“Those are priceless,” said Giles. “Does the family know she gave them to you?”
Thomasin coloured. “I don’t know, but she knew what she was doing and none of them were particularly interested in taking care of her. I fear she is quite neglected.”
“Well, you are home now, and we are glad for it. We have been feeling a little neglected ourselves.”
“But you have been busy yourselves? Tell me what transpired with Mariot.”
“Well, it is so much more than we feared. The poor girl has had a terrible shock,” said Giles, watching his wife raise her eyebrows. “It was a perfect string of disasters.”
“I am all ears.”
“It started with the smith’s boy, as we know. He came to the house, delivering the nails that Williams had ordered to repair the side gate, but afterwards, he did not leave but wandered into the kitchen and helped himself to a venison pie that Cook had just taken out of the oven. Mariot was coming in from the garden and saw him. He ran, so she gave chase, thinking she could catch him and retrieve the pie. He ran all the way to the smithy with her in pursuit.”
“And yet he swore to us that he had not seen her!”
“Indeed he did, unwilling to be caught.”
“What happened next?”
“This was told to us in Mariot’s words. She ran into the yard at the back, thinking to find him there and recover the pie, but she overheard the smith and his men planning an attack upon the queen during the procession.”
“What?” Thomasin sat up.
“Yes, she had wandered into the centre of the attack at St Paul’s that we were warned about. The smith and his friends were supporters of Queen Catherine and believed Anne to have bewitched the king into putting her aside. They had listened to Elizabeth Barton and taken her words to heart, thinking the king to be damned and the country with it. Mariot heard all this,hidden in the yard. Then the men closed the gates and she was locked inside.”
“And could not return home to warn us.”
“Exactly. She knew what she had heard and was very frightened. They discovered her there, of course, and realised she had overheard their plans, so they locked her in a woodshed.”
“She must have been there when Williams visited.”
“Yes, but it was far enough from the street that he could not hear her cries.”
“But how did it turn into a ransom?”
“The smith knew he had to keep her locked away until the attack had taken place. He considered dropping her in the river, but realised he might make money from the situation, so he commanded a clerk to write the note.”
“The demand for ten pounds? Because he cannot write himself?”
“That is correct — the last thing that happened before you left here. None of the men in his circle could write, only mark their names with a cross. But the clerk was uneasy about the content, believing it to show that harm was intended, and he came to Monk’s Place soon after and told me that it was the smith who instructed him to write it.”
“And we went straight to the sheriff,” continued Lettice, excited. “All the men at the smithy were arrested, the plot was discovered and Mariot was set free.”
“Goodness me!” said Thomasin, taking it all in. “I can hardly believe this!”
“It was a good thing that Mariot ran after the pie, otherwise the plot against the queen would have continued. They had bricks and stones ready to throw at her carriage from the upper floors of the cathedral; no doubt she would have been injured before they could all be apprehended.”
“As might I have been,” Thomasin replied, shuddering at the thought of an attack coming from the air. “There was a moment that we feared such an attack, but it turned out to be wafers raining down on us.”
“Wafers?” asked Lettice.
“Yes, as part of the pageants. Just after the gilded Standard!”
“I don’t suppose you saved any?”
“I am sorry, no,” Thomasin smiled. “What a story, though. And thanks to Mariot and the clerk, the plot was foiled.”
“She is quite the heroine,” Giles agreed.
