Face Down Before Rebel Hooves Part 12

"I do not understand, madam."

"I know you do not, Jennet, and there is no time now to explain. I've no idea how to go about retrieving those letters if she's taken to carrying them on her person. Will you stay and help me?"

"I will stay," Jennet promised.

The next morning the rebels were on the move again. Together with Lady Northumberland's chamberers, Bess Kelke and Meggy Lamplugh, Jennet shared a precarious perch atop the rawhide cover that protected a load of featherbeds, traveling chests, and other household goods. It was not the most comfortable way to travel, but Jennet preferred it to walking.

"Great sackless cuddy," Bess muttered as Master Carnaby rode by, his horse's hooves kicking up dirt from the road.

All Northumberland's lesser servants spoke English with thick Northern accents and at first Jennet had not always been able to make sense of their conversation. Now, however, she was becoming accustomed to the way they talked. "Big stupid donkey?" she asked.

"Reet," said the heavily bearded groom perched on the driver's bench. He'd traded his livery for a crusader's cross. To Jennet's mind, one was as bad as the other. The Percy lion engraved upon a badge marked him as the earl of Northumberland's man. The cross identified him as a rebel.

"I dinna ken whe Mistress Standbridge will nivver give ower clamming for him," Bess continued.

"She's always chunteren on, nivver content w' nowt," Meggy agreed.

Since everyone at Brancepeth knew Mistress Standbridge and Master Carnaby were lovers, Jennet supposed Bess meant Carnaby would do well to make his mistress his wife. Unfortunately, no one seemed to know much else about Lady Pendennis's cousin, save that she'd made frequent visits to Topcliffe in recent months, carrying messages from one countess to the other.

"Is Mistress Carnaby Master Carnaby's sister?" Jennet asked. Then she listened in fascination as Bess recounted a long involved tale to explain Mistress Carnaby's widowed state. She sat up a bit straighter when she heard that Ranulf Carnaby had been slain by one of the queen's intelligence gatherers. Caught carrying a secret message to the king of Spain, he'd fought to the death rather than go to London and be tortured for what he knew.

"What man did he fight?"

Bess gave her an odd look. "A divvent knaa his nyem."

Jennet wondered if Guy Carnaby knew it. "How long ago was this?"

"Six years since," Bess thought, but she jabbed the groom in the ribs and asked him for confirmation.

"De'el take ye, what are ye naggin' on at?"

When the two of them began a spirited exchange, half quarrel, half flirtation, Jennet retreated into her own thoughts. Six years ago . . . when Sir Walter Pendennis had been one of the most successful of the queen's intelligence gatherers. He'd been important enough to be in charge of other agents. Had he been responsible for the death of Ranulf Carnaby? Could he even have killed the man himself?

She frowned. If he had, did that mean Master Carnaby had told the earl of Northumberland that Sir Walter's wife might betray them? Or did it mean Carnaby had sent the message to Dartnall himself? As the earl's secretary, he might have been able to steal the earl's seal and affix it to a letter Northumberland knew nothing about. Jennet puzzled over the matter for the rest of the day's journey.

The sun hung low in the sky by the time they reached Darlington and stopped for the night. Absently, Jennet spoke as she clambered down from the cart. "I must see if Lady Appleton needs me."

"Who?" Bess's bewildered question sent Jennet into a panic. How could she have been so stupid as to use the wrong name?

"Lady Pendennis, that is," she blurted, trying to force a laugh through a suddenly dry throat. "Lady Appleton was another young lady in Lady Quarles's service when Lady Pendennis was there. Not that she was Lady Pendennis then. Just plain Mistress Lowell."

Her babbling only attracted more curious looks. Jennet was almost in tears. If anyone had heard of Lady Appleton, the expert on poisons and loyal subject of the queen, there would be trouble.

Thankfully, a distraction presented itself, an excited buzz running through the line of riders as word came that the earls had been thwarted in their wish to hear Ma.s.s. There was holy water in Darlington but no vestments. They would have to settle for reading their proclamation of rebellion, something Jennet had heard they intended to do in every place they stopped.

"We, Thomas, earl of Northumberland, and Charles, earl of Westmorland," it began, "most loyal va.s.sals of Her Majesty, to all true believers in the ancient Catholic Church."

Jennet listened in growing amazement as they accused "certain wicked and designing men of the retinue of the queen" of "crafty and malicious wiles" and of persecuting "the true Catholic religion of G.o.d" and attempting the destruction of the n.o.bility.

The proclamation went on to spell out the earls' chief demands and vow to restore "the ancient freedom of the Church of G.o.d and of the realm." "If we do not this of ourselves," it continued, "we risk to be made Protestants by force, which would be a sore danger to our State and to our country to which we belong."

So much wordiness, Jennet thought, and all it meant was that they wanted to replace the Church of England with the Roman Catholic faith.

She was surprised to hear no mention of the queen of Scots. Master Baldwin had told them Sir Walter believed freeing her was the real goal of this rebellion. The chief objectives, as read out in Darlington, were the reinstatement of what the rebels called "the true and ancient religion," the removal of several of the queen's councillors, the liberation of those n.o.bles who were in prison, notably the duke of Norfolk, and the recall of certain former councillors. Those who had served under the queen's late sister, Jennet presumed. At the end of the proclamation was a demand for general amnesty.

A great cheer went up when the reading was complete. Most of the men who flocked to the earls' cause were armed with guns and halberds, pitchforks and bows, prepared to back up their convictions with force. "Death to the heretics!" some cried. Others shouted, "Take back the monasteries!"

A horrifying vision materialized in Jennet's mind at these words. Until that moment, this uprising had seemed far removed from her loved ones, but Leigh Abbey had once been a monastery. It had been granted to Lady Appleton's grandfather after its dissolution as a religious house. Would her home be destroyed if men such as these had their way? Mark and their children thrown out of their home? It had not been so many years ago that the fires of Smithfield had made martyrs of those who would not give up the New Religion. Jennet knew, only too well, that people who objected to the policies of the Crown ofttimes lost their lives.

"Faith," she whispered. No wonder Lady Appleton had agreed to spy on the rebels. If they were not stopped, they might well destroy all she held dear.

Chapter 24.

Their betters were invited to sup at the house of a gentleman of Darlington, where the earl and countess of Westmorland would lodge, but the waiting gentlewomen and lesser female servants made do with what a harried and overburdened innkeeper could supply for their supper. They gathered in the common room, tired after a long day of travel and upheaval. Spirits were high, for men did seem to be flocking to the cause, but bodies flagged, in dire need of food and drink and rest.

"Turnip soup?" Marion complained, setting her bowl aside untasted. She looked with even less favor on the dark bread she'd been given. Another of Lady Westmorland's gentlewomen was likewise contemptuous of the offering. Both were out of sorts because they had been billeted at the inn while their mistress's two other attendants had beds at the manor.

"I am hungry enough to swallow anything," Joan Lascelles declared, accepting her portion from Meggy Lamplugh. Bess Kelke filled each bowl from a steaming cauldron the innkeeper's boys had brought in, then pa.s.sed it to Meggy and Jennet to distribute.

Susanna made no comment, simply dipped her spoon in the hot, watery broth and lifted it toward her mouth. The smell reached her a moment before she took the first taste.

"Do not eat of it!" she cried.

Reaching out, Margaret Heron caught Joan's hand. "What is it, Eleanor? What is wrong?"

Cecily Carnaby, startled, leapt to her feet. She collided with Marion in an attempt to reach Joan and in the resultant tangle the cauldron tumbled over, spilling its contents into the rushes.

"Do not let one drop pa.s.s your lips," Susanna warned. She dipped a finger into her bowl and at once withdrew it, wincing. She'd not even had to touch one of the thick fleshy roots. The milky juice alone was enough to make her skin tingle.

"Have you burnt your finger?" Jennet rushed to her side. "Oh, madam! The soup was too hot."

Marion, too, came to inspect the damage. "'Tis very pink," she said of the fingertip. "Shall I fetch a house leek?" Its juice was a sovereign remedy for burns.

"The soup was not too hot. It was made with poison." The unpleasant, acrid odor of bryony had warned Susanna in time.

Exclamations of "Poison!" and "How could this be?" greeted her announcement, along with calls for the cook to be brought forth. In the confusion, bowls were dropped and pushed away in haste, until little of the deadly contents remained.

"I did naught!" the cook protested when the men-at-arms the earl had left behind dragged him out of his kitchen. "I did naught!"

"Naught but mistake the Devil's turnip for its harmless cousin. If I had eaten of the soup, my mouth and throat would have blistered, at the least. I might well have died."

"'Twas an honest mistake," the cook whined. "One root for another."

"Show me your hands," Susanna demanded. Her own were shaking.

The plants grew plentifully in the wild and bore some resemblance to the turnip, hence the common name for bryony, but although the Devil's turnip might be pale yellow in color within, it was black on the outside. To make the subst.i.tution, it had been peeled and chopped up, and anyone who'd done that with bare hands would have blisters to show for it.

The cook's hands bore several old burns and calluses, but showed no evidence of recent exposure to the caustic juice of a poisonous plant. The men-at-arms searched his kitchen for gloves and found none. The slim possibility remained that the cook was one of those rare people unaffected by the juice, in whiich case, Susanna reasoned, he might have made an honest mistake.

"Were some of your turnips black?" Susanna asked him.

"Were in the ground, madam. Dirt be dark of color."

"Did anyone come into your kitchen who should not have been there?"

"Anyone might have, madam. In all the confusion." His face brightened as he realized he had a way to exonerate himself. "I was gone for some time while the soup simmered," he admitted. "Listening to the proclamation in the marketplace with everyone else."

"An accident," Guy Carnaby concluded when he was called in, but he gave Susanna an odd look. "What else could it be? Why would anyone have tried to poison you women?"

In spite of his calming words, it was some time before the furor died down, although not so late that the countess had returned to the inn for the night.

"Let us leave to chance which one of us waits up for her," Susanna suggested to the other gentlewomen.

She drew the short straw herself, and, as she'd expected, Jennet offered to keep her company, claiming she was too distressed to sleep. The two of them adjourned to the privacy of the countess's chamber.

They had plenty to keep them busy there. When the countess of Northumberland traveled she took with her all her own household goods, including a bed and a portable altar. The mattress and featherbed and curtains had been a.s.sembled, but the sheets and coverlets were still to be added.

"Did someone try to kill everyone, or just you, madam?" Jennet asked as she stirred up the fire and set several of the earthenware hot water bottles, known in the North as pigs, on the coals. The fact that these were used to warm beds had given rise to the slander that uncouth northerners slept with their livestock.

"I do not know. By the time I thought to sniff any of the other bowls, most of the soup had been spilt. You do not think it was, after all, just another accident?"

"Too many accidents for my liking," Jennet muttered.

"Yes, and you do not know about all of them." Susanna gave Jennet a concise account of the incident at the ford. "The billet strap could have worn through with age."

Jennet snorted. "Not since Fulke last saw it."

She was right. Fulke was her master of horse, who kept a close watch on every aspect of Leigh Abbey's stable. He'd not have let her take faulty equipment with her to Hamburg.

"Well, then, 'tis possible someone wants me dead. But is it because of who I am or who Eleanor was? And what person here would go to such extremes?" She could not tell now, with all the broken crockery and spilled soup, but that only her bowl had contained the deadly root seemed unlikely. If the poisoning had not been an accident, that meant someone was willing to endanger all the women to get at her.

"Madam," Jennet blurted, "the murderer is Mistress Carnaby!"

"Cecily Carnaby? Why would she want me dead?"

"'Tis Lady Pendennis she wants dead. Mistress Carnaby's husband was killed by an intelligence gatherer. What if it was Sir Walter?"

The story Jennet had heard tumbled out, and it did not take Susanna long to find flaws in her logic. "Ranulf Carnaby's death was a long time ago, and even if his widow does still want revenge for his death, why attack me? Indeed, she has made me most welcome in Lady Northumberland's household. She is even grateful to me for the improvement in her eye. Poor woman. She will be blind in time. There's no hope of saving her sight. Already it makes her clumsy."

"She overset the cauldron on purpose," Jennet muttered.

"She stumbled into it," Susanna corrected her. "Besides, you've just said yourself that it was Guy Carnaby you suspected of telling the earl of Northumberland about Walter's past."

"If he knew, she could have known, too. And as revenge, a spouse for a spouse makes perfect sense."

"Do you mean to say you think she convinced the earl to order Eleanor killed? That she's behind all three so-called accidents?"

Jennet had given up any pretense of making the countess's bed ready for the night. She stood with hands on hips, glaring at Susanna. "She could have sent that letter herself. Stolen the earl's seal. Written the-"

"In code?"

"Was it in code? No one's seen it but Master Dartnall and I do not think Master Baldwin thought to ask him about that detail."

"More likely something I have said or done has made someone nervous."

"Master Carnaby was quick to dismiss tonight's incident as mischance. Perhaps he and Mistress Carnaby conspire together to kill Lady Pendennis."

Susanna sighed as she fluffed the pillows. What happened this evening troubled her. That it had been an accident seemed to stretch credulity, but not so much as thinking it had been deliberate. How could a poisoner have known in advance that the cook would serve turnip soup? Although any one of their company could have added that poisonous root to the pot-it would be the work of a moment to step into the kitchen and drop it in-that person would also have had to know how and where to find the Devil's turnip growing in the woods, and dig it up, and prepare it. She supposed they'd have found it easy enough to avoid blisters. The more gently bred someone was, the more likely to wear gloves, even indoors. But Susanna had difficulty seeing how the whole affair could have been planned in advance.

Accident or design? If it had been deliberate, that meant the poisoner was willing to let others suffer and mayhap die to get at Eleanor. She did not want to believe that anyone she'd met here could be that cold-blooded, but she remembered the night Cecily, at Lady Northumberland's command, had slain the rat.

Then Lady Westmorland came to mind. Susanna shook her head. Of them all, Lady Westmorland seemed least likely to have had advance knowledge of the turnip soup. And if, by some wild stretch of the imagination, she'd paid the cook to poison his own dish, surely the fellow would have fled afterward for fear of being hanged for murder.

"Mayhap we are too quick to dismiss Master Carnaby's opinion," Susanna said aloud. "Now that I think about it, the root seems more likely to have got into the soup by mischance."

"Well, then, what of the matter of your saddle? That sounds suspicious to me." Jennet applied the hot pigs with such a will that she imperiled the countess's fine linen sheets.

"If it was cut, it could have been tampered with well in advance."

"Cecily Carnaby," Jennet said, abandoning her task. "Or Master Carnaby. If they blame Sir Walter for Ranulf Carnaby's death-"

"Why take revenge on me if it was Walter who killed Ranulf? And remember, it is pure speculation that Walter was responsible." But she recalled, of a sudden, the tone of voice Guy Carnaby had used when he'd spoken of Walter that first day at Topcliffe. Susanna picked up where Jennet had left off with the pigs. "It makes no sense. Everyone here believes Eleanor left her spouse. Killing her would not punish him, for logic dictates that Walter no longer cares for the wife who abandoned him. Indeed, he might thank the man who freed him to marry another."

"Revenge is not logical. You must watch your back around both of the Carnabys." Jennet shot a worried look in Susanna's direction. "Have a care, madam. If some person does wish to harm Lady Pendennis, he or she may try again."

Susanna sank down on the end of the bed, inexpressibly weary. "I wish I dared make lists. Writing things down makes matters so much more clear."

"We must leave here, madam. Escape before there are any more attempts to kill you."

Susanna ignored the suggestion. Another thought had occurred to her and she knew she might not have a better chance to solicit Jennet's opinion. "Something has been plaguing me ever since my interview with Lady Westmorland. There are inconsistencies in what Sir Walter told me about Eleanor's involvement with the rebels. He said they approached her, but Lady Westmorland seemed certain Eleanor had contacted Dartnall. And Marion told me that her cousin wrote, at least once, to her kinfolk in Westmorland."

"Do you think Lady Pendennis intended to leave Sir Walter? Could the story he concocted for you to tell the rebels have been the truth?"

"If she did mean to leave him, we must ask another question. Did he learn of her activities from her before her accident, as he told me, or only afterward, by going through her effects?"

Jennet's eyes went wide. "Do you mean to suggest he arranged her death?"

"I do not like to think so, but Walter's odd behavior has bothered me all along. He is cold and distant when he speaks of his dead wife. And from what you've told me, he had little reaction when Nick told him that Eleanor had been murdered."

"He did not care, Master Baldwin said."

"But we both know Walter loved her deeply when they wed." Susanna closed her eyes. What she was thinking caused her pain, but it had to be considered. "If he discovered she'd betrayed him, betrayed England, could he have lashed out?"