And suddenly there came to my mind: What if it were indeed a ghost? What if the ghost of Isabella had come to haunt me? What part did I play in her sudden death? Was it murder? And if it was, was not I the motive for that murder?

And why should I think of Isabella at such a moment? How could I say except that there was something about that shrouded figure which had brought her to my mind?

Ghost or not I was going to find out. The figure moved backward. Then I saw a hand emerge. The finger was beckoning me.

I was about to leap out of my bed when my instincts warned me. If there was a murderer concealed behind that shroud it was the same person who had been dosing my food. I had feigned a lassitude I did not feel. I must behave like a person who was under the influence of poppy juice.

I rose slowly from my bed.

The hand disappeared; the figure had moved out into the corridor.

I went out. The figure was a few yards away. The finger beckoned me again.

Trying to act like a sleepwalker, I followed.

The figure had disappeared around a bend. I hurried after it. I came to rest at the top of the great staircase which led into the hall.

There was no sign of the shrouded figure.

I stood at the top of the staircase; and then I knew. Someone was behind me, hands stretched out, waiting to hurl me down those stairs.

I turned and grappled.

I heard someone shout: “I’m coming,” and there was my daughter Linnet. She seized the shroud. The three of us were huddled together for a moment. I felt myself lifted off my feet. Then suddenly there was a wild scream. I found myself clinging to a piece of gray cloth as a figure went crashing to the foot of the staircase.

Linnet and I did not speak. We ran down the staircase to that crumpled figure, which lay face downward. I lifted the hood and the mask that fitted over the face.

“’Tis Manuela,” I said.

She did not die until three days afterward. Poor tragic Manuela!

She was conscious and lucid for a while before death overtook her. I was at her bedside and she was aware that I was there. She had little time left, she said, and much to say.

To think that this Spanish woman should have lived in my household for so many years and I know so little of her! How strange that she should be so devoted to Roberto and yet plan to kill his mother.

It was vengeance. Just retribution, she called it.

“As soon as I saw the ruby cross I knew that I would kill you,” she said. “Before that I just wanted to make you suffer.”

“But you did not attempt to kill me until last night,” I reminded her. “You gave me small doses of poison and tried to rob me of my reason.”

“That was what happened to Isabella. She was ill; she was robbed of her reason; and then one day she was thrown down the staircase.”

Her story was told jerkily, far from lucidly and not at one sitting. I had to piece it together to make a coherent whole. She was very weak, but she wished to tell it. It was a kind of confession. She wanted extreme unction, and I was determined that she should have it if I could manage it. It would mean running some risk, but I had known of Catholic families in the neighborhood and I would ask if a priest might come to ease Manuela’s last hours.

He would have to come in secret, but I would defy Jake, if necessary, to bring her this last consolation.

I learned that Manuela was a half sister of Isabella—her mother having been a serving girl in the mansion which was Isabella’s home. Manuela had been given a place in that mansion as soon as she was old enough to take it and had been sent to Tenerife when Isabella went there to marry Don Felipe.

She had been present when Jake had stormed the mansion; she had successfully hidden herself from the marauders. She had assisted at the birth of Carlos and had loved the boy. It was only when he came to England and threw off all his Spanish ways that she turned to Roberto.

But the gist of her story was Edmundo. She had loved him and they were to have been married. She had greatly admired the ruby cross which Isabella wore frequently. She had even taken it once and worn it when she went to meet Edmundo in the garden—a sin for which she had done penance.

Edmundo had said: “I would I could give you a cross like that.”

Perhaps someone had heard him. In any case the cross was missing and Edmundo confessed that he had strangled Isabella, then thrown her down the stairs. He had done it, he admitted, because he had stolen the cross and been discovered in the act by Isabella, who had threatened to have him arrested for robbery.

Manuela had accepted this because she knew he loved her and the cross was missing—until she had seen me wearing it. She believed then that it had been in my possession ever since, that Don Felipe had given it to me and that therefore I must have known that Edmundo had not stolen it and only admitted to doing so under torture which few men could stand out against.

It seemed clear to her that Edmundo had killed Isabella on orders from his master. A servant belonged to his master and if certain deeds were demanded of him he performed them, but any sin incurred was not on his conscience.

When Edmundo was arrested Don Felipe should have saved him, but he had not done so. He did not want anyone to know that Edmundo had killed Isabella on orders from him. The situation was fraught with danger because Don Felipe wished to marry me and there were rumors in circulation that I was a witch and a heretic. Therefore, Don Felipe dared not make any move to save Edmundo because by doing so he could turn suspicion on himself and I was involved. The ruby cross provided a good reason why Edmundo should have committed the murder and so Don Felipe was content for this to be the accepted version of the affair, although the cross all the time was in his possession, while poor Edmundo, tortured until he admitted that he had stolen it, was condemned to death.

When Manuela saw me wearing the cross she believed that I had had it all those years. It had not occurred to her that it was one of the valuable objects which Jake had stolen when he raided the Hacienda, that it had been in his possession ever since and he had only recently given it to me.

She had always hated me. She had blamed me for what happened. But for me, she was sure that it never would. In her view, I was, therefore, responsible for Isabella’s death. It was she who had aroused Pilar’s venom against me; it was she who had made the image of Isabella and put it in my drawer. She had taken it to Pilar and it was to have been used as evidence that I was a witch.

And then because she knew that there had been suspicion in my mind, she had sought to make it grow. She wanted me to suspect my husband was planning to murder me. She had put the image among Jake’s clothes and waited for me to find it. Her revenge was slow and painstaking. She was in no hurry. She had infinite patience. All she wanted was my uneasiness—until she saw me wear the cross.

Then there was no doubt in her mind of Felipe’s guilt and mine. She brooded on the happy life she might have had; on the children of her union with Edmundo who had never been born. She was fierce and passionate; she could find no satisfaction in anything but revenge.

So she had decided I should suffer as Isabella had suffered. She did not wish to murder me outright. She wanted justice. Isabella had gone mad, so should I. She had suffered over a long period, so should I. And in due course I should be found at the bottom of a staircase, as Isabella had been.

She lived for this revenge. It was the only thing which could compensate her for the loss of Edmundo.

She had put poisonous plants into my food—not enough to kill me but only to impair my health; she had locked me in the hut and then unlocked the door and hung the key inside. She had made herself a shroud and tried to unnerve me. She had meant to drive me into madness and then, when those about me began to doubt my sanity, lure me to the top of the staircase—an easy victim, half drugged as she believed me to be—and throw me to the foot of it. People would say: “She was possessed by devils. Remember, how strange she became?”

“My poor Manuela!” I cried, and I assured her that I had never seen the cross until a short while before. I now remembered such an ornament’s being mentioned at the time of Edmundo’s execution, but I had not connected it with the gift which my second husband had given to me.

Oh, Jake, I thought, you took the cross when you came to the Hacienda. You took everything of value you could lay your hands on. And Felipe … you were guilty of the murder of Isabella, just as guilty as though you yourself had strangled her and thrown her down the stairs.

I was relieved that Manuela now knew that I was guiltless of participation in Isabella’s death.

“Take care of Roberto,” she said. “I loved him … dearly.”

I told her she had no need to ask his mother to do that.

I rode over to a family nearby who when the priests had come to Trewynd in Edward’s time had entertained them there and hidden them.

They had one there at that time. He was brought out of the priest’s hole in which they hid him whenever visitors called at the house and, disguised as one of the grooms, he rode back to Lyon Court with me.

I knew that I was doing a daring thing. If Jake had returned home at that time I cannot imagine what would have happened.

I told the priest of my fears and he answered that he was accustomed to taking risks and would not deny a dying woman her last solace on Earth.

I took him to her sickroom and he was there holding the cross before her eyes as she passed away.

She died peacefully, I think, for I had assured her of my forgiveness. She was glad that she had not succeeded in killing me and did not have to go before her Maker with murder on her conscience.

She died clasping the cross.

I felt alive again. What a fool I had been. As if Jake would murder me and if he did it would not be by such devious methods. He would have taken out his sword and run me through. I laughed. It was good to be alive. I was not menaced. Jake was an unfaithful husband. Had he not always been and had I ever expected anything else? I had sheltered two of his bastards under my roof already. Penn was but the third. They gave him satisfaction in the sons he could not get with me.

My vitality had returned. I could fight again.

Linnet had to know what had happened. I should have had to tell her the whole story some time or other—just as my mother had told me her strange story when I was about my daughter’s age. The whole household knew too that the mistress who was supposed to be going mad was not, but Manuela had been completely so because she had poisoned my food and tried to throw me down the stairs. There was no need for them to know the reasons why she had done these things. It was enough that they accepted the fact that devils had begun to possess her.

Manuela was buried in the Lyon section of the graveyard and we laid rosemary on her grave.

I at least would never forget her.

The Fugitive

SO DEEPLY IMMERSED HAD I been in my own affairs that I had not been aware of what was happening in the outside world. Now I heard the excited talk about what was called the Babington Plot, which, said all loyal supporters of Our Gracious Lady Elizabeth, had by God’s grace been discovered. A young man named Anthony Babington had in his youth served as a page to Mary Stuart and, as men were wont to, fell in love with her. He had joined forces with a group of ardent Catholics and together they had made a plot to put the Queen of Scotland on the throne and bring back the Catholic religion to England. This plot had the blessing of Spain and the Pope.

The conspirators met in taverns around St. Giles’ and in Babington’s house in Barbican and there worked out their conspiracy. Elizabeth was to be assassinated, Mary set free and set on the throne. Catholics throughout the country would rally to her help. The Pope gave his sanction and Philip of Spain would help—with his fast-growing Armada if necessary.

Letters had been smuggled into the prison of the Queen of Scots by a most ingenious method. Corked tubes had been fabricated in which letters could be concealed and these were inserted into the beer barrels which were carried into the Queen’s apartments. When the Queen had read the letters she could insert her answers into the tube and put them back into the empty barrels which would be returned to the brewer. It seemed foolproof and would have been if the brewer had not been in the pay of Walsingham as well as the Queen. Thus the letters which were inserted in the full barrels and the replies that went into the empty ones were all conveyed to Amyas Paulet—the Queen’s jailor at that time—and passed on to Walsingham. In this way Elizabeth’s Secretary of State knew every twist and turn of the Babington Plot as it was worked out.