Uneasy Lies the Crown Read online

  The disguisers gone, the minstrels started to play a tune, and much of the party got up to dance. Cecily declined however, preferring instead to talk to Father Simon, who had offered prayers of thanks with her after the news of the battle came. But when Dario Gabrieli approached her, Adeline by his side, and begged Cecily to join in the dance, she found herself whisked up with the others. The troubadour moved more gracefully than even the ladies, and when the dance finished, he called for the minstrels to stop playing and asked that someone bring him his lute.

  He stared directly at Cecily as he tuned the instrument, his eyes still lingering on her when he began to sing, telling the tale of Lancelot and Guinevere. Cecily fidgeted in her seat, wishing he would stare at someone else. She looked around. Everyone else was focused on him, Father Simon included. For this she was grateful. She did not want anyone to think she welcomed Gabrieli’s attention.

  With a sigh, she poured more wine into her pewter goblet, but as she raised it to her lips, she noticed Adeline, her face still flushed from the exertion of dancing, watching her with a contented smile. She looked at Cecily and then at Gabrieli. Adeline, too, was holding a glass, and she raised it to her friend before she drank. Not wanting to draw attention to herself, Cecily slipped from her seat and went around the perimeter of the hall until she reached Adeline.

  “When you accepted Dario’s offer of friendship I did not suspect you had this in mind,” Adeline said, leaning close and whispering to Cecily. “It is most exciting.”

  “You have misinterpreted entirely,” Cecily protested. “There is nothing between us.”

  “I know how you like to emulate Christine de Pizan, so you are no doubt disappointed that I am not following her excellent advice and trying to dissuade you from your course of action,” Adeline said. “You’ll get no criticism from me, only a friend in whom you can confide anything. I shall never breathe a word of this to anyone.”

  “I assure you, there is nothing to hide,” Cecily said.

  “My dear friend, I shall not press you on the matter.” Adeline’s smile reminded Cecily of an extremely satisfied cat. “You must be careful, though. The other ladies are bound to be jealous. Thank goodness you have me to protect you.”

  “I saw Gabrieli give you a note,” Cecily said. “If you mean to impugn me in an attempt to disguise your own behavior—”

  “Do not speak to me like that,” Adeline said. “You are a guest in my home. I have taken you in and stayed loyal to you despite your immoral leanings. Conduct yourself carefully, madam, lest you find yourself in a more uncomfortable situation.”

  * * *

  On a crisp October day, King Henry and his much-reduced army—he now had fewer than a thousand men-at-arms, and the total number of his force was less than half what he had started with—set off from Harfleur. They were attacked only a few miles later, but rebuffed their enemy with little effort and continued their march. The men braced for another skirmish, but it did not come.

  When they reached the town of Arques, the king demanded—and was given—free passage across the river. The same strategy worked again in other cities, but the soldiers began to hear rumors that the French were amassing a great army, swollen with the men who had not come to the aid of their countrymen at Harfleur. Was Henry’s good fortune starting to change?

  The king’s plan to cross the Somme where his great-grandfather Edward III had after defeating the French at Crécy nearly a century ago could not be achieved. The French had anticipated him, and the English continued on until they could find a safer place to ford the river, forced to move deeper into the center of the country. They were still searching for an adequate site on the day they should have reached Calais.

  William had grown weak during the march, and could no longer ignore the pain radiating from the wound on his face. He poured wine on it, as the doctor had instructed, and kept it packed with the prescribed poultice. Rain beat down on the army. Morale was low. It seemed France would destroy them.

  And just when William started to believe things couldn’t get worse, the unthinkable happened. A soldier had disobeyed the king. Not only had he stolen from a town they passed through, he had stolen from the church, removed the gilt—though not gold—pyx that held the bread for the Eucharist.

  Would God support an army who stole from His house? Or would He turn His back on the English and their king? A dark gloom came over William. He pulled from his pack the diptych that matched the one he had given to his wife, fell to his knees, and prayed.

  1901

  21

  As twilight’s inky blue veil blanketed London, I retreated to the library after a quick visit to the boys in the nursery. Henry had constructed out of pillows and crates what I had to admit was a credible facsimile of a wooden fort. He’d persuaded his brothers to take the part of the settlers inside. Richard did not even pretend to be engaged in the activity—he was reading the book of medieval history he had taken from his father’s desk—but Tom happily entered into the spirit of things, flinging projectiles at Henry, who was waving what I believe he intended to be a tomahawk.

  When Colin arrived home, he was even less pleased than Jeremy at hearing what had happened at Marlborough House. “It is an inexcusable way to treat anyone,” he said, so distracted that he had not lit the cigar he’d been holding in his hand for the past quarter hour. “Gale is—”

  “Wretched,” I finished for him.

  “Quite.”

  “I don’t understand why a Scotland Yard inspector—wretched or not—has such sway in this situation. Surely your own role, not to mention your extensive experience, puts you in a position of more authority.”

  “It would have during the previous monarch’s reign,” he said. “Gale, though, has smoothed over any number of scrapes the king got himself into when he was Prince of Wales, and you know how loyal Bertie is. The inspector’s ambition is to become head of the king’s security, and I say let him have it. It’s not a position I would consider for even a second.”

  “Your expertise lies elsewhere,” I said. “Discretion, cunning, and the subtle diplomatic manipulation of delicate situations are your specialties. They would be wasted in guarding the king.” Still, I could not help but feel that it was unfair for Colin, regardless of his previous interactions with Bertie, to be forced to work under the wretched Inspector Gale. When I voiced this, he assured me I had misinterpreted the arrangement. Gale was investigating the murders. My husband was looking into the broader implications of the crimes, which meant he, not Gale, had the more important job. At least if one agreed it was more important to safeguard the king from theoretical threats than to bring a murderer to justice.

  After leaving Mrs. Grummidge’s house, I had parted from Jeremy and gone to the coroner’s office, where I had been able to learn the details of Lizzie Hopman’s funeral from the man who had examined her body. There was to be a simple service at St. Botolph’s Without in Aldgate. He also shared with me the cause of death. She had been manually strangled. I could tell from the look on his face that there was more, but I did not press him to share it with me. I had heard enough. I went home and telephoned Jeremy to pass on the information. He promised to contact Mrs. Grummidge and arrange to escort her to the memorial.

  “This is as good a lead as we’ve had in this case,” Colin said, as I recounted for him the connection I’d discovered between Mrs. Grummidge and Lizzie Hopman. “You’ve done excellent work, Emily.”

  “I can’t help but think that this suggests there is another meaning to the messages you have received,” I said. “The murders look more and more like acts of vengeance, not like an elaborate scheme to put the king on notice.”

  “You may be right, but we cannot risk letting down our guard. If anything were to happen to the king—”

  “I, of course, understand. But the messages must have some purpose, and if it is not to warn the king it might be something equally—or more—important.”

  “I suppose you have a suggestion
as to both the meaning and the way to puzzle it out?”

  On this count, he was wrong. I had nothing to go on but my intuition, and that told me that the messages and the murders were not so closely connected as we thought. The note Queen Victoria had presented to Colin—from the royal deathbed, no less—had been penned days before Lizzie’s death, the event I was convinced served to catalyze the murderer’s spree. Whoever wrote it could not have known that Lizzie would soon meet a grisly fate. More significantly, what on earth could it have had to do with the queen?

  “You should see this,” my husband said, producing a familiar-looking envelope. “I was beginning to despair that I would never find the next clue, but then I remembered the London Stone in Cannon Street.”

  “I’m ashamed I didn’t think of it myself,” I said. “The very stone from which Arthur pulled Excalibur.”

  “Unlikely in the extreme, my dear, although it’s possible that Jack Cade struck his sword on it when he rose up against Henry VI. Regardless of the truth of any of the legends connected to it, you will want to read the message.” He handed it to me.

  … he caused proclamation to be made, that no person should be so hardy on pain of death either to take any thing out of any church that belonged to the same, or to hurt or do any violence either to priests, women, or any such as should be found without weapon or armor, and not ready to make resistance …

  “It’s from Holinshed’s Chronicles,” Colin said, “which Shakespeare used when writing his play. The passage describes Henry V’s direction to his army before the siege at Harfleur, as soon as his ships had landed.” A sketch of a chalice filled the bottom of the page.

  At my request, Colin gathered the rest of the messages, and we laid them on his desk. He was standing behind me, still holding the unlit cigar. We studied the words, the handwriting, and examined both the paper and the ink, but could find nothing that offered any further illumination.

  “The chalice is your next clue to find, but I am still at a loss to understand what the queen meant when she said this was an instruction,” I said, picking up the first message. “Une sanz pluis. Sapere aude. One and no more. Dare to know.”

  “You can repeat it over and over. I doubt it will bring enlightenment.”

  “Funny that you mention enlightenment. It is the second phrase, sapere aude, that was used during the Enlightenment, correct?”

  “Yes,” Colin said, turning and sitting on the edge of my desk. “Kant coined it as the motto of the period, translating it, I believe, as have courage to use your own reason.”

  “Dare to know is how you phrased it before,” I said.

  “That is another standard translation of the original Latin, often applied to Horace’s original.”

  “Do we have the original?”

  “Yes, of course.” He crossed to the bookcase that held the Roman writers and pulled down a volume from one of the shelves, flipping through the pages before presenting it to me.

  Sapere aude: incipe!

  qui recte vivendi prorogat horam,

  rusticus exspectat dum defluat amnis;

  at ille labitur et labetur in omne volubilis aevum.

  “How I wish Margaret were here! Not only would she take immense pleasure from chiding me for my substandard knowledge of Latin, she could give us a precise translation.”

  “I am not altogether incapable, my dear.” He took the book back from me and read:

  Dare to be wise, begin!

  He who postpones the hour of living rightly,

  a farmer who waits until the river flows;

  but it still glides, and will glide into every kind of stream flows.

  “This time you said dare to be wise,” I said.

  “It’s a small difference,” he replied. “You of all people, who have spent years obsessing over various translations of The Iliad, should recognize that.”

  “You’re quite right. I wanted a better feeling for the phrase, that’s all. There’s something striking about it, and knowing that it became a battle cry for the Enlightenment thinkers—”

  “I’m not sure I would go quite that far.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Let me finish what I am about to say before you criticize. What other movement gained momentum during the eighteenth century? The Freemasons. And doesn’t dare to know sound like the sort of phrase that would be adopted by a secret society? Not the masons—I’m not suggesting they are behind your messages—but some other group. People dedicated to protecting the king at any cost.”

  “Who give a message to an aged woman on her deathbed in the hopes that she knows to whom it should be delivered?”

  “No, not exactly. I don’t have it all worked out yet, but you cannot deny that something along these lines could be possible.”

  “I most certainly can deny it.” He crossed his arms. “You will never, ever convince me that Queen Victoria belonged to any secret society.”

  “A society of ladies, eager to defend their monarch—”

  “Now you’re getting carried away,” he said. “You cannot think—even for a moment—that Victoria would have endorsed any such thing. She was all for a lady having power and strength when the lady in question was herself. She was not so generous to the other members of her sex.”

  His words, alas, rang true. Queen Victoria had never offered even a hint of support to the women’s suffrage movement. Quite the contrary. According to my mother, Her Majesty had once referred to the subject as a mad, wicked folly, and she never failed to make it clear to those around her that she supported the traditional roles of man and wife. Other than for herself, of course. I have never been able to tolerate hypocrisy. Perhaps that explains the cool relations I always had with the late queen.

  I frowned and scrunched my eyebrows together. “I realize it sounds absurd and I quite agree that Victoria would not have joined any secret society—unless the Prince Consort had suggested it, in which case it no doubt would have pertained to something—”

  My husband raised his hand to stop me. “Enough.”

  “Yes, well. As I was saying … the phrase itself, particularly when combined with the one that proceeds it, une sanz pluis, sounds like just the sort of rallying cry one would choose for a secret society. You cannot disagree with that.”

  “I absolutely disagree. To begin, would you be so kind as to elaborate for me on your experience—extensive experience, I assume—with secret societies and their rallying cries?”

  “You can poke fun at me later, but this does—”

  “What this does, Emily, is pertain to two murders, vicious and brutal, that were staged to send a message, a message it is not unreasonable to conclude is intended for the king.”

  “I cannot agree with you at all. If anything, I am more convinced than ever that the murders and the messages are wholly unrelated.” I pursed my lips and stared into his flashing eyes. “Are you a member of a secret society?”

  He cast those eyes, still flashing, to the ceiling. “Heaven help me. I should have known it would come to this.”

  “There’s no need to answer the question,” I said. “I am well aware that it would be unreasonable to expect an honest answer if you do belong to one. Either way, you would reply in the negative, and I would have no way of determining the veracity of your statement.”

  “I do not belong to any secret societies. However…” He pulled me to my feet and took my face in his strong hands. “… I realize that you cannot trust my denial and rather than subject myself to impertinent questions that could, in theory, compromise my integrity—particularly if I am indeed a member of some such group—I can think of no better way to distract you from your purpose than this.” He kissed me with an intensity that would have made me lose my balance if he weren’t holding onto me.

  “I cannot believe you would think me so easily distracted—” He had moved his lips to my neck and the ensuing sensation was so pleasant I could not continue. He lifted me up so that I was sitting on the edge of the
desk and had one hand firmly around my waist, the other resting gently on my cheek.

  “What’s a secret society, Papa?” Henry’s voice came from under his father’s desk on the other side of the room.

  My husband and I both froze, our eyes open wide in horror. Colin straightened his cravat and then his jacket and strode toward the boy, whose head was now peeking up over the leather-covered mahogany desktop. “When a group of individuals share a common interest, they are sometimes moved to found a formal organization to pursue said interest,” he said. “They can meet and discuss whatever is pertinent to the topic.”

  “Why do they keep it secret?” Henry asked. His father sat in his desk chair and drew the boy onto his lap.

  “Because they believe—incorrectly—that keeping things secret makes them more interesting.”

  “That’s all?” Henry frowned.

  “That’s all,” Colin said.

  “Bloody waste of time, I’d say.”

  “Henry! Where did you learn such language?” I asked. “You must not speak in such a vulgar manner.” Henry shrugged, but agreed to my request and then apologized for having to rush off in a hurry.

  “Nanny will want me to have my bath,” he said, before picking up the cat—who had also been under the desk—and dashing from the room.

  “I never heard him come in,” I said. “He moves like a ghost.”

  Colin leaned forward and dropped his head into his hands as soon as the library door had closed behind our son. “I’ve never considered myself an overly religious man, my dear, but I should like to drop to my knees and thank the Lord above that the boy did not wait another five minutes to reveal his presence.”