The Doublet Affair: An Ursula Blanchard Mystery at Queen Elizabeth I's Court

A tantalizing re-creation of Elizabethan life and manners told with intelligence and wit," raved Library Journal upon the publication of To Shield the Queen, the volume that introduced twenty-six-year-old Ursula Blanchard, Lady of the Presence Chamber to Queen Elizabeth I, and one of the most entrancing mystery heroines to come along in many a season.

Young Ursula knows it can be treacherous easing herself into the petty foibles at court, but now, having once saved the Virgin Queen from political disaster, she faces an even greater challenge. Sortie of Ursula's old acquaintances may be plotting to overthrow Elizabeth in favor of Mary, Queen of Scots, and the re-establishment of the Catholic faith. Ardent, some would say fanatical, believers will stop at nothing -- smuggling, counterfeiting, civil war, perhaps murder -- to further their cause. One of Elizabeth's spies is already dead and the clues to his death point in a troubling direction.

Most disturbing to Ursula is whether her old friends Ann and Leonard Mason could be mixed up in a treasonous plot against the Queen. There have been rumors that all is not as it should be with the Masons.

Secretary of state Sir William Cecil needs his own spy in the Mason home and Ursula is the obvious choice, She knows the family, she can justify her visit by helping to care for the Masons' five children, and she can perhaps use her newly acquired skill at lockpiching to uncover some surprising truths.

Torn between her devotion to Elizabeth, still a young woman like herself, and her longing to be reunited with her exiled Catholic husband, Matthew, in France, Ursula makes a difficult bargain that balances personal happiness against duty to Queen and country. Her journey takes her into dangerous territory eventually into the underground cells of the Tower of London itself Whatever happens, she will never again be quite as trusting or quite as secure.

The novel begins as Ursula Blanchard, waiting woman to Queen Elizabeth I, is having a lesson in picking locks under the watchful eye of her majesty's secretary of state. An unusual lesson indeed for a respectable woman of the court, but Blanchard is no ordinary lady in waiting. She does have the proper antecedents for her place, but an eye and an ear for suspicious dealings helps her to earn additional income. She is a spy, paid to seek out traitorous deeds. In The Doublet Affair, Lord Burleigh sends her to watch some erstwhile friends whose dealings have become more suspicious than keeping the odd Catholic priest under their roof. The plot is enriched by Ursula's own ambivalence about her role: not only does she have a fondness for the family under suspicion, she longs to leave court entirely to join her French husband.

The central mystery is an appropriate one for the period. There are the usual mysterious deaths as well as hints of treachery against the crown. Indeed, one of Fiona Buckley's strengths is her historical appreciation for the fact that Elizabeth, despite her longevity, was never completely secure on the throne; Catholic plots and other schemes of usurpation abounded. Buckley's weakness is her certainty (and Ursula's) that Elizabeth was gentler in religious persecution than her sister. Regardless, Buckley's imaginative sense of quotidian life in Elizabethan England is delightful, and the mystery reaches a satisfying conclusion--with Ursula's lock picks put to good use.

Fiona Buckley is a pseudonym for an established author venturing into historical whodunits. The Doublet Affair follows her first effort, To Shield the Queen. --K. Crouch