The Queen's Exiles Page 13

  My own fault, she told herself. She’d be dry and comfortable if she had stopped at an inn on the road when the downpour started. But she was impatient to get her business here in the capital done and over with. In Antwerp she had returned to her banker and taken a portion of her gold, which now lay tucked inside her saddlebags, destined for the Brussels group of the Brethren. Claes had insisted that she take a servant as an escort, but the fellow slowed her down, slogging behind her, hunched over in his saddle, looking glum in the rain. So she had left him at an inn outside Antwerp and told him to return to Polder. Good riddance. She was used to taking care of herself. She just wanted to get her task done and get back to Antwerp to rendezvous with Adam Thornleigh on the boat. Then she would be off to England with him. Baron Thornleigh . Call me Adam. The thought of him buoyed her spirits. She lifted her shoulder to shrug off the drenched patch of cloak, telling herself, It’s only water.

  Drumbeats sounded, and Fenella’s horse shied back a step. She steadied the animal as a small troop of soldiers marched out from a side street. A captain led the way, followed by five foot soldiers, then another horseman leading a prisoner by a rope. The rope ended in a noose around the prisoner’s neck, and he staggered along, wrists bound at his back, his filthy clothes drenched. Five more foot soldiers brought up the rear, followed by two drummers. A straggle of people plodded behind, among them a weeping woman with a child clutching her hand. The drummers beat out the flat drumrolls that signaled an execution. The prisoner was on his way to hang.

  What had the poor fool done? Fenella wondered. Stolen a rich man’s purse? Spoken out against the Duke of Alba’s tyranny? Those crimes were nothing compared to hers. She had murdered Alba’s kinsman. And she was about to commit another crime, bringing aid to men who were fighting Alba. She shuddered, thinking of that noose around the prisoner’s neck. She could see herself on the scaffold . . . the scratchy rope . . . you dropped so violently it snapped your neck.

  Stop it, she told herself. No good will come of frightening myself. She was about to turn her horse and carry on when her eyes were drawn to the captain on the lead horse. He wore a breastplate and a helmet with a white plume. She’d been in the city long enough to know that the plume marked him as one of Alba’s commanders. He looked familiar. Where had she seen him before? A young man on the street lurched forward as though to stop him, and the commander scowled and his fighting hand went to his sword. Then his expression relaxed, for it was clear the young man was no threat, weeping and pulling his hair and swaying on his feet. The commander’s hand settled and he looked forward again.

  That martial action of his jolted Fenella’s memory. Edinburgh. The garrison at Leith! She’d been eighteen and so miserably poor she had let the garrison commander, a Frenchman named D’Oysel, make her his mistress. But he’d turned out to be a brute, and when he cut her face she’d been so desperate to escape him she had asked for help from a captain of cavalry—this same commander who was riding toward her now. His name came back to her in a rush. Carlos Valverde. She blushed to remember how she had offered him her body in asking for his help. But help her he did, in exchange for her help in getting his kinsman out of jail. Adam Thornleigh. That was the first time she had ever seen Adam. She struggled to remember exactly how the two men were related. Cousins? No, brothers-in-law, that was it. Adam’s sister was Valverde’s wife. Questions reared up. What was he doing in Brussels? How had he come to work for Alba?

  Her horse jerked up its head with an anxious whinny. That drew a glance from Valverde, and Fenella quickly turned so he would not see her face. She could not risk him noticing her. She had killed a Spanish don and Valverde had the power to arrest. Her horse danced nervously on the spot, a rear hoof skidding on the wet cobbles. She tightened her grip on the reins and got control of the horse. The execution party carried on, swallowed by the gray rain.

  God, get me out of here, she thought. She kicked the horse’s flanks and it broke into a trot. Her heart was beating fast, out of time with the drums fading behind her. When she was well past the party she reined in her horse to a steady walk. Finish what you came for, then get out of this God-cursed country.

  She was determined to see her task through. She’d promised this to Claes, her contribution to his cause. It was the least she could do, she had told him, and now she felt how true those words were. Guilt needled her. Hers was a paltry contribution. In fighting Alba, Claes was risking his very life.

  But it’s not my cause, she thought irritably. Claes had agreed. Go to England, he had said. Be safe there. Be happy. And go she certainly would. It was the only sane thing to do. Yet guilt had wormed its way into her heart and settled there. She could not shake the sense that she was abandoning her husband.

  He had given her directions to the house of the Brethren. It lay just inside the southern wall, by the Anderlecht Gate. Her route would take her right through the city, and Fenella was aware that she must look unusual, even suspicious, riding alone in a downpour when most people were indoors. She could not afford to attract attention. She would be glad, too, to change into dry clothes before going to see the Brethren. So she decided to go first to her old friend Berck Verhulst. He and his wife might offer her a bed to return to for the night after she’d concluded her business with the Brethren. If they were not home, she would finish her business and then find an inn.

  The Grote Markt was behind her now, and the Bourse, too. Water trickled off the slate roof of a house to her right and poured from the eaves of a cobbler’s shop to her left, splashing mud up to her stirrups. Between the buildings she saw the bridge ahead, a skeletal shape in the rain. It led to Sint-Gorikseiland, the island in the shallow Zenne River that wound through the city center. Her horse clomped onto the bridge, its hooves sounding hollowly on the wooden planks. The island was home to fishermen and fishmongers, and Fenella smelled its fishy reek and heard the plash of a watermill. The Low Countries had been well named. This marshy country, level with the sea, was a world of water.

  And of rubbish, by the stench. People seemed to use the river as a sewer. She saw the half carcass of a pig, the nether half, floating toward the bridge. Overhanging branches on the riverbank snagged it, and the leafy tips trailing in the water covered it, only a black hoof protruding. That pig will stink come Sunday, Fenella thought as she reached the other side and turned her horse.

  She stopped beside a couple of muddy children on their knees in the grass, harvesting worms wriggling to the surface from the rain. She asked if they knew Meinheer Verhulst. “The Pelican,” they said, and pointed down the path that ran beside the riverbank.

  Fenella carried on down the path, past dripping trees and dripping cottages, until she reached the jetty where Berck Verhulst’s barge was tethered, a long, low vessel with two stubby masts. Berck, the gentle giant, she thought with a smile as she tied her horse to the rail under a tree. She hadn’t seen him in over five years. In Polder he had been one of her best customers at the chandlery. He owned the Pelican and lived aboard it, ferrying cargo between Brussels and Antwerp—grain, sheep, ale, horses, whatever paid—and had often come to buy Fenella’s gear. So often, in fact, she remembered Claes once muttering, Verhulst again? But Claes had had no reason to be jealous; she thought of Berck like a brother. Not long before the slaughter of Polder he’d married a woman from Brussels and they’d moved here. Fenella had never met his wife. Did they have children now? Bairns brought up on a barge? Well, she thought, they’d see more interesting sights than many a pampered young lord in a moat-bound castle. She crossed the spongy grass and stepped onto the jetty.

  When she came alongside the boat and took in its condition she felt a pinch of worry. It hadn’t left shore for some time; that was clear from the slime of black mold on the lines that tethered it to the bollard. And the furled sails, dripping with rain, sagged with age and neglect. Did Berck not live aboard anymore? She heard sounds belowdecks, a faint clanging and scraping. Hard to tell what caused them with the rain drumming so loud
ly on the deck.

  She lifted the wet skirt of her cloak to step safely onboard and went amidships to the small cabin and knocked. “Hello?” she called. The clanging and scraping went on. She opened the hatch. The cabin was not much bigger than a closet and empty but for a begrimed stool and a heap of frayed hemp line. She closed the hatch, happy to be out of the rain, and threw off her sodden hood. A companionway led to the lower deck. She went down the steps, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and found herself in the galley. A low brick hearth. A scatter of splintered crates. A hanging lantern in which a guttering candle gave off the only light and its tallow a rank smell. And there was Berck, on his knees at the cold hearth, his back to her, laying bricks with a clang and scrape of his trowel. He hadn’t heard her with the din of the rain above.

  She came to him. “Berck.”

  He swung around. A beard covered half his face, a ragged bush like black wires, and his black hair, too, was shaggy and unkempt. His eyes lit up. “Fenella Doorn?” He got to his feet, looming over her, his head brushing the deck head. Legs like tree trunks and hands like hams.

  “None other,” she said with a smile.

  He grinned. “Christ on the cross.” His voice was a deep rumble. “You’re a sight to make a man dance a jig.”

  She grinned back but thought with a sad twinge that Berck’s jig days seemed over. His wrestler’s body had gone to fat. He was sweating from his labor, and his dingy linen shirt, big as a sail, clung in damp patches to his paunchy torso. She playfully poked his belly. “Someone’s been feeding you well, my friend.” She glanced around for his wife.

  He winked at her. “And someone needs to fatten you up. Come, sit you down, Fenella, and tell me what brings you here. Christ almighty, you’re soaked as a stowaway rat.”

  She laughed. “God’s truth, I’ll be glad to get myself dry.”

  The moment she mentioned the baggage on her horse he was on his way to fetch it. He climbed the companionway with unexpected liveliness for a man so big. She heard his thumping gait across the deck. Waiting, she took in her surroundings. Unwashed wooden cups and trenchers. Mud-matted straw on the floor. A threadbare blanket on a berth that was littered with cracked blocks and broken sheaves. A sour smell like old cheese. The squalor surprised her. Berck used to be a proud seaman and kept his vessel in good order.

  When he came back she changed her dress and stockings in the privacy of the stern cabin where his berth was a narrow, lumpy bed. The cabin was as dirty as the galley, but the dry clothes felt very good and she was happy to return to the galley and sit at Berck’s scuffed table and accept a mug of ale that he drew from a keg almost half his size. He thudded down on the bench across from her with his own full mug and told her he had heard about the tragedy in Polder five years ago. “Lost your man, I heard. Bad luck, Fenella. A hard blow, I warrant.”

  She looked down at her ale. No need to tell him that Claes had survived. Claes was safer if everyone thought him dead. She told Berck how she’d gone to Sark and established her business there.

  A grin spread under his bush of beard. “Aye, you’re a woman bound to get on in the world wherever the devil drops you.” He raised his mug in a salute.

  She smiled and clinked mugs with him and they drank. He downed his ale in four huge gulps, then refilled it from the keg. An oversized thirst, Fenella thought wryly. Now she knew where that big belly came from. “Shall I meet your wife?” she asked. “She hasn’t been caught out in this downpour, I hope.”

  He spat into the hearth. “Caught by the devil, for all I care.” Fenella listened with growing concern as he told her how his wife had left him three years ago. “Said I was always at the cockfights, always off wagering.” He upended his mug to finish the ale and his eyes grew misty with anger. “God knows I only did it to keep her in style. Her with her frippery and gewgaws.”

  So his gambling had ruptured his marriage. She guessed why. “You fell into debt?”

  He nodded. “Deeper than a sea sinkhole. And then, when I hit the bottom, she ran off with a hot-gospeller. A right knave, babbled like a baby about being saved by Jesus. And she fell in with his claptrap. Bah! The devil take ’em both.”

  A melancholy tale, Fenella thought. She reached across the table and took his hand. “I’m sorry.”

  He looked at her morosely and then with sudden energy clapped his big hand over hers. There was a new gleam in his eyes. “We’re both of us alone now, eh, Fenella?”

  Uneasy, she slipped her hand back, not answering, and took a swallow of ale. “And your business, Berck? How does it fare?”

  He heaved himself up from the table and shuffled to the keg to refill his mug. “Gone, three years now. I couldn’t pay the license to work the boat. That’s over.”

  She was shocked. “How do you live?”

  “With my hands. Dug the canal, me and a gang glad of the wage. There’s many in this city that grouse about the Spaniards, but I say the Spaniards have put bread on many a workingman’s table.”

  “And now?” she asked. The canal was finished.

  “My place is at the lock. I help warp the vessels in and out. When I’m needed. Not today.” He raised his mug and winked. “There’s luck, eh?”

  A dockhand. It was a living, yes, but he was no longer his own master. It made Fenella sadder than she could say. Perhaps he read her face, for he raised his head with a look of wounded pride. “I get by just fine. That ale you’re drinking is the personal gift of a Spanish don. Came off an overloaded barge, the don’s own supply, three kegs that rolled off and would’ve sunk if my mates and me hadn’t salvaged ’em.”

  Scrabbling for Spanish charity. This was sadder still. And a chilling reminder that she had to be careful about what she said. Thank God she had not mentioned Claes. Berck worked for the city, so his livelihood, meager though it was, came from the magistrates’ collaboration with the Spanish overlords. If he heard of a rebel, Berck might well turn him in.

  He slammed his hand on the table like a slab of meat and said with sudden, brash cheerfulness, “To good days ahead, eh, Fenella?” He raised his mug again in a toast.

  His bravado touched her. She managed a smile. “To good days for us all, Berck.” She toasted him. They both drank.

  “Now,” he said, wiping his ale-damp beard with his hand, “what brings you to Brussels?”

  “Business. And a chance to see old friends, like you.”

  “Have you somewhere to stay? You’re welcome to a berth here.”

  She hated to tell him that she would rather ride in the rain than sleep on this dirty boat. Besides, she’d expected to find a married couple, not a bachelor.

  Perhaps he read her face. “The stern cabin would be all yours,” he assured her.

  “That’s kind,” she said, “but I must see to my business before it gets dark. My customer is beyond the Anderlecht Gate. There’s bound to be an inn thereabouts.” She cocked her head, eyes on the ceiling. The din on deck had stopped. “Listen, the rain’s let up.”

  The truth was, something else was troubling her, Berck’s tale of how his wife had run out on him. A disloyal wife, she thought. Is that what I am? Claes had gone on a mission that was clearly dangerous, and what if he was hurt? Or killed? If he died, God forbid, she could only mourn him . . . for the second time. But if he was hurt? A wife’s place was with her husband, to help him and comfort him. That was the marriage vow, and she had taken it with her eyes open. She sensed that Claes’s stern-faced comrade, Sister Martha, would like to take her place. But I’m his lawful wife.

  No, he set me free, the voice inside her pleaded. Go to England, he had said. Be safe there. Be happy. And she had been so relieved to hear that. She wanted no part of the life Claes had chosen in leading the Brethren, hiding underground like rats, always in fear. His hope of vanquishing the mighty Spaniards seemed daft to her, like the wishful thinking of a child. Yet the question needled her without pity: Was she free? What if Claes one day realized how hopeless the fight was
and left the Brethren? Shouldn’t she then come back and live with him as his wife? And if that was the case, how could she start life in England as Adam Thornleigh’s business partner, so near him that she would always be yearning for him? How could she put her heart into rebuilding her business there if one day she would have to go back to Claes?

  “You’ll come back, though, won’t you?” Berck was saying.

  “What?”

  “After your business is done. We’ve got lots to catch up on. Old times.”

  She looked at him, the spidery red threads that webbed his cheeks, the morose yet hopeful look in his eyes. “I’ll try,” she lied. She fetched her satchel, readying to leave, and took out five gold ducats and pressed them into his beefy hand.

  He looked taken aback. “What’s this?” He sounded on the verge of taking offense.

  “To hell with Spaniards,” she said slyly. “Buy your own kegs.”

  He barked a laugh and closed his fist around the coins. “Ha! So I will.” He grinned. “You’re a woman in a million, Fenella.”

  She was already going up the steps, her satchel strap over one shoulder, her damp cloak over the other arm. “Here, I’ll help you onto your horse,” Berck said, following.

  Up on deck she opened the cabin door. The rain had stopped, but heavy gray clouds still massed above, allowing no sun. Evening was drawing near. She stepped onto the jetty and turned to say good-bye to Berck on deck. A dog was yapping onshore. Fenella glanced at it. It was crouched on the riverside path barking frantically at something. Through the screen of trees that lined the path Fenella saw a figure coming toward the dog—a man, looking over his shoulder, his face turned away, his steps erratic. He cleared the trees, and she saw that blood soaked his shirtsleeve and half his jerkin. He looked forward again and she saw his face. Her breath caught. Adam Thornleigh!

  She dumped the satchel and cloak and ran. At the foot of the jetty she intercepted him. “Adam!”