Blood Between Queens (35 page)

About anything. She could not beat back images of the atrocities her grandfather and her uncle had inflicted on the Thornleighs. Could such things be true? Her father had said nothing about it.
He told me only what
our
family suffered. But can I believe a woman who raves such lies about Father? No, she is truly mad.

Did Will know his mother was mad? Was that why he was so solicitous about her? It gave Justine a desperate hope.
Maybe, then, he won’t believe her if she tells him about me.
The thought made her cringe with shame.
I’m a coward. He’s bound to find out some day. I should tell him myself, just as Lord Thornleigh has always said.

A loud thump jarred her. She listened intently. Had an animal got into the room adjoining hers? All she could hear was a faint creaking. It sounded odd, rhythmic. Curious, she got up and opened her door. The passage was dark, no one in sight, human or animal. But the creaking was louder, definitely coming from the chamber next to hers. She tapped lightly on the door. “Hello?”

No answer.

She opened the door. A bedchamber, ghostly dark. She made out a chair fallen on its side. Above the chair a figure floated, all in white, like a ghost.

Justine’s heart kicked. The figure was Will’s mother. Head askew. The rope from the rafter, creaking.

She lurched forward. Grabbed the dangling legs. The creaking stopped. She looked up and saw the white face lazily swing to her, a result of the rope’s final twist. The dead eyes stared down at her.

A form appeared at the doorway. Will, in shirtsleeves. He froze. Ink stains on his fingers.

T
he gunpowder was hidden inside household goods being delivered by boat to Kilburn Manor: a keg of salt, two crates of candles, and five sacks of grain. Christopher, in workman’s clothes, was aboard the boat as it reached his sister’s jetty just east of Chelsea village. He rolled the salt keg down the ramp from the deck, keeping his head down as four porters from her house came down the jetty to pick up the cargo. He was relieved to see the area so quiet. The sun was up, a new workday beginning, but on this stretch of the Thames the only signs of life were a couple of fishing smacks, and ducks diving among the riverbank reeds. Kilburn Manor was the ideal place to lure Elizabeth. But would she take the bait? Christopher was on tenterhooks waiting to hear. He’d had no word from Justine since sending her with Mary’s message yesterday.

A deeper fear had gnawed him all night. Had Justine gone back to pay the witness for his information? Frances, the fool, had given her the money. Did Justine now know that he had dispatched her friend Alice? His time was running out. Elizabeth
had
to take his bait.

He glanced up at the house. Frances was rushing down the steps. He was dismayed to see her coming straight toward him. Damn the woman, why hadn’t she just sent her steward? Had she no sense?

“Where to, my lady?” one of the porters asked.

“What?” She looked as nervous as a caught felon.

Christopher hefted the keg up onto his shoulder and prompted her. “To the cellar, my lady?”

“Oh . . . yes.” She went on with unnatural precision, raising her voice for her porters to hear, “That’s right. Take everything down to the cellar.”

Christopher stalked past her. She followed him and the porters as they carried the cargo around to the cellar door, trudged down the stairs, and deposited it. The space was dim, the morning light creeping through a single high slit of a window. Frances dismissed the porters, and Christopher pretended to wipe a cut on his hand, waiting as the men went up the steps. As soon as he was alone with her he said in a furious low voice, “I told you, everything must seem normal. Change nothing in your household routine. Nothing. Now, have you heard from Justine?”

She shook her head, looking distraught. “No.”

So he still didn’t know where he stood. Would Elizabeth come before Justine’s witness could destroy him? There was nothing to do but prepare. He grabbed a crowbar to pry off the keg lid. “All right. Get upstairs and go about your day.”

“No, Christopher, we cannot go on!”

He turned on her. “What?”

“We must abandon the scheme.”

Dread gripped him. Had he been betrayed? “What’s happened?”

She held out a paper. “Look!” The light was so poor Christopher could not make out the writing. “What is it?”

“From Adam. He has left Portsmouth. He’s stopped in London.” She wailed, “He’ll be home tomorrow!”

“Shh!” He glanced up the stairs. Anyone might hear her. “Pull yourself together, Frances. We will deal with this. You know we cannot stop now.”

Her mouth trembled. Fear strained her face. She shook her head. “No . . . not here. Not with Adam coming. You must find another place.”

He wanted to shake her. Another place? The fool! He clamped down his fury. “You’re anxious, I understand that. But we have come too far to turn back now.”

“But, Adam!”

“All you need to do is put him off.” He forced gentleness into his voice. “Frances, we are so close to victory. I’ve heard from Northumberland. He has over five thousand men ready to ride, with more being mustered every hour. And they will be backed by battle-hardened Spanish troops ready to cross from Rotterdam at a day’s notice. Now you and I must do our part. If Elizabeth agrees to meet Lord Herries here, your work is finished. I shall do the rest.” He slapped his palm on the crate that held some of the gunpowder. “Just think, she’ll be in your great hall, right above where you and I stand now.”

“Put him off?” She said it as if she had heard nothing else. “How?”

“Send him a message. Forestall him.” He wished her wretched husband
would
come; then he could rid the world of one more Thornleigh. But Frances would not go through with this if there was a chance of her husband being hurt. “You say he’s in London. Where?”

“The Admiralty.”

“Then send him word there’s sickness here in the house. Tell him to stay where he is until he hears from you that the infection is past. Can you do that?” She still looked glassy-eyed with anxiety. “Frances, if Elizabeth agrees, this will soon be over. But until then you must stay strong. Now go, send the message. And then wait to hear from Elizabeth.”

She closed her eyes as if it was all too much. But she nodded and whispered, “All right.”

 

Like a sleepwalker fleeing a nightmare, Justine found herself at Kilburn Manor. She hardly knew how she had reached the place. Stumbling out of Will’s house was the last thing she remembered clearly. She must have wandered London’s streets for hours because she was vaguely aware of the sun being high as she sat numbly in the boat heading west. But the decision to come to Chelsea, and the conversation, if it could be called that, with her aunt in the parlor—a conversation in which Justine could scarcely hold a thought or hold herself upright on her trembling legs—was all a fog.

“Your father?” her aunt had said, looking oddly frightened and distant. “He is in the new wing.” She had pointed to the empty building across the courtyard.

Now Justine found herself standing in a space that seemed like a huge cave. A cave on a cliff. That’s how it felt, for she had come up a long flight of marble stairs, and all the way up she had glimpsed sky through gaps in canvas sheets hung over tall, unglazed windows that ran from the ground to the second-story ceiling. Her skirt hem had dragged over thin drifts of snow hiding in the stair corners. The cave was a vast empty chamber off the staircase. It was dark, the windows covered with boards that blotted the sunlight. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom she saw, at the far end, a small coal fire glowing in a grate in a marble fireplace that was taller than her. She walked toward it, her footsteps echoing up to the lofty ceiling. Her gaze drifted up to the ceiling’s twitching shadows and she halted, pierced by the ghastly memory of the woman’s body. The creaking rope. The dead eyes staring down at her.

“Justine?”

She gasped as a ghost stepped out of the gloom. A man. Firelight glinted off his blond hair.

“Father!” She ran to him and threw her arms around his neck and held on to him tightly with all the need of a child lost in a nightmare. From the warmth of him she realized she was cold to the bone.

“You’re shaking. Justine, what has happened?”

“Take me with you! Please, Father. Take me with you to France.”

He pried her away from him and took hold of her hands. “France? What are you talking about?”

“When you go with Mary. I beg you, let me go with you!”

“Child, you’re making no sense. This isn’t about . . . your friend Alice, is it? The man you mentioned?”

Rigaud
. Oh God, she had forgotten. “No, no, I haven’t been there.”

“I see.” He squeezed her hands with fresh energy. “But you did deliver the message to Thornleigh, didn’t you?”

“No.”

“What?” he cried in dismay.

“Not to him. To Sir William Cecil.”

“Ah! Even better. And Cecil has taken it to Elizabeth?”

She nodded. It was difficult to think.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes. He took the message to Whitehall. He is urging Her Majesty to agree. No, wait . . . was that yesterday? Yes, I saw him go yesterday.” She could not force her mind onto the matter. Her thoughts were still snagged in the horror. Will’s face, as white as his mother’s corpse. His hoarse questions. She had blurted in shock, “It’s my fault.” Shock had heaved the confession out of her, about her family, herself: “I am a Grenville.” And a cold grave of silence had opened between her and Will.

“Justine, you have done well,” her father said.

He was smiling, but misery racked Justine. Done well? She had brought everything crashing down around her and was stumbling through the rubble of her life. Will hated her. It was over.
Just as his mother intended
.

“Oh, Father . . . Father.” He was all she had now. The only person who loved her for herself. She clutched fistfuls of his shirt. “He hates me.
Hates
me.” She could not hold back the tears.

“Who hates you? What are you talking about?”

It came out of her in a rush of wretchedness. How she loved Will but had kept secret her identity even as they took their betrothal vows. How his mother had hated her and hanged herself. How Justine finally told him, over his mother’s body, and lost him forever.

“Good heavens,” he murmured, holding her to comfort her. “I had no idea. Poor Justine.”

His sympathy felt like balm. She sobbed in his embrace. He smelled faintly of smoke. Or was it just a fragment of memory? That night he had fled from Yeavering Hall. It sent a thought of Alice shuddering through her.
I must see Rigaud. Must do that, for Alice
. Two days, Rigaud had said.
When did he say that?
Her thoughts were a dark tangle, all thorns. She could not think straight. She clung to her father, adrift.

“Come, sit down.” He led her to a scatter of cushions on the floor by the little fire. She kneeled, feeling suddenly so drained she could have laid down and gladly sunk into the oblivion of sleep. He poured her a cup of wine from a bottle amongst his few belongings, and she took several deep swallows. The liquor shot fire to her empty stomach and fuzziness to her head.

“I am sorry for this crude place with so little to comfort you,” he said gently. “You know I cannot show my face in public. So I camp here as I wait.”

She was so grateful for his love and understanding, it took a moment to pull her mind back to what he meant. She dried her eyes with her sleeve. “Wait?”

“For Elizabeth’s reply. Whether she will come here to meet Lord Herries, aye or nay.”

“Ah, yes.” The rest of the world, beyond her private woe.

“She will send word to Frances.”

Justine nodded. “I believe she will come.” The wine, the warm little fire, the affection in her father’s face—she had found a haven and longed to stay safe within it, with him. “And when Mary’s abdication is settled you will return with her to France. You said so. All I want is to go with you.” She tried to smile. “You and I, Father, we will lighten each other’s exile.” But she could not hold on to the smile. Hot tears brimmed. “There is nothing for me here.”

 

Dusk was gathering when Christopher got the news. Frances beckoned him to the doorway to tell him. Justine lay asleep on the cushions by the small fire. Frances stood hugging herself, the fur trim on her cloak trembling in the draft. “Elizabeth has agreed,” she whispered.

His heart jumped. “When?”

“Tomorrow.”

So fast! He could not believe his luck. “What time?”

“Just after dark. Cecil sent word. She will come in a fishing boat with five men-at-arms dressed as sailors. There must be no special preparations here to give away her identity. Herries must come alone. She will stay no more than an hour. Those are Cecil’s terms.”

He smiled. The hour would be Elizabeth’s last. As for Herries, Mary had agreed to sacrifice him. “You accepted, of course?”

She nodded. Now that it was arranged she seemed calmer, almost eager. Yet worry flitted across her face. “A pity to lose the old manor house.”

“Frances, when Mary is queen you shall build as many grand new mansions as you wish.”

A smile wobbled on her lips. She looked past him to the hearth where Justine lay sleeping. “Does she know?”

“Only what she needs to. Go now. And do not come back unless it’s urgent.”

He closed the door and came back to the hearth. He sat on a cushion beside Justine, feeling strangely empty. Now that victory was so near, he knew he should be elated. Or even feel the opposite, fear that something might yet go wrong. But he felt neither as he watched the fire’s glow flicker over his daughter’s face, her brow creasing in her fitful sleep. How relieved he had been to hear that she had not gone back to the witness. It meant he had time to finish his mission, thank God. But what a sad tale she had told about the young man she loved, and his mother hanging herself. He felt a deep pang of regret.
She loves a nephew of Richard Thornleigh, yet I, her father, knew nothing of it, played no part in advising her, guiding her.
He had not even seen her grow to womanhood. He felt cheated of the years spent apart from her. The puny fire cringed in a draft, and Christopher looked around the room in anger at being an outlaw, forced to camp here in the barren vastness of his sister’s broken dream. The three of them—his daughter, his sister, and himself—had all been cheated of what was theirs. Yeavering Hall should be his.
He
should be baron, not Thornleigh.

A new thought reared up in his mind. Talking to Frances earlier to allay her fears about her husband, he had half wished Adam Thornleigh would indeed come home and die with Elizabeth. Rid the world of one more Thornleigh. But the member of that house that Christopher most wanted to see pay for his sins was the baron himself. Could he make that happen?

Justine awoke with a start. “What?” she cried, sitting bolt upright, looking about, disoriented.

“Shh. You’re safe here, child. All is well.”

She blinked, relaxing. “Father.” She rubbed her neck, sore from the makeshift bed. “You should have woken me.”

“You need sleep. And a proper bed. Go to your aunt now. She will see you are taken care of for the night.”

“I would rather stay with you.”