To Shield the Queen (21 page)

The piebald.

With that, the small cold voice whose existence I had never suspected until the day I fled from Abingdon Fair, spoke to me again. I would be wise, it said, not to quarrel with Aunt Tabitha; and not just because I feared her.

There are things you want to find out
. The words fell into my mind like tiny drops of cold rain. I had followed William Johnson and his friends from house to house through southern England and I had arrived at a theory which explained their purpose.
You are seeking confirmation. The answer may be here. You know one way to seek it, but you will need to stay the night. Don’t provoke your aunt just now
.

But what of Meg!

One night. With luck, you will only need one night
.

Quietly, I said, “I just want to see my child. I want to see for myself that Meg is well.”

Aunt Tabitha rose. “You are very impatient. Very well. I will take you to her now,” she said.

• • •

“Oh, Meg,” I said. “My dearest, darling Meg. You’ve grown so much!”

I had missed those stages of growth. I did not know my daughter as I should. It was months since I had last held her in my arms. I pulled her close to me.

“I’m so very glad to be with you again, sweetheart! Are people being kind to you?”

I set her back from me so that I could look at her. She was clean and prettily dressed, but her little face was too serious. She took after Gerald. Her dark hair was like his, rougher in texture than mine. The sight of her brought him back vividly. That small square rosy-brown face and brown eyes were meant for laughter, though, not for this strange gravity. She curtsied again.

“Indeed, everyone has been very kind, Mother. Aunt Tabitha says I must be grateful to have come here.”

“I’m sure she does,” I said. I had held her very tightly a moment ago, and she had not shown any discomfort, but there was one thing I must make sure about. “You look lovely,” I said, “but I hope your shift is as clean as your dress. Let me look.”

A moment later, holding her to me, I breathed a silent prayer of relief. In two weeks, my small daughter had been reproved and lectured out of natural spontaneity, and I knew she had done some weeping, for her brown eyes were sad and somehow dimmed, but I did not think she had been beaten.

No serious harm had been done to her, and she would only be here for one more night, I said to myself. Tonight, I must stay here and satisfy the small, cold voice, and so, perforce, must Meg stay, but tomorrow I would get us both away somehow.

However, escape we would, all the same. I would not take Meg back to the cottage, but to Tom and Alice Juniper instead. Tomorrow, we would both be free of Faldene.

I stayed with Meg for some time, playing with her, and making much of her, and presently saw her to bed, then I went back to Aunt Tabitha. Forcing myself to smile, I said that on reflection, and because I must in fact start my journey back to court the next day, I felt it best to leave Meg at Faldene for the time being. I asked if I could spend the night there, as it was late for setting out again and there was no inn in Faldene village.

“Of course,” said my aunt, frostily. Always one for doing the correct thing, was Aunt Tabitha.

It still felt as though I were betraying Meg, but John’s murderers must not go free, and the stakes might be higher even than that. I was still the implacable huntress.

• • •

Uncle Herbert, who had been in his study working at his ledgers, emerged for supper. Unlike my aunt, he had altered lately, putting on more weight and becoming very fleshy round the jowls. His fashionable puffed Venetian breeches and his elaborately padded doublet made him look even bigger. He was hobbling—“Gout, my girl. I’ve gone and developed gout”—and he wasn’t pleased to see me.

“So
you’re
here. If you think you’re taking your wench away, you’re mistaken. We’ve taken her in hand now.”

He became a little more amiable (if not much) when Aunt Tabitha assured him that I had agreed to the new arrangement.

I said I was sure their intentions were good. Making my tongue frame the words was almost physically painful but if I had to dissemble, I would do it properly. We sat down to eat, and over the meal, my aunt and uncle made conversation, bringing me up to date on family news. The eldest son was in London, conducting business for Uncle Herbert, whose gout now made riding difficult, and the second son had a place in the ambassador’s household in France. Cousin Mary had at last been married off, although her husband had only comparatively modest means. “The Blanchards are well connected, and could have brought us many advantages. We much regret the loss of the Blanchard match,” said my aunt.

This was provocation and I gave way, in a small degree, to the urge for retaliation. “But you had a Blanchard match,” I said, “if only you had given me a dowry to sweeten Gerald’s family.”

They did not actually say, “You? Unthinkable!” but their expressions said it for them before they returned their attention to their food.

“However,” Aunt Tabitha said after a pause, “Mary is settled after a fashion. Her sister Honoria has had another daughter and . . . ”

When they had finished talking about my cousins, Uncle Herbert showed some interest in my life at court and asked what the queen was like at close quarters. I answered politely, and carefully.

I went to bed early.

I ventured a pleasantry. “I saw that the ivy’s been removed. Still, I won’t be wanting to climb down it tonight, Aunt Tabitha.”

My aunt had no sense of humour. “You were always a hoyden. I tried to whip it out of you but you never change. I don’t trust you. Don’t think you can steal Meg away in the dark, by the way. Our mastiffs don’t know you, and they are loose at night.”

“You may rest assured,” I said, “that I shan’t leave the house until tomorrow.”

It was true enough. I wouldn’t be staying in my room either, but my purpose this time lay on the premises.

I was tired but I must stay awake somehow. I didn’t want to tell Dale what I intended, so I said I wasn’t sleepy and would sit up by the window for a while and keep a candle burning.

I let the fresh air blow in on my face, while I gazed out on the perilous slope of tiles down which I had slithered, five years ago, clutching at a venturesome ivy stem which had crept over the top of the wall on to the roof, and finally trusting myself to the creeper on the wall itself, in order to make my escape.

I remembered how Gerald had taken me across the gardens and how we had scrambled over the bank and ditch which bounded the grounds, out to where John was waiting with the horses; and how I had fallen into the ditch in the dark, and Gerald had jumped in to help me climb out; and how, down there, with only the stars to see, we had stopped to kiss and cling.

It was all over now, all lost and long ago and Meg was my only reminder.

I shook myself fully awake, because it was deep in the night by now. Dale was fast asleep and it was time to tackle the errand I had set myself.

I found that inside the closet door there were now three nails, adorned with keys, all very similar. I took the lot and crept down to the hall. It was hushed and empty. A waxing moon looked in through a window and cast a pale light across the floor. I hoped no one sleeping in either of the two wings was suffering from toothache or insomnia because if they were to look out of their windows they might catch sight of my flickering candle crossing the hall.

My uncle’s study led off the hall. I crept to the door and held the candle in one hand, while I tried the keys. The second worked. A faint rattle as it slid home, a click as it turned, and I was in, back amid the familiar smell of paper and ink. The candlelight revealed things well remembered: the desk, old and scored, with inkstains here and there; the silver writing set, with inkstand and sander, quills in their tall holder and a trimming knife in a shaped trough; my uncle’s carved chair; the panelled walls and the shelves full of leatherbound ledgers; the padlocked cupboard which I knew held the money-chest.

I wasn’t concerned with the money-chest. I was after the ledgers. I pulled the curtain across the window to conceal my candle, and set to work.

I found it almost at once. It was an entry in a current ledger labelled “Expenditure, July to December 1560.” It was dated 3 September. The entry read: “Donation to charity, for the furtherance of instruction in lawful religion—200 marks.”

One man’s lawful religion was another man’s heresy. Uncle Herbert, I thought, unlike Aunt Tabitha, had a certain sense of humour. But 200 marks! Over £130 pounds. “Generous of you, Uncle Herbert,” I muttered. “Unusually generous. You were never one for giving much to charity.”

Searching rapidly back through the ledger and those of the year before I found that Uncle Herbert had, as usual, made a few charitable donations. A man in his social position was virtually obliged to make them, although my uncle, who gave the servants his cast-offs at Christmas, wasn’t going to be bountiful to the poor in any circumstances. He had kept his genuine donations small.

I turned back to the entry in question and began to shiver. Family was family, however obnoxious, and much as I detested Uncle Herbert and Aunt Tabitha, I did not want to bring them into the kind of danger that this promised. I wanted to harm the Westleys and the Masons even less.

However, there was John, and not only John. It was wider than that now. If this meant what I thought it did . . .

Perhaps it didn’t. Perhaps I had read more into this entry than was really there, although I had been looking for it. I had guessed and guessed right. It was so much:
two hundred marks!

For a few moments, engrossed in the possible meaning of my discovery, I had ceased to keep alert for sounds elsewhere in the house. I had also forgotten Uncle Herbert’s talent for treading softly and creeping up on people undetected. I only realised that someone else had come into the room when the draught from the open door made the flame of my own candle stream. I sprang up and turned.

There in the doorway, wheezing slightly, as though he had come across the hall too fast, a fur-trimmed gown wrapped over his nightshirt, and a thick palm shielding his candle, was Uncle Herbert.

“And what, Ursula, is the meaning of this? I looked out of my bedchamber window and I saw a light moving across the hall. What are you doing out of your bed at this time of night, and what are you doing in my study, and what the
devil
are you doing with my ledgers?”

I was not only frightened, but tired, and was making mistakes all the way. I hadn’t kept alert for footsteps and I hadn’t had the sense to slam the ledger. He stepped to the table and looked at the open page.

“Why were you studying
this
page in particular?”

“I wasn’t. I was just reading it through.” The item concerning the two hundred marks seemed to rewrite itself in giant letters and spring off the page to meet us.

“If you wished to know what we were spending on Meg, you could have asked us,” he said. “You had no need to creep about in the night like a miscreant for that. My head groom tells me that when you arrived here, you showed a remarkable interest in William Johnson’s piebald horse. Why was that?”

I managed not to jump. The stance of my uncle’s bulky body, enlarged by the shadow which the candles threw on the wall behind him, suddenly seemed extraordinarily menacing.

I thought of John then, and was overtaken, without warning, by sheer rage. I lost my temper, so completely that it overwhelmed my sense of danger. I flung the truth in my uncle’s face.