Queen Without a Crown Read Free

were a struggle, but if anything, this was an advantage, since Gladys didn’t get on well with other servants, though she was less of a liability than she had been. A narrow escape from being hanged on a charge of witchcraft – I had managed to save her, but only just – had had its effect. She no longer spat curses at people she disliked, and she washed, these days, without being told.
    I had at one time feared that old age was damaging her mind, but it was as though the shock of coming so close to death had jolted her back to normality. All the same, I wasn’t sure that she’d stay there, and I felt that the less she mingled with other people, the better.
    She did light cleaning and plain sewing for us, for her eyesight was good, despite her age. She slept on a truckle bed in the room where the Brockleys occupied a small four-poster. They didn’t like the arrangement, but could hardly complain, for few servants had a room of their own and a curtained bed. To have an extra person in the room was a minor inconvenience.
    In any case, Roger Brockley was responsible for Gladys’ presence in my household in the first place. Brockley, my groom, manservant, steward whenever we were at Withysham and sometimes my invaluable co-agent, had a chivalrous kindness for the aged. Gladys had been charged with witchcraft more than once. Years ago, when we first came across her on the Welsh border, Brockley, seeing her as a helpless, frightened old woman, had intervened to protect her from a similar accusation. ‘So you really can’t object to sharing a room with Gladys now,’ I had told him. ‘She wouldn’t be here at all, but for you!’
    Within the suite, Hugh and I had done our best to create the illusion of a home. We had given the second largest room to Meg and Sybil, while the main room was ours. It had a vast four-poster and a deep mullioned window bay with a practical window seat which lifted up to reveal a chest below. By moving a table and a couple of settles into the bay, we had created a miniature parlour, and this was where we talked to Mark Easton, after Elizabeth had sent us away to discuss his mysterious family business in private.
    He joined us there after a brief visit to his own quarters for a much-needed wash and a change of clothes, and his first comment was: ‘This is like being inside a private house. How delightful!’
    ‘We do our best,’ Hugh said, leading him to one of the settles in the bay, where they both sat down. ‘Will you have mulled ale, or wine?’
    For purposes of hospitality, we always kept a cask or two of good liquor in our chamber. Fran Brockley (though I still often called her Dale, her surname before she married Brockley) was by the fire with Gladys, mulling pewter jugs of ale and wine with hot pokers. My daughter Meg was next door, out of the way, at her books with Lambert, but I had called Sybil Jester, who had been with them, in to join us. She was partly Meg’s chaperone but very much more my friend. She was in the middle years, and her looks were unusual: her features just too wide for their height, her nose a little splayed, her dark, strong eyebrows stretching towards her temples. Yet there was charm in those distinctive features and in her serene smile. As she came in, following Mark, she gave us that familiar smile, but looked enquiringly at our visitor.
    ‘This is Mark Easton, messenger from Lord Sussex in York,’ I said, motioning her to the window seat. ‘But he has family news for us, though what it is, I’ve no idea.’
    Easton accepted mulled ale, and Brockley, who had been warming his hands at the hearth alongside Fran, brought it to him. ‘I called it family business,’ Mark said, ‘but it’s really to do with friends of Mistress Stannard. One of them, mistress, was formerly your ward, I think. Mistress Penelope Mason, she used to be, I believe, before she married a fellow called Clem Moss.’
    ‘Pen!’ I said, enlightened. ‘Yes, I was her guardian for a