The Queen's Exiles Page 10

  “I had a knife in my boot.” Claes was struggling with his own shock at seeing them. “Poor Vos was already dead. Drowned. I cut the cord. He sank. I made it to the surface. Gasped air.”

  “The Spaniards didn’t see you?” Johan marveled.

  Claes shook his head. “There was such chaos. Bodies thrashing in the water. Screaming. They didn’t see me drift downriver.” His voice went flat. “The hardest part was Vos’s deadweight as I cut.”

  It had made Fenella shudder. She saw he didn’t want to speak of it. How he had changed! So thin! An intense new light in his eyes. Johan rushed to him and threw his arm around him. Claes, shaken by his father’s disability, embraced him with feeling, and Fenella saw tears well up in the old man’s eyes. Then Claes let Johan go and embraced her, and she held on to him tightly, feeling rocked with joy and wonder. All these years she had imagined his agony, his terror, his lungs bursting, water flooding him with death. It didn’t happen! She held him, and her own tears spilled.

  The others in the group stood watching, joined by a few more men who came in from the tunnel, and they all waited, anxiously curious about the newcomers. Claes awkwardly, proudly presented them: “My father. My wife. Sweet Jesu, I never thought to see either of them again.”

  There were sympathetic nods from the group, and Fenella sensed they knew the story of how Claes had been separated from her and Johan. Some of the men offered gruff statements of welcome. A scrawny woman offered a jug of ale. Johan took it and gulped the brew, looking around, excited, his eyes constantly lighting back on his son. Claes, with his gaze still on Fenella, called for food. The group surrounded Fenella and she felt herself led away.

  They all sat down on benches at a long, scarred table where one of the men, burly like a blacksmith, Brother Dunstan they called him, thumped down jugs of ale and the scrawny woman passed out bowls of oily fish stew. Claes sat at the head of the table, Fenella and Johan on either side of him. She scarcely saw the others or heard their noisy talk as they ate. She saw only Claes. Though she was flushed with gladness at seeing him alive, guilt nipped at her. She felt she had to make him understand. “I was sure you were dead. I saw you die. Or I would never have left.” She heard the plea in her voice: I didn’t abandon you.

  “I know,” he said gently. “What else could you do but leave? I hid in the woods and met others who’d done the same, and several told me they’d seen you and Father flee. I was just glad you’d survived. But I had nothing . . . no way to find out where you’d gone. I could only pray that your good sense and Father’s help would see you through.”

  “I was no help, Son,” Johan said, quaffing ale. “The dagos hacked off my arm. It was Nella who saved me.”

  Claes looked at her, surprised, pleased.

  She was still trying to piece it all together. “Did you go back to Polder?”

  He shook his head. “There was nothing for me there. I lived in the woods. Banded with a few men who’d lost everything, like me. We talked of nothing except how we might fight back.”

  “Ah!” Johan said, a grunt of admiration.

  Claes gave him a look both affectionate and sober. “We were vagabonds, living like dogs. But we had conviction, to hit the Spaniards and one day force them out. That sustained us and drew others to our cause.”

  His words brought a brusque chorus of approval from the others. “Death to the dagos,” said Johan’s niece Wilhelmina—Sister Martha—her baleful eyes on Fenella as though in a challenge. Johan asked about her family. Her husband had died of fever four winters ago, she said, chewing her stew. She kept the farmhouse but lived with her late husband’s parents at their nearby farm with her children. “My eldest is here.” She jerked her chin to the strapping lad who ate beside her. “He’s with us.”

  The Brethren didn’t take long to finish their meal. Johan shoveled down stew as if he’d been starved. Claes ate a full bowl. Fenella could not touch a bite.

  Later, she and Claes sat facing each other on the narrow mattress while the others slept, stretched out around them, a single candle burning. He took her hand and squeezed it. His grip was strong, his hand bony, the skin dry as flour. She gazed at him, still marveling at the sight of him. He’d been growing a belly when they’d lived in Polder; he’d jested that it was her fault, her tasty baking. Now, he was so thin his jutting collarbones were like sticks under his homespun shirt and his cheeks were two long furrows. His nose had a new crook in it. She reached out and touched it, shy as a virgin. “Broken?”

  He nodded. “Three years ago. A skirmish with collaborators. The DeGroot family. We burned down their warehouse. But not before they got in a few licks.”

  How strange it was. Her easygoing shipwright husband transformed into a fighter.

  “Fenella,” he said, his voice low, intense. “You coming back. It’s a sign from God.”

  Something in her stiffened. “A sign of what?”

  “For years I’ve imagined life after victory, after we win back the country. I’ve dreamed of the day you’d come home. It’s what’s kept me going, kept me building the Brethren. Just knowing you were all right. Flourishing.”

  She didn’t understand. “But . . . you didn’t know.”

  He smiled as though holding a secret. “Two years ago I was in Rotterdam organizing a joint mission with a group there. In a tavern I heard a German seaman speak of a woman on Sark. A fine-looking woman who ran a ship repair business, and with her was an old man named Doorn. I was amazed. It could only be you and Father.” He added with emphasis, “Amazed and so happy. You’ve prospered. Just as you should.”

  That shocked her. He had known where she was but did nothing? “You could have sent for me.”

  He shook his head. “I made a choice, Fenella. A hard choice. The life I was living was too rough. More important, my work was too dangerous—for you. It was best to keep you out of it, for your own safety. You see that, don’t you?”

  It struck her that he felt some of the same guilt she did. Her heart softened, sadness flooding her at the ill luck of their long separation, five lost years. Such different choices they had made! She had fled the Spaniards, wanting only freedom, while he had chosen to stay and fight. Would she have stayed if she’d known he was alive? Of course. He was her husband. But what he had said needled her—that he had learned where she was and yet had sent no word.

  “But that’s all in the past,” he said with sudden fervor. “Now . . .” He squeezed her hand again, his eyes aglow. “My dear wife, don’t you see? My dream is fulfilled. It’s God’s sign that victory is nigh.”

  His talk of God gave her a cold feeling in the bottom of her stomach. Claes hadn’t used to be especially pious. They were man and wife, yet she had the sense that she hardly knew him. His work with these people, the Brethren, had become his whole life. He was clearly the leader of this group. They were a dour lot. She had met many rough men on Sark, pirates, privateers, rovers, and rogues, but most of them had been fired with a hungry zest for life. She had not seen one of these Brethren smile.

  “But, tell me,” he said eagerly, “what made you come home? Why now?”

  It shook her out of her callous thoughts. Who was she to pass judgment on others? She, a murderer! Lowering her voice, she told him what had happened on Sark. How an English corsair had come into her bay with Spanish captives, among them the commander who had sent the men of Polder to their death, including Claes.

  He gaped at her. “Don Alfonso?”

  “The same. I had a pistol. Every thought in my head vanished except the memory of you drowning. I shot him. Dead.”

  Amazement broke over Claes’s face. Then a smile of awe. He pulled her to him and held her. She could not move, he held her so tightly. She felt his body tremble. She realized she was trembling, too. He pulled her away again, his hands still on her shoulders. “Dear wife. You are truly one of us.”

  It shook her. Was she? She struggled with the storm of her thoughts. Finish the story, she told herself. “I knew t
hey would come after me. Don Alfonso is the nephew of the mighty Duke of Alba. So I left. Sailed away on my fishing smack and left everything. Claes, I can’t go back. But as for coming here . . . I only came to get the gold I keep with an Antwerp banker, and to bring Johan home. It’s what he wanted.” I didn’t. She bit her lip, those words unsaid but churning inside her. Finish. “I’ve left my boat near Antwerp. My plan is . . . was . . . to get far away. To England. Start afresh.” She feared she was babbling. “But now . . . here you are.”

  “England?” He was clearly astonished.

  What reason could she give for that? She had not mentioned Adam Thornleigh, her promise to rendezvous with him five days from now. Nor would she mention it. Struggling for an explanation, she snatched one. “The English queen is a friend of the Dutch. She gives the Sea Beggars safe harbor.”

  Claes’s whole expression changed. Sympathetic interest hardened to a steely keenness. “What do you know about the Sea Beggars?”

  “I’ve met a few. They roam the Channel, dozens of vessels, harassing Spanish shipping. Captain La Marck—they call him the Admiral—he came in last year to repair his shot-up carrack. Captain Abels came in twice over the winter for new masts.”

  “You know La Marck?” he said eagerly. “I haven’t met him, but Fenella, we’re in contact with the Sea Beggars. We all support William, Prince of Orange. One day, when we’ve finally sent the Spaniards home or to hell, William will be our king.” The light leapt in his eyes again and she knew it wasn’t for her. “Tell me,” he said, taking her hand, “did you ever see an Englishman, a captain, in the company of La Marck’s fleet? There’s a lord, a Baron Thornleigh, who attacks with his own ship in solidarity with the Sea Beggars, and he’s hit the Spaniards hard.”

  She felt something inside her shrink back from him. She wanted to keep the knowledge of Adam Thornleigh all to herself. She had an urge to slide her hand from Claes’s, but she forced herself to be still. Holding back from him was folly. And wrong. There was a struggle building inside her over her future. If she was to have any hope of making a decision, she must not poison this moment with a lie. “Thornleigh. Yes. He’s the one who brought in Don Alfonso.”

  Claes let out a laugh of surprise. Of delight. “God’s sign, Fenella, you see? Ah, I’d like to meet that Englishman.”

  She wanted to speak no more of him. “Claes, what exactly do you do, you and this group of yours? The Brethren. You say you fight. But how?”

  He seemed about to speak, charged by that inner light. But then something shifted in his eyes, like a door closing. “This has been an extraordinary day. You must be very weary. And early tomorrow all of us must be about our business. Rest now, Fenella. Tomorrow, we’ll talk.”

  She lay down beside him on that narrow mattress and listened to his breathing, tight at first, keyed up like she was, then becoming regular, slow. He slept. All night, she scarcely closed her eyes.

  Now, packing supplies alongside Sister Martha, she heard someone shout, “Stand aside!”

  Fenella turned. It was the blacksmith, Brother Dunstan, rumbling an eight-foot cannon toward the tunnel. He and another man came at a jog, hauling the big gun by ropes like oxen. Sister Martha lurched aside. A hand grabbed Fenella’s arm and pulled her out of the way and she staggered as the wooden wheels of the gun growled by, brushing her skirt, a sharp metallic smell rising from the scabby barrel. She’d seen enough small cannon to know it was a saker. A six pounder. She turned. It was Claes who had pulled her clear.

  “We need a name for you,” he said gently. He had a leather satchel with him, its strap slung over his shoulder. “Saint Brendan was the patron saint of sailors. Shall you be Sister Brenda?”

  She could only blink at him. His white-blond hair lifting in the dank river draft. Unease spreading through her like icy water.

  “Brother Domenic,” a man called from the tunnel entrance, wiping his brow with his sleeve. “We’ve loaded all the shot. Which boat for the saker?”

  “Number three,” Claes told him. “Don’t use clean tarpaulins as cover. Dirty them with fish guts.”

  The man nodded, and the gun and its crew rolled past him and he fell in behind them. Johan came hustling in, coming the other way. “Sun’ll soon burn off the fog,” he declared to the room at large, catching his breath. “Time to get moving.” Three men were hefting boxes past him toward the tunnel and one grunted, “When Brother Domenic gives the word.”

  “Provisions almost ready,” Sister Martha reported over the packed boxes of food.

  Johan beamed when he saw Fenella and Claes standing together. He joined them. “All set, my boy.” He winked at Fenella. “I’m pilot of boat four.” He chuckled, stifling a cough. “Haven’t been told yet where we’re going, but once I know I’ll get us there. These blacksmiths and farmers and brewers are good men, to be sure, but me, I know these waters’ spidery ways.”

  Fenella smiled in spite of her anxious state. She had never seen Johan so happy.

  “Father, here are sealed charts,” Claes told him, pulling folded papers from his satchel. “Give them to the other pilots, would you?”

  Johan nodded as he took them, his eyes sparkling. “I will, I will.” He gave Fenella a long, contented look. “Sun’ll soon burn off the fog. Time to go.”

  She reached for Johan’s hand. Her own was unsteady. “Take care.”

  “Aye, we’ll take care of the dagos.” Chuckling at his jest, he hustled back down the tunnel.

  Fenella felt Claes’s eyes on her. “You’ll be safe here,” he said. “Sister Agatha will be staying with you. There’s plenty of food up in the house. We won’t be more than a few days.”

  “Claes, you said we’d talk this morning. What’s happening? Where are you going?”

  His thumb twitched at the satchel strap on his shoulder. He seemed in a struggle over how to answer. “I wish we had more time.” He looked away.

  She followed his gaze to Sister Martha, who was watching her, distrust in her eyes. Or was it jealousy? Despite the monkish names that Claes and his people had adopted, Fenella didn’t expect he’d lived like a monk for the last five years. She turned away from the woman. “I think I have a right to know. Especially if they do kill you this time.”

  A faint smile tugged his mouth. “You always did speak your mind.” He shot a commanding look at Sister Martha, who stiffly turned, picked up a box in her sturdy arms, and carried it toward the tunnel. They were alone.

  “Bergen op Zoom,” Claes told Fenella. “We’re going to ambush a troop coming to reinforce the garrison.”

  Her breath caught. “The fortress.”

  He nodded. “One of their main armories.”

  She knew the city. The old town was surrounded by marshes and diked fields that could easily be flooded, a distinctly Dutch defense action. “They’ll be fearsome,” she said. The famous Spanish tercios had been masters of European battlefields for generations. Claes’s little band could not possibly hope to beat such hardened professionals. But he had mentioned there were other rebel groups, too. Maybe they were not going alone? “Do you have the strength in men to win?”

  He shrugged. “Not yet. This time we’ll do some damage, then vanish. It’s our way. One day, though, we’ll take that city. With it we’ll be able to get reinforcements and supplies by sea. Use it as a base to take back our country.”

  He took a step closer to her with a yearning look. She knew he was going to embrace her. Kiss her. She stiffened. “Claes, I . . . I think it’s good, what you’re doing. Brave. I wish you Godspeed. But I—”

  “Fenella, I’d love to have you with me in this fight.”

  She looked into his shining eyes. She was his wife. Her duty was to be with him. A pain squeezed her heart at the thought of Adam Thornleigh sailing away, sailing out of her life forever. She forced herself to take a deep breath to stifle the pain. Her heart thrummed in her ears. She made her decision. “If that’s what you want, Claes, I’ll stay.”

  He took her by t
he shoulders. “No, you don’t understand. I told you, God has sent you as a sign that victory is near. Near—but not yet. There’s still hard work to be done. Much fighting. Some dying. I’d love to have you with me in this fight, but more than that I want you with me when it’s safe. When we’ve won.” He touched her scarred cheek. “You’ve suffered enough. I don’t want this danger for you. Go. Get your money in Antwerp and go to England. Be safe there. Be happy.”

  She felt frozen. Humbled. Grateful. England . . . exactly what she wanted to hear! But his words, so unexpected, so generous, brought no joy. Some dying, he’d said. She had lost him once to death. She could not bear to have him die again. Impulsively, she grabbed his hand. “Come with me. You’ve fought for five years. Let others carry on. Come with me to England.”

  His smile was rueful. “There are no Spaniards to vanquish in England. No, dear wife, my work is here. A Dutchman I was born, and a Dutchman I shall die.”

  She saw that there was no way to persuade him. Nothing more to say. A guilty thrill of relief coursed through her. She could leave! It made her feel ashamed.

  “Money,” she blurted. “Let me send you money from Antwerp. I have plenty. Let me give you that, at least. For your cause.”

  He shook his head. “We are provided for. Brother Sebastian’s family is wealthy and supports us amply with—” He stopped, a thought cutting off his words. “Do you really have enough to give some away?”

  “Yes. Truly. More than enough. And will gladly give you what you need.”

  “You must keep enough, though, to live in England. Live well.”

  How kind he was. “Don’t worry, Claes, I’ll be fine. Now, how much do you need?”

  “Not me. There is a branch of the Brethren that desperately needs help. Could you take them some of your gold before you leave?”

  She quickly calculated. Could she get to Antwerp for her money, make this delivery to the Brethren, then get back to the boat in time to meet Thornleigh? Yes, if she set out this very moment she could make it. “I’ll do it. Where is this branch of your people?”