The Queen's Exiles Page 3

  Doorn’s eyes snapped to him. “From you, my lord?”

  “Me? Never.” The Spaniard would rot at the bottom of the bay and good riddance. Adam had watched plenty of his own men plunge into the Channel. And he would never forget Spain’s vicious attack four years ago on him and the other ships of Hawkins’s expedition to the New World, when scores of English seamen had died, their throats slashed by Spanish swords, limbs ripped off by Spanish cannonballs. Corpses now, fish white in the sunless depths of the Gulf of Mexico. “But she’ll have to answer for what she did.”

  Doorn shrugged. “Seigneur Helier is the Queen’s man here and he’s over in Jersey, at his manor of Saint-Ouen. Never fear about him, sir; he has lordship of all Sark and he is well pleased with the trade Fenella brings in. The only other authority is the church elders, and they’ll shed no tear for a God-cursed dago papist. As for the poxy sailors Nella sent on their way, they won’t reach their home soil for weeks, and even when they do, why would they blab against her when she saved their skins?” He added with a growl, “Me, I would’ve let them swing. But Nella, she’s different.”

  Indeed she is, Adam thought. Extraordinary woman. How bold she had been, demanding that he free the Spanish seamen. How paradoxical, killing Don Alfonso. And now, all around him, was the evidence of her small fiefdom. The long shed was the center of her boatyard, and the cottages hugging the low, irregular terraces no doubt housed her shore crew and their families. Out in the bay a smart-looking caravel, Swedish by the look of her rigging, rocked at a mooring, her shrouds pinging musically in the breeze, while four other vessels bobbed alongside the jetty: an expertly refitted Dutch cog, a Highland galley, a serviceable fishing smack that was perhaps French, and a wherry. All belonged to Fenella. Adam thought of that desperate voyage he had made with her from Edinburgh eleven years ago. He had been weak and fevered after months in the Leith garrison, jailed for running arms to the Scottish rebels. All he knew then of Fenella was that she was the mistress of the garrison commander, a brute she’d wanted to escape from, so she sprang Adam from his cell and supplied a fishing boat for them to flee in. Adam owed her his life—the commander would have hanged him. When she proved to be a capable sailor he’d been even more grateful, for he had helmed the boat in a fog of fever.

  Not too fevered, though, to notice how fine looking she was. Even with that scar across her cheekbone. Like a white branch, broken. It tugged a string of sadness in him that something so lovely had been marred. A rose with one cankered petal. Oddly, the flaw heightened the beauty of the whole lush bloom. He remembered, when they were at sea, her gouged, bleeding cheek. What kind of brute would do that to a woman? Adam had killed men, but he could not imagine deliberately maiming a woman.

  Then he thought of his wife, and knew he was lying to himself. If he had Frances in his grasp he would strike her senseless. My wife, the traitor. How close her plot had come to killing the Queen. And how enraged he had been to find Frances had escaped. In the three years since then his agents had scoured Europe for her. Now, one had found her. In Brussels. Reading his agent’s letter, Adam had felt the hot excitement of vengeance. When he caught up with Frances he would drag her home to hang.

  Except what about Katherine and Robert? She would be twelve now, the boy nine. Every day Adam cursed his wife for taking them. Stealing them. His spry, clever Kate. Robert, his son and heir. Adam so missed their shining faces. They must have been so frightened, torn away from their home and everything they knew. Were they frightened still? And how were they living? What had Frances been doing all this time? He looked east across the water, toward the darkness where Europe lay. Weary though he was, he itched to track down the wretched woman. Not to exact vengeance, not anymore—that was a cankerous obsession, and he knew he had to let it go. All he wanted was to get his children back.

  It came to him over the echo of a razorbill’s cry: Now is the time to do it. His ship would be out of commission for weeks, and he couldn’t bear to loaf on this island backwater. He’d been on his way home to report to Elizabeth on his mission, first to the Dutch Prince William of Orange in exile on his German estates, then to the French Huguenots in La Rochelle. All these dissidents wanted Elizabeth’s support, but first she had to know how strong they were, what real chance they had of disrupting her adversaries, the Catholic kings of France and Spain, so eager for her downfall. She was waiting for Adam’s report, but his return to England would now have to wait until his ship was refitted. That didn’t mean he had to wait here doing nothing. He could go quietly, privately, to Brussels. If he didn’t, Frances might slip through his fingers again. She could slip away to hell for all he cared, but if she left the capital she would take Kate and Robert with her and he’d lose them again, this time perhaps forever. Looking out at the dark horizon, he made his decision. He would go to Brussels, get his children, and take them home.

  “Her name’s not Craig,” Doorn said suddenly.

  The words cut into Adam’s thoughts. “What?”

  “Fenella. After she left Scotland she married.”

  He felt a prick of disappointment, almost as though he’d lost something. Absurd. He barely knew the woman. But he could not deny his intense curiosity about her. “So her name now is what?”

  “Doorn.”

  Adam blinked at him. She’d married this crippled old man? “She settled in my village. Polder. It’s in Brabant, north of Bergen op Zoom, on the River Scheldt. Her brother left her a little money when he died and she opened a chandlery. Nothing much, just a counter and a shed, but Nella knows boats, and word of her Swedish blocks and quality cordage got round. That’s where she met my son, Claes. He was a shipwright like me. I lived with them, my wife and I, and when she died I went on living with them.” Doorn was watching the seabirds wheeling around the cliff top. “Glad I am that she died when she did, quiet-like.”

  The old man’s solemn tone gave Adam a twinge of unease. A foreboding.

  “Three years Claes and Nella had been married,” Doorn went on, “three years to the day. That’s when the Spanish soldiers came riding in. Like a squall they hit us. Some folk in the village had been printing pamphlets against the Spanish occupation, tracts against the Duke of Alba, the new governor come to subdue the whole Dutch people.” He spat in the sand. “Curse him to hell.”

  Adam knew all about the pitiless Duke of Alba. The Dutch had paid a bitter price for daring to oppose him.

  “He hanged so many in Antwerp, they say the price of rope shot up,” Doorn said with grim humor. His look turned grave. “It was a quiet morning in Polder when the soldiers thundered in with sword and axe and pistol. And with fire. We heard screaming and shooting. It was slaughter. Soldiers threw a torch into our house. I took a stick to one of them and cracked his head, but another raised his sword and hacked off my arm.” He nodded to his empty sleeve. “I lay there in my blood. Fenella dragged me out. Our house went up in flames.” He plucked at the sleeve, picking off a speck of dirt. “They rounded up the village men on the quay. Fenella and I made our way there, me fainting, staggering. We did not dare cross the line of soldiers, but we saw past them, past the screeching women. They tied the men together, two by two, face-to-face. To save the time it would take to hang them. They pushed them into the river. They tied Claes to Vos the bookbinder. I saw them go under. . . .” His voice cracked.

  Adam stood silent, picturing it.

  “Polder was in flames.... Fenella and I, we spent weeks in the forest. She foraged . . . kept me alive.” Doorn rasped a cough. It became a spasm of coughing that made his narrow chest crumple and his shoulders shudder. When it passed, he spat, then swallowed, and got control of himself. “The commander that day was a fair-haired Spanish lord, name of Don Alfonso.”

  Good God, Adam thought. His prisoner. He saw the nobleman again, scrambling for the Elizabeth’s longboat. Tumbling overboard, his face blown away, a red pulp of blood and bone.

  “Now you know, my lord. Why she hates the dagos.”

 
The sky glittered with stars over Fenella’s cottage. The night breeze stole through the open window, jerking the flame of the candle on the table where she stood. The table was spread with boat gear—blocks, sheaves, shackles—crowding the crockery pot of thyme that Fenella grew. She bit off a mouthful of bread slathered with goat cheese and topped with a spring of thyme and chewed it slowly, trying to savor the tang of the cheese and the sweetness of the bread. Trying not to think about the dead Spaniard. I’ve done murder. For one stunning moment when Don Alfonso had pitched overboard she had felt a thrill of satisfaction. If only she could have shot him five years ago! Killed him as he strolled the wharf while his soldiers drowned the men in pairs. She could still see Claes’s wild eyes as he hit the river with Vos, arms bound, thrashing like a speared fish.

  She closed her eyes to shut out the awful memory. What was the use of remembering? She had long ago forced herself to let the past die.

  But what she had done today could not be forgotten. Of all the stupid, impetuous things she had done in her life, killing Don Alfonso was the stupidest. The thrill was gone, swamped now by a fear that made her feel almost sick to her stomach. Was she going to prison? Seigneur Helier was the Queen’s authority here, the lord of Sark, but he was Fenella’s friend, so could she hope he might turn a blind eye? Lord Thornleigh outranked him, though. Would Thornleigh clap her in irons? Her hand holding the bread trembled. He hadn’t detained her—that was a good sign. Besides, he was fighting Spaniards himself, killing them. He’d almost hanged the don.

  But even if both the seigneur and Thornleigh turned a blind eye, what about the Spaniards? What would they do when they heard she had killed one of their own? For they would surely hear. The Spanish seamen whose necks she had saved would make landfall in France as soon as they could, at Saint-Malo or Ushant, and there one or more of them would blab. Probably not to inform on her, not with malice, but just because when they reached a tavern the tale was too good not to tell. The “Sea Queen of Sark” who blew off the face of a Spanish grandee. What sailor could resist telling that? Then word would reach Spain. Don Alfonso might well have a powerful family; they might be royal courtiers. They would demand vengeance from King Philip. Panic nipped at her. She took another bite of bread and cheese to quash it. Manchet bread was her special treat. The fine wheat flour, doubly milled, was expensive. She had it brought from England and baked it herself using her own recipe with rose water and nutmeg. Those items were as dear as diamonds, but a few drops and a few grains scenting the manchet loaf made her feel she was feasting like a duchess. Not tonight. This bite was hard to swallow, her throat had gone so dry.

  She forced it down with a mouthful of wine. A Baltic trader had given it to her, three barrels of the renowned wine from Madeira as part payment for what he’d owed her for repairs to his carrack. She had gifted one barrel to the Seigneur of Sark as a mark of their friendship and one barrel to the church elders to keep them out of her hair. The last she savored in the evenings with Johan, or with Madeleine Benoit, the rigger’s wife, who liked a laugh as much as Fenella did. She drained the Madeira from her goblet. Johan always scoffed at how she stood to eat when she was by herself. She didn’t like sitting at a table alone. Made her feel unready. Though for what, she couldn’t say. She set down the empty goblet, her mind on the Spaniards who might soon be coming for her. Her trembling hand made the glass rattle on the wood.

  A rasping sound. She glanced at Johan’s closed door. A snore? Annoying, but at least it was a healthy sound, not like his awful coughing fits. Johan was getting sicker. It gave her a pang. Was she going to lose him? How bullheaded he was about wanting to go home to fight the occupation. Idiotic. He’d deserved the tongue-lashing she’d given him. The Spaniards would crush him like a bug. And yet something in his fierce wish to go home gave her a twinge of shame. Who was she to say how any man should live his life? Or sacrifice it. The rasp sounded again. Not a snore, she realized, just his window shutter grating on its hinge, nudged by the breeze. A west wind had risen.

  Her gaze rose to the loft above his room. That’s where she slept. Her big feather bed shared the platform with bolts of canvas and heaps of cordage. She liked the snugness of the loft, like a ship’s berth, and loved its window view overlooking the bay and her shipyard. She had taken refuge up there after leaving Thornleigh’s ship, her hand still smarting from the kick of the pistol. She had sat stiffly on her bed and watched through the window as the men careened the Elizabeth, her crew and Thornleigh’s working together.

  Adam Thornleigh. The way he’d looked at her as she held the smoking pistol. A look of shock, but something more, too, something mysterious. Admiration? It sent a spark through her. For eleven years Thornleigh had smiled at her in her dreams. Claes Doorn had been a good man, quiet and calm, and he had cherished her. No woman could have asked for a better husband. But he had not fired her blood the way Adam Thornleigh had done with a single glance.

  She straightened up in self-disgust. He looked at me as a murderer. What else could he see? He, a great lord, a baron, honored at the court of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth. Me, as common as barley bread. Besides, he had a wife. When he and Fenella had left Scotland, in his fever he’d spoken of his wife being with child, their first. His bairn, she thought, envying his wife. It tugged an ache inside her. She would be thirty-one at Michaelmas. No man. No bairn.

  Foolish, lack-brain thoughts. She had a far bigger problem. The noose. She clapped the crockery lid back on the cheese pot to clear her head and swept bread crumbs off the table. Her noisy bustling brought a whimper from Jenny, the young maid asleep on the straw pallet in the corner by the hearth. Fenella stopped with a sigh. Let the girl sleep. I should do the same. God knows what tomorrow will bring.

  She took the candle and climbed the stairs to the loft. Sleep didn’t seem likely. She set down the candle on her nightstand, a priceless ebony prie-dieu she had salvaged from a Portuguese wreck. She freed her bunched hair from her mobcap and shook it loose. Unlacing her bodice, she undressed down to her shift, then turned to the night-dark window, so black it reflected her image as clearly as a mirror. She kept no mirrors, had no time for them, but now she stood still, hands on her hips, and gazed at herself. The flickering candlelight probed the scar on her cheek. She had long ago come to terms with it. A badge of her independence. In a way, it had saved her. Her life had once depended on her looks. The Leith garrison commander had wanted her, so she had traded her body for security and bread. But even then, at eighteen, she’d vaguely known that in the future, once beauty was gone, she would have nothing to trade. Her ravaged cheek had forced her to stand on her own early. Hard at first, with some bitter weeping into her pillow, but she had persevered and grown her business. Here on Sark she had prospered.

  But now? She felt cold and fearful. Would she wake one morning to see a Spanish pinnace sailing in to hunt her down?

  A rap at the door startled her. Who, at this hour? Benoit reporting trouble with the visiting seamen? She had seen them drinking. Brawling sailors were common as sand flies. She didn’t need that kind of nuisance now. She whirled on a robe and went down. Jenny was sleepily opening the door, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

  Fenella’s breath caught. Adam Thornleigh stood in the doorway.

  His eyes swept over her loosely tied gown, her tumbled hair. Then back at her face. “Forgive the intrusion at this late hour, Mistress Doorn. But we need to talk.”

  Had he come to arrest her? But he could have done that hours ago. She found her voice. “Of course, my lord. Come in.” He stepped inside, ducking his head under the low doorway. How fine he looked! He had washed, shaved, put on a clean shirt and a doublet of garnet wool. His dark hair, pushed off his forehead, was still damp and glistening. His sheathed sword gleamed in the firelight. She glanced at the dumbstruck maid, whose eyes were big with awe. “To bed with you, Jenny.” The girl curtsied, then crept away. Fenella said, “Come through to the parlor, my lord.”

  He followed her. She close
d the door, took a deep breath, then turned to him. “I hope you are comfortable at the Seigneurie?”

  “It’s fine.” He frowned, as though unsure of how to go on. “Couldn’t sleep, though.”

  She waited, her pulse racing. This visit could only be about Don Alfonso. In the silence the wind whispered at the window. A hawthorn bush scratched at the pane. She asked, struggling to sound calm, “Will you take a glass of Madeira?”

  “Fenella, you need to leave.”

  “Leave?”

  “It’s not safe for you here. The Spaniards. They’ll want revenge.”

  A shiver ran through her. “I know.” Yet the shiver was part thrill. He was on her side!

  “Do you?” he asked gravely. “I mean that they’ll come for you. To hang you.”

  The word made her flinch. She had seen Spanish torture, executions.

  “You need to get yourself to some place safe,” he said. “You have family in Scotland, don’t you?”

  “Family”—that was a word only for a lord. The sunken-eyed kinfolk she’d grown up with had long ago been felled by plague and war. The few who were left were too penniless to feed themselves, let alone another. “My home is here. On Sark.” Home, livelihood, everything she had worked to build! Fury boiled up in her at the thought of losing it. At the unfairness of it. At herself for her own brainless act. She lifted her chin, pretending defiance. “Seigneur Helier will stand by me.”