"We plan armed uprisings in Normandie, Britagne, Gascogne, Champagne, and the Limousin," La Renaudie confided. "The main force will gather at Nantes, at the mouth of the Loire, for from that point they will be in a position to attack any of the royal chateaux in Touraine. Wherever the court is, we will have access by land and water."
More and more, Sir Robert was reminded of the ill-fated rebellion Sir Thomas Wyatt had attempted in England during the reign of Queen Mary. This plan had many of the same flaws, not the least of which involved the number of people who knew details of it in advance. La Renaudie did not intend to move against the court until March. In three months a great deal could go wrong.
The delay was in large part due to a desire to solicit aid from abroad, in particular from the church leaders in Geneva and from the English queen. Sir Robert suspected that Elizabeth would be sensible enough to avoid such a dangerous entanglement. In fact, he intended to advise her to do so, but he said nothing of that to La Renaudie. This revolt was both ill planned and ill timed and he suspected that it would end by accomplishing the one thing the rebels least desired, a union between the rival Catholic factions headed by the Guise brothers on one hand and the queen mother on the other.
As the day turned to evening, Sir Robert"s dislike of both the plan and the planner increased. When, on his way to bed, he came upon La Renaudie in a hallway, blatantly seducing one of the maids, Sir Robert was appalled.
It was true enough that he was not always faithful to Susanna, but he had never taken another woman in the same house where his wife was staying. His certainty that La Renaudie would be spending the remainder of the night in Diane"s chambers made the Frenchman"s actions seem even more reprehensible.
"You do not approve," Diane remarked the next morning as they watched La Renaudie and his men ride away.
Sir Robert considered her gravely, wondering to what, exactly, she referred. He was tempted to warn her against her lover. Both as a man and as a political force, La Renaudie was dangerous to all those foolish enough to become involved with him. In the end, however, he said only, "I am but a humble messenger, ma belle. I have no opinions of mine own."
Diane smiled at that, and reached up to touch his cheek with one soft fingertip. "I think you are much, much more than a messenger, Sir Robert Appleton. And you are most a.s.suredly not a humble man."
He caught her hand, lifting her knuckles to his lips. Her eyes danced with a challenge, daring him to try to seduce the rebel leader"s woman. He contented himself with issuing an invitation.
"If he does not succeed, Diane, and you find yourself in need of refuge, remember always that you have a friend in England."
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
"She continues to ask questions."
"She will learn nothing," Grimshaw said in a placating voice. He hoped he was telling the truth. "There is nothing for her to find out."
"We accomplish nothing, either."
"Sir Robert is not even in England," Grimshaw pointed out. "The letter I saw indicates he may be abroad for some time yet."
"The letter you lost."
Grimshaw made no reply. There was nothing he could say. He hadn"t a clue what had happened to the thrice-folded piece of parchment. His only real regret was that he"d not thought quickly enough and said he"d burnt it after perusing its contents. If he"d been clever, he"d never have confessed to misplacing it.
That letter, wherever it was now, had indicated that Lady Appleton had asked specific questions of her husband, questions about those she"d encountered at Appleton Manor and Denholm Hall and in Manchester. Grimshaw did not like the implications, but neither could he think of anything he could do to rectify the situation. He had not spoken directly to Lady Appleton since her first visit to the market town.
A harsh sound, the clearing of a throat, broke into his thoughts. "I suppose that girl, Bess, thought better of her theft and returned the letter to Appleton Manor."
"No doubt of it, though certes I have no way of confirming my suspicion without betraying that she stole it in the first place to bring to me."
"How much does the cook know?"
"Very little, I do think, else Lady Appleton would have made some move by now. Sir Robert"s wife did not speak to the coroner or to the constable or to any other justice when she was in Manchester." Neither had her man been anywhere near them. Grimshaw, himself one of Manchester"s justices of the peace, took hope from that. "Perhaps she does not suspect there was anything unusual about Bexwith"s death after all."
He wished he did not.
"Then why all the questions? Why her annoying interest in poisons?"
Grimshaw swallowed hard. "Poisons?"
"She does not believe in our ghost."
In spite of his best efforts to deny the truth, Matthew Grimshaw was no longer able to ignore the oddness of John Bexwith"s death. "The ghost," he began, his voice tinged with desperation, "the ghost-"
"The ghost may serve my purpose yet again, even with all the people presently living at Appleton Manor. The servants are still properly frightened of spirits and keep to their beds at night. Only Lady Appleton seems to lack fear . . . to the point of most foolhardy behavior."
Grimshaw bit back a sound of dismay. This was madness, surely. Why could not his employer leave well enough alone?
"I must have Sir Robert here in Lancashire. Did the letter hint at any affection between husband and wife? Can we use her to lure him north?"
"What difference would that make? Until he"s finished with the queen"s business, he"ll not be allowed to come here."
"But there might be word waiting for him upon his return to England, a message that will bring him north in all haste. Not her death. That could be too easily handled by minions. No, an accident, I think. Something crippling, so that she cannot travel south and he must perforce come to her. Yes. He must find an alarming message waiting for him at Leigh Abbey, instead of his beloved wife."
"Lies?" Grimshaw asked hopefully.
A contemptuous look was his only answer and he knew the truth without hearing it. Lady Appleton was going to have an accident in which she would be seriously hurt. And there was nothing Matthew Grimshaw dared do to prevent it.
Chapter Twenty-Eight.
Susanna woke, pulled from a deep and dreamless sleep by a loud thump. It was not repeated and she was uncertain whence it had come.
The room was chilled, for the fire had gone out, but it was warm enough beneath the piled blankets. The hangings around her bed kept out the cold, as well, but they did not quite meet on the side she was facing.
She attempted to drift off again but it was no use. It was not just the hangings that were at fault. The old wooden shutters, which she had not yet replaced, were cracked and bowed and let in the bright beams of a moon at the full.
For some reason, this excess of light was sufficient to hold back slumber. Reluctantly, she threw aside the covers and shoved the bed hangings the rest of the way apart and felt with her bare toes for the leather shoes she"d left on the cold stone floor.
It was the business of a moment to struggle into her warm velvet night robe and open the shutters the rest of the way. A film of frozen condensation coated the newly installed gla.s.s windowpane, obscuring her view, but there was now light enough within the room to show her that the washbasin had a thin coat of ice atop the water. She considered waking Jennet, whose job it was to tend the fire, but the maid"s gentle snores deterred her. Jennet worked as hard as anyone at Appleton Manor. Susanna stirred the embers back to life herself and let her servant sleep.
A faint sound caught her attention just as the flame caught, a low moaning that seemed to come from outside. Puzzled, Susanna returned to the window and wiped a patch clear with the side of her hand. Her view encompa.s.sed the rear of Appleton Hall, extending as far the apple orchard and including the small stone chapel where Dame Cat had made her home.
It was the chapel that drew her gaze. A dim light shone inside, a light that should not have been burning at this hour of the night. So, she thought. Our ghost has returned.
h.o.a.rfrost covered the ground and from this angle, by the light of the moon, Susanna could just make out a track where someone had walked. Each step had made an impression, leaving her in no doubt that a flesh and blood person had crossed the yard, and recently, to haunt the chapel.
Convinced the specter would flee again if she did not hurry, Susanna did not waste time waking her servants. Armed only with the fireplace poker, she hurried down the stairs and out into the night. She slowed her pace as she approached the chapel door, proceeding more cautiously.
The door creaked softly as she opened it, but there was no other sound but her own breathing and the pounding of her heart. Tightening her grip on the makeshift weapon until it bit into the soft sides of her hands, she advanced one slow step at a time.
Within, the moonlight created an eerie effect, its beams distorted by the stained gla.s.s in the windows. The single candle guttering on the altar revealed little beyond a small circle of light.
"Are you there?" Susanna whispered. Then, in a stronger voice, she issued a challenge. "Show yourself and state your case. Ghosts do not haunt without reason."
Nor did they light candles, but at this moment Susanna was unsure which she"d less like to encounter, a spirit or a fellow human being bent on mischief. Either would be unwelcome, but she could hardly shirk her duty now. This might be her best chance to find out the truth.
Pale, filmy fabric stirred, catching Susanna"s attention. Her quarry was behind the altar. As she watched, an equally pale bare arm was extended. The apparition beckoned, wanting her to come closer.
She wished she"d brought a torch.
She wondered why the cat and her kittens made no sound.
She obeyed the summons anyway, approaching the mysterious spirit who had been haunting Appleton Manor. Her trepidation increased, in spite of her growing certainty that this was no supernatural being. A ghost could not have made those footprints, she repeated silently, to rea.s.sure herself. And she was dealing with a small person, one she could overcome physically if it came to that. Those thoughts gave Susanna the courage to continue.
Almost at her goal, she extended her own hand, palm up. "Talk to me," she urged. "Tell me why you have come."
What was now clearly a woman, her face hidden by a thin veil and her form draped in the loose, concealing folds of some heavier fabric, backed away. When Susanna began to follow, her quarry turned and ran.
"Stay!" Even as she called out, Susanna knew that the only way she"d persuade the other woman to talk was to catch her. Intent upon learning who had come to haunt Appleton Manor, she launched a rapid pursuit.
She never saw the opening beneath her feet. One moment she was racing across solid stone. The next she was plunging downward, straight into the vault that held the remains of all the past generations of Appletons. Susanna felt a sharp pain in her leg as she landed, but she had no time to cry out. Her head struck against the side of a coffin and that rendered her unconscious even before her bruised and battered body came to rest on the flagged floor of the crypt.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
Jennet was puzzled to wake and find the shutters open wide. Grumbling to herself, she got out of bed and went to close them again, not even noticing that Lady Appleton was gone from the room. What she did see was a ghostly figure fleeing from the chapel, its shape even more fearsome in the moonlight.
"Lady Appleton! "Tis the ghost!" Jennet all but threw herself into the large bed, but there was no one there to offer comfort. A terrible coldness came over her as she realized what that meant.
Lady Appleton had gone ghost hunting. Jennet was sure of it. And she was certain, too, that something terrible had happened to her mistress.
Her shouts roused the household. Jennet was trembling so badly that she could scarce make herself understood. Bess paled at the very mention of the ghost. Mark"s expression grew grim when he heard that Lady Appleton was missing.
"Where did you see the ghost?" he demanded, shaking Jennet a little in his agitation.
She jerked away from him, rubbing her bare, bruised shoulder and pulling the coverlet she had wrapped about herself tight once more. "It was coming out of the chapel."
"Fulke. Lionel. Bring torches and come with me."
Jennet and the other women servants followed after, terrified of what they might find and yet equally afraid to remain behind. Mark went first, cautiously, into the chapel.
"Why has the vault been opened?" Jennet heard him demand. No one had an answer for him. "Be careful where you step," he ordered next, sounding authoritative and in control, but in the next moment, just as Jennet braved the interior, he cried out in dismay.
His torch, held out over the gap in the paving stones, revealed what Jennet most dreaded. The body of her mistress lay fully six feet below the servants who"d gathered to search for her.
"The ghost has killed her," Bess wailed. Hands over her eyes she turned and ran, nearly colliding with the open door of the chapel on her way out.
Mabel moved a little closer to the opening. "Mayn"t be dead." She grabbed Lionel and shoved him toward the hole. "Ye be most agile. Get ye down there and see."
Scrambling to obey and fighting tears at the same time, the lad leapt into the vault. He pushed aside a fireplace poker that had fallen with her and knelt by Lady Appleton"s side, then looked as if he feared to touch her.
"Put your fingertips on her neck," Jennet called down.
She was determined that Mabel should not be the one to take charge. Lady Appleton was her responsibility, not the cook"s. Indeed, it was most suspicious that the cook was taking such an interest. The other servants Lady Appleton had hired since coming north had all followed Bess"s lead and fled. And Mabel was dressed, her kirtle laced up over her shift as if she"d been up already when the alarm was sounded.
"She"s alive," Lionel called. "I feel the rush of her blood. But she"s very cold." He struggled out of his heavy wool shirt and put it over Lady Appleton, shivering as his torso was bared to the cold December night.
"We must lift her," Mark murmured.
"May be she is injured," Mabel objected. "Ye could make matters worse."
""Tis certain she is injured, but "tis just as certain that she"s cold and unconscious. We can do nothing for her until we get her out of there."
Suiting action to words, he sent Fulke for a ladder, then carefully lowered himself into the vault. Working together, he and Lionel lifted Lady Appleton"s limp form high above their heads, high enough that Mabel and Jennet could catch hold of her and slide her onto the floor of the chapel.
Her breathing was very shallow and she had a lump rising on the back of her head, but there was another injury, as well. Lady Appleton had a deep gash in her leg, one that ran from ankle to knee.
Jennet bandaged it as best she could with strips Mabel tore from the bottom of her shift and handed over. Jennet hoped to stanch the flow of blood, but she knew her own shortcomings. It was Lady Appleton who understood doctoring and remedies.
"Bring her inside," Jennet ordered, her voice unsteady and tears p.r.i.c.kling at the backs of her eyes. "We must send to Manchester for a physician."
"Little good that will do." Mabel grumbled. Then she suggested calling in a cunning woman who lived not far beyond Gorebury.
Torn between her uncertainty about Mabel and her need to help her mistress, Jennet chewed her lower lip until it bled. She did not quite trust Mabel, but neither did she fear her. It had most a.s.suredly not been Mabel she"d seen running away from the chapel in filmy white robes.
"Send for both," she decided at last. Lionel and Fulke could be dispatched each for one.
Lady Appleton moaned softly. She opened her eyes and called out for water.
Abruptly, Jennet forgot everything but seeing to her mistress"s comfort.
Chapter Thirty.
With the dawn, word came to Denholm Hall that a terrible accident that had befallen Lady Appleton. The story had already been embellished, turning the apparition in the chapel into a fearful specter that smelled of fire and brimstone and had long talons for fingers. All the servants had reportedly left, running clear back to Manchester. It was even said that Lady Appleton was like to die from her injuries.
Believing the last to be true, Catherine Denholm fled to the sanctuary of her father"s study, deeply troubled. Susanna had been lured into danger, but had the intent been merely to frighten, or to do grievous harm?