The Fugitive Queen by Fiona Buckley Page A

take two useful P’s as a guide. Porta parvum, he’d say.”
    â€œCarry little? Did he teach you Latin, Brockley? I never knew that!”
    â€œI don’t know much, madam. Just a smattering. He did teach his class some dog Latin but I only had a year of it.”
    â€œYou’re full of surprises,” I said, smiling. “Isn’t he, Dale?” There had been a time when Brockley and I had had such a habit of exchanging expressionless pleasantries, that we had made Dale feel shut out and hurt her feelings. Nowadays, I tried to share the jokes with her. “I just wish,” I said, “that we hadn’t got to find our way.”
    Dudley had never visited his Yorkshire legacy and the agent he had sent to inspect it and make an inventory of its contents, six years ago when it first came into his hands, was now dead. Dudley still had the report and the inventory, however, and these he gave to me, along with a letter of introduction to the steward.
    The name of the place was Tyesdale, in a parish called Fritton. It was the largest property in the parish. The adjoining estate, Fernthorpe, had once been bigger but the family had foolishly got into trouble back in the days of King Henry VIII and been involved in the Catholic rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace. None of them had been hanged, but they had been heavily fined—or had negotiated a deal—and had paid by surrendering some of their land to the crown. Tyesdale was now the larger by a considerable margin.
    â€œAnd has the better house,” Dudley told me. “At some point, after the rising, the original house caught fire and the family couldn’t afford to rebuild it properly. The replacement’s not much better than a large hovel. Tyesdale, on the other hand, is said to have a good manor house. The steward there is called Magnus Whitely. By the way, the agent I sent didn’t take to him. And so . . .” Dudley’s smile was malicious “ . . . I shan’t send a courier ahead to announce your impending arrival. You can take him by surprise, Mistress Stannard.”
    To get to Tyesdale, our recommended route was north through the cities of Bedford, Northampton, Leicester, Nottingham, and Sheffield; then north-westward for about twenty miles to a place I had never heard of, called Glossop, and after that, to another place I hadn’t heard of, a hamlet named Mossley. After Mossley, we must ask directions, for the way led across lonely moorland. We should try asking both for Fritton and for Tyesdale. In his report, the agent admitted to having got lost several times after Glossop, until at last he had hired a guide.
    â€œOn which I was reluctant to spend my master’s money but it was better than wandering in the wilderness,” he had written piously. Our journey was clearly going to involve a marked element of exploration.
    Still, we did have good traveling conditions and plenty of daylight. The fact that I detested the whole business only made me more determined to get on with it, so I urged an early start each morning. I allowed a rest at midday and then I made us ride on through the later afternoon and early evening. We made the best speed we could and reached Sheffield after six days. The next day was Sunday and we rested, horses and humans alike.
    The humans attended church and I instructed Brockley to see if he could find us a guide to see us to Glossop. On Monday, with a local hired man to show us the way, we set off again. The road was a well-frequented track with quite a good surface. It was then, though, that we noticed how the land was changing.
    Pen commented on it first, which was a relief because it was almost the first spontaneous remark she had made since we started out. Although she had had kind and encouraging letters from both her mother and her brother George, expressing pleasure at her new dowry and thanking Hugh and myself earnestly for our supposed