‘We shall need the coach,’ I said, as I helped Dale fold dresses and pack them into a big basketwork hamper. ‘You and Sybil can travel in it with the luggage. Brockley and I will ride. We’ll want our horses during our stay at Knoll House, since we’ll be living there for some time. Eddie can drive the coach.’
‘I don’t understand why you can’t just visit two or three times a week, ma’am, if it’s to give lessons in embroidery. It isn’t that far.’
‘No, it’s only about nine miles,’ I agreed. ‘In fact, I expect to do it the other way about and visit Hawkswood two or three times a week. I’m staying at Knoll House because Walsingham wishes me to be part of the household. You know why.’
I had not told my entire household about the assignment that Walsingham had given me, but I had mentioned it to my close associates. I usually did. The Brockleys, Sybil and Wilder could all be trusted. I didn’t always tell Gladys but she invariably found out, and I gathered that this was one of the times when she knew all about it without a single word from me.
‘What sort of a household is it? We don’t really know, do we?’ Dale grumbled. ‘Will you want court fashions there?’ She held up an elaborate brocade gown. ‘Should I pack this? And do you want those big open ruffs and the best jewellery – your long rope of pearls and the gold earrings and all?’
‘Better pack them,’ I said. ‘And my other brocade gown. And some warm clothing – shawls and woollen shifts. I’ve never seen such changeable weather. One minute we’re sweltering, the next we’re shivering.’ I looked at the window, at the spatter of rain on the glass and the low grey sky beyond it. This was another unseasonably damp and chilly day. ‘I want to be prepared for anything … yes, Wilder?’
My steward had appeared in the doorway of my chamber. ‘Madam, Master Stagg is here and he has a young lady with him. He seems put out and is asking to see you. He doesn’t want to tell me why.’
‘He’s brought a young lady?’ I was puzzled. If Julius Stagg had come to report a problem with the new window, he would hardly have fetched a girl along as well. ‘Where are they, Wilder?’
‘In the great hall, madam.’
‘Take them into the East Parlour, and tell Phoebe to put a taper to the fire in there. It’s laid. I’ll join them in a moment.’
I waited long enough to give Dale a few more instructions about what to pack for Knoll House, and then went downstairs to the big parlour at the eastern end of the house. It was more formal than my favourite small parlour, but more domestic and would be more welcoming than the hall if a young woman was to be entertained.
When I entered the room, my senior maid, Phoebe, was on her knees by the fire, coaxing it, and Gladys was also there – out of curiosity, of course, but armed with a tray of snacks and wine glasses. She was trying to offer refreshments to my guests, but wasn’t getting any custom. Master Stagg was pacing restlessly about, and as I came in he turned sharply with a swish of his damp riding cloak and showed me an unsmiling, anxious face. The young lady was over by the window, just standing there.
I signalled to Gladys and Phoebe to leave us. Phoebe went at once, without displaying curiosity, but Gladys departed with visible reluctance as my two visitors came towards me, the girl hesitantly, lingering a little way behind Master Stagg. She was dressed for the weather in a long hooded cloak of pale blue. She had put the hood back, revealing light-brown hair gathered in a net at the back of her head, and I could see that she wore a narrow ruff. She had no farthingale, and her cloak hung straight.
She was certainly young, seventeen or eighteen, by my estimate. She looked taller than she really was, because she was so slender and held herself so well. She had big grey eyes and her skin was fair, with a soft flush of health over her cheekbones and no spots or pockmarks. She was holding the cloak closed with her left hand and I saw that the hand was slim and fine, and that she was wearing a heavy sapphire-and-diamond ring on the third finger. She seemed very nervous.
‘My dear Mistress Stannard,’ Stagg said, ‘I must apologize for descending on you like this, and with such a strange request. It is nothing to do with the commission for the church window, all that is going as it should. But … I am so upset, I’m forgetting how to do things properly. I must first introduce you. This is my niece, Eleanor Liversedge. She is shortly to be married, as I think I told you. Eleanor, my dear, this is Mistress Ursula Stannard. I hope – I hope so much – that she can help us.’
Eleanor curtsied and I said: ‘When I know what kind of help you need, I will of course do my best. Meanwhile, Eleanor, do please take your cloak off. This room is already becoming pleasantly warm.’
I looked round and, as I expected, saw that Wilder was waiting attentively in the passage behind me. Phoebe had now joined him. ‘Phoebe, take my guests’ cloaks. Wilder, I have just sent Gladys away with the tray of refreshments. Please send her back.’
I turned back to the newcomers. ‘Let us all be seated, and then, Master Stagg, perhaps you will explain. All this seems so mysterious.’
They surrendered their cloaks and took seats. The East Parlour was well supplied with settles and stools. They looked at me and I looked at them. Stagg cleared his throat. Eventually, he said: ‘It is so difficult. I now wonder if I should have thought of you at all, Mistress Stannard. It is only that you have a … a certain reputation … and by sheer, magical chance, you are I believe about to make a stay at Knoll House, with Master Giles Frost and his daughters.’
‘As you have made the effort to come to Hawkswood,’ I said, ‘the least I can do is make the effort to listen to what you have to say. So please say it. I take it that Mistress Liversedge here is concerned in some way?’
For the first time, Eleanor spoke. ‘It’s about my dowry chest,’ she said.
I was startled and probably looked it, since I couldn’t imagine any way in which Eleanor’s dowry chest could concern me. Stagg said: ‘You saw it when you visited my workshop. I expect you remember.’
‘Yes, of course I do. But …’
I broke off, because Gladys had reappeared with her tray. She was grumbling. ‘First you say go away, then Wilder says bring it back …’
‘Just hand the things round, Gladys,’ I said, as patiently as possible. It wasn’t Gladys’s job to carry refreshment trays about – not least because nowadays she limped on account of the rheumatics and was all too liable to spill things. But she sometimes volunteered all the same because of her incurable desire to know everything that was going on. Not witchcraft, just curiosity and determination. I didn’t really mind. Gladys had sometimes been helpful in unexpected ways.
‘Master Stagg, you were saying?’
Before Stagg could reply, Eleanor said: ‘The dowry chest has been stolen. We’ve come to ask you to help us get it back.’
‘Stolen? But … what has that to do with Knoll House?’
‘We think,’ said Stagg, ‘that Giles Frost may have stolen it.’ I stared at him in astonishment.
This time, Stagg and Eleanor accepted wine from Gladys and allowed her to put a platter of small meat pies and saffron cakes in front of them. In an undertone, I told her to sit down in a corner and stay quiet. Then I said: ‘I don’t understand. That is a very serious accusation. You will have to explain more clearly.’
‘I think I told you, did I not, that I recently did a small repair to the windows of the private chapel at Knoll House?’ said Stagg.
‘Yes, you did. But …’
‘In the eyes of Master Frost, I am not of the level of society that he would invite to dinner,’ said Stagg. ‘Though he might well receive Eleanor’s affianced. It’s a strange world! However, he did most graciously accept a casual suggestion from me that he might call in on the formal betrothal party that we held for Eleanor two days ago. It took place at my home in Guildford – I live above my workshop, as you know. Although Eleanor has been betrothed since she was thirteen, with the wedding imminent an official betrothal party seemed appropriate. Eleanor was to take the bridal chest and various other gifts home with her after the party. Well, Master Frost called in briefly, as promised, to drink the couple’s health.’
At this point, he stopped, looking awkward. ‘And?’ I asked.
‘When I was at Knoll House, I was once or twice called into the house itself, to discuss details or to be paid. I was taken into their great hall for these things. I noticed that there were many ornaments and utensils of silver on display, and Master Frost told me that he has a great admiration for silver goods and collects them. He even admitted to being obsessive about it. And after the betrothal party …’
‘It would have been easy enough,’ said Eleanor.
She had a clear voice, with curiously little expression. She didn’t sound angry, or distressed or bewildered. She just said the words she wished to say and showed no hint of her feelings. ‘I came in my stepfather’s wagon, which has a cover to provide protection from the weather, and after the party I was to take the gifts home in the wagon. There were quite a lot of presents and during the party we put them out on display, including the dowry chest that my uncle wanted to give me.’
‘People had given her jewellery and a set of bronze tableware and rolls of linen and silk … all sorts of things,’ Stagg added.
‘Master Frost was on horseback,’ said Eleanor, ‘but he also had a cart with him. He said that since he needed to come to Guildford to call in at my party, he was taking the opportunity to collect some goods he’d ordered in the town …’ Her voice trailed away and she looked to her uncle to continue.
‘Yes,’ Stagg said. ‘He told me that he had collected some gowns for himself and his daughters, and some furniture for Knoll House, and it was all in his cart. At the end of the party, my servants were going back and forth, taking Eleanor’s things to her stepfather’s wagon, and Master Frost’s groom – the one who was driving the cart – was helping them.’
‘They were all going back and forth,’ Eleanor said. ‘Master Frost had only to pick a moment when the groom happened to be collecting things from upstairs and the other servants were outside packing things into the wagon. He had only to say to him “Oh, that chest is mine, bring it down and put it in my cart.” It was heavy, but the groom was young and strong, and could manage. The man probably thought nothing of it, just did it because his master told him to.’ Eleanor’s tone did have a trace of expression this time. It was acid.
‘When I got home and everything was brought into my stepfather’s house, the dowry chest my uncle had given me wasn’t there. The chest itself had silver decorations and there was a silver salt inside and … And Master Frost admits to being a passionate collector.’
‘But you can’t be sure—’ I began, and was cut short.
‘Can’t be sure that Frost was the thief?’ said Stagg. ‘That’s just it. We can. As soon as I heard that Eleanor’s chest was missing, I started asking questions of people who had been at the gathering, and a neighbour of mine who’d been a guest said he had seen a chest being loaded into Master Frost’s cart. I was horrified. I didn’t want to start scandalous gossip, so I said that was all right, it was something I’d collected for him and been looking after until he could fetch it. But I was lying. It has to have been my niece’s bridal silver.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘But … er … I don’t see how I can help. I will if I can, naturally, but …’
‘You do have a certain reputation,’ said Stagg. ‘And you are going to stay at Knoll House. You will have opportunities to search the place. I doubt if he will put his loot out on display yetawhile. He would expect me to report it stolen, and perhaps have the news cried in public and the lost goods described. He would keep it out of sight for the time being, unless he is a fool.’
‘He sounds as if he is!’ I said with asperity. ‘To have the chest taken out of your house by his own groom on a public occasion, with witnesses everywhere, would have been very foolish indeed.’
‘But it happened,’ said Stagg. He added: ‘I know little of Frost. Does he have the reputation of an honest man?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said, although Walsingham’s comments about Frost’s contacts with Spain wriggled wormlike through my mind. I added: ‘Surely, you yourself could …’
Stagg cut me short. ‘I have no entrée to Knoll House. I was there as a tradesman, working in the chapel and saw little of the interior of the house. Master Frost called in at Eleanor’s party to drink her health, and to see and admire the gifts, as a gracious courtesy to an inferior.’
‘Or so we thought,’ Eleanor put in.
‘I see. Well,’ I said, ‘if I find it, what then? I inform you, I suppose, and then you will inform the local constable, or perhaps the sheriff, Sir Edward Heron. Then there can be an official search of the premises and …’
Eleanor exclaimed: ‘No!’
I looked at her in amazement. ‘But why ever not? Isn’t that the natural course of events?’
‘Not this time! Please!’ Eleanor’s voice did now sound extremely expressive. In fact, it sounded urgent. Again, she looked appealingly at her uncle.
‘Her husband-to-be,’ said Stagg, ‘is a very serious and upright man, careful of his reputation and utterly repelled by the thought of any scandal in his family or household – or his bride. He …’
‘There is nothing scandalous about being the victim of a robbery,’ I pointed out. ‘It’s a misfortune, requiring sympathy!’
‘Martin doesn’t think in that way,’ Eleanor said. She was actually trembling. ‘The idea of the preparations for our wedding being mingled with constables and perhaps a trial, at which my uncle would have to give evidence and so perhaps might I, would horrify him. He might be questioned himself since he was at the gathering! And maybe my stepfather would be questioned – he was there too. It would be dreadful: there would be so much talk and gossip, and people saying things to each other and even sniggering across dinner tables or after church. You know what I mean – how people talk and find other people’s disasters comical and try to make something of it …’
Her voice trailed away, but I found myself nodding my head. I did know. There are people like that. Plenty of them. However, I said: ‘But your betrothed is a Londoner, is he not? You will be going to live in London, and Guildford gossip won’t mean much there. Anyway, gossip dies away after a while, and this gossip can’t really harm you. You are the victim.’
‘But we might still have to go through being questioned,’ said Eleanor miserably, ‘and perhaps attend a trial.’
‘She means,’ said Stagg, patiently, as though he were addressing an idiot, ‘that her future husband would feel such distaste for the whole matter that he might withdraw from the betrothal. Betrothals are no longer legally binding, you know. I doubt if he could be compelled to honour it.’
Eleanor’s head came up, proudly. ‘And I wouldn’t want to marry a man who didn’t want to marry me!’
‘So,’ I said, ‘if I find the chest, what does happen next?’
‘It would be best,’ said Stagg, ‘if it could be quietly returned to Eleanor, or to me, without any fuss and without anyone but ourselves knowing it was ever stolen.’
‘You mean,’ I said, thinking it out, ‘that if I find the chest, you would come to Knoll House and quietly request Master Frost to return it? I suppose that might work.’
‘You don’t sound sure,’ said Master Stagg. ‘Nor am I. The chances are that Frost would just have me thrown out, and if I then went to the authorities he would make sure the chest was moved and safely hidden where it wouldn’t be found. He would protect his good name. And again, if the authorities became involved, then Eleanor’s betrothed might hear of it, and well, he wouldn’t like it.’
I was beginning to feel that if Eleanor’s betrothed, Martin whoever he was, were to call the marriage off, Eleanor would be well out of it. He didn’t sound at all a pleasant or reasonable man.
‘So just what do you want me to do?’ I asked.
‘Well, if you find the chest …’ Master Stagg hesitated and then plunged. ‘You will be taking your own servants with you, I believe?’
‘One or two,’ I said.
‘Well, could you, between you, just quietly steal it back and bring it to me in secret? After all, I – and Eleanor – are its lawful owners.’
‘I am sorry,’ I said. ‘But I think you are quite … quite …’
‘Quite out of my mind?’ Stagg smiled. Eleanor looked at me pleadingly. ‘I can offer an inducement,’ he said. ‘I can cut the price of your new church window by half. And after all, what would you be doing that is wrong? I repeat, Eleanor and I are the legal owners of that chest and its contents! We have witnesses to that. And I don’t expect you to run any risk at all. I wouldn’t expect you to touch the chest unless you were quite sure you could do it safely.’
‘I can’t possibly agree to this,’ I said. ‘I’ll look for the chest. I suppose there is nothing against that. But if I find it, I will simply inform you and then it will be for you to act, or not, as the case may be. I will not attempt to steal the wretched thing back.’
‘Oh, please!’ said Eleanor. And with that, the big grey eyes filled with imploring tears.
‘I don’t think you should go to Knoll House at all,’ Christopher Spelton said. It was the next day. He had called on me while on the way to deliver a message in Guildford, found me pensive, and asked why. As it happened, Gladys was in the room when he arrived and burst into speech at once, doing the explaining before I did. I had only to say, yes, Gladys has it right. She was there.
‘I suppose there’s no harm in giving embroidery lessons,’ Christopher said. ‘Or in dropping a few political lies into a conversation. Even if they’re recognized as untruths, I suppose you can always take refuge in being a foolish female who gets things wrong, but …’
‘Thank you!’ I said.
‘I know you’re not,’ said Christopher comfortingly. ‘But the idea of searching for stolen goods in the house of one’s host … that does strike me as foolish.’
‘It doesn’t amount to anything much,’ I said. ‘Just keeping my eyes open, and little more than that. I wouldn’t be doing anything.’
‘I can’t quite explain,’ said Christopher, ‘but this business gives me a bad feeling. It’s so extraordinary. It makes me feel that there might be some hidden purpose behind it, though I can’t imagine what. I really do think it would be better if you didn’t go to Knoll House at all.’
‘That’s what I say,’ grumbled Gladys.
‘Walsingham’s orders,’ I said.
Christopher gave me a wry grin. ‘Yes, Walsingham’s orders. One always feels that they have to be obeyed. But be careful, Ursula. I know Knoll House, by the way. I called there once – a long time ago, well before this man Frost took over. Carrying a message, of course. It’s a gloomy sort of place.’
‘I can hardly refuse Walsingham because Knoll House is gloomy!’
Christopher sighed. He thought for a moment and then said: ‘Are you going to tell Laurence Miller about this … er … unwanted assignment? It’s the sort of thing he will want to know.’
‘So that he can report to Sir William Cecil? No, I don’t think I should. That would almost amount to pointing a finger of suspicion at Master Frost in a public way, and Eleanor would object to that. She is so anxious to keep it all a secret from the man she’s betrothed to. She wouldn’t want it bruited about, even to Cecil. Even to Walsingham, discreet though they are. Anyway,’ I added, perhaps pettishly, ‘I have always disliked the idea that I have someone watching me and sending reports of me to William Cecil. It’s supposed to be for my protection but I still don’t like it. No, I shan’t tell Miller. After all, as I keep telling you, I’m not going to do anything, other than look about me when I’m at Knoll House. If I find the chest, I’ll tell Master Stagg and leave the rest to him.’
‘You didn’t agree, madam!’ Brockley said it as a statement and a question both at the same time. ‘You’re not going to try to steal the chest back, surely! Even if the lass did behave like an overflowing river!’
‘No, no, no!’ I said, with exasperation. Christopher had gone, and I had gathered my close associates round me in the East Parlour: the Brockleys, Sybil and Gladys. I had placed myself on the broad window seat, while the others had disposed themselves around the room, the Brockleys side by side on a padded settle and Sybil on another, her face composed and her skirts spread tidily round her, while Gladys, with her mottled brown complexion and hooked nose and the curved back that the years had inflicted on her, was crouched on a low stool close to the empty hearth. The variable weather had varied once again, and the day was too warm for a fire.
‘I keep saying it,’ I declared. ‘I said it to Eleanor and Stagg, and I said it to Christopher Spelton when he came here this morning! I told him I was prepared to look for the chest, but wouldn’t attempt to spirit it away. Master Spelton would be against me going to Knoll House at all, were it not on Walsingham’s orders.’
‘Why?’ asked Brockley bluntly. ‘I mean, why is Master Spelton so opposed to it?’
‘He says he has a bad feeling about my visit. You can’t call that a reason! And I repeat, all I will do is look for the chest.’
‘Wild geese!’ said Brockley in exasperated tones, and everyone laughed.
They all knew the story. Years before, on a journey to Cambridge in the company of an old friend, Rob Henderson, dead now for three years, I had heard a flight of wild geese calling as they flew overhead and said that I liked the sound they made, that it was full of salt winds and empty spaces, and Rob had said I had revealed something in my nature, something untamed. There was some truth in that, as I realized at the time. Without it, I would never have eloped with my first husband by climbing out of my bedchamber window and sliding down the sloping roof of a single-storey room jutting out below.
Nor, I suspected, would I ever have become involved in the adventures that had befallen me over the years. I had always thought of myself as undertaking my various assignments out of loyalty to the queen, but I knew that I wouldn’t have been asked to undertake them in the first place if that strange wild streak in me hadn’t been there. But all the same …
‘I have always,’ I said with dignity, ‘done my best to behave like a lady. I just haven’t always been treated as one.’
‘Who rode through the night as one of a party who meant to assault a house, because she thought her son might be imprisoned there?’ enquired Brockley. ‘Who once crouched on the floor of a warehouse in Antwerp in the middle of the night, helping to take up floorboards in search of missing treasure? Who …?’
‘I had to try to rescue Harry. And I was in that warehouse because Dale’s life was in danger and I needed that treasure to buy her safety. Anyway, you weren’t there. You didn’t actually see me pulling up floorboards.’
‘No, madam. But you did tell me about it,’ Brockley said mildly.
And suddenly, for a moment as brief as a flash of lightning, it was there – the curious rapport that Brockley and I had, which once had made Dale violently jealous and still occasionally made her unhappy, so that we tried never to let her be aware of it. This time it was our joint remembrance of more than one dangerous adventure in which Brockley and I had taken part. There was a silence.
‘All right,’ Brockley said at last. ‘But please, madam, please take care. Be sure that you do no more than look around you to see if your glance lights on the chest. No one’s life is in danger, no one has been kidnapped, and neither the queen nor Cecil nor Walsingham have asked you to do it. Personally, I wish they hadn’t asked you to do anything. I don’t like the idea of you – our – actually staying in the house of a questionable fellow, which is what this Giles Frost seems to be.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I agree with you. But we’re going, all the same. Moreover, I’ll be paid,’ I added brightly, ‘by Walsingham. And if I instruct the Frost girls well, I might even be paid by Master Frost!’
They laughed, but then Brockley said soberly: ‘Ah well, there’s one thing. It may be as well for you to be away from home for a while, madam, in view of the threats which, according to Walsingham, have been made against you by the brother of Simeon Wilmot.’
‘Walsingham himself said as much,’ I told him.
‘He may well be right,’ Sybil chimed in. ‘When poor Philip was killed I even wondered if it had something to do with this brother. What were you told his name was, Ursula?’
‘Hunt. Anthony Hunt. I wondered too,’ I said. ‘But nothing more has come of it. It’s still a mystery.’ I looked at Brockley. ‘Perhaps you will find it helpful to be away from here for a while, it may distract your mind. Philip must be very much in your thoughts.’
‘He is,’ said Brockley. ‘My poor boy. Murdered by someone unknown, and since then nothing. He has been wiped out. It’s as if he had never existed at all.’
Again there was a silence, and again one of those curious flashes between us. I knew, of course, that it had been wonderful for Brockley when he found that he had a son, and I knew what a bitter disappointment it had been for him when Philip became involved in a foolish plot. And I knew too that he had grieved like any other father when Philip died. Only, I hadn’t realized until this moment just how deeply Brockley had felt about all those things. He had not expressed his feelings very openly.
He never did. He always put his duties first. I had left it to Dale to comfort him and I knew that she had tried. I had stepped back, as it were, and not intruded on them. Now I wondered if I should have been more openly sympathetic – except that Dale might not have liked that.
These things could be very complicated. I smiled round at my servants, my companions, my friends, and said: ‘Remember, if any outsider wants to know where we are going, we are bound for Buckinghamshire to visit Meg.’
Whereupon, Gladys pulled a face that made her nutcracker countenance look even less pleasing than usual and said: ‘Let’s hope, indeed, that this man Anthony Hunt don’t get on your scent. Reckon he’s likely to try, do you?’
‘It’s possible,’ I said.
Gladys snorted. ‘And let’s hope there ain’t nothing dangerous in this place Knoll House, seeing that it’s that Walsingham that’s sending you there, and the kind of trouble you mostly land in when he gives you a task.’
‘Gladys,’ I said, ‘once again you are croaking like a raven. It’s depressing.’
It was. And unfortunately, with Gladys, her croakings all too often came true.