A Knight in Shining Armor Read online

  “I want a chair in the history department of an Ivy League school,” he said quietly.

  “Done,” Dougless answered, sounding like an auctioneer. She’d donate a wing or a building to a college if she had to.

  “All right,” Lee said, “settle back and eat. This is a great story. I may be able to sell it to the movies. The story starts years before poor ol’ Nick was executed. He—”

  “Nicholas,” Dougless said. “He doesn’t like to be called Nick.”

  “Sure, okay, Nicholas then. What I’d never read in any book—I guess no historian thought it important—was that the Stafford family had an obscure claim to the throne through Henry the Sixth. They were descended directly through the male line, while Queen Elizabeth was considered by some to be a bastard and, being a woman as well, therefore unfit to rule. You know that for years her throne was not exactly secure?”

  Dougless nodded.

  “If the historians forgot that the Staffords were related to kings, there was someone who didn’t. A woman named Lettice Culpin.”

  “Nicholas’s wife?”

  “You do know your history,” Lee said. “Yes, the beautiful Lettice. It seems that her family also had some claim to the throne of England, a claim even more obscure than the Staffords’. Lady Margaret believed that Lettice was a very ambitious young woman. Her plan was to marry a Stafford, produce an heir, and put the child on the throne.”

  Dougless considered this. “But why Nicholas? Why not the older brother? It seems like she’d want to marry the man who was earl.”

  Lee smiled. “I have to keep on my toes with you, don’t I? You’re going to have to tell me where you learned so much about the Staffords. The eldest brother . . . ah . . .”

  “Christopher.”

  “Yes, Christopher was engaged to marry a very rich French heiress who happened to be only twelve years old. I guess he decided he’d rather have the money from the heiress than have Lettice, no matter how beautiful she was.”

  “But Kit died and Nicholas became the earl,” Dougless said softly.

  “Lady Margaret hinted that her eldest son’s death might not have been an accident. He drowned, but Lady Margaret said he was a strong swimmer. Anyway, she never knew for sure, she just guessed.”

  “So Lettice married the man who was to become the earl.”

  “Yes,” Lee said, “but things didn’t go the way Lettice planned. It seems Nicholas wasn’t interested in furthering himself at court, or in talking conspiracy and trying to find someone who’d back him if he tried for the throne. Nicholas was mostly interested in women.”

  “And learning,” Dougless shot at him. “He commissioned monks to copy books. He designed Thornwyck Castle. He—” She stopped.

  Lee’s eyes widened. “That’s true. Lady Margaret wrote all that, but how did you know?”

  “It doesn’t matter. What happened after Nicholas married . . . her?”

  “You sound as though you’re jealous. Okay, okay. After they were married—and Lettice seems to have quickly realized Nicholas wasn’t going to do what she wanted him to—she began to look around for some way to get rid of him.”

  “As she had Christopher.”

  “That was never proven. It may have been a fortunate accident—fortunate for Lettice anyway. Lady Margaret admitted that most of this was speculation, but after Lettice married Nicholas, he had some very close calls. A stirrup broke, a—”

  “And he cut his calf,” Dougless whispered, “when he fell from the horse.”

  “I don’t know where he was hurt, Lady Margaret didn’t say. Dougless, are you sure you’re all right?”

  She glared at him.

  “Anyway, Nicholas proved much harder to kill than Christopher had been, so Lettice began to look for someone to help her.”

  “And she found Robert Sydney.”

  Lee smiled. “I bet you’re great with detective novels, always figuring out the ending.

  “Yes, Lettice found Robert Sydney. He was Arabella Harewood’s husband, and he must have been pretty mad about all of England laughing about Stafford and his wife on the table. To make matters worse, nine months later, Arabella presented him with a black-haired son.”

  “And the child and Arabella died.”

  “Right. Lady Margaret thinks Sydney had a hand in those deaths.”

  Dougless took a breath. “So Lettice and Robert Sydney contrived to get Nicholas accused and executed for treason.”

  “Yes. Lady Margaret thinks Lettice just waited for an opportunity to get Nicholas for something, so when Stafford started gathering men to protect his Welsh estates, she informed Sydney, who rode hell-bent-for-leather to the queen. In a way, it’s understandable that Elizabeth believed Sydney. Just months before, Mary Queen of Scots had declared herself queen of England as well as Scotland, and here was the earl of Thornwyck raising an army. Elizabeth just clapped Stafford in chains, had a mock trial with “secret” evidence, then whacked off Stafford’s head.”

  Dougless winced. “So Lettice and Robert Sydney went free.”

  Lee smiled. “Sort of. Actually, what happened after Stafford’s execution was one of the great ironies of life. It seems that Lettice, who had planned everything so carefully, hadn’t considered Robert Sydney’s ambition. Lady Margaret thought Lettice planned to marry some English duke who was Elizabeth’s cousin and start all over again, but Sydney had other plans. He threatened to tell the queen everything if Lettice didn’t marry him. He wanted to put his kid on the throne.”

  “Blackmail,” Dougless whispered.

  “Right. Blackmail. I told you this was like a movie. Or a best-seller. Maybe I should fictionalize this. Anyway, she was forced to marry Sydney.” Lee gave a snort of laughter. “What’s really ironic about this whole story is that Lettice was barren. She never conceived at all, not even to miscarry. So she sent her first husband to the blade because of what she wanted for the child she planned to have; then she couldn’t have children. Unbelievable, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Dougless said through a closed throat. “Unbelievable.” She paused. “What of Lady Margaret?”

  “Neither Lettice nor Sydney had any idea the old woman knew what they’d done. No doubt they’d have killed her if they’d known, but she was a clever old broad and kept her mouth shut. Maybe she realized she couldn’t prove anything. The queen confiscated everything she owned, so Sydney stepped in and offered her a choice between the pauper’s farm or marrying his ex-father-in-law, Lord Harewood. Of course Sydney had an ulterior motive. Since he had three kids of Arabella’s still alive, Lady Margaret’s marriage made them obscurely related. It isn’t much of a relationship by our standards today, but back then it was enough that Queen Elizabeth gave Sydney two of the Stafford estates.”

  He took a sip of his beer. “After Lady Margaret married Harewood, she wrote everything down, put it in an iron chest, had some faithful old servant knock out part of a wall, and hid the box in there. As an afterthought, she put her letters in a chest and hid them too. Then the wall was sealed up.”

  He paused. “It was a good thing she did it when she did. According to a letter that’s survived that was written by a friend of hers, two weeks later Lady Margaret was found dead at the bottom of a staircase, her neck broken. I guess after Mr. and Mrs. Sydney got the two Stafford estates, they had all they needed from her.”

  Dougless leaned back against the booth and was silent for a while. “What happened to them? To . . . Lettice and Robert Sydney?” She could hardly bear to say the names.

  “Roasted in hell, I imagine. But actually, I don’t know. I know that since they never had any kids, their estates passed into the hands of his nephew, who was a dissolute little bastard. In one generation the little creep managed to bankrupt the Sydney estates. It’ll take more research to find out specifically what happened to Lettice and her husband. Historians haven’t been too interested in them.” He smiled. “Up to now, that is. History will change after I write my book.”

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