Page 262 of A Column of Fire

They approached their current penitentiary. Chartley Manor had a moat and battlements, but otherwise it was a house rather than a castle, a timber-framed mansion with many cheerful fireplaces and rows of windows to make it bright inside. It was not quite big enough for Mary’s entourage plus the Paulet family household, so the men-at-arms were all lodged in houses in the neighbourhood. Mary and Alison did not feel perpetually surrounded by guards but, all the same, the place was still a prison.

The riders crossed the bridge over the moat, entered the broad courtyard, and reined in by the well in the centre. Alison dismounted and let Garçon drink from the horse trough. A brewer’s dray stood to one side, and burly men were rolling barrels of beer into the queen’s quarters through the kitchen entrance. Near the main door Alison noticed a little crowd of women. Lady Margaret Paulet was there with some of her maids, clustered around the figure of a man in a travel-stained coat. Lady Margaret was friendlier than her husband, and Alison strolled across the yard to see what was going on.

The man at the centre of the little crowd was holding open a travelling case full of ribbons, buttons and cheap jewellery. Mary came and stood behind Alison. The women were fingering the goods for sale, asking the price and chattering animatedly about which they liked. One of them said archly: ‘Have you got any love potions?’

It was a flirtatious remark, and travelling vendors were usually adept at charming their female customers, but this one seemed embarrassed, and muttered something about ribbons being better than potions.

Sir Amias Paulet emerged from the front door and came to investigate. In his fifties, he was a bald man with a fringe of grey hair and a luxuriant ginger moustache. ‘What is this?’ he said.

Lady Margaret looked guilty. ‘Oh, nothing,’ she replied.

Paulet said to the salesman: ‘Lady Margaret is not interested in fripperies.’ Margaret and her maids moved away reluctantly, and Paulet added scornfully: ‘Show them to the Scottish queen. Such vanities are more her type of thing.’

Mary and the women in her captive entourage ignored his rudeness, which was familiar. They were desperate for diversion, and they quickly crowded around the salesman, replacing the disappointed Paulet maids.

At that point Alison looked more closely at the man and repressed a gasp of shock as she recognized him. He had thinning hair and a bushy red-brown beard. It was the man who had spoken to her in the park at Sheffield Castle, and his name was Jean Langlais.

She looked at Mary and remembered that the queen had never seen him. Alison was the only one he had spoken to. She felt a thrill of excited hope. He had undoubtedly come here to talk to her again.

She also experienced a little spasm of desire. Since meeting him in the park she had entertained a little fantasy in which she married him and they became the leading couple at the court when Mary was queen of a Catholic England. It was silly, she knew, to have such thoughts about a man she had met for only a few minutes; but perhaps a prisoner was entitled to foolish dreams.

She needed to get Langlais away from the too-public courtyard and into a place where he could drop his pretence of being a travelling tinker and speak frankly.

‘I’m cold,’ she said. ‘Let’s go inside.’

Mary said: ‘I’m still warm from the ride.’

Alison said: ‘Please, madam, remember your weak chest, and step into the house.’

Mary looked offended that Alison should dare to insist; then perhaps she heard the hint of urgency in Alison’s voice, for she raised a speculative eyebrow; and finally she looked directly at Alison, registered the message in Alison’s widened eyes, and said: ‘On second thoughts, yes, let’s go in.’

They took Langlais directly to Mary’s private chamber and Alison dismissed everyone else. Then she said in French: ‘Your majesty, this is Jean Langlais, the messenger from the duke of Guise.’

Mary perked up. ‘What does the duke have to say to me?’ she asked him eagerly.

‘The crisis is over,’ Langlais said, speaking French with an English accent. ‘The Treaty of Nemours has been signed, and Protestantism is once more illegal in France.’

Mary waved an impatient hand. ‘This is old news.’

Langlais was impervious to the queen’s dismissiveness. He carried on unruffled. ‘The treaty is a triumph for the Church, and for the duke of Guise and the rest of your majesty’s French family.’

‘Yes, I know.’

‘Which means that your cousin, Duke Henri, is free to revive the plan that has been his heart’s desire for so long – to put your majesty on the English throne that is rightfully your own.’

Alison hesitated to rejoice. Too often she had celebrated prematurely. All the same, her heart leaped in hope. She saw Mary’s face brighten.

Langlais went on: ‘Once again our first task is to set up a channel of communication between the duke and your majesty. I have found a good English Catholic boy to be our courier. But we have to find a way to get messages into and out of this house without Paulet reading them.’

Alison said: ‘We’ve done this before, but each time it gets more difficult. We can’t use the laundry girls again. Walsingham found out about that ruse.’

Langlais nodded. ‘Throckmorton probably betrayed that secret before he died.’

Alison was struck by how coldly he spoke of the martyrdom of Sir Francis Throckmorton. She wondered how many others of Langlais’s fellow conspirators had suffered torture and execution.

She put that thought out of her mind and said: ‘Anyway, Paulet won’t let us send our washing out. The queen’s servants have to scrub clothes in the moat.’

Langlais said, ‘We’ll have to think of something else.’