The Ringed Castle - Dorothy Dunnett [72]
The whistler jumped to his feet, a lad in buff jacket and slops, his half-mended rake dropped on the floor. ‘I,’ said Philippa clearly, ‘am Mistress Somerville from the Queen’s Court at London. Mr Bailey expects me. Why does no one answer the door?’
The lad wiped his hands on his sides. ‘He’s out,’ he said.
‘His servants?’ said Philippa.
‘She’s out, too,’ said the lad. ‘Jeff’s took them to market.’
‘I see,’ said Philippa. ‘And when will they return?’
‘He said,’ said the boy, ‘he would be out for the day.’ He looked up at the sky. ‘Is it dinnertime?’
‘Past, I should think,’ Philippa said. She and Fogge and George the groom had shared some fruit and cheese from a basket, but there remained a certain emptiness of which she was not unaware.
‘Oh,’ said the boy. ‘Then he’s not to be back till tomorrow.’
‘From market?’ Philippa said.
The boy gazed at her with undisturbed amiability. ‘No,’ he explained patiently. ‘If it’s after dinner, he hasn’t gone to the market. He’s gone to stay with a friend.’
‘And the housekeeper?’ said Philippa.
‘Off to see a sick mother,’ the boy said triumphantly; and Philippa opened her purse, searched for and gave him a teston.
‘Well done,’ said Philippa cordially and left him, subsiding once more to the floor with his rake. She then walked straight back to the house and climbed through the open bay window.
The room inside was quite empty, except for a wainscot cupboard with an aumbry, a painted spruce table and one or two cheapish thrown chairs, although the cold fireplace had an overmantel of elaborate friezework, and the ceiling was also carried out in fine decorative plaster. There was a tapestry, discoloured with smoke, on one wall. Philippa left the room silently.
A narrow corridor, with more doors opening from it. A steep staircase, its bannisters of carved and waxed oak. A shaft of daylight from the rear of the house, and the subdued clack of pewter or earthenware. Philippa, treading quietly, walked to the front door and opened it, and then made her way back to the sound.
The housekeeper of Gardington, a middle-aged lady with a pallid, ridged face, looked up when Philippa entered and opened her mouth. In the event, she neither screamed, fainted, nor dropped the bowl she was holding, although her hand gripped so hard that she cracked it, and, saving both pieces quickly, laid the two shells on the table and turned to face Philippa. ‘And who’s to pay for that?’ she said harshly.
‘I shall,’ said Philippa coolly. ‘And I’m sorry I shocked you so badly. But I seemed quite unable to make myself heard at the door, and very soon I shall have to return to the Palace——’
The woman interrupted. ‘You weren’t invited. How did you get in? You’ve broken the door!’
‘The door is open,’ said Philippa, with absolute truth. Her fine, plucked eyebrows rose to impossible heights.
‘It couldn’t be!’
‘And besides,’ said Philippa patiently, ‘I have an appointment with Mr Bailey. If you would tell him I am here. Mistress Somerville, from Hampton Court Palace.’
The woman stared at her, thinking. It was a crude weapon, but the only one Philippa could be sure of. She had used it also in her letter. Mistress Philippa Somerville, one of the Queen’s ladies, was a friend of the family Crawford with which he had some connection, and wished the favour of an interview. She had not said what her relationship with the Crawfords might be, and she had not mentioned Lymond’s name anywhere. The housekeeper said, ‘He’s not here.’
‘I know,’ Philippa said. ‘He’s staying with a friend, and you’re visiting a sick mother. It is not an offence, of course, for a gentleman and his household to try to hide from one of the Queen’s servants. It only gives rise to certain strange speculations at Court.’
The language was too formal, she thought, for the housekeeper. But it might be more to the weight of the person whose foot had made the floorboards creak outside the door, just a moment before. And she had barely stopped speaking when the kitchen door was