A Traitor's Tears Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  The Ursula Blanchard Mysteries from Fiona Buckley

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One: Tower Hill

  Chapter Two: Gifts from a Queen

  Chapter Three: Spiteful Tongues

  Chapter Four: The Season of Abundance

  Chapter Five: Summons to Court

  Chapter Six: A Name for a Dead Stranger

  Chapter Seven: The Elusive Beginning

  Chapter Eight: The Faint Spoor

  Chapter Nine: Kenninghall

  Chapter Ten: The Last Hope

  Chapter Eleven: Unwanted Opportunity

  Chapter Twelve: Terror by Night

  Chapter Thirteen: The Missing Piece

  Chapter Fourteen: The Nature of Cats

  Chapter Fifteen: Encounter in a Second-rate Inn

  Chapter Sixteen: Wild and Impossible

  Chapter Seventeen: A Trap for a Dangerous Mouse

  Chapter Eighteen: Beyond Reason

  Chapter Nineteen: A Trace of Fragrance

  Chapter Twenty: Untimely Sunset

  Chapter Twenty-One: The Living Tool

  Chapter Twenty-Two: Queen of the Hive

  The Ursula Blanchard Mysteries from Fiona Buckley

  THE ROBSART MYSTERY

  THE DOUBLET AFFAIR

  QUEEN’S RANSOM

  TO RUIN A QUEEN

  QUEEN OF AMBITION

  A PAWN FOR THE QUEEN

  THE FUGITIVE QUEEN

  THE SIREN QUEEN

  QUEEN WITHOUT A CROWN *

  QUEEN’S BOUNTY *

  A RESCUE FOR A QUEEN *

  A TRAITOR’S TEARS *

  * available from Severn House

  A TRAITOR’S TEARS

  Fiona Buckley

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First published in Great Britain 2013 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  9–15 High Street, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM1 1DF.

  First published in the USA 2014 by

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS of

  110 East 59th Street, New York, N.Y. 10022

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2013 by Fiona Buckley.

  The right of Fiona Buckley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Buckley, Fiona

  A traitor’s tears. – (An Ursula Blanchard Elizabethan mystery; 12)

  1. Blanchard, Ursula (Fictitious character)–Fiction. 2. Murder–Investigation–England–Surrey–Fiction. 3. Great Britain–History–Elizabeth, 1558-1603– Fiction. 4. Detective and mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9'14-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-057-7 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-543-5 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-479-9 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  This book is dedicated to my family in Kent:

  Pat and David, Derek and Val

  ONE

  Tower Hill

  It is possible to dislike someone quite heartily, without actually wishing them dead, let alone murdered. When in the July of 1573, a group of ladies walking in a sunny garden came suddenly upon a flowerbed with a corpse lying in the middle of it, the horror was not less because one of the sauntering group had every reason to detest the victim.

  I was that one and the sight burned itself into my brain. It was the contrast that added the final edge to the shock; the contrast between the couch of bright gillyflowers on which the poor thing lay, and the hard glitter of the silver dagger hilt that jutted from its heart. The blade had been driven in viciously, all the way to that hilt, and the blood had spread in a wide stain across the cream silk bodice and run down to darken the pretty pink blooms below. I can see it now, and I still recoil from it.

  But I am getting ahead of myself. The events of 1573, which caused so much trouble to me and to people I cared for, didn’t begin in that garden in July. They began more than a year before, on 2 June 1572, on Tower Hill in London, when Thomas Howard, 4th Duke of Norfolk, met his end.

  No one could say he hadn’t courted it. He had harboured wild dreams of marrying Mary Stuart, the dethroned former Queen of the Scots, and becoming her consort if ever she regained the Scottish crown or – as she and her many supporters hoped – she managed to snatch the English one from the head of our own Queen Elizabeth. Norfolk had become involved in two successive plots concocted by a Florentine banker called Roberto Ridolfi. He was forgiven the first time. He was Elizabeth’s cousin and she had a family feeling for him. But when he became entangled in a second such conspiracy, even Elizabeth’s patience ran out, and besides, her advisers, especially her Lord Treasurer Sir William Cecil (by then Lord Burghley) and Francis Walsingham, who was her Ambassador to France but had come back briefly to help with the crisis of this new Ridolfi plot, would not agree to let him live.

  She couldn’t execute Ridolfi, who was safely abroad, and she refused vehemently to execute Mary Stuart, though Mary had known about the plot. Dethroned or not, Mary was an anointed queen and her person was sacrosanct. But when it came to signing Norfolk’s death warrant, Elizabeth had no choice.

  She didn’t want to witness his death yet she seemed to need to know what happened, to be able to picture it, not for pleasure but, I think, because in some way she wanted to feel she hadn’t abandoned her cousin but had tried to be with him at the end, if only in her imagination.

  There were others, at court, who could have been witnesses on her behalf, but instead, she chose to call me from my quiet home at Hawkswood in Surrey, to attend the execution and report on it to her. It sounds like a curious choice, but it was not as strange as it may seem. Although it wasn’t widely talked about or all that widely known, I was her half-sister. Her father, King Henry VIII, had had a roving eye. Elizabeth trusted me and I had carried out a number of secret assignments for her. But as a result of such an assignment, it was partly due to me that Norfolk’s latest attempt at treason was foiled and her feelings about that were mixed, a tangle of gratitude and bitterness. I knew that perfectly well. She knew I would give her an accurate account but perhaps she also wanted me to see for myself exactly what I had done. I think so. I wasn’t so very surprised when, at the end of May, her summons to London arrived.

  I wasn’t so very pleased, either.

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ I said, standing in the small snug room that had once been a private parlour for me and my dear late husband, Hugh. ‘I don’t want to see Norfolk die. I can’t!’

  I then discovered that the three principal members of my household who were with me at the time were unanimously embattled against me.

  Roger Brockley, my reliable manservant, who had been my resourceful
companion in many times of danger, had a high forehead, lightly strewn with pale gold freckles, a receding hairline and very steady grey-blue eyes. At the moment, he was looking at me as one might look at a small child who was being difficult.

  My tirewoman – who was Roger’s wife although I still called her Dale as I had done before they married, when she was Fran Dale – had slightly prominent blue eyes and a scatter of pockmarks from a childhood attack of smallpox. The pocks became more noticeable if she was tired or frightened, and they were noticeable now. The idea that I might refuse a request from Elizabeth clearly alarmed her.

  Also, I thought, looking at her with compassion, she wanted to agree with Brockley, whatever his opinion might be. They had recently been at odds with each other, and I was the reason. Dale was not a highly intelligent woman, but she had moments of perception and when she had become jealous of the friendship between Roger Brockley and me, it was not quite unjustified. He and I were not, never had been and never would be lovers, but we had come near it once and, more recently, during a time of shared danger, had formed a mental bond which was rare. Dale had sensed it, and that had caused trouble.

  The third member of the trio was my gentlewoman Sybil Jester. Sybil had an interesting face, which looked as though it had been slightly compressed between chin and scalp, so that all her features were just a little splayed. The result, though unusual, was quite attractive but when she was worried or displeased, she would frown and then her somewhat elongated eyebrows drew together like a storm cloud. Glancing at her now, I could almost hear the thunder rumble.

  I surveyed the three of them in exasperation. I felt outnumbered.

  Brockley cleared his throat. ‘It isn’t wise to ignore the queen’s requests, madam. Besides, I think that she has need of you. This will be a bitter business for her.’

  ‘Roger’s right, ma’am,’ said Dale nervously. ‘Saying no to the queen … it wouldn’t be safe!’

  Sybil said, ‘I agree. But we’ll all come with you. We’ll soon be home again, and then it will all be over.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said exasperatedly. ‘If only I could be let alone and allowed to stay here! With my little Harry.’

  ‘If you’re away at court for a while,’ said Sybil, ‘it might help the gossip to die down. I’m tired of it. Last time I went to Guildford – you remember, I went to buy linen from the warehouse there – some other customers came in and one of them must have recognized me, because … well, I overheard a comment. And it’s not the first time things like that have happened. They’ve happened twice in Woking. I know where it starts from, too.’

  ‘So do I,’ I said. ‘Jane Cobbold. Well, I knew it would be like this. It will die down on its own, eventually. I just have to see it through. Running away won’t help. I want to stay here with Harry.’

  I knew I sounded petulant.

  Harry was my baby son, born the previous February, a good twelve months after my husband’s death and the cause, therefore, of much ill-natured gossip, largely inspired by my conventionally minded acquaintance, Jane Cobbold of Cobbold Hall, near Woking. She was all the more offended because she wasn’t allowed to ostracize me. Her husband, Anthony Cobbold, believed in cultivating people who were in high places or had relatives there.

  He was proud to be a friend of the county sheriff, Sir Edward Heron; he had lately made friends with one Roland Wyse, who at the moment was working for Lord Burghley; and he also knew that the queen was my sister. He clearly hadn’t been able to silence Jane’s gossip-mongering, but he had compelled her to maintain social contacts with me – had indeed quarrelled with her on the subject. Their butler was the cousin of my chief cook, John Hawthorn. We had heard all about it.

  Jane was not, obviously, mistaken when she went about saying that Harry couldn’t be my late husband’s son, but her assumption that during a visit to the Continent the previous year I had misbehaved myself as no lady, certainly not a recent widow, ought to do, was wrong. It hadn’t been like that at all.

  Now, though, her spiteful tongue was a nuisance, even worse than I had expected. It was true that a brief absence due to being invited to Elizabeth’s court might do me some good. And could I, really, say no to the queen?

  I felt my resistance falter. I couldn’t refuse the queen. I would have to go to Tower Hill and watch Norfolk’s execution, and that was that.

  The door of the parlour opened and our little gathering was increased by one. Gladys Morgan had joined us, uninvited, but that was typical. Gladys was an aged Welshwoman who had attached herself to my household years ago, after we had rescued her from a charge of witchcraft. We had had to do it again since, for Gladys was just the kind to attract that sort of suspicion.

  I had long since insisted that she should wash with reasonable regularity, but she detested it and in any case, she seemed to have a body odour whether she washed or not. Her teeth consisted of a few brown fangs, her laugh was a disagreeable cackle and her temper was short. She had a repertoire of blasphemous curses which in days gone by she had regularly hurled at people who annoyed her. She had done that much less since it nearly brought her to the scaffold, but it could still happen occasionally. She was also very skilled with herbal medicines, and nothing irritates a physician more than a woman who concocts more efficient potions than he does. Vicars and doctors had been among her accusers the last time she was arrested for witchcraft.

  But Gladys had been part of our lives for a long time and we were used to her ways. That she should walk without knocking into the midst of our discussion neither surprised or annoyed us.

  ‘This is to do with that letter from the court, ain’t it?’ she said, hobbling across the room and seating herself in a patch of sunlight. She had become very lame that year. ‘Saw the seal, I did. From Lord Burghley. He wants you for something, mistress?’

  ‘The queen wants me,’ I said. ‘To witness Norfolk’s death on her behalf.’

  ‘And told Lord Burghley to summon you on her behalf,’ said Gladys, and snorted. ‘Lord Burghley. Same man as he was when he was just Sir William Cecil. All these fancy titles! Folk don’t change their natures. Whenever Cecil wanted you for anything in the past, or the queen either, it always led to trouble. Didn’t it, now?’

  ‘Not this time,’ I said. ‘Why should it? I don’t want to go though I’m beginning to think that I’ll have to. But it won’t be anything worse than unpleasant.’

  ‘You wait and see,’ said Gladys ominously.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘This time you’ll see.’

  We were both right, in a way. Trouble did follow, but for once it wasn’t because of any ulterior motive on the part of either Cecil or the queen. Quite by accident, they placed me where I would witness the beginning of the disaster, without at that time understanding what I had seen.

  Gladys said, ‘Don’t want me to come along, do you? Don’t feel like travelling, these days.’

  ‘I shouldn’t think you ever want to see London again,’ I said, remembering her narrow escape at Tyburn. ‘Very well! I’ll do as the queen bids me. I’ll take Sybil with me, and Dale and Brockley, of course. But I’ll only ask Brockley to come with me to Tower Hill. If you will, Brockley. You’ve been a soldier.’

  ‘Of course, madam,’ said Brockley.

  It was several hours’ ride from Hawkswood in west Surrey to London, allowing for refreshment breaks at inns, for us and the horses. We set out early. There were five of us: myself, Sybil, Brockley, with Dale – who was no keen horsewoman – on his pillion, and John Ryder, the courier who had carried Lord Burghley’s summons to me. He had not heard my protests and near rebellion because at the time, thirsty after his ride, he had been taking a tankard of ale with my steward, Adam Wilder. It was just as well. Ryder, grey-bearded and fatherly, was an old friend but I knew he would have sided with the others. He and Brockley had known each other long ago, when both of them were soldiers. It was bad enough to have Brockley looking at me as though I were a tiresome little girl; I wouldn’t have liked to hav
e John Ryder doing the same thing. I had immense respect for him. He had joined us on our last adventure, which had taken us into dangerous Spain. But for him, we might not have got out safely.

  Not that he didn’t understand what a sad business this execution was. He said as much to me as we journeyed. ‘There’ll be tears shed for that foolish man Thomas Howard of Norfolk tomorrow. I understand that because his family pleaded for him, he’s been given a decent lodging in the Tower; he’s not in a dungeon. There hasn’t been an execution on Tower Hill for so long that the old scaffold wasn’t fit for use when they went to make it ready, and it had to be rebuilt. It’s a shame it’s for Thomas Howard. He’s been more silly than wicked, in my view.’

  The queen was at Whitehall. I had seen all the queen’s palaces in my thirty-eight years and Whitehall wasn’t my favourite; it was too confusing. It was not so much a coherent building as a small-scale town, with numerous separate or nearly separate buildings, amid a maze of courtyards and little enclosed gardens. However, we were expected. Ryder was passed straight in to announce our arrival and we only had a short wait before one of the senior officials known as White Staves, with the white stick that was his badge of office under his arm, appeared to greet us, followed by three menservants and two grooms. Our horses were led away except for Ryder’s. He belonged to Cecil’s household and intended to return there for the night, since it wasn’t far away.

  Brockley, whose past career included being a groom as well as a soldier, would normally have gone to see for himself that our horses were properly cared for, but at court, he knew he need not worry. He came with Dale and me as we followed the White Stave to our own quarters.

  Our lodging turned out to be three rooms at the top of a building that I remembered from the past as guest accommodation. They were comfortable if small, and there were attendants to bring us hot washing water and towels. Supper would be in three hours’ time, we learned, and would be taken in the main dining hall across an open courtyard. At Whitehall, guests sometimes had to brave bad weather if they wanted to eat.