The Queen's Exiles Page 19

  Fenella swallowed. Never had she felt such a turmoil of grief and remorse.

  A new look of kindness softened the Frenchwoman’s face. “I’m sorry. Those were good men. We have said a prayer for their souls. When you feel strong enough to get up we’ll pray for them together.”

  Fenella felt a twitch of fury. What good were prayers to a dead man?

  Marguerite said, obviously curious, “One was your particular friend, that’s clear.”

  “Friend.” The word pierced Fenella’s heart. “Yes . . . he was. I wish I could tell you . . . his name.” Johan. Her companion after the hellish massacre of Polder. Her comrade through the lonely years on Sark. Her right-hand man in the business, his knowledge of ships and shipbuilding second to none. Argumentative, sharp-tongued, loyal old Johan. Tears stung her eyes. Claes saw them hang his father! Her tears spilled.

  “There, there.” Marguerite patted her hand, all sympathy. “We are fighters, my dear, but we are women, too. So weep for your friend. Pray for him. And never forget him.”

  Fenella swiped away the tears, angry at herself. Tears were as useless as prayers. “You say you are fighters. But can you win?”

  Marguerite looked taken aback at her sudden intensity. Fenella hardly knew herself where the harsh passion had come from.

  “I can tell you this much. The gold you brought will go a long way to sustaining the fight.”

  “My satchel!” It had slipped off her shoulder when she’d bolted through the crowd.

  “Don’t worry, I brought it back. The gold is here, safe.”

  A sound downstairs. A door closing? They shared a glance. Hope shot through Fenella. “He’s back.”

  “Perhaps.” Marguerite stood up. Her control masked the anxiety that Fenella knew gripped her. Was it her husband . . . or Spanish soldiers?

  They strained to listen in the silence. The wait was torture. Forcing her heavy limbs to obey, Fenella pushed herself up onto her elbow and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, her feet onto the floor. Faint footsteps sounded downstairs. Her hope surged back. It could not be soldiers; they would make far more noise. It had to be Jacques. Was Claes out of danger? Free? Had Jacques brought Claes with him? She pushed herself off the bed and stood up.

  Louder footsteps on the stairs. They both watched the doorway.

  “Jacques,” Marguerite breathed in relief as he stepped in and closed the door behind him.

  Fenella felt a shiver at that closed door. “Where is Brother Domenic?”

  Jacques looked at her, his face haggard. “They’ve taken him to prison. The one beneath the King’s House. It seems that Alba has . . . a special plan for him.”

  “Oh no,” Marguerite said in hushed horror. She went to him and they clasped hands. “Just as I feared.”

  A chill crawled over Fenella’s skin. “Special?”

  They looked at her, their faces drawn. “Because he’s such an effective leader,” Marguerite said.

  Jacques nodded. “My informant in the palace said—” His voice faltered.

  “Tell me,” Fenella demanded.

  “Alba is going to make an example of him. Brother Domenic alone . . . in the market square. A show execution.”

  A show. Fenella knew the Spaniards, knew the nightmare possibilities. Torture on the rack to break limbs. Hanged until almost dead and cut down alive. Castrated. Abdomen slit and entrails drawn, the victim still conscious.

  The couple bowed their heads, still holding hands. They murmured in unison, “May God have mercy on his soul.”

  Fenella felt a coldness steal through her bones. There would be no mercy for Claes’s body. Her heartbeat, quickening moments ago in hope, then in fear, now slowed and beat with a rhythm as steady as the execution drums. A word rose to her throat. For a moment it stuck there, hard as a stone. She forced it out. “No.”

  They looked up at her in surprise. “No?”

  “I can’t let that happen.”

  The Frenchman said with pity, “It is in God’s hands.”

  No, in mine. An insane thought, maybe. How could she possibly prevent Claes’s death? But somehow she had to try. And if she was to have any hope of succeeding she would need the Beaumonts’ help.

  “There’s something you need to know,” she said. They were still holding hands. Man and wife. It gave her the courage to go on. “Brother Domenic is my husband.”

  Adam awoke on the boat from a dream of Fenella, wanting her, his body’s need as intense as a schoolboy’s. He sat up in the cramped berth and rubbed his face hard to break the longing. The Odette, at anchor, rocked beneath him slowly, gently with the motion of the ebbing tide.

  He pushed off the berth, got to his feet, pulled on his boots. Get moving. The lure of Fenella lingered, warming him. Today he would see her. Today she would come to the boat. He had held on to the sweet anticipation of that since he’d come aboard yesterday. Had filled his mind with Fenella, willing the thought of her to keep at bay his torment about Kate and Robert.

  That memory still made him feel sick. Leaving them behind, galloping away from the gunman on the roof, not knowing what had happened to them. He told himself that they would be cared for by the nuns, that they were not in danger. But he had failed to get them out, and the bitterness of that made a fist of his stomach. He would not be bringing his children home.

  He grabbed his hat. Food. Get some food for Fenella. Stay busy while waiting for her. Otherwise he’d torture himself about Robert and Kate. There was some biscuit and small beer on the boat, but he wanted something better for Fenella. She liked manchet bread, he remembered, made with fine white flour. Little hope of finding such a thing in the village, but at least it gave him a mission.

  He came up on deck, rotating his shoulder to ease the soreness. The wound was no longer painful, but the muscle was still tender. The sun was burning through the morning mist. Shreds of fog hung in the trees that crowded the shore. Ducks bobbed in the reeds, fishing for breakfast. There was a faint smell of wood smoke from the village. He hoped this might be a market day. If not, there would be a cookhouse. If the place was too poor even for that, he’d inquire if some housewife had fresh bread to sell.

  He climbed into the little skiff and rowed for shore, and with every pull of the oars he asked himself again: Who had tried to shoot him? The question had plagued him on his overnight ride to Antwerp and the next day all the way to the cove, and it plagued him still. The Duke of Alba wanted him dead, but how could Alba have known he would be at the abbey? One sickening possibility was Isabel’s husband. Did Carlos betray me? But that made no sense. Carlos risked himself to help me. Unless . . . if Alba suspected what Carlos had done he might have forced the information from him. But Adam couldn’t imagine Carlos breaking like that. Even if he had, Alba commanded thousands of soldiers, so why not send several to be sure of success? Why a lone, hidden gunman?

  No, Alba was not behind this. So who else wanted him dead? His thoughts had wound this tortuous route again and again since he’d galloped out of Brussels, and he always came up hard against the same answer: Frances. Four days ago she had lured him to the church using their daughter as bait. She had to be working with Tyrone, who had certainly betrayed him that day, no doubt for a bountiful reward from Frances. But Adam had assumed that Frances had set that trap as a display of her strength, to show him he could not get the children, then she would send him on his way. At the very worst she might have delivered him to Alba. Would she actually go so far as to hire a man to kill him?

  It seemed astounding, inconceivable. His own wife, who had once been so cloyingly devoted to him. But her act of treason had severed their marriage as surely as an executioner’s axe, and she had certainly hidden Robert and Kate in the convent to keep them from him. Did she also fear that he would come for her? Drag her back to England to hang? Did that terrify her enough to post a man in the convent with orders to shoot him if he came for the children?

  The skiff’s bow nosed through the reeds. Adam hopped out in
to the ankle-high water and pulled the skiff up onto the muddy shore. He looked out at the Odette. The boat was nicely hidden from both land and water, cocooned by the sweeping crescent of shoreline thick with trees. He tramped through the underbrush and soon reached the narrow footpath that ran parallel to the shore. Villagers took the path to reach the stream that fed a larger bay to the north. Adam set out in the opposite direction, toward the village. He passed through woods, then across a meadow, and in half an hour he saw the rooftops of the cottages that made up the village. A hamlet, really, just a scatter of humble dwellings. The squat, stone church was the only other building, except for the ostler’s ramshackle stable. When Adam had returned the hired horse he had found the ostler cleaning a mare’s rear hoof and asked if any message had come for him. He and Fenella had agreed to send a message here if either got delayed.

  “Message?” The ostler looked up, the hoof wedged between his knees. A bald old fellow, he looked slightly puzzled.

  “Yes, a note? Or letter?”

  “My trade is horses, sir, not letters.”

  The sir surprised Adam. How had the fellow marked him as a gentleman? He wore clothes little better than a farmer’s and he’d left the sword from Carlos on the boat. “No matter,” he said, tossing the fellow an extra coin for the horse. No message meant that Fenella was on her way.

  She’ll be here by nightfall, he thought now, the knowledge exciting him as he followed the weedy path that wound into the village. He passed two men sawing a bough fallen from a beech tree. They regarded him with a mix of curiosity and suspicion, it seemed to Adam. Villagers everywhere probably watched any stranger the same way. An ox bellowed from an adjacent field. Adam passed a cottage garden where bees hummed in the hollyhocks and pear trees nudged a stone wall. Maybe he could buy some pears. Fenella would like that.

  The stone wall merged with the churchyard wall and he strode on, watching people coming out of the church, a farming family, men and woman old and young in clothes as drab as the soil they worked. A stocky young woman held a baby. A christening? A swallow flitted above the mother and child, and the baby chirped and gurgled at it and the people laughed and grinned. Adam’s heart twisted. He remembered Kate’s christening, her small fist batting at the vicar’s beefy hand. He had smiled at her pluck. Now, twelve years later, there was nothing to stop Frances from delivering her and Robert up to the mighty machine of the Catholic church. Adam thought in fury of the nun who had cuffed his son for his tic. And Kate? She would never leave that convent. His lively daughter, a nun . . . shut away from life, from love. The thought cut him so deeply he wanted to howl like a mad wolf.

  He gritted his teeth and picked up his pace. He had to accept what he could not change. For now. He would not leave his children there forever. He would find some way to get them away from Frances. But they were not his only concern. There was Fenella. She could not stay in this country. If she did, Alba would track her down for killing his kinsman. Adam had to get her to England. The thought of her took the edge off his wretchedness about his children. It was a stirring consolation. He knew now that he was in love with Fenella. And she had given every indication that she loved him. In England they would have each other.

  There was his duty to Elizabeth, too. Before he’d reached Sark he’d sent her his report outlining everything he thought safe to entrust to paper about his meetings with the Dutch prince in exile and with the French Huguenots based in the port of La Rochelle. But Elizabeth would be waiting to hear from his mouth his opinion of how far she dare pledge England to their cause. The prince wanted Elizabeth’s military support to free the Netherlands from Spanish occupation, and the French Protestants, too, wanted her to supply them with arms. Adam intended to advise her to do both. For Elizabeth’s sake, and for Fenella’s, he had to get home without further delay. Later, somehow, he would come back for Robert and Kate.

  The village, Adam found, did have a market of sorts today. Farmers had set up a half-dozen crude stalls beside the church. Strings of onions, baskets of turnips, wheels of cheese. Homemade brooms, a workhorse harness, a used butter churn. A few villagers strolled, inspecting the offerings, haggling, buying. A boy sat on the dusty ground skinning a rabbit. Farmwives stood gossiping beside a donkey that munched discarded cabbage leaves. Men ambled to and from the alehouse across from the church.

  The cheese looked good. A stout farmwife stood beside a ripe, golden wheel of it on the back of her cart. Fenella would enjoy that, Adam thought. “How much for a good thick wedge?” he asked.

  The woman was all smiles. “Sir, you can have a whole wheel for ten penningen.”

  He smiled back. “Half will do me.” He dug in his pocket for coins. “Shall we say five penningen?”

  As she was cutting the cheese, a hand tapped his shoulder. He turned to see the black-whiskered face of his agent, Tyrone! Before Adam could think, his hand shot to the blackguard’s throat and grappled it. “You!”

  Tyrone raised his hands in surrender, but his look was hard, unrepentant. “Hold on, now. You may want to throttle the life out of me, but then you wouldn’t hear about your wife.”

  Adam released him with a furious jerk. “So you’re working with her, you admit it!”

  Tyrone rubbed his neck, glaring at Adam. “A man has to make a living, my lord. You were tardy with your silver.”

  “So the two of you set a trap for me, put my daughter in that church.”

  “Your wife told me she wanted to talk to you is all. Just talk. How was I to know she’d bring a troop to nab you? Anyway, they didn’t nab you and you got away, so we’re quits.”

  “How did you know I was here?” Had he followed him from Brussels? Was Tyrone the gunman on the roof?

  “Your wife went to the abbey when she got word of the commander’s raid and I went with her. She quizzed her children about you—”

  “My children.”

  “Aye, aye, yours. No one questions that.”

  Adam grabbed the man’s jerkin in both fists. “Who shot at me? You?”

  “Me? What do you take me for? I make no bones about raking in some silver on the side, for I saw no harm in it. But killing? Murder? No, that’s not what I do.” His look turned sly. “It was you the commander was looking for in the abbey, wasn’t it? You tried to get your young ones, I warrant. After that, well, I reckoned you’d come to this village. I knew you’d landed nearby.”

  Questions roiled in Adam’s mind, but he and Tyrone were getting glances from the passing villagers. He let go of the man’s jerkin and said under his breath, “Why are you here?”

  Tyrone’s eyes glinted. “Thought I’d make a little more silver. You’re hell-bent on getting back the young Lord Robert and his sister, and I can tell how you might yet get hold of them. That’s information you’ll want to pay for, my lord.”

  “Don’t call me that,” he said in a fierce whisper. “Not here.”

  Tyrone, chastised, looked at the people milling around them. “Christ, you’re right,” he growled. His gaze went toward the alehouse. “See that portly fellow all in black? His smug face? That’s a churchwarden’s face if ever I saw one. Bible men, they saunter about watching their village folk, sniffing for lewdness or thievery or anything untoward. You and me, we’re two strangers, and that’s enough to prick up his ears. I don’t want him coming and quizzing me. Do you?”

  Adam inwardly cursed his hostile action with Tyrone. He could not afford to draw attention. “No.”

  “Over there,” Tyrone said, nodding at the churchyard. “We can talk there, away from the Bible man’s eyes.”

  “Right. Come on.” He didn’t trust the man, but if he had even a shred of information about how to get Kate and Robert, Adam wanted it. They made their way past the knots of villagers and reached the churchyard wall. The lych gate was open for the christening party who lingered, chattering, by the church door. Adam followed Tyrone in through the lych gate and they walked together along the path through the graveyard. A crow lifted from a tom
bstone, wings flapping.

  “Here is good,” Adam said the moment they’d turned the corner of the church and were out of sight of the villagers. “Now tell me. How can I get my children out?”

  “Shhh.” Tyrone’s eyes flicked to a spot behind Adam.

  Adam glanced over his shoulder. An old couple had left the christening party and were moving toward them, eyeing him and Tyrone. The couple were apparently heading for a grave across the grass. They shuffled on. When they were out of sight behind the rows of tombstones, Adam turned back.

  He saw Tyrone’s knife just in time. The blade glinted in a savage underhand stab. Adam’s heart jolted and he kicked the knife from Tyrone’s hand. It flew through the air and speared the grass. Tyrone lunged for it, but Adam tripped him and he tumbled.

  Adam whipped out his own dagger from his belt. Tyrone jumped up and charged him with such force he almost knocked him down. As Adam stumbled, Tyrone grappled his wrist that held the blade. They wrestled on their feet, arms straining, Tyrone struggling to get the dagger, Adam struggling to turn the blade. Locked in the power struggle, they crashed against a tombstone, knocking Adam backward, off-balance. The tombstone scraped his cheek as he fell with a thud on his back, the breath knocked from him. Tyrone leapt on top of him and snatched the dagger. He pinned Adam’s arms to the ground with one hand and one foot. He raised the dagger high to plunge it into Adam’s throat.

  Willing a surge of strength Adam wrenched his arm free and grabbed Tyrone’s wrist. He hacked Tyrone’s hand against the tombstone’s edge. He heard the wrist bone snap. Tyrone cried out and the dagger tumbled. Adam snatched it and lifted it and rammed the blade into Tyrone’s side.

  Tyrone’s face above him contorted. Adam yanked the blade out. Tyrone groped for his bleeding side. Adam stabbed again. A trickle of blood seeped over Tyrone’s lips. His eyes rolled in their sockets. He collapsed onto Adam.

  Adam pushed him off. He got to his feet, the bloody dagger in his hand. He twisted around. Had anyone seen?