The Siren Queen: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Read online

  “I’d estimate eight or nine inches but I still think I’d better address you as Your Majesty of Cathay. There’s gold thread in that embroidered stomacher and look at the pearl edging on her hood. She can’t be just his housekeeper. He must have got married again.”

  We smiled at each other in friendly amusement and once again, as so many times before, I was thankful for Hugh. I liked everything about him: his spare body, which always smelled clean; his intelligent blue eyes, his maturity, the peace of our life together. With Gerald life had been happy and exciting, but I only enjoyed it because I was young. I didn’t long for it now. With Matthew I had known the wildest passion, but he often made me unhappy, for he was an enemy to the queen I served and had loved even before I knew she was my sister.

  By the time I met Hugh, dear Hugh, on whose goodwill and good judgment I had learned to rely, I only wanted serenity and he had given it to me. The Brockleys, who had shaken their heads at first when I said I meant to marry him, had long since agreed that I had chosen wisely.

  Even in such matters as the difference between a duchess and a ducal housekeeper, Hugh was right, and the fact that the housekeeper was dressed like royalty was hardly surprising in Thomas Howard’s house, which was virtually a small palace full of servants who mostly thought themselves superior in status to anyone else’s servants—or even, in some cases, to their employer’s guests.

  The housekeeper was merely the vanguard of an army. Pages came, maids and grooms, and a terrifyingly dignified butler who stepped in front of them all to bow to us, wish us good afternoon, and snap his fingers at his underlings by way of telling them to see to our horses and luggage. Then he led the way inside. Even Brockley, who usually insisted on making sure that our horses were properly looked after, was overborne by assurances that the ducal stables were an equine paradise and was swept indoors with the rest of us.

  Howard House was in the City, but it was a different world from that of the raucous London streets. We were shown to rooms overlooking peaceful gardens, and there provided with every possible comfort: ewers of hot and cold water, basins, soap, warm towels, capacious clothespresses; and for me and Hugh, an immense four-poster bed. Even our two extra men were assured of good pallets in the grooms’ dormitory above the stable, while Gladys was given a similar pallet in the maids’ quarters on the floor above the guest chambers. Sybil and Meg had a room to themselves with a tester bed in it, and since, in my letter of acceptance, I had asked to have Brockley and Dale accommodated near me, they were given a small chamber adjoining ours.

  Later, while they attended to our unpacking and Gladys helped them, Hugh and I, accompanied by Sybil and Meg, were collected by a page, shown downstairs, handed to the care of the butler, and led to a parlor in the style of a small-scale hall, where the walls were adorned by stags’ antlers, costly tapestries, and two fine Turkish carpets. Two clerkly individuals were seated at a table, examining some documents, and perched casually on the window seat, reading what I saw from the cover was an English language copy of the Bible, was a man whom I recognized from my days at court as Thomas Howard of Norfolk.

  He was little changed, except for being older; in his thirties now, with a few crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. But otherwise he was as I remembered, small of stature and plain of face. He had pale eyes and a beaky little nose, mousy hair, and exquisite clothes. His mulberry velvet doublet and his ruff were fastidiously clean. He laid his Bible aside as his butler announced us; he slid off the seat and came to us, hands extended.

  “I ask your pardon. Thomas Howard at your service! I could not greet you when you first arrived. I was interviewing a lawyer.” His smile had a certain charm. “My late wife had two daughters by her first husband, who are the joint heirs to his estate—except that he had other relatives who would like to inherit it instead and are doing their best to seize it. I am beginning legal proceedings on the girls’ behalf. At present they’re at Kenninghall, my Norfolk home, and I hope that when next I go to Norfolk, I shall have good news for them. Mistress Stannard, I have seen you at court, of course. Some time ago now, but I recognize you all the same. This is your husband? Master Stannard, I am delighted to make your acquaintance. And this must be your daughter, Margaret!”

  “Yes, this is Meg,” I said. “And may I also present Mistress Sybil Jester, her gentlewoman.”

  “Enchanting!”

  He bowed to Meg and Sybil, who both curtsied in a graceful fashion, which evidently pleased him. Then, with startling abruptness, he took Meg’s arm, said, “Come to the light,” and led her over to the window, where he stood her in front of him, put a hand on her chin, and turned her face this way and that. I saw her embarrassed expression and felt myself bristle. Beside me, Hugh drew his breath in with a hiss.

  Releasing her, the duke instructed my daughter with a gesture to turn right around in front of him. She did so, flushing. He seemed unaware of this, however. “Charming,” he said, as he brought her back to us. “Quite charming. Is she really only thirteen?”

  “You may speak for yourself, Meg,” I said, with steel in my voice.

  “I shall be fourteen in June, sir,” she told him.

  “Marriage ripe?” Norfolk inquired, glancing from her to me. This time I spared her from answering, and said: “Yes, certainly. But we have agreed that Meg shouldn’t marry before she is seventeen at the earliest.”

  “That will hardly be possible, anyway, as I think I explained in my letter to you,” said the duke easily. “Well, come this way, all of you. Some modest refreshments have been laid out in the great hall—through that door there. Higford!”

  “Sir?” The two clerkly individuals had been carefully minding their own business but both now turned to us and stood up.

  “This is my principal secretary, Master Higford,” said Norfolk, indicating the elder of the two. “And his chief assistant, Master Barker. . . . But where is Dean, may I ask?”

  “Making a fair copy of the draft letter you approved this morning, sir,” Higford said.

  “Send for him, and ask him to join us in the hall.”

  The younger man went out obediently. The duke had a peremptory manner with his employees, I thought. I supposed that he hadn’t been intentionally rude to Meg. He just took power and privilege for granted. It wouldn’t have occurred to him that to treat a young girl like a filly for sale might upset her or her guardians. Well, we would see what Edmund Dean was like.

  The Duke of Norfolk’s ideas about cuisine were, well, ducal. In the hall, a white cloth had been spread over a long table, on which the modest refreshments awaited us. These, offered in dishes and goblets of silver, included fresh bread rolls, a whole salmon, a platter of cold sliced beef, two steaming tureens of soup, and enough pies, creams, and custards to feed an ordinary family for a week and leave them enough to throw a party at the end of it. Jugs of ale and flagons of wine were provided to wash it all down. Serving maids stood behind the table, ready to fill our plates and goblets for us. I hoped that in the servants’ quarters, Brockley and Dale and the rest were being equally well fed.

  Norfolk, to whom all this was clearly normal, led us to the table and invited us to partake. He smiled at Meg and added to me: “I am very glad to make your daughter’s acquaintance, Mistress Stannard, but nearly as glad to make yours as well, for I believe you can tell me something that I wish to know. Master Dean will be here in a few minutes, but while we await him, perhaps I may question you on this other matter. I believe that you have actually met Mary Stuart of Scotland.”

  There was a silence.

  It didn’t last long—perhaps a heartbeat or two—and Norfolk showed no sign of noticing it. Hugh and I were aware of it, though, and Sybil, who was being helped to chicken soup and bread rolls, glanced at us momentarily, as though she too had sensed the moment. I had indeed met Mary Stuart, the deposed Queen of Scotland, currently living in England, in Tutbury Castle in Staffordshire, as a cross between a guest and a prisoner. She had fled from Scotla
nd pursued by the accusation that she had conspired to have her husband, Henry Lord Darnley, blown up with gunpowder, and an inquiry, carried out in England, had petered out, as much as anything because Mary herself had not testified.

  I had first met Mary some years ago, when I myself was visiting Scotland. I had been charmed by her. I had met her again the previous year, when, briefly resuming my work as one of Elizabeth’s agents, I had carried a secret message to her.

  On that second occasion, I had also helped to prevent her from escaping to France, where she might all too easily have raised an army with which to invade Scotland—and then, very possibly, England. In the eyes of Catholics, of whom she was one, Elizabeth’s mother, Anne Boleyn, had not been lawfully married to King Henry, and Elizabeth, therefore, was a natural daughter with no right to inherit the crown. Mary believed that it belonged to her. She would have no very pleasant memories of me, and as for me, I would have to remember all my life that I had once let her beguile me, and had thereby let myself be deceived.

  “I have met her, yes,” I said expressionlessly, after those few heartbeats had gone by.

  “Tell me,” said Norfolk, and although he was trying to sound offhand, there was an underlying note of eagerness, “is she as lovely and as enchanting as they say?”

  I remembered a rumor that Norfolk was interested in marrying her. I looked at him doubtfully, and his plain face broke once more into a smile. “I miss having a wife,” he said. “And what a wife she would be, especially if one day she were to return to her throne in Scotland! There have been moves afoot to bring her restoration about—did you know? The Scottish regent, Mary’s half brother . . . ”

  “The Earl of Moray,” said Hugh casually, spearing a slice of beef on the end of a silver knife.

  “Aye, exactly. Moray is considering the matter. Now, a queen needs a consort—at least, our Elizabeth apparently doesn’t, but most queens would—and why should I not become Mary’s? This is in confidence, of course.” A belated urge toward caution had evidently overtaken him. “It is all very delicate. Mary Stuart is, from all I have heard, a lady of sensibility. I must not think myself acceptable before I am accepted. On the other hand, there has been an exchange of letters between us, and she has written calling me her own lord and promising to be a perfect wife to me and to obey me in all things. Well, such a noble lady will have others seeking her hand and may yet change her mind. But if our own sovereign queen will consent to it, then it could come to pass—why not? I am of sufficient rank and it would bind Scotland and England together in friendship. Only I am a romantic,” said Norfolk, becoming soulful. “From all I have ever heard of Mary, she is a woman to delight any man . . . ”

  She was also given to making rash promises. No woman of judgment would ever have made marriage vows to Darnley, or to the Earl of Bothwell, who had probably arranged Darnley’s death. After her marriage to Bothwell, public outrage had driven them both out of Scotland. Bothwell was heaven knew where; Mary at Tutbury. The marriage was presumably still in force, although both Mary and Norfolk seemed to have forgotten about it.

  Mary, I thought, was of the breed that longs to subject itself to the domination of a man, in which she differed markedly from Elizabeth, who preferred to do her own dominating.

  Even the personable Sir Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, her Sweet Robin (whom Elizabeth trusted, and sometimes, also, called her Eyes, because he kept her informed of much that would otherwise not have come to her notice), even Dudley, who had once dreamed of marrying her, had never come anywhere near being able to control my royal half sister.

  Norfolk was still enthusing about Mary. “. . . such sweet, womanly letters. But I have never yet seen her with my own eyes. So I ask you again: what was your impression of her?”

  There was another frozen moment. He was gazing at me like a dog who wants master to throw a stick for him. I wanted to look him in the eye and say: “Unfortunately, she is the kind of woman who might ask her lover to put a barrel of gunpowder under your bed if you offended her,” but I couldn’t do it. Partly because I was his guest and my daughter was about to be introduced to his protégé with a view to matrimony; partly because it’s so hard to disappoint a yearning spaniel.

  I had to answer, though. It was necessary to say something. “She has been through hard times,” I said, “and her reputation isn’t perfect, but you know that, of course.”

  “Oh yes, but the world is full of jealousy.” Norfolk brushed this aside. “Sweet and lovely women are always the target of cruel tongues. I have heard all the stories but they sound to me like no more than a tale of a young woman bewildered and led astray. Mistress Stannard, I am asking, how did she seem to you?”

  “The hard times haven’t destroyed her beauty though perhaps it is a little less than it used to be,” I said cautiously. “She does indeed have considerable charm.”

  “I knew it. I knew it. I have to admit,” said the Duke of Norfolk joyfully, “that the reports I have had of her, from people who saw her in Scotland and when she was a young girl in France, have made me fall in love with her already, and it would be no small thing to become the Scottish consort, would it?”

  I swallowed. I had no idea what to say next and nor had Hugh, who was regarding me in consternation from beyond Norfolk’s shoulder. The consternation wasn’t due to any anxiety over what I would say—Hugh trusted my good sense as I trusted his—but to sheer alarm at such a mixture of ambition and simplemindedness.

  In an effort to avoid commenting any further on Mary’s personality, I finally said: “Are you permitted to correspond with her, sir? I understood that she was kept somewhat cut off from the world.”

  “Oh, she has her correspondents—John Leslie, Bishop of Ross, and the Spanish ambassador too,” said Norfolk easily.

  “De Spes?” I said, surprised.

  “Why, yes; she is after all a queen and he the representative of a king. They exchange letters with her freely and so do a few others. The Bishop of Ross has smoothed the way for me so that lately, I too have been able to write to Tutbury direct. He will gladly promote a match between us, if Queen Elizabeth can be brought to agree. He desires nothing more than to see Mary restored to her throne and provided with a husband she can trust.”

  I was most relieved, just at that moment, to hear someone declare that here was Master Edmund Dean, and to see Norfolk turn away at once from the subject of Mary Stuart to something more immediate, although still concerned with marriage, which was evidently in fashion just now. A young man, dressed in a neat black doublet and hose, slashed to show a silvery lining, had entered the room. Norfolk at once beckoned to him and a moment later, he was being introduced to Hugh and myself.

  He was presentable enough, that was beyond doubt. He was a little taller than Hugh, and lean, with raven-dark hair, neatly barbered to reveal shapely ears. His bone structure was edged, the straight nose, the long chin, the cheekbones, and eye sockets chiseled so sharply that they seemed about to cut through the pale skin. His eyes were deep-set and blue, not sky blue, but that penetrating shade which I privately call lightning-blue. He smiled, showing excellent teeth.

  But the smile didn’t reach those remarkable eyes. I wondered what he would look like if he were really amused and realized that unlike the Duke of Norfolk, he completely lacked even the beginnings of crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes. With Edmund Dean, I thought, amusement was a rare event. His eyes would nearly always remain penetrating, and cold.

  I wanted my daughter to be happy in her marriage, whenever that came about, and contentment in marriage usually includes a physical attraction between the couple. Edmund Dean certainly wasn’t short of sexual magnetism. But that magnetism, like love itself, comes in more than one form. One is the dangerous heat that burns, as perilous as flames are to moths or direct sunlight to one’s eyes. There had been something of that in Matthew and it had not, in the end, brought me happiness. There is, too, the glowing warmth that gives both comfort and stimulation. Ger
ald had had that; so, in a more muted form, had Hugh.

  But there is a third kind, which is as cold as the Arctic. Draw close to it and it’s like touching a steel blade on a frosty morning. In Edmund Dean, I recognized it instantly.

  He was personable, looked healthy, and had been chosen by the Duke of Norfolk, and in my estimation was the kind of man who would marry my daughter only over my dead body.

  3

  Old Age and a Pomander

  “This is the young man I asked you here to meet,” Norfolk was saying. “My third secretary at the moment, although it may be only a temporary career. However, he’s useful to me, since he speaks flawless Italian and I have dealings with that country from time to time. Come forward, Master Dean, and let me present you to Master and Mistress Stannard . . . ”

  Dean was bowing to Hugh and offering me his hand. I took it, half expecting it to send a shock up my arm. He turned from me to be introduced to Meg. Meg curtsied, her eyes fixed on his face, which had obviously riveted her attention. Dean smiled at her and spoke a few conventional words of greeting, but then let Hugh steer him aside and engage him in a conversation that I knew would include a polite but searching inquiry into his family, his health, and his past, present, and likely future circumstances. I drew Meg away and encouraged her to take some food. Shyly, she said: “He’s very handsome, Mother.”

  “There are other things to consider,” I told her, quite snappily. Behind me, Norfolk was urging Sybil to try the cold beef, and at the same time, I could hear snatches of Hugh’s interrogation and Dean’s replies.

  “. . . most unfortunate, the closing of Antwerp. What steps do you propose to take to rebuild your fortunes?”

  “My father used to deal with Italy but he reduced that side of the business when he found that he could bring in a wider choice of goods by way of the Low Countries . . . I spent over two years in Italy, however, and once I’m in a position to begin my own business, I intend to build up a trade in the Mediterranean . . . ”