The Queen's Exiles Read online

  Praise for The Queen’s Exiles

  “A bold and original take on the Tudors that dares to be different. Enjoy the adventure!”

  —Susanna Kearsley, New York Times bestselling author of The Firebird

  “Barbara Kyle owes me two nights of sleep for writing such an enthralling book that I couldn’t stop turning the pages until the final mesmerizing sentence.... The reader takes a galloping horseback ride through the feverishly patriotic and brutally violent spectacle of the Netherlands in 1572, only to slide breathlessly out of the saddle at the story’s conclusion, craving the next installment of the riveting Thornleigh saga.”

  —Christine Trent, author of Lady of Ashes

  “The Queen’s Exiles is such a vivid and compelling novel, so beautifully researched and written, and brimming with wonderful characters, that, from the first page, I truly hated to put it down. The novel is an exquisitely crafted escape to another place and time, a thoroughly enjoyable read by an author at the very top of her craft.”

  —Diane Haeger, author of I, Jane: In the Court of Henry VIII

  “This moving adventure pulses with Shakespearean passions: love and heartbreak, risk and valour, and loyalties challenged in a savage time. Fenella Doorn, savvy and brave, is an unforgettable heroine.”

  —Antoni Cimolino, Artistic Director of the Stratford Festival

  “A blood-racing, wave-swept, rip-roaring firecracker of a romantic thriller charged with the heart-thumping passion of privateers on the run, racing through the shadows of plot and treachery, in a bid to save those whom they love, their freedom, and Queen Elizabeth.”

  —Jenny Barden, author of The Lost Duchess

  “A brilliant book—a page-turner of a thriller with a backbone of love and loyalty in treacherous Tudor times . . . In the footsteps of her intelligent, courageous heroine, Fenella Doorn, Barbara Kyle sweeps us from the salty boatyards of Sark to the sumptuous courts of Europe, on a truly unforgettable adventure. I absolutely loved it.”

  —Deborah Swift, author of A Divided Inheritance

  Books by Barbara Kyle

  The Queen’s Exiles

  Blood Between Queens

  The Queen’s Gamble

  The Queen’s Captive

  The King’s Daughter

  The Queen’s Lady

  The QUEEN’S EXILES

  BARBARA KYLE

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Praise for The Queen’s Exiles

  Books by Barbara Kyle

  Title Page

  HISTORICAL PREFACE

  1 - The Prisoner

  2 - The Spanish Threat

  3 - Alba’s Commander

  4 - Fenella’s Gold

  5 - Frances

  6 - The Mission

  7 - “Mares’ Tails and Mackerel Scales”

  8 - The Bargeman

  9 - Isabel

  10 - Enemies Unseen

  11 - Silken Ribbons and Gold Lace

  12 - The Letter

  13 - The Fire Ship

  14 - A Reckoning

  15 - Banished

  16 - “Señor Grande”

  17 - Death in the Great Hall

  18 - The Duchess’s Coach

  19 - The Cove

  20 - The Eve of Battle

  21 - The Walls of Brielle

  22 - Departures

  23 - The Commander’s House

  24 - The Cellar

  25 - Home

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A READING GROUP GUIDE - THE QUEEN’S EXILES

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  Copyright Page

  HISTORICAL PREFACE

  In 1571, Elizabeth I of England, at the age of thirty-eight, had reigned for thirteen years. She was far from secure on her throne. England was a small, weak country with no standing army and an undersized navy. Elizabeth knew that Philip II of Spain, the most powerful monarch in Europe, was poised to invade.

  To strike at her, his army would sail from the Netherlands. There, less than a hundred miles off her shores, his troops had already subjugated the Dutch. Philip was lord of Spain, portions of the Italian peninsula, and the Netherlands, whose cities of Antwerp and Bruges were Europe’s richest trading centers. He was also stupendously wealthy thanks to his vast New World possessions. The Spanish Main was a scythe-shaped slice of the globe that ran from Florida through Mexico and Central America to the north coast of South America, gateway to Peru. Twice a year the Spanish treasure fleet crossed the Atlantic to deliver hoards of New World gold, silver, and precious gems to Philip’s treasury in Spain. He used this constant river of riches to finance his constant wars. Throughout Europe, Spain’s armies were feared and triumphant.

  Nowhere were they more feared than in the Netherlands. There, Philip’s ruthless general the Duke of Alba had crushed Dutch resistance to Spanish rule. As governor from 1567, Alba had set up a special court called the Council of Troubles. Under its authority he executed thousands, including leading Dutch nobles. The people called it the Council of Blood. Prince William of Orange was one of the ten thousand people summoned before the Council. But Prince William escaped. He gathered a rebel army and marched into Brabant, the Dutch heartland. But his troops were inexperienced and untrained, and with winter approaching and money running out, William turned back. He went into exile in the German lands, awaiting his next chance.

  Philip of Spain was known as “the most Catholic prince in Christendom.” Catholics considered Elizabeth of England a bastard (they did not acknowledge the marriage of her mother, Anne Boleyn, to her father, Henry VIII) and a heretic, for Elizabeth’s first act as queen had been a proclamation to make the realm Protestant. It had also made her the supreme head of the church in England, a concept that Catholics found grotesque: a woman as head of a church. In 1570, Pope Pius V excommunicated Elizabeth in a fiery decree, calling her a heretic and “the servant of crime.” He released all her subjects from any allegiance to her and excommunicated any who obeyed her orders. Scores of affluent Catholics left England with their families and settled in the Spanish-occupied Netherlands.

  These English exiles considered Elizabeth’s cousin Mary, Queen of Scots, to be the legitimate claimant to the English throne. Since 1568 Elizabeth had held Mary under house arrest in England, a comfortable captivity in Sheffield Castle. Elizabeth did not dare set Mary free, fearing she would foment an invasion by a Catholic League of Spain, France, and the pope. In the Netherlands the English exiles were plotting to overthrow Elizabeth with military help from their powerful Spanish friends and install Mary in her place. And there, in the Netherlands, a day’s sail from the English coast, Spanish troops under the merciless Duke of Alba stood ready should Philip give the invasion order.

  But the Dutch rebels had not given up, only gone to ground. They still considered Prince William of Orange their leader. He was keen for a second chance to win back his country for the Dutch. And Elizabeth of England was eager to secretly support him.

  That second chance came in the spring of 1572. This time the rebels would not come marching, as an army. They would come—a desperate, motley fleet—from the sea.

  1

  The Prisoner

  The Island of Sark: Spring 1572

  Fenella Doorn watched the unfamiliar wreck of a ship ghosting into her bay. Crippled by cannon fire, she thought. What else could do such damage? The foremast was blown away, as well as half the mainmast where a jury rig clung to the jagged stump, and shot holes tattered the sails on the mizzen. And yet to Fenella’s experienced eye the vessel had an air of defiance. Demi-cannons hulked in the shadowed gun ports.
This ship was a fighter, battered but not beaten. With fight still in her, was she friend or foe?

  Or faux friend. Fenella kept her anxious gaze fixed on the vessel as she started down the footpath from the cliff overlooking La Coupée Bay. Old Johan followed her, scuffling to keep up. The English Isle of Sark was the smallest of the four major Channel Islands, just a mile long and scarcely a mile and a half wide, so from the cliff top Fenella could see much of the surrounding sea. The few hundred farmers and fishermen who called the island home were never far from the sound of waves smacking the forty miles of rocky coast. Fenella, born a Scot and bred from generations of fishermen, was as familiar with the pulse of the sea as with her own heartbeat.

  “She flies no colors,” Johan said, suspicion in his voice. Sheep grazing on the cliff top behind them bleated as though echoing the old Dutchman’s unease.

  “She likely struck her colors in the skirmish,” Fenella said.

  “Surrendered? Then why wasn’t she taken as a prize?”

  “Maybe she was, and the prize crew boarded her.” Whoever was in command had done a fine piece of seamanship, Fenella thought. The skirmish must have happened far out in the Channel, since no report of it had reached Sark, yet this captain had brought in his ship with one mast shot away and a single lateen sail on the jury-rigged mainmast. Crew now labored at lowering the sails on main and mizzen, the figures too small at this distance to make out features.

  “Or maybe she’s Spanish,” Johan warned. “Spaniards are cunning. Have a care, Nella.”

  “That’s no Spaniard. Her beak’s too long. English, maybe.” She had decided the ship was not a danger, at least not to the people of Sark. On the contrary, the crew might need victualing, and Sark’s crofters would be glad to sell them mutton and the first spring lambs. Fenella saw silver for herself, too. The monotonous clanging aboard, faint at this distance, told her that crew was working the pumps non-stop, which meant there was at least one hole below the waterline. That promised employment for Fenella’s shore crew to careen the hull on the beach to make repairs.

  Still, something about the crippled vessel unnerved her, as though it had come hunting her personally. She gave a thought to the flintlock pistol that lay in her petticoat pocket beneath her skirt. A foolish fear, she told herself, especially on such a peaceful, sunny day. Her skirt brushed the flowering gorse, releasing its faint perfume into the warm air. The cliff paths all around were brocaded with primroses, dog violets, and yellow celandines. Springtime always lifted Fenella’s heart. Yet she had seen death strike often enough amid sunshine and flowers.

  She and Johan were almost at the beach, and the cliff path through the gorse was now wide enough for them to walk abreast. Knowing they could be seen from the ship, Fenella took comfort in having the old man at her side. Absurd, she knew, since he was sixty, twice her age, and had just one arm. The other had been hacked off above the elbow when they’d fled the Spanish troops’ onslaught of the Netherlands, troops who had butchered the Doorns’ village and made Fenella a widow at twenty-five. Johan, her father-in-law, was as stubborn as her late husband, and she knew he would fight for her to the death. She loved the old man for that, but his devotion was also troubling, disabled and frail as he was. She worried about him, for he was getting frailer every day, the cough that had infected his lungs at Christmas persisting despite the spring warmth. Still, she did not slacken her brisk pace on the path as it wound down to the beach. Johan would not want her to.

  “More likely she’s Dutch,” she said to reassure herself and him, “crawling in from a scrape with a Spanish galleon or two.” The Dutch hated the brutal Spanish occupation of their country and many had taken to the sea to attack Spanish shipping in the Channel. They had organized themselves into a ragged fleet of a few dozen vessels and with rebel pride called themselves the Sea Beggars. Fenella had refitted several of their vessels that had been shot up by Spanish guns. “The fools never learn,” she muttered. She belittled the rebels to mask her admiration for them. But realism outweighed her admiration. Imperial Spain, the most powerful nation on earth, was invincible. The Sea Beggars were minnows attacking sharks.

  “That’s not Dutch rigging,” Johan said. They were crossing the beach, heading for their rowboat, and he raised a hand to shade his rheumy eyes as he studied the ship. “Now that I see her abeam, I think your first guess was right, Nella. She’s English.”

  Nothing unusual about English shipping around Sark. The island lay eighty miles off England’s south coast, closer to France, and English trade with France, the Netherlands, Spain, and Portugal was constant. But this ship had been maimed in a battle and England wasn’t at war. “An English privateer?” Fenella wondered aloud.

  She heard a clank at the bow and saw a dull metallic gleam as the vessel’s anchor plunged with a splash. Cable roared through the hawsehole. Fenella knew the anchor would hold well on La Coupée’s sandy bottom. This ship was here to stay.

  She and Johan reached the rowboat and lifted it to the water’s edge, wavelets sloshing at their feet. They climbed aboard and she took the oars. He sat in the stern, squinting at the ship. “God’s blood,” he said with sudden eagerness, “could it be the baron?”

  She scoffed as she rowed. “That fable again, Johan?” He had spoken before about an English privateer, a nobleman who was hitting the Spaniards hard. It was common knowledge that privateers and pirates of many nations prowled the Channel looting their prey—if they weren’t sunk first. But a baron? To Fenella it made no sense. Why would an English lord put himself at such risk?

  “It’s him; I can feel it.” Johan’s milky eyes shone with excitement. Then, indignation. “And look what the Spanish devils have done to him. Shot him to pieces, damn their hides! I’ve got to get home, Nella. I’ve got to go and do my part!”

  “You’ll do no such thing.” He had been harping at her for months to take him back to the Netherlands so he could join the resistance movement. What nonsense. As if a one-armed old man with weak lungs could be of any use. “Might as well spit at a hurricane.”

  “I beg you, take me back so I can do what I can. Before I breathe my last.”

  “Enough,” she snapped. “I’ve told you, we’ll go nowhere near that madness.” Exasperation made her row with such vigor she felt sweat trickle down her back. “You need to look in a mirror, Johan. Fighting’s for the young.”

  “If you won’t take me, just give me a boat that I can helm and one brawny crewman. That’s all I ask.”

  “A boat is something I cannot spare. And with one arm you’ll find the swim to Amsterdam a long one.” Over her shoulder she glimpsed a scatter of men at the ship’s rail watching them approach. “Now, keep your nonsense to yourself in front of these visitors and let’s earn some coin. Go on, hail them.”

  Johan shot her a look that said, You and I are not done yet. But he squared his shoulders to do business. Cupping his hand to his mouth, he called up to the men at the rail, “Are you English?”

  “English, aye!” a voice called down. “We’re the Elizabeth. Come aboard, if you will!”

  Rowing closer, Fenella felt the breeze die in the lee of the tall hull, like a wooden wall, and its shadow engulfed her. Again, she sensed the ship’s latent power, like a harpooned whale, weak but still able to crush a boat with a thrash of its tail. But harpooned the ship was. Fenella saw three jagged shot holes in the hull’s planking, two forward and one aft, all plugged with oakum-stiffened canvas that dripped water. The gun port sills were stained black with gunpowder, and the acrid smell of it clung to the planks. Fenella sculled the rowboat around and came alongside, and Johan made fast the bowline to the ship’s chain plate. The crew tumbled a rope ladder over the side.

  Fenella let Johan climb up first, a slow process with his single hand and fluttering empty sleeve. She followed. It was their usual device with strangers. Visitors assumed that the man was in charge and Fenella a mere shore woman. It allowed her a few moments to observe them unwatched before introduc
ing herself as the owner of a salvage enterprise, to their inevitable surprise.

  Today, as it turned out, she was mistaken.

  “Mistress Doorn?” a man asked, striding toward her. So, they knew of her. He was stocky, bullnecked, and black bearded, his thick lips chapped by the sun. Gun grease streaked his plain gray breeches and doublet, and a grimy bandage wrapped his head, its bloodstain dried to a nut brown.

  “Aye, sir,” she answered.

  “I must say, I expected—” He stopped, looking flustered.

  “A hag instead of a beauty?” Johan slyly suggested.

  The Englishman collected himself. “Someone older.”

  Fenella noted the dozen or so crewmen nearby, dirty, barefoot, bleary-eyed. They carried on at their labor, some coiling lines, some snubbing the anchor cable even as they stole glances at her. They had the look of exhausted men relieved to have made safe harbor. No wonder—she had never seen a deck so damaged. The stump of the lost foremast looked like an amputated limb. In the base of the mainmast a thirty-three-pounder cannonball was embedded in the oak. Shot holes peppered the roughly furled sails on the mizzenmast. The bowsprit was blown away, as was the taffrail, and shot had plowed splintered channels in the deck planks. Dried blood stained the deck in red-brown splotches. The scene belowdecks must be as bad or worse, since the clang of the pumps never ceased. The sweating men at the pumps would be sloshing in knee-high bilgewater. The deck itself vibrated underfoot with every clang. She could hear men moaning below, too. The wounded, no doubt.

  “I’m Curry,” the bearded man said. “James Curry. My gunner’s mate was on a Portsmouth carrack you refitted last year, Mistress Doorn, and says you’re the best. As you see, we’ve suffered severe hits. Can you effect repairs?”