To Ruin A Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court (12 page)

“Indeed? And what might that be? Mistress Blanchard, it is a pleasure to sit opposite you and look into your fair face, which is worth any man’s study, but it would be pleasanter still if you came round here and shared my settle with me. Come. Then tell me what it is you don’t understand.”

“It will mean turning my head to look at you, Sir Philip. It’s easier to talk across the table.” I said it mildly, but as a frown began to appear between his eyebrows, I made haste to soften the refusal by giving him the most delightful smile I could conjure up.

It was a mistake. I had taken care to dress with propriety but I was quite old enough to know that a lovely smile can outweigh sackcloth and ashes; never mind tawny velvet and cream satin. Mortimer put down his wineglass, leaned across the table, and seized one of my hands in both of his “You know how to lead a man on, by God you do. You’re a lovely thing, Mistress Blanchard.”

I thought wryly that since the castle had a tiltyard, it was a fair assumption that Sir Philip liked tilting and anyone who made a habit of controlling a charger with one hand while leveling a lance in the other acquired a powerful clutch. Mortimer had a handclasp like steel ivy.

I hadn’t really expected this. After all, I was a guest and a lady of standing, and as Mortimer himself had observed, I was married. He amused himself with maidservants but I hadn’t thought he would get dangerously amorous with me. Slightly flirtatious and very very fuddled—that was the effect I wanted. I didn’t quite seem to be achieving it. Unwisely, I used my spare hand to pick up my glass and provide myself with a heartening draft of canary. My head began to swim alarmingly, almost at once. I dragged my scattered thoughts together and tried to keep to the point.

“Sir Philip,” I said, “you often speak of restoring your family fortunes. But how
do
you intend to do it? Isn’t it a rather daunting task?”

“Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.” Releasing my hand, he turned sideways on his settle, presenting his profile to me, and gave me a gleaming sidelong glance. And then fell irritatingly silent.

I persisted. “You seem so sure of yourself, Sir Philip. And that’s what I don’t understand. I think you have a
secret!” I tried not to stumble over my words and attempted to sound sweetly roguish, but realized to my annoyance that I had overdone it. The wine had got me after all. I was more fuddled than he was. “You’re hiding something from me.” I started to wag an arch finger but stopped myself hastily. “Do tell me how you intend to achieve your ambition. Have you found a hidden treasure?”

My host-cum-guest put a knowing forefinger alongside his nose, and grinned at me. “Ah,” said Sir Philip Mortimer slyly. “Now, wouldn’t you like to know that, my pretty one? And why would you want to know? I’ve heard that you could get your marriage set aside if you wished. Would you like to be chatelaine of the Mortimer castles yourself?”

It would have been rude to tell him that I wouldn’t want to be chatelaine of any castle at all if I had to marry him to do it, and that Vetch Castle in particular was drafty and out-of-date. I began on a modest assurance that I would never think of such a thing but I never got to the end of the sentence. With startling suddenness, he reached once more across the table, shoving our two glasses aside so that they slopped, and this time seized both my hands. He pulled me toward him, changed his grip to clasp the back of my head, turned me so that he could get at my mouth, and planted his own over it.

I had a horrible vision of Gerald watching this scene, and then an even more horrible one of Matthew bursting in on it. With my upper half stretched awkwardly across the table and my reeling head being almost dragged off, it was difficult to put up an effective resistance. Since my mouth was stopped up, I couldn’t even ask him to desist,
let alone shout for help. I strove to get my left ear out of the remains of the sweet cheese flan and clutched at the edge of the table, trying to anchor myself against being pulled any farther. My fingers touched a heavy silver platter. I caught it up and walloped it down on the top of Mortimer’s head.

He jerked his mouth away from mine but it was no respite. “You bitch! What are you doing? You lead me on and then you … I’ll show you!” said Mortimer savagely, and getting to his feet, he hauled me roughly around the table, right into his arms. I still had hold of the dish but it was useless at such close quarters. I tried to use my knee but he was ready for that and avoided it, shoving me down on my back on the settle.

“Don’t!” I gasped. “Please, Sir Philip, don’t do this. I didn’t intend …”

“Didn’t you? Well, I do!” His intentions were all too obvious and most alarming. I then tried to sink my teeth in his wrist, but he grabbed my unoccupied hand and smashed the knuckles against the table so viciously that I let go. Still struggling, I saw beyond Sir Philip’s shoulder that the door was opening. Brockley’s head came around it. His expression at once became scandalized. Mortimer’s mouth was down on mine again. Desperately, I signaled for help with my eyes but to my bewilderment, Brockley merely disappeared again.

Mortimer was too strong, and I was too drunk. The worst was going to happen. Now what do I do? I asked myself wildly. I tried, and failed, to free my mouth in order to scream (where in hell’s name had Brockley got to?). Should I give in, in the cause of duty, in the hope that a sated Sir Philip might yet yield up his secret? No,
absolutely not. Even if I hadn’t been a wife, I wouldn’t want to give in to this. I didn’t want Mortimer and didn’t intend to let him force himself on me. He lifted his mouth at last, presumably in order to breathe, and I drew a lungful of air, ready to shriek for aid. Then I realized that someone else was ahead of me. Somewhere, close at hand, a child was screaming for her mother.

“That’s Meg! Let go! Let me up!”

“Oh, in God’s name! What a time for a child to have a nightmare!”

“Get off me! Get off, I say!” Meg needed me, and with her need came instant sobriety and a strength which surprised me much as it did Mortimer. I heaved and kicked with such violence that he toppled off me. Hurling myself off the settle, I rushed out and was in Meg’s room in moments. And there was Meg, sitting up in bed and screaming at the top of her lungs, while Bridget, Brockley, Dale, and the Hendersons all stood around smiling with approval. She stopped as soon as she saw me, jumped out of bed and ran to me, laughing.

“Did I do it well? Did I, Mother? Mr. Brockley said you needed help and this was how to do it. He said Sir Philip was drunk and being rude.”

“Shhh. Pretend to be crying,” I whispered, and held her close as Mortimer lurched into the doorway behind me.

“Oh, the poor child, sir!” cried Bridget, wiping her eyes with her apron. “She has bad dreams sometimes and cries for her mother’s arms. When her mother’s been away, I’ve had such times with her. This time she says she dreamed of a face looking out from that haunted tower.
That Susanna told us today that the southwest tower is haunted. I said she should be ashamed, repeating such a tale to a child, and now see what’s come of it.”

Bridget was nearly illiterate, not always clean, and decidedly overweight, but she was no fool. This superb flight of imagination proved it. I had always known that Meg could have no better nurse.

“Sir Philip,” I said, savagely polite, as I cradled my daughter and surreptitiously massaged the knuckles my affectionate supper guest had bruised against the table, “I must cut our evening short, I fear. I think I must stay with Meg.”

His face was thunderous but he knew he must accept defeat and as he had not seen Brockley look around the door, he also assumed I was shielding him. “Quite,” he said. “Quite.” To my relief, he turned away and we heard him stumping off down the stairs.

“I’ve heard the story of the haunted tower,” I said. “They’re supposed to be the ghosts of a lady and a minstrel. Did Susanna really tell Meg about them?”

“Yes, ma’am, she did. And that girl Olwen, that’s no better than she ought to be, she came in for a gossip and she joined in and she and Susanna both swore that they’d heard a ghostly harp played in the tower once or twice and Susanna said she once saw a face looking out. Then when Lady Thomasine came to say goodnight to Meg this evening after supper, before she went away, Meg asked her if it was true that there were ghosts in the southwest tower, and she said there were.”

“I wasn’t frightened,” said Meg proudly, drawing herself out of my arms. “Susanna said the ghosts sometimes come out of the tower. She said the harp’s been
heard in other places in the castle, always when something terrible is going to happen. But Lady Thomasine said I wasn’t to be afraid because the ghosts wouldn’t hurt me, even if I did hear them, or see anything.”

“Of course they wouldn’t, my love. None of us would let ghosts or anything else do you any harm.” Bridget picked her up and lifted her back into her bed.

I looked at Brockley. “Thank you. It was an inspiration, getting Meg to scream. I wondered why you’d disappeared.”

“I hoped it would give you a chance to get away without me interfering directly and giving extra offense,” said Brockley. “I’d have interfered if I’d had to.”

“I take it,” said Rob, “that the scheme failed.”

“And you put yourself in peril, Ursula,” Mattie said reprovingly. “I did try to warn you, you know.”

“I had to try something. I’m afraid it did fail, yes. I’ll have to think of a new ploy now.”

“Please, madam, try not to take such risks again,” said Brockley in a harassed voice. “The things you do!”

I had started my inquiries by making a complete mess of them. I did not know what to do next. The following morning, though, the first thing I had to do, as soon as breakfast was over, was to say good-bye to Meg as she set off with the Hendersons, ostensibly for London, in reality for Tewkesbury.

Gladys left as well, perched behind one of Rob’s men, and accompanied by a Welshman who would guide them to the Black Mountains and bring Rob’s man back so that he could go on to rejoin his master. Some of the servants turned out to stare and mutter at Gladys. One or two of them made the sign against the evil eye, and from her pillion saddle, Gladys sneered back, but the presence of the Hendersons made sure that there was nothing really unseemly.

Meg and I both cried at parting, even though it was for only two weeks. Whether I succeeded or failed in my
task, I had no intention of staying longer. Once the fortnight was over, she and I would be off to France together and I was as impatient for that day as though I were a child myself. I wanted to be with her
now
. I wanted to hear everything that had happened during our two years apart; I wanted to read poetry with her, to play music and sing songs with her; to dance and embroider with her and talk to her, talk to her, making up for all the time we had lost. Two weeks felt like eternity.

I watched her go, and then went up to the top of one of the watchtowers on the outer walls. From there, looking over the battlements, I saw Gladys and her escort part from the others and turn west, and watched the rest of them, with Meg sitting very upright on her little pony, dwindle slowly out of sight on the eastward road.

When I returned to the guest quarters, I called Dale and Brockley to me and said briskly: “I’ve agreed to stay here for a fortnight but I want to cut it short and there’s only one way to do it and that’s to make a quick job of finding out what Sir Philip is up to.”

Brockley’s answer was unexpected. “Madam, I was shocked when you told us how Sir William Cecil had used your daughter to fetch you to England. But there is one thing. Before we left France, you were very low in spirits. You seem very different now.”

“I’ve seen Meg and soon I’ll be with her all the time. Can you wonder?”

Brockley smiled, rather grimly. “Madam, we know you so well. No doubt seeing Meg again has helped. But I don’t think that’s the whole story, by any means. Is it, Fran?”

I glared at them. “What are you talking about?”

Not in the least impressed by my frowning brows, Dale sighed audibly, and Brockley shook his head at me. “You’re going hunting again. That’s what’s made the difference.”

I told him not to talk nonsense, but secretly, and to my dismay, I realized that there was much in what he said. From that moment in Rob Henderson’s study, when I involuntarily asked whether it was true that nothing was known of the scandal which had made Philip Mortimer leave the court ten years before, something had woken in me which had been asleep too long. From that moment on, my depression had begun to lift. Rob Henderson had sensed it too. I would enjoy myself when I got to Vetch, he had told me. It worried me. It was a poor augury for the future and besides, I didn’t want it to be true. I didn’t want to be a huntress. It was merely something that had been forced on me.

“Never mind all that,” I said. “I have to think of a new ploy. I must talk to Lady Thomasine again.”

When I once more went out into the courtyard I found it full of bustle. Servants were hurrying about with bedding and fuel, buckets and mops and armfuls of fresh rushes. I made my way through the confusion and in by way of Aragon and the blue parlor. A fire had been lit there, and mattresses and linen were spread in front of it. I met the girl Olwen and asked her if Lady Thomasine were in her chamber. “Yes, ma’am,” she said, and I hastened on to the Mortimer Tower.

The sound of a lute drifted down the spiral staircase to meet me. I found Lady Thomasine, her tawny and cerise slippers poking out from under an elaborate brocade skirt, elegantly disposed in her window seat
while Rafe Northcote played a romantic ballad for her. I curtsied to my hostess but waited in the doorway while he finished the melody. He bowed to us both, and I patted my palms together in applause.

“You really do play well, Rafe,” I said politely.

“My own Mark Smeaton,” Lady Thomasine said with a smile. “I was always sorry for him, you know. Smeaton, I mean. You know who he was, Mistress Blanchard?”

“The musician who was one of the men executed for committing adultery with Anne Boleyn,” I said. “My mother served Queen Anne for a time. She knew Smeaton. She said that he was a fine minstrel and a handsome fellow but that there was nothing wrong between him and the queen.”