To Shield the Queen by Fiona Buckley Page A

household.”
    “Yes, there are. But then, with people so much in the public eye as the Dudleys,” I said, “there is always gossip.”
    Lightning lit up the sky, followed by a crash of thunder, and the rain suddenly increased, as though the flash had released it. Puddles danced with raindrops and there was a sweet smell in the air.
“I don’t want to give offence, ma’am.” John always took care to address his employers correctly, even when arguing with them. “But I must speak my mind. Something funny happened to me yesterday evening and I reckon you ought to know about it.”
    “Something funny?”
    “I don’t mean comic, Mistress Blanchard. I mean peculiar. I was approached.”
    “Approached?”
    “Aye. By someone I didn’t know who was lounging round the stables watching other folks work. I was cleaning Bay Star’s tack ready for you today and this fellow come drifting up to me and said was I John Wilton. So I said yes. And then he said was I travelling Abingdon way with you today, so I said yes again, since it’s no secret as far as I’m aware . . . ”
    “No, it’s no secret,” I said. “We shall certainly pass through Abingdon. It’s the last town before Cumnor. Go on.”
    “Well, he asked if I’d like to earn a bit extra, so I said how—though I didn’t say it in a very friendly fashion. I don’t take to people as talk in near-whispers. Makes me wonder what it is they’re afraid to say out in the open. But my tone didn’t put him off. He said there was a private message to be carried. Then he waffled a bit. He said the great lord he worked for wanted a letter delivered secretly, and that it was a delicate affair of state. But it all sounded thoroughly havey-cavey to me, so I said no.”
    “Who was the letter for? And who was sending it?”
    “That I can’t tell you. Things didn’t get that far.”
    “Didn’t you ask?” I said, quite sharply.
    “I didn’t want to know,” said John candidly. “And besides, I doubt if he’d have told me until I’d more or less agreed to help. It could have nothing to do with the Dudleys, ma’am. The fellow mentioned Abingdon and maybe that was the point, and it was just that we were bound in the right direction. But I didn’t like it. I wouldn’t do anything to mix you up in anything that wasn’t respectable, and I just hope that you’re not mixed up in such a thing anyway.”
“John, I’ve simply been employed to help Lady Dudley, who is very ill. I am to lend a hand to the companion she already has and try to convince Lady Dudley that her husband means her no harm. To help give the lie to the rumours you mention, in fact. I’m sure there’s nothing wrong about that.”
    “Well, it sounds all right,” John admitted. “Only, I didn’t like that fellow and his talk of secret messages.”
    At heart, neither did I. All too well, I remembered de Quadra and his hints. “If anyone else ever comes to you with such a suggestion,” I said, “try to find out more. Be a little more inquisitive, John, for goodness’ sake. If there is anything going on around Lady Dudley that shouldn’t be, then I don’t know about it—but if it’s there, I ought to know about it. Do you understand?”
    • • •
    The storm persisted and in the end we stayed the night at the Cockspur. We set out early the next day, dined en route in the little riverside town of Abingdon, and reached Cumnor Place in the late afternoon.
    The weather was cloudy but the rain had done the crops good. All round us, the meadows were green, and we saw flourishing orchards and ripening corn. The land belonged to Cumnor Place, Bristow said, and John remarked that the estate seemed prosperous. However, Cumnor Place itself, when we got there, didn’t look prosperous at all.
    There was no one on duty at the gatehouse, and we rode straight through the open gate and along a further path to the courtyard. I saw at once that in the days before Anne Boleyn and the Reformation, this