Face Down In The Marrow-Bone Pie Part 2

News that Francis II was in ill health, beyond the condition of his skin, troubled Robert only because the boy-king's death might mean the return of his widow to Scotland. She would be more trouble to England there than in France. It was in Elizabeth's best interests that Mary Stewart's husband stay healthy.

"Who controls him?" he asked Pendennis.

"Some say his wife's uncles, the duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine. Some say his mother, Queen Catherine. In some respects it does not matter. All are most devout Catholics."

"And the remedy for England? Support the Protestant faction? Cause discord where we may?"

"Perhaps. That is what you are to a.s.sess."

"You sound doubtful. I had heard the number of French Calvinists was growing."

"Aye. They claim between three hundred thousand and four hundred thousand souls here in France. Some estimate as much as half of the n.o.bility and a third of the bourgeoisie have been converted by missionaries working out of Geneva. Until the national synod of the Reformed Church was convened here in Paris in May there seemed a real possibility that Catholicism would be replaced as the state religion. Unfortunately, the synod coincided with the appearance of that most ominous portent, the star with the long tail. The New Religion has been blamed for every untoward event since."

Sir Robert refilled their goblets and stared broodingly into the dark wine. "We are at peace with France now. I wonder how wise it is to involve ourselves in their civil war."

"Any peace is fleeting. The queen would be foolish not to take an interest in France's internal affairs."

"And why send me? The queen's message made it clear you judged it imperative that I be the emissary sent." He'd debated whether to ask, but the question gnawed at him. He'd been wanting an a.s.signment to France, but he was wary of the mission all the same. Mishandle his duties and he might well lose his chance for advancement at court. The new queen was as fickle as her predecessors. A man in favor one day might find himself hung, drawn and quartered the next.

"How gratifying to know royalty pays heed to my advice." Pendennis drained his goblet in one long swallow and stared at the branches in the fireplace. "You were requested, my friend, by name."

"By whom?"

"G.o.defroy du Barri, the seigneur de La Renaudie. It is rumored his undertaking has the blessing of John Calvin himself, and as you are well known in Geneva, it follows that he trusts you."

"I do not know of this La Renaudie."

"He is something of a mystery. We do know he has been in the countryside recruiting unemployed functionaries and former officers, anyone, in truth, who has suffered as a result of the economies practiced by the most Catholic Cardinal of Lorraine. We suspect that his real intent is to try to capture both the cardinal and his brother the duke. Most likely kill them. He claims, certes, that he is only organizing a delegation of loyal subjects to approach the young king with a pet.i.tion to redress their grievances."

"He wants access to the court."

"Aye. Once in, with careful planning and the support of certain n.o.blemen already there, who knows what he might accomplish?"

"He might accomplish his own capture, torture, and execution. The risks are enormous."

"Less, perhaps, if certain parties know that he has English support."

"So," Robert mused aloud. "My real a.s.signment is to discover just what chance this La Renaudie has to overthrow one of the powerful factions behind France's throne." He drank deeply and frowned. On his evaluation might rest the lives of many good men. "Where am I to meet the fellow?"

"He will send word, after your visit to Blois."

Robert grimaced, filled with a deep sense of foreboding. He did not like to be in situations where he had so little control.

Chapter Six.

Jennet Barton, Lady Appleton's tiring maid, stood in the middle of the sun-drenched courtyard at Leigh Abbey, arms crossed over her chest, and carefully a.s.sessed the three male servants her mistress had selected to accompany them to Lancas.h.i.+re. First there was Mark, the head groom who also had charge of the b.u.t.tery. He was a well-proportioned fellow a year or so Jennet's senior, with mole brown hair and a plain face. Next to Mark stood Fulke, one of Leigh Abbey's two grooms of the stable. He was a strapping youth, red-cheeked and rough-skinned. Half hidden by Fulke's bulk was young Lionel, the gardener's boy, who had seen only thirteen summers but already towered over Jennet, who was of but middling height for a woman.

An adequate escort, Jennet concluded, but not a very lively one. The trip ahead promised to be fraught with difficulty and deathly dull. Unless it was true that there was a ghost.

"Since you are to go with me," Lady Appleton told them, "you deserve to know what awaits you in the north."

That they might then ask to stay behind at Leigh Abbey was a risk, but Jennet did not believe it was a very great one. The members of Lady Appleton's household were loyal, and well accustomed to her eccentric behavior. Jennet already knew the story and scarcely listened as her mistress explained about John Bexwith's death and subsequent rumors concerning its cause. Jennet had a natural talent for being in the right place at the right time to overhear the juiciest bits of news and she'd been just outside the study on the day Master Grimshaw's first letter came. Now there had been another.

"The second letter," Lady Appleton said, "was written by that same lawyer to inform Sir Robert that he's found no one willing to stay at Appleton Manor. Thus, it becomes necessary for me to go north in person. If I do not take charge and oversee the installation of new staff, the house will sit empty, abandoned, and decaying. Thieves and vagabonds will not be frightened off by this foolishness about a ghost, and I do not intend to let it deter me, either. I will not sit idly by and allow my husband's boyhood home to be robbed and vandalized."

All that sounded reasonable enough, and was delivered in Lady Appleton's most stirring manner, but Jennet wondered if there was more to this decision to travel than simple duty. Ever since Michaelmas, when the year's accounts had been settled, Jennet had noted her mistress's growing restlessness. Lady Appleton had been heard to mutter that there were no challenges left at Leigh Abbey.

Jennet herself was curious about the haunted house, though now that she thought about it she was not entirely sure she wanted to go and live in it. "What if there really is a ghost?" she asked some time later, when the two women were alone in Lady Appleton's chamber, engaged in packing clothing for the forthcoming trip.

"Why, we'll invite it to dine with us." Lady Appleton chuckled as she folded a s.h.i.+ft made of finest lawn and tucked it into a small canvas traveling bag. "On marrow-bone pie."

Jennet failed to see any humor in the jest.

"If you are afraid, Jennet, you need not accompany me."

"I'll not desert you, madam," Jennet said staunchly. Her pride was stung by the suggestion that she might be less brave than her mistress.

Lady Appleton smiled. "Tell me, Jennet. Does it please you that Mark is going with us?"

Blus.h.i.+ng furiously, Jennet bent to retrieve a st.u.r.dy wool cloak from the bottom of a chest. Her m.u.f.fled words were barely audible. "He's nothing to me."

"And you are everything to him. It is plain he loves you, Jennet, and you could do far worse."

"Mark's a good man," Jennet grudgingly conceded, "and devoted to you, mistress. He'll protect us with his life on this journey."

"He'd make you a good husband."

Jennet spoke before she thought. "He'd turn me into a brood mare."

Belatedly, she realized her words might offend. The Appletons had been married long enough to have had four or five children by now and yet they had none. Lady Appleton handed Jennet a pair of yellow velvet sleeves and a matching bodice and bade her fold them. If she was troubled by her failure to produce an heir, or by Jennet's careless comment, she gave no sign of it.

Was she barren? Jennet wondered. She'd never seen Lady Appleton indulge in any of the well-known treatments, yet surely she knew them. Lady Appleton had great skill with all manner of herbal remedies. She must be familiar with the garlic test.

Folding and packing occupied only a small part of Jennet's inquisitive mind. Could it be that her mistress had overheated her womb with all those baths? On the other hand, bathing was sometimes ordered to cure a too-cold womb. Then again, the problem might lie with Sir Robert.

Jennet stood still, a ruff clutched in both hands, struck by that startling possibility. A man's a.s.sets were well displayed in hose and codpiece and Sir Robert did not appear to her to be lacking in that- "Jennet? Stop woolgathering, my girl. We've much to do to prepare for the journey."

Once again Jennet felt color seep into her cheeks as she hurried to do as she'd been bidden. She was glad Lady Appleton could not possibly guess the direction of her thoughts, and hastily diverted the conversation, changing it back to the subject she knew most interested her mistress at the moment.

"Do you think there is a ghost?" she asked.

"No. I do not believe anything supernatural is going on at Appleton. You will see when we get there, Jennet. John Bexwith likely died of old age, and if he did not, then his death will turn out to be a simple matter of accidental poisoning. There is a slight chance he was murdered, but even if that proves so, his killer was no ghost. Of that I am certain."

"Murder?" Jennet was no longer blus.h.i.+ng. Indeed, she suspected that her face had abruptly lost all its color. Unaware that she was doing so, she began to worry her lower lip.

A few hours later, Jennet and Mark met by arrangement in the ornamental gardens on the south side of Leigh Abbey.

"Lady Appleton actually looked pleased by the prospect of unraveling a mystery," she told him. "And she said I need not go, that I could remain here, where it is safe."

Mark, intent on nibbling her ear, did not respond for a moment. Then, as her words took root, he abruptly released her. "You do not wish to come with me? But, Jennet, this is a great opportunity, for both of us."

"Opportunity?"

"The chance of a lifetime." Growing more confident again, Mark took both her hands in his. "Appleton Manor needs a new steward. I mean to convince Lady Appleton that I am the best man to fill that post."

"Mark Jaffrey, are you daft? There may have been one steward murdered there already. Do you mean to be the next victim?"

"Why, Jennet, do you care so much?"

Chagrined, she punched him in the arm. He laughed and pulled her closer, whispering of how good her life could be if she became a steward's wife. Then he started to kiss her again and Jennet stopped trying to talk him out of it.

But she was still uneasy about going to Appleton Manor. Deep in her heart, Jennet was certain that some terrible danger awaited them there.

Chapter Seven.

Her husband's holding lay before her, at this distance an imposing stone structure located in the southeast portion of a two acre lot enclosed by a square moat. At a short distance from the great hall and its domestic buildings Lady Appleton could just make out a small chapel, also built of stone.

She hesitated only a moment before urging her mount across the double-arched stone bridge, noting that there seemed to be no sign of life ahead. The only movement anywhere was the stirring of leaves, brilliantly hued in this season, on the branches of a few ancient trees.

"A fine place for a ghost," Jennet muttered.

Spurred on by the comment, even though she secretly agreed with her maidservant's a.s.sessment, Susanna Appleton continued leading her small band of travelers down the slope and over the bridge. They had endured a long and exhausting journey and she was anxious for it to end. In a few more hours it would be dark and she wished to be comfortably settled in well before nightfall.

In a bolstering tone, she addressed her retinue. "If the house proves as deserted as it appears, it will still provide shelter. We have provisions with us, and firewood, too. Neither cold nor hunger will trouble us tonight."

Two packhorses carried all they would need for the present, and Susanna began to make plans to visit the nearest village on the morrow. They'd need more supplies soon, but more importantly she wanted answers.

Within ten minutes, they reached the courtyard. An air of neglect hung about the place, more than could be accounted for by a month and a half without a steward to oversee matters. Dismounting, Susanna handed Mark her reins and strode briskly up a flight of stone steps to the porch. A heavy oaken door banded with iron was the main entrance to the house. She did not know whether to be angry or relieved when she discovered that it had been left unlocked. It swung open with an agonized creak of rusty hinges to reveal the lofty room at ground level that was Appleton's great hall.

Keep-style, the kitchen, hall, and chamber had been cobbled together end to end, but this was no castle. Susanna's knowledge of the place and its environs was limited, but she was quite certain that Appleton had never been used for the defense of the lands surrounding it. She picked her way through the soiled rushes that covered the floor, wrinkling her nose as unpleasant odors rose with each step. Rustling noises preceded her. Mice . . . she hoped.

The most cursory of surveys of the great hall revealed that the concept of a fireplace with a chimney for this princ.i.p.al room had not yet reached Appleton. A single opening, high above a central hearth, was deemed adequate to draw smoke from the hall.

"Inefficient," Susanna murmured, but she was alert to possibilities now and saw no reason why the hall could not be modernized. Her own grandfather had rebuilt Leigh Abbey. She resolved to do the same with Appleton.

Lifting her skirts carefully to keep them above the layers of acc.u.mulated filth, Susanna continued her explorations, at length mounting a dais which was lit by pale sunbeams filtering through a dirt-streaked oriel window. The illumination was sufficient, when she opened the door behind the dais, to show her the cellar beyond. She did not go in, for it appeared to be quite empty.

Opposite the window she located the narrow, tortuous stairway to the chamber above the storage room. Susanna hesitated, then squared her shoulders. She turned back only long enough to issue a few succinct orders to Jennet, Lionel, and Fulke and to tell Mark to bring a torch. He obeyed instantly, but in his other hand he carried a cudgel.

Upstairs the windows were all fitted with shutters, but one hung broken and open and let in light. An enterprising spider had spun its web across the s.p.a.ce, but neither ghost nor vagabond inhabited the spa.r.s.ely furnished great chamber at Appleton. It contained a sagging bed and a livery cupboard with a carpet and, seeming oddly out of place, a pair of virginals. It lacked a dressing box. There was no looking gla.s.s, either, and no fireplace.

Disappointed, but far from discouraged, Susanna led the way back down to the great hall. Clouds of dust billowed up with every step. "In the old days," she remarked, "it was the custom for family and retainers alike to sleep all together on pallets in the great hall."

There were worse things, she supposed, but she had no great desire to endure rough living conditions. The sooner she installed comfortable furnis.h.i.+ngs, the better. With a delicate shudder at the thought of what she might find next, she ventured past the b.u.t.tery and pantry and went into the kitchen. Like the rest of the place, the service rooms were filthy.

"Not fit for a gentleman's house," Mark muttered.

"It will be," Susanna said.

She stood with her hands on her hips and looked around her. The workrooms were a disgrace, which might well be at least a part of the reason why Robert had always discouraged her from visiting his ancestral estate. He'd not wanted her to see how general the state of neglect and disrepair was at Appleton.

"All this can be remedied, Mark."

"It will cost a fortune."

"I have a fortune," she reminded him.

Even as tired as she was after the long journey, Susanna was ready to face the challenge of turning Appleton into a second home. She discovered oil lamps and candlesticks, though neither oil nor candles were in evidence. A few mildewed and stained linens had been left behind, and some pewter. She hoped whatever gold and silver plate there had been had been stored elsewhere rather than stolen. That was something else she'd have to ask Lawyer Grimshaw about.

By the time she returned to the great hall for the second time, she'd all but given up hope that any part of the house would be comfortable to live in for the present. Even the privy had turned out to be inconvenient, having been constructed according to the old rule that dictated setting the cesspit a bowshot away from the house.

There was one area left to inspect. Bracing herself for more evidence of neglect, Appleton's new lady climbed the high, curving staircase at the lower end of the hall. She was pleasantly surprised to find herself in a solar with a fireplace. There was a washbasin set into an outer wall, too. It was getting too dark outside to see for certain through the glazed and leaded windows, but she suspected that the water drained out through the mouth of a gargoyle carved into the stone.

"I will sleep here," she told Mark, who still followed her closely with both light and cudgel at the ready. "As soon as we have eaten, instruct Fulke and Lionel to help you move all the furnis.h.i.+ngs now in the great chamber to this room."

She was almost cheerful as she went back downstairs and her optimism increased further when she saw that there was now a cheerful fire going in the open hearth. Jennet had seen to both the removal of the rushes and the unpacking of those essentials necessary for the night.

"Most excellent progress, Jennet," she called out as she approached her maidservant from behind.

Jennet jumped and let out a shriek. One hand went to her breast, as if to contain the wildly beating heart beneath the bodice of her plain blue kirtle. "Your pardon, madam," she apologized.

Susanna chose to ignore the obvious fear in Jennet's eyes, and to attribute her nervousness to the vast emptiness of the hall around them.

"We will all eat together here, as they did in days gone by." She sketched a circle around the fire with her hands. There was no reason for formality in these circ.u.mstances. They had sat together at table in every inn along the road north. Finding herself a stool, Susanna dragged it close to the welcome warmth, sat, and reached for a heel of the bread they'd brought with them.

She wondered what Robert was doing.

He'd know what she was up to by now. She'd written to him before their departure from Leigh Abbey. In a brief note she'd detailed her plans. It was as well he was in Paris, she decided. The distance between them ensured he'd had no time to reply, no chance to order her to stay at home.

She knew he'd be angry. He'd been adamant in his opinion that no one needed to visit Lancas.h.i.+re in person. Still, he'd not been at home to see the second letter from Matthew Grimshaw. She was not so foolish as to think that it would have changed his mind, but it was the excuse she would give when they saw each other again. By then his irritation would have faded, and she would have restored Appleton Manor to its former glory. How could he possibly object to that?

"What news?" she asked Mark as he concluded a brief consultation with Fulke and Lionel.

"No one's about." He pulled a bench up to the fire for himself and Jennet. "No beasts are stabled here. No livestock whatsoever, unless you count the trout in the brook." He whispered something Susanna could not hear in Jennet's ear and the young woman smiled.

She'd make him a good match, Susanna thought. Pretty enough to be proud of but not so beautiful as to cause him concern. And practical. Jennet had a keen eye to the main chance. They'd make a formidable pair once they settled matters between them.