Free To Shield the Queen by Fiona Buckley Page B

wish you no harm. You are young, and a woman, and I understand that you have a child dependent on you. I speak to you not out of any personal interest, but as a human being. Take care. You may be stepping into danger.”
    “Danger?” I was startled.
    “An art you should acquire,” said de Quadra, with perfect seriousness, “is that of holding important conversations while making them look trivial. Look as though we were discussing the weather, as you English so much love to do. Or discussing the people around us. I wonder what Edward Stanley of Derby and Sir Thomas Smith are talking about so earnestly? Those two amuse me. Sir Thomas is so big and outspoken, and my lord of Derby so neat and courteous; Sir Thomas such a rabid Protestant and Derby with so much Catholic passion in his past, yet they are often together. I believe much of their conversation is a duet of hatred for Dudley. I wonder who the third man in the group is.”
    I glanced at the little group, who were strolling together a few yards away. I wasn’t interested in them but I didn’t wish to offend the Spanish ambassador. “I suppose he’s another friend,” I said.
“If so, he is not on their social level.”
    I looked again, and saw that de Quadra was right though I couldn’t make out why. The man was quite well dressed. “What is it about him that tells one that?” I said.
    “Oh, come, Mistress Blanchard. He looks at their faces when they speak and bobs his head to show his willingness to agree, and he is matching his pace to theirs, not the other way about. If you are to be involved in political affairs, you should cultivate habits of observation.”
    “But I’m not going to be involved in political affairs! I’m only going to comfort an ailing woman and hope thereby to quieten some rumours.”
    “If and when Amy Dudley dies, her husband will become free to marry and may seek to marry the queen. That is most certainly a political affair.” He used the French word affaire, dryly, with a double meaning. “You English,” he said, “have a saying that where there is smoke, there is fire. In my experience, there is truth in that. The rumours that you hope to quieten are, I presume, the whispers that someone intends harm to Lady Dudley. They are persistent. There is much smoke. To me it suggests a flame somewhere.”
    I experienced a jolt in the stomach, not of surprise, but of alarm, as though a secret fear had been roused to life. “My lord bishop,” I said urgently, “if you know anything definite, please tell me.”
    De Quadra shook his tonsured head. “I know nothing specific. However, the rumours are not only persistent but strong. You speak of quietening them. I would counsel you to beware of them. If you go to Cumnor, Mistress Blanchard, I advise you to be very alert to all that goes on in that house. For your own sake, take care.”
• • •
    We set out on the Friday, each of us with a few belongings in saddlebags. The bulk of the luggage would follow by packhorse. Like pillion riders, packhorses slowed travellers down. Dudley had mounted me on a dainty little mare called Bay Star, and Fran Dale had a stolid, broad-backed white gelding. I had asked Dudley to give her a safe, comfortable horse, in the hope of reducing her complaints to a minimum.
    I kept Dale because she was a very competent lady’s maid and completely honest, but her favourite phrase was “I can’t abide . . . ” The list of things that she couldn’t abide, apart from horse-riding, included moths round candles, loud noises, nasty smells, the flies that buzzed round horses in summer, and any place which was neither London nor the court. She had round blue eyes, a skin which must once have been good but was now marred by lines and smallpox scars, and a permanently aggrieved expression. John found her annoying. That first day he told her roundly, twice, to stop grumbling.
    Despite Dudley’s wish for haste, we soon saw that the journey would take at least