By Royal Command Read online

  I listened outside the library for a moment, then, deeming it safe to do so, pushed open the door and went in. I looked about me nervously, for the moon was shining through a pane of blue in the stained-glass window and this cast an eerie glow about the place. I glanced at the small table on which stood a skull and shuddered, for this blue light shone directly on to the domed forehead and seemed to light the hollow eyes from within.

  Quickly turning my back on it, I went towards the fireplace, wondering what condition Miss Charity would be in when I found her, for she’d been missing perhaps three days now and must have been concealed all that time. She’d be very frightened, of course, and cold and hungry . . . I suddenly recalled the evening before, when both gentlemen had demanded meat, soup, good white bread – and plenty of it. Of course, the extra must have been for the girl! But then, if she was well enough to sit up and eat, why hadn’t she called for help or tried to escape?

  ‘Hello,’ I whispered into the darkness behind the fireplace. ‘Don’t be frightened. I’ve come to help you.’

  No reply came. The low, cramped space I was in gave way to a small chamber where I could stand upright and I held my tin plate aloft, bracing myself to see someone cruelly tied up, perhaps, or blindfolded and gagged. My candles revealed nothing but a three-legged stool and a few mean utensils, however, all seeming to be untouched since I’d first found myself here some weeks before.

  I stood there, perplexed, for from the moment I’d known of the disappearance of Miss Charity I’d presumed she’d be hidden here. The house was ancient, however, and had many unused rooms, nooks and crannies, and she might be anywhere.

  If, indeed, she was hidden here at all.

  As I pondered this, I seemed to hear a voice calling for help, and I started up, for it had sounded so real that I feared the household would be woken. But perhaps I had only heard it in my head.

  Heard it – or imagined it?

  ‘Oh, help me, please!’ came the voice again.

  I will help you, I silently pledged, but I don’t know where to find you. Where are you?

  But there came no answer to this. I touched the walls of the small enclosure I was in: one was solid marble, the others of brick and heavy timber. Miss Charity was not hidden in this space, at any rate.

  I went back into the library and made a tour of its walls, looking behind a linen hanging and gently tapping pieces of panelling. I found nothing strange: no panels slid to one side, no tapestries swung back to reveal secret doorways.

  Where was she? I sighed. I was weary now and longed for my bed, and knew from having played about the house with Beth and Merryl that a person might hide themselves away in any one of a dozen or more places.

  I began to walk back to my own chamber, taking care that my feet made as little noise as possible on the rushes. I could not go upstairs and search all the bedchambers, so would surely have to leave Miss Charity to her fate – at least for this night. Her father would contact Dr Dee by the morning, as he’d said, and Dr Dee would then pretend to contact her by magickal means and restore her to her family.

  But what, I suddenly thought, if William Mucklow, being the Puritan that he was, decided that he could not allow such occult practices as Dr Dee suggested? Would the doctor then release her, or would she stay hidden away and eventually perish?

  ‘Oh, do help me, please!’

  There was the voice ringing out in my head once again, and wearily I retraced my footsteps back to the library and, reaching the stone staircase, looked out of the window at the churchyard of St Mary’s, its graves shining white in the moonlight. Both times that I’d heard sighing, it had been close to this spot.

  I held my candles aloft and looked around, up and down the passageway, and noticed, at my feet, the glint of moonlight on metal. Kicking away some of the rushes, I saw a large brass ring recessed into the floor and, bending down to remove an amount of straw, I discovered the outline of a trapdoor etched beneath.

  My heart thudded. There was a cellar in the kitchen where beer and some costly wines were kept, but I hadn’t known there was another.

  I stared at the trapdoor, knowing I should lift it and see what might be found but suddenly terrified at the thought of doing so, for all at once it came upon me that Miss Charity might have expired of cold and fright and that I’d descend into the cellar only to discover her corpse. I battled with my fear for some moments, trying to convince myself that the voice in my head was merely my imagination. I was almost at the point of returning to my bedchamber.

  I did not go back, however, for I realised that as well as the wish to help the girl, I had a mischievous desire to thwart the plans of Mr Kelly, whom I’d come to dislike very much. Acknowledging this, I placed the plate containing the candles on the staircase, pushed my fingers under the ring and pulled up the trapdoor – which came up so smoothly and quietly I knew it must have been used quite recently.

  ‘Hello,’ I whispered, my voice shaking. ‘Hello. I’ve come to help you.’

  There was no reply, just my voice echoing into the darkness.

  I took up the candles again and, holding them over the opening, saw that there was a wooden ladder going down into the dark. Although I still feared what I might find, I tucked up my skirts as best I could and, holding on tightly with my one free hand, descended. After a moment’s thought, I went back and closed the trapdoor behind me.

  Stepping off the last rung at the bottom of the ladder, one thing struck me straightaway: this wasn’t a cellar I stood in, but a long, narrow passageway which seemed to extend away in the direction of St Mary’s Church. Perhaps, I thought, it had once been a secret route whereby a priest of the old religion called into the house to conduct a Mass could, if needs be, have gone down the secret trapdoor and along the passageway to escape. The walls were of plain black earth, shored up with planks, and the ground was rough-trodden underfoot, and here and there water had seeped in and settled into stale-smelling puddles. I lifted my candles higher, straining to see further on, then gasped aloud, for a little way off I could see something huddled on the ground; an indefinite, dark shape.

  My foot slipped on a stone, making a noise, and the shape started violently.

  ‘It’s all right,’ I whispered into the darkness. ‘I’ve come to help you.’

  Reaching the shape, I saw that it was a girl lying on a rough straw mattress. Her knees were drawn up to her chest and her head was bent on to them.

  I touched her, making her shudder.

  ‘It’s all right, Miss.’ I stroked her shoulder, very gently, and, lifting the candles around to give a better view, saw that she had a small flour sack placed over her head. This had a string gathered around the top of it which was pulled in tightly and led down to her wrists, then on to her ankles.

  ‘You are strung up like a boiling fowl,’ I said. ‘Wait while I undo you.’ I untied the bottom knots, released her feet, unwound the string from her hands then lifted the sack from her head. The girl who emerged was very pale, with dark copper hair the same colour as William Mucklow’s must have once been. She was dressed in a dark velvet gown and cloak, and had two thick rugs about her shoulders.

  ‘Miss Charity?’ I asked, which I own was rather silly of me, for who else would it have been?

  She gave a hesitant nod, screwing up her eyes at the light from the candles, and then she opened her mouth and shut it again without speaking.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She nodded again, splayed her fingers, stretched out her arms. ‘I . . . I believe so. Though I feel very . . . sleepy and confused.’

  ‘I’ve come to take you home.’

  She yawned and her eyes half-closed. ‘I’m so tired. How long have I been down here in the dark?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Two or three days, perhaps.’

  ‘That long!’

  ‘I think you were given some strong herbal preparation to send you to sleep. But do you know how you came to be here?’

  She frowned. ‘It was
very strange. I’d escaped from my maid so that I could go for a walk without her and was enjoying the freedom, when suddenly a man on a horse stopped and presented me with a bouquet of flowers.’

  ‘Did you see his face?’

  She shook her head. ‘He wore a dark riding cloak with a hood, which was pulled forward.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Then – well, it seemed a romantic enough gesture and I thanked him kindly before bending my head to smell the bouquet. I was about to tell him that it would not be seemly for me to accept such a gift and that for certain my father wouldn’t allow it, but I found the aroma of the flowers so intoxicating that it made me dizzy . . .’

  ‘And then you swooned?’ I asked, for I’d heard that the flower of the opium poppy could bring about such a thing.

  ‘I suppose I must have done. I don’t remember.’ She turned to stare hard at me. ‘But who are you?’

  I thought it best not to answer this. ‘Now, can you stand, Miss Charity?’ I asked briskly. ‘We must get you home.’

  ‘Will you first lift the light to show all around us,’ she asked, and this I did. ‘Where’s the well?’ she said after a moment.

  I shook my head, not knowing what she meant.

  ‘The man said that I was poised on the edge of a bottomless well, and if I tried to escape – or even move – I’d plunge straight into it.’

  ‘There is no well,’ I said. ‘You are just in a passageway between a house and a church.’

  She yawned again. ‘He said that if I was quiet and good and made no sound, he’d restore me to my family quite soon.’

  ‘So you thought it best not to shout?’

  She nodded. ‘I mostly kept silent – only sometimes I sighed. Of course, all the time I was wishing for someone to come and help me.’

  I smiled at her. Maybe the voice had not been just my imagination, then. Maybe, somehow, I’d heard her silent call.

  ‘I think I heard you,’ I said, rubbing her ankles where the string had cut into them. ‘But I must get you home to your family now. Your mother and father are frantic with worry.’

  ‘But where are we?’

  I looked at her consideringly. ‘I think it’s best for you not to know,’ I said, ‘and best for me, too. That way you can tell no one where you’ve been or who rescued you.’

  ‘Whatever you wish,’ she said, her eyes half-closing in sleep again.

  ‘You must try and stand now, Miss,’ I said.

  Swaying slightly, holding on to me, she stood up and I fastened her cloak about her shoulders more securely, set her fur mittens on her hands and made sure her shawl was snug about her neck. She stood there patiently, allowing me to do these things as a child would, and indeed it was likely that she had always been tended and fussed over by maidservants and had never had to do them for herself.

  ‘I’ll walk home with you,’ I said, ‘although you must promise me faithfully that you’ll try and forget the direction you’re coming from.’

  ‘I promise,’ she said. ‘But when I get home, what shall I tell them?’

  ‘Tell them . . . tell them you were kept prisoner somewhere, and then you escaped – but it was fearful dark and you couldn’t tell where you were. They’ll be so happy to see you that they won’t ask too many questions.’

  ‘Is it very far from here?’

  I shook my head. ‘Not far at all.’

  I was nervous about going back through the house, not only fearing that we might be heard, but that Miss Charity might recognise the house where she’d been kept prisoner. We went onwards, therefore, along the passage and soon found ourselves standing beside a ladder similar to the one I’d come down. I climbed this while my companion held the candles aloft, and, pushing open the trapdoor at the top, found, as I’d anticipated, that I was in the body of St Mary’s, which was now as dark, still and cold as a burial chamber. The trapdoor through which I’d emerged was cleverly concealed between two pews, its outline hidden within the strips of old pine that made up the flooring and its ancient hinges rusted and dusty. How many worshippers, I wondered, had sat there not knowing that a secret passage lay beneath their feet?

  I helped Miss Charity through, we closed the trapdoor, and then had a nervous few moments when we thought the church door might be locked from the outside. It was not, however, and we left the churchyard in the normal way through the lych-gate, only just missing the bellman on his rounds, calling three o’clock.

  ‘Do my mother and father think I’m dead?’ she asked as we walked back through the deserted lanes.

  ‘Not dead,’ I answered. ‘They fear you’ve eloped, and have dismissed your lady’s maid for her negligence!’

  She laughed a little at this, and indeed sounded almost normal. ‘I must find poor Susanna and reinstate her! But how can my parents think I’ve eloped when I’ve scarce spoken to a man, let alone got to know one well enough to run off with him?’ She looked at me with interest. ‘Do you have a sweetheart?’

  I thought of Tomas straightaway. But of course he wasn’t my sweetheart! ‘I don’t, Miss,’ I said, shaking my head.

  We reached the gates of Charity’s father’s house and I made her promise, once again, not to try and recall where she’d been.

  ‘I will not,’ she said, kissing my cheeks with great affection, ‘but I will ever be grateful to you, and should a time come when I can repay your kindness in rescuing me, then I certainly will.’

  I was embarrassed to be embraced by someone so well born, but thanked her.

  ‘I mean it most sincerely,’ she said, and she pressed her beautiful sable mittens on to me and insisted that I take them. I did so rather than be thought unmannerly, although I knew that if a maidservant appeared in such expensive finery it would be assumed that she’d stolen them. I would never wear them, I thought, nor would I ever have cause to ask for help from a lady such as she . . .

  Chapter Six

  I had barely one hour’s sleep that night and wished I had not bothered to lay my head down at all, for I’m sure I felt the worse for it. Rising reluctantly, I went about my early morning duties in the usual way: cleaning the grates, lighting the fires, heating the washing water and simmering a pottage for Merryl and Beth’s breakfast, wondering all the time what was happening at the Mucklow household and thinking how overjoyed Miss Charity’s mother and father must be to have her home. My reveries about this happy scene, however, were tempered with the thought of how Dr Dee and Mr Kelly would react when they discovered that their little bird had flown the nest. How often they had checked on Miss Mucklow I didn’t know, but seeing as the trapdoor to the secret passage was in such a prominent position, I thought it likely to have only been once a day – and then probably when the household was a bed. If this was so, then they might not discover her disappearance until much later that night.

  When I went in to light the fire in the library I had a close look about me and discovered some dried herbs in a pestle and mortar, ready for crushing. I sniffed these and thought they were the flowers of scented mayweed, which, made into an infusion, is a well-known sleeping draught. These, I supposed, together with some poppy juice, would have ensured that Charity was always too sleepy to try to escape.

  It was a particularly trying morning, for Tom-fool the monkey started a high-pitched screeching which went right through our heads, this noise being accompanied by him leaping along the cupboards in the kitchen and dislodging dishes and platters. Merryl suggested that he might be feeling the cold – for there had been another very hard frost – and, thinking this the case, we found some old baby clothes and dressed him in them, which only maddened him the more, so much so that he bit me on the arm and drew blood. We shut him in the kitchen cellar as punishment for this, where he continued to squawk, scream, rattle at the latch and generally show his temper, so that when Mistress Midge announced that she had started thinking of our Christmas fare and dictated a list of provisions she needed from the market, I was only too pleased at the thought of ge
tting out of the house.

  I dressed Merryl and Beth in their warmest clothes and we’d just set off when a maidservant wearing a thick knitted hood, bundled in shawls against the cold, came hurrying along the river path towards us.

  ‘Can you tell me where the magician’s house is?’ she asked, and then gave a start of surprise. ‘You are his servant, are you not?’

  I nodded that I was, and when she pushed back her hood a little to reveal her face, I realised it was the maid I’d spoken to at the Mucklow house. ‘You came to my master’s house to deliver a letter, and now I’m bringing you the reply,’ she said.

  I regarded her rather warily, wondering what the letter might contain and hoping that Miss Charity had not given any hints to her father of where she’d been.

  I pointed behind us. ‘There. Dr Dee’s house is the one we’ve just left.’

  She brought out a parchment from under her shawl. ‘Would you be good enough to take this in for me?’ she asked, and added in a low voice, ‘For I’ve heard many tales about what goes on inside that place, and to tell the truth I’m afeared to cross its threshold.’

  I smiled. ‘I can assure you that nothing will happen if you go in,’ I said. ‘You won’t be changed into a Christmas goose!’

  ‘That’s what you say.’ She bit her lip nervously. ‘I would go, indeed I would, but I’m in a hurry, for my young lady’s returned and there’s much to do.’

  ‘Miss Charity’s back?’ I asked, assuming surprise.

  ‘She is – and because of it the whole household is set to make merry. Which is not the habitual state of affairs in a Puritan household,’ she added in an undertone.

  ‘Then she didn’t elope.’ I affected a look of polite enquiry. ‘But where did she go?’

  ‘Someone took her – but she says she doesn’t know who, or where she was kept,’ said the girl. She pulled a wry face. ‘Or perhaps she did elope but didn’t find the man to her liking!’