Brockley,” I said over my shoulder, “take Meg indoors. She must wash her face and hands before dinner.”

“Mother, Edmund was reading a poem to me . . . ”

“I have a copy in my chamber. You can read the rest for yourself whenever you like. Go with Brockley, please.”

“But, Mother . . . ”

“Come, Meg, do as your mother says!” Brockley stepped smartly forward, took Meg’s arm and virtually lifted her off the bench. She tried to protest but I snapped:
“Meg! Go!”
so fiercely that she ceased to resist and went, drooping. I gazed after her, my fury giving way to despondency. Just how far in love was my hitherto amenable and delightful daughter?

I turned to Dean. “Was it not made clear to you, sir, that we did not wish to pursue this matter of Meg’s betrothal?”

“But only, madam, on account of her youth, which time will amend, all too soon, and—she is so lovely. I am sorry to have displeased you.” He was trying his beguilements on me now. In a confiding voice that went very ill with those penetrating eyes, he said: “I admit it; I want her to leave a little of her heart with me,
so that three or four years hence, she may say to you: What of Master Dean? And perhaps the matter can be reopened then?”

This was what came of trying to withdraw from the marriage negotiations with tact. All the same, I made one last attempt to be tactful. “I cannot understand,” I said, “why a girl as young as Meg attracts you so much. You’re a grown man.”

“But, Mistress Stannard, it
is
her youth that I like. Far more than her dowry, if the truth be told. Being young, she will be compliant. She can be molded into my ideal of a wife. Then I shall be pleased, and she will be happy. Do you not see?”

Yes, I saw.

To hell with tact.

“Master Dean,” I said, “I think I should tell you that Master Stannard and I realized that something of the sort was in your mind and although we didn’t say so then, that is another reason why we have definitely decided against any marriage between you and Meg. My daughter is . . . ”

The granddaughter of King Henry the Eighth, and the half niece of Queen Elizabeth, and not, therefore, in the least likely to be the piece of pliable clay that Dean evidently imagined.

“. . . my daughter is not to be molded, but to be valued. She is not a white page for you to write on. Her character and intelligence have written their own signatures there already. The Duke of Norfolk meant well when he made the introduction, but our considered decision is—no. Never again attempt to walk or talk with her alone. Good day to you.”

He had gone white. He said nothing, but bowed once more, and turning away from him, I walked quickly back toward the house. It was then made plain to me that there was something, or rather, someone, else whom I had forgotten in my race to rescue Meg. The discovery of Matthew’s name in that letter had driven Gladys Morgan completely out of my head. I had a vague memory of Dale saying she had taken Gladys some breakfast that morning, in the Brockleys’ room, and, yes, Dale had asked what we were to do about Gladys, and I had said let her be. She knew she was supposed to stay in the Brockleys’ quarters and I was in a hurry to be off to the Cecils’ house.

I had vaguely—stupidly—assumed that Gladys would obey orders. She had not. As I came to the archway in front of the terrace, I found my way barred by her and by Arthur Johnson. They were quarreling again, not loudly, but angrily all the same. Johnson was gesticulating with a pair of clippers. As I approached, Gladys burst into an eldritch cackle, swung away from Johnson, and scuttled off ahead of me toward the house.

“
Now
what’s the matter with you two?” I said irritably to Johnson.

“She’s laughing at me, that’s what,” said the old man sullenly. “Once again, I give her a chance. Again, I offer my hand and my heart and this time she don’t just say no thanks, she
laughs
at me. Old besom!”

“I shouldn’t ask her again. And you’re well out of it. She’s got a shocking temper.”

Johnson made a noise that sounded like “Aaaaah!” with a piglike snort at the end of it, and strode off, holding his clippers like a dagger. I stood still in order to let him go, but then, afraid that Edmund Dean would follow me and catch up with me, I hurried on, wanting to avoid him.

I noticed then that the sense of foreboding that had descended on me the previous day was still with me. Whatever it presaged had not yet come to pass, it seemed. It was still there, looming and threatening.