Queen Without a Crown (25 page)

‘Well, we do not!’ Pen refused to back down. ‘Jane, go and tell Agnes that we want wine and whatever refreshments she can find, and let this business of Mark alone.’

I intervened. ‘That can wait,’ I said. ‘Pen, I have indeed come to tell the tale of my researches to Jane. I may as well do it now.’

‘I’ll find Agnes, madam,’ said Brockley, and departed.

Pen looked exasperatedly at Clem, who said good-humouredly: ‘Ill news is better out than in, in my view. Best do it quick, and if it means tears, get them shed and dried. Let Mistress Stannard talk, my love.’

Clem’s greatest virtue was his common sense. Pen sank down on to a settle and said: ‘Oh, very well. But Jane, I am angry with you.’

‘You know something about being in love, Pen,’ I said. ‘Be a little tolerant. Now, Jane . . .’

I talked. The wine came, brought in by Agnes and Brockley and accompanied by some sweetmeats made of nuts and honey. I went on talking, for after all, it was a longish story.

At the end of it, Jane, who had listened in silence and with great attention, said: ‘In all this, Mistress Stannard, there has been one vital person who may still be there to be questioned, but has not been found.’

‘And who would that be, mistress?’ Brockley asked, surprised.

‘Why, that woman who said she saw Gervase Easton put something on Hoxton’s tray. Not the one called Madge, but the woman Susannah Lamb. Mistress Stannard, could you try and find her? Could you? Because Mark says his father didn’t do it, that he wouldn’t have lied on the point of death and that what he told Mark in his last letter has to be the truth. Yet this Susannah Lamb says she recognized him. There’s something there that needs explaining.’

She turned to Pen, her head high. ‘Sister, I love you and am grateful for your kindness in looking after me here, but there are things I can’t do even for you. I have said this before, and you didn’t listen. Now I say it again, with Mistress Stannard here as my witness. Please believe me. Unless I marry Mark, I marry no one. I mean it. I wed him and no other. I ask you, not for the first time, to say as much to the family near Bolton. I don’t want to meet their son, for his sake, in case he actually does take to me! I wouldn’t like to disappoint an honest young man.’

She spoke with calm resolution, but without aggression or defiance, as though, even at eighteen, she were already too adult, too sure of herself, to need such things. Again, I knew I had recognized what Mark had recognized: not just sweetness this time, but something beyond it, an honesty and a strength.

I found myself responding. The combination of our need to save Hawkswood, if we could, and the appeal in Jane’s eyes was powerful. ‘If you think it will help,’ I said, ignoring Pen’s attempts to shake her head at me. ‘I will look for Susannah.’

A Pretty Pope

H
eavy rainstorms set in the next day; and anyway, our hard-worked horses again needed rest. We were obliged to stay two clear days at Tyesdale, just as we had at Carlisle. I tried to use the time well. I talked to Pen and Clem and to Jane herself, about Jane’s future.

Whenever the matter was raised, Jane, throughout, whether she were speaking to me or to her sister or brother-in-law, held to the statement she had wanted me to witness, and strengthened it. She would not, she said, marry Mark against her family’s wishes, but she would ally herself to no other and she would never change her mind.

It was plain enough that she would never do what Gerald Blanchard and I had once done, which was to elope at midnight. Such lawless actions were not in the nature of Jane Mason, and if they had been, I wouldn’t, nowadays, have encouraged them. I was in my mid-thirties. I was no longer the rebellious girl I had been at twenty.

It seemed to me, though, that her feelings for Mark were deep and strong, and I tried to explain them to Clem and Penelope. Clem was prepared to listen and agree that they should at least not try to thrust Jane into a betrothal she didn’t want. Pen, however, was obstinate.

‘Do you propose to force her into marriage?’ I asked her angrily, having called her to my room on the eve of our departure, in order to make one last try. ‘
You
were nearly forced into marriage once, against your will. How did you like it?’

Pen, standing before me in her dark-blue gown, her hands linked in front of her, every inch the dignified young housewife, suddenly flinched. For a moment she looked young and vulnerable. I felt compunction. The episode in question had arisen originally from a mission I had carried out for Elizabeth and had then been helped on its way, as it were, by a wayward love affair on Pen’s part. The whole debacle had ended in bloodshed and left a scar on her mind which I had no wish to prod.

It was as well that Brockley wasn’t present. Brockley had been so thoroughly exasperated by Pen on occasion that he had recommended me to treat her more harshly than I was willing to do. I knew too much about harsh treatment, having had it from Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert. Had Brockley been there, he would have been more ruthless than I was.

He had already asked me if I had told Pen or the Masons about Hawkswood and the chance of payment from Mark. I had not; not so much out of delicacy of feeling, but out of the certainty that none of them, however sympathetic towards Hugh and myself, would countenance what they saw as an undesirable marriage for Jane in order to rescue us. From what Jane had told us concerning Mark’s letter to her, he hadn’t mentioned money at all. I felt it would be better if I didn’t, either.

Without Brockley, however, Pen was better able to stand up to me. ‘It isn’t the same thing,’ she said protestingly. ‘The young man we have in mind for Jane is decent, from a respectable home. You’d like him. So would Jane, if she would give herself a chance.’

‘Pen,’ I said patiently, ‘give Mark Easton a chance. Or give me a chance at least to search all the avenues that might lead to the truth. Try to see things from Jane’s viewpoint.’

‘She is being foolish, just as I was when I was a girl,’ said Pen, to my annoyance. Opponents who surrender a point to you and then somehow turn the surrender into a weapon are very annoying indeed.

Once more, as on the day of our arrival, I drew on the strength of old authority. ‘Pen, as your former guardian, to whom I think you owe some respect, I ask you to hold back on this matter of Jane’s betrothal until you hear the outcome of my quest. As soon as I return to the south, I mean to search for the woman who claimed to have recognized Gervase Easton as the culprit. Give me time. If Gervase’s name can be cleared,’ I said, ‘would you and your mother and brother then object to Mark as a suitor for your sister?’

‘No, we wouldn’t,’ said Pen, fairly enough. ‘But with this shadow . . .’

‘And if I remove the shadow?’

‘As I said, everything would be different then.’

‘Then give it a chance to be different. Let me complete my enquiries.’ I spoke with all the assurance I could muster, but even as I did so, I remembered the left-handed man in the portrait at Ramsfold. A sinking in the pit of the stomach told me that, at heart, I now feared that Gervase, after all, was guilty.

Pen must have seen something in my face, for she said: ‘But you’re not sure of the outcome, are you?’

‘I want to
be
sure. One way or the other.’

‘If Mark’s father had fought this man that he believed had cuckolded him and killed him in a duel, Clem and I, and mother and George too, would accept that as honourable. But poison is another matter.’

‘I know.’ In this, I had to admit that Pen was right. To trick a man – in this case, an ailing man – into eating poisoned food was a hateful deed, and there were no motives to excuse it. ‘But that,’ I said, ‘is precisely why we need to know the truth.’

‘Is it? If it’s the wrong answer, will it help Mark to know it? Does he,’ said Pen acutely, ‘really want to know for sure that his father did such a thing?’

‘He has asked me to find out.’

‘But he doesn’t believe you’ll find that his father was guilty. He talked to us about it, you know – when we first taxed him with being the son of a notorious man. You could give him a terrible shock if, after all, you prove him wrong.’

She had become a very dangerous opponent, had my Pen. She had lit up my own innermost doubts and fears.

At length, I said: ‘While there is still a chance that the answer may be the right one, I must go on. Mark is not a fool. In fact, for years – before his uncle died and Mark found that letter – he did think Gervase was guilty. He has lived with that knowledge before. He started me on my quest, and he will have to deal with anything I find. And I ask you, Pen, to leave Jane be until I send word to you – to say either that I have discovered the truth and here it is, or that the truth can’t be found. Then you must decide whether it is right to bind the father’s guilt on to the innocent son.’

It was a fine, noble note on which to end, and it had an effect on Pen. She said: ‘Very well. I agree. But there must be a time limit. Three months?’

‘All right. Three months.’

I didn’t add what I was thinking: that if I found no answer, or the wrong one, I sincerely hoped that Mark and Jane would somehow, after all, find the courage and the ingenuity to elope. They would have a chance then of happiness. Even if Hawkswood . . .

I didn’t want to think about that.

‘A pretty Pope,’ said Elizabeth bitterly, striding angrily about the private room in Windsor Castle where she had given me audience. ‘A fine Christian, this Pope Pius the Fifth. Without a twinge of conscience, he is prepared to torment honest men and women by telling them that they must be either cut off from the love of God or else turn traitor to their lawful queen. Who does he think he is, I wonder, to speak with such assurance on behalf of God? If I were God,’ said Elizabeth with fury, rounding a table and spinning to face me, her satin train sweeping the rushes like a broom. ‘If I were God, I would strike Pope Pius dead with a lightning bolt! What was the wording again?’

I have a good memory, but I had taken the first opportunity I could to write down what I remembered of the appalling letter I had found among Anne of Northumberland’s papers. I had read those notes through several times before coming into Elizabeth’s presence and had them at my command. With reluctance, I embarked once more on the recital.

‘The letter said that if the restoration of Mary of Scotland did not soon take place, and if Mary should not be made your heir, then a Bull would be issued freeing all English Catholics from their duty to obey the Crown. It added that true believers should not obey your laws and any who did would be excommunicated. It said that the one true church would . . . formally . . .’

Here I faltered, as I had done during my first recital, and Elizabeth, who had now halted facing me, regarded me in an ironical fashion. ‘Go on, Ursula. I told you the first time – I won’t chop your head off. It isn’t your fault.’

‘Would formally depose you,’ I said in a low voice.

‘It means,’ said Elizabeth, ‘that the Catholics in England, whether they wish it or no, may not look on me – or even refer to me – as their sovereign and also remain Catholic. Bah!’

She began to stride furiously about once more. However, although the table had a number of small objects on it, and although my royal half-sister was quite capable of throwing things at people who had aroused her wrath, she had never yet thrown anything at me and didn’t do so now.

‘I see,’ she said, halting in front of me once more. ‘Yes. I do see. Dear God. I have striven to look after my people. At one of my first Council meetings, I told my Councillors that corrupt judges must be dealt with; that I would not seek to peer into men’s minds and question their most private beliefs. And I have cared for my people. I
have
! And now, many who trusted me, whose welfare I have safeguarded, are to be told that their trust is a mortal sin in the eyes of the Almighty. And many innocent, ignorant souls will believe it!’

‘Perhaps not so very many,’ I said, in an attempt at reassurance.

‘I have made this land solvent. I have kept it – until now – a land at peace. I have given my people a country in which they can
live
; in which they can marry and rear their children; work at their trades, enjoy their sports; entertain their neighbours with good food and music and dancing; sleep in safety; sleep, at the last, in quiet and hallowed graves. Pius, it seems, puts no value on these things. He would prefer a land where blood streams in the ditches and people who chance not to agree with him, on this or that, scream in the flames. A fine Christian!’

‘I would kill him if I could get my hands on him,’ I said.

‘I shan’t send you on
that
assignment, Ursula,’ said Elizabeth, ferociously humorous. ‘There is trouble ahead, my sister, but I hope to hold it at bay. I will see that my vengeance for this last rebellion makes it clear to my subjects that Elizabeth, here and now, is more to be feared than any invisible God. As for that Northumberland woman; she did well to flee to Scotland. She’d be wise to flee further still in case I snatch her out of her refuge even yet! I and my Council will discuss this proposed
effusion
from Pius, and we will be ready for it. Proclamations will be prepared, to warn anyone against thinking that they owe him more allegiance than they owe me; I shall have land and sea forces ready in case of risings here or attack from outside – from Spain, for instance. More, I cannot do. As it is, we have been caught wrong-footed in one respect.’

‘Ma’am?’

‘Oh yes. Your warning to Regent Moray was carried north with all speed, but still, it wasn’t swift enough. Lady Northumberland’s message to the Archbishop of St Andrews must have got through the snow and arrived first. Regent James Stewart, Earl of Moray, was assassinated ten days ago. He was shot with a musket from an upper window. The news came yesterday.’

‘I think he was shot to clear the way for Mary Stuart’s restoration,’ I said slowly.

‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth bitterly. ‘I think so too. Well, Mary Stuart shall have no crown: not Scotland’s, and not mine. Crownless she is, and crownless she will stay. Mewed up in England, in Tutbury Castle, is where she will stay as well!’