"To Shield The Queen" by Fiona Buckley

My third book read in Fiona Buckley’s Ursula Blanchard series, TO SHIELD THE QUEEN, is actually the first in the eight-book series.  It takes the reader back to the origins of how Ursula not only became a Lady of Queen Elizabeth’s court, but also how she came to marry Gerald Blanchard, followed by Matthew de la Roche (one for romance; the other for passion), as well as what great mystery of Elizabeth’s early reign drove her into life as the queen’s spy.

This mystery is the bold move Fiona Buckley takes in creating her plot around the relationship purported to have existed been Queen Elizabeth I and her Master of Horse, Robin Dudley - with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the death of Dudley's wife, Amy Robsart - and gives this historical event to Ursula’s already overfilled hands.

The woman is still in mourning for her beloved husband Gerald, who delivered her from the oppressive situation of life in the household of her uncle and aunt.  As a Lady of the Queen’s Court now, she must leave her young daughter Meg in the care of her nurse, while she tries to manage her small amount of finances into paying for various extravagances – like the maid she is told she will need for appearances-sake as one of the queen’s ladies.

And then, there’s Matthew de la Roche, the gallant young man from France who becomes enamored with Ursula – and she, quietly to herself, with him. 

So what is a widowed young mother of Elizabethan England to do when asked by the queen, and by Dudley, to tend to the ill Amy and calm the woman’s frantic fears that Dudley was plotting her death? The cessation of these rumors is vitally important to not only them, but also to England itself – as Ursula gradually begins to comprehend.  Catholic elements hostile to Elizabeth’s Protestant reign are looking for any reason to destroy her place on England’s throne.  A marriage to Dudley, especially under suspicious circumstances like these, would provide them with ample ammunition to deliver Mary Stuart, the Catholic queen of Scotland, into her stead.

Therefore Ursula is dispatched on this mission, receiving from Dudley compensation that solves her financial woes.  What she discovers when reaching Amy’s household, however, leaves her to wonder if there just might be something more to this whole situation than merely a timid wife in a panic her husband is no longer faithful.

Whatever one believes in regards to the fate of Amy Robsart, it is undeniable that to utilize the unsolvable mystery of her demise as the main plot for a new character’s series is to invite either grand success or horrid ruin.  Is Buckley trying to solve this mystery of whether Dudley’s wife was murdered to free him for marriage to Elizabeth?  I think not.  In my opinion, she is simply proposing a feasible solution that works well into the plot she has crafted here; and as there have been books two through eight in the continuing series, it is clearly a solution that has established an audience for Ursula Blanchard – now Stannard – who is clearly a woman outside of her own time.

Such is one more facet of this story that thrilled me: in stepping back in time, I also stepped back to witness a younger Ursula.

The first book I read of these eight was THE FUGITIVE QUEEN.  In that tale, I saw Ursula as a woman, a mother, approaching middle age though not yet there, holding a degree of respect and authority superceded only by the queen.  Here with TO SHIELD A QUEEN, Ursula could be any young woman, of any era, seeking the means to support her child, while quietly longing for the man she loved.  She is a heroine in both the simplicity of her personal affairs, as well as in the complexity of her public life.  Triumphantly, she moves with the lithe grace of a true lady through the realities of 16^th century English history.