Blood Between Queens (15 page)

“Frances,” he said, his voice a rasp, “we must see Sparling’s taken care of.”

She flinched. The boy stank, and pus oozed from sores around his mouth. Thankfully, a sturdy dockworker reached them, saying, “I’ll take him, sir.” Adam looked shaky with exhaustion as he transferred his burden into the arms of the worker. “Lord,” said the man, “the boy’s in a bad way.”

On death’s door, it seemed to Frances. If only they would take him away so she could embrace Adam.

“Did we make it, sir?” the boy whispered, blinking at Adam with milky eyes.

“We did, lad.” Adam tousled the boy’s matted hair. “We did.”

The boy slumped in the worker’s arms as though the relief was a blow.

“Here’s water,” a woman said, bringing a bucket. She handed Adam a ladle of water, and he took it in both hands and gulped it down, fingers trembling, then scooped another ladleful and held it to the boy’s lips. Much of the water dribbled around his scabby mouth. “But you don’t get off that easy, Sparling,” Adam said. “Where’s my sovereign?”

“Sovereign?”

“A bet is a bet.” Adam’s voice was still raspy, but Frances recognized his jesting tone. “We made it home alive. I win.”

The boy’s eyes watered. His mouth opened, but he was too overcome with feeling to speak.

“I’ll come round to collect it when you’re better,” Adam said gently. “No shirking, you hear?”

“Aye, sir . . . a sovereign, sir,” the boy murmured. “Thank you, sir.”

“Off with you, now.”

The dock worker carrying the lad started for the tavern. Frances had held back as long as she could. “Adam,” she burst out, “welcome home!”

He looked suddenly rocky and gripped the edge of a barrel for support. He seemed dazed, almost faint.

“You are ill!” she cried.

He shook his head, struggling to gain control. “Sick at heart . . . so many dead. Young Sparling won’t make it.”

“Come away to the inn,” she urged, taking his arm to support him. “You need a doctor. Food. Rest.”

He resisted. “Must see to the men.” He looked around. “Where’s Curry?” His longtime first mate. “His arm’s broken.”

“Never mind the men, half the town have come out to help them. You can do no more, Adam. You’re sick yourself. Come away.”

“Any word of the others? Hawkins on the
Minion
? Drake on the
Judith
?”

“No. You are the first back.” She felt almost cheated. Adam would not embrace her in front of so many people even if he had the strength. “Please, come away to the inn. I’ll take care of you there and we—”

Her words were cut off by the voices of townsmen who had pushed through the crowd to him, three of them. The chains of office around their necks proclaimed them aldermen. “Sir Adam! Great God in heaven, what hell you have been through!” They barraged him with questions, and as he told them of the Spanish attack, of the loss of ships and hundreds of men, of his own crippled ship, there was cold steel in his eyes, a quiet fury that Frances had not seen in him for years, not since . . . since that day they’d stood together at the altar. No, she would not think about that now, that unhappy past. He was home, his life spared by God, she was sure. God had given her a new chance to make their future happy.

“Gentlemen,” she said sternly, coming between the men and Adam, “my husband needs food and rest, and I am taking him to the Green Glass Inn. Visit him there, later. Now I entreat you, let us
pass
.” They demurred, acknowledging the need for Adam to recuperate, and stepped aside.

Adam, looking dazed again, muttered with a hollow chuckle, “Yes . . . a wash would be good.”

Frances took charge, guiding him through the crowd. People parted to make way, whispering in awe about him, the captain who had escaped the devil Spaniards. She longed to get him quickly to the inn where they could be alone, but he was limping slightly, some weakness in his knee, and she had to keep the pace slow.

“Frances,” he said with an anxious look, “how are the children?”

“They are well. Katherine has prayed for you every night.”

“Ah, my Kate.” He smiled a truly warm smile for the first time. “And Robert, is he grown?”

“Past my waist. He’ll be overjoyed to see you.”

“My father? Lady Thornleigh?”

“Your parents are hale.”

“Look,” he said, blinking up at the sky. “The sun’s coming out.” He looked at her, and his voice gentled. “It’s good to be home.”

She could have cried for happiness.

At the inn the landlord and his excited wife and customers made a fuss about the “hero,” and it was all Frances could do to get Adam up the stairs without being mobbed, and into the room. She closed the door. Alone, finally. Adam sank onto the bed with a groan. Head hitting the pillow, booted feet barely off the floor, he was asleep by the time Frances reached the bedside.

He slept for thirteen hours. She sat in a chair by the bed, watching him, taking breaks to eat quick meals brought to her, to nap, and to send the mayor’s messenger away with her own message that no one was to disturb her husband yet. She washed the scabbed gash on Adam’s cheek with a damp towel, careful not to wake him, through it would have taken a lightning strike to do so, she thought with tender amusement. She inspected his body as best she could and was satisfied he had no crucial wounds, though his hands were lacerated with tiny cuts and his neck was sunburned to leather and his beard held trapped dirt she didn’t even want to imagine. She was content to just be alone with him. She planned how, once he awoke, she would bathe him, cut that beard and shave him, then feed him, just a slice of bread and a little lean meat at first, maybe a baked apple; if he gorged he would be sick.

He awoke with a hoarse shout. “All hands to pumps!”

“Shh,” Frances said, moving to his side.

He sat up with a start, looking around with haggard eyes, struggling to recall where he was.

“It’s all right, you’re off the ship,” she assured him.

He stared at her as at a stranger, then seemed to remember. “Is there water?” he asked, licking his parched lips.

She hastened to pour a cup for him from the pitcher. He gulped it down. He rubbed his face with vigor, as though to ready himself for battle. “My boots,” he said, swinging his legs over the bed side. He scanned the satchels of his belongings that Frances had had delivered from the ship. “Where are my boots?”

She smiled. “No need for boots.” She had tugged them off him as he slept.

He looked at her. “Get them, please.”

She didn’t want an argument to be their first conversation, so she fetched the boots. Perhaps they made him feel more like himself. “I’ll have the landlord bring you food,” she said as Adam pulled on the boots. “You must eat sparingly at first, you know.”

“I will.” He stood, sucking in a deep breath to steady himself. “Have them pack something for me to take, too.”

“Take?”

He raked his fingers into his beard. “And tell them I need scissors. And a razor.” He patted his shirt. “And clean clothes.” He looked around as though impatient. “Then, time to go.”

Home! She could not hide her delight. He wanted to be home! “Why not take a day or two here to get back your strength?”
Just the two of us,
she thought happily. “The children can wait.”

He didn’t seem to be listening. He was pouring water from the pitcher into a washbasin. “Where is Elizabeth? At Whitehall? Richmond? Or on progress somewhere?”

She stiffened. Elizabeth. The name always made her cringe. “Why?”

He was pulling off his shirt to wash. “If you don’t know where she is, find someone who does, would you? One of the aldermen, perhaps. Or the mayor—he may know something of her schedule.”

She stared at him as he splashed water on his chest and arms. Though thin, his body was still strong looking. A body that Elizabeth coveted. Frances forced her voice to stay calm. “If your intention is to send the Queen a message, I shall call for paper and pen.”

He turned, drying his face and chest with a towel. “Message?” His tone was stern. “Good God, no. I’m going.”

It stung her. “You are not well.”

“Well enough.”

“But why to
her?
”

He tossed the towel aside with a sigh. “Frances, don’t do this.”

“If you are well enough to ride to her, you’re well enough to ride home.”

He stared at her with such obvious disdain she felt it like a slap. “Over fifty of my crew lie at the bottom of the sea, limbs ripped off by Spanish cannon. Dozens from our other ships were taken prisoner and will by now have been mutilated under the torture of the Mexican Inquisition. Dozens more, sailing home, starved to death before my eyes. It is my duty, madam, to report these atrocities to our queen. Even
you
should see that.”

She said nothing, too hurt.

He let out a tight sigh, his look contrite. “Forgive me, Frances. I know you mean well. But I must, in all haste, make to Elizabeth.” He moved past her, impatient to get to his satchels. She saw the steel of hate flash in his eyes as he muttered, “And as God is my witness, I shall make the Spaniards pay.”

Not an hour later she stood in the inn’s stable yard watching him ride off for London. She had seen his hatred, his fury at Spain, and she understood it. But it could not match her own hatred for Elizabeth. She felt it like a stranglehold, a force so powerful that if she could be in Elizabeth’s presence and turn the hatred physically against her, Elizabeth would fall dead at her feet. She watched Adam become a speck swallowed up by the road. She choked back a wail. After almost two years at sea, he was going to her rival.

A
dam reached London after a punishing, fast ride. It was dark when he arrived, bone weary and aching, at Baynard’s Castle on the River Thames. Baynard’s was the Earl of Pembroke’s London house, massive and magnificent, and tonight the earl was hosting a dinner for Elizabeth. Adam rode in through the gates on the Strand and drew rein in the torchlit courtyard. Dismounting, saddle sore, he handed his horse to a groom and looked up at the castle. The windows were alive with candlelight.
Like Elizabeth herself,
he thought. To him, she always moved in a nimbus of light. He heard music. Knowing her, there would be dancing.

Inside, as he climbed the staircase lined with torches that led to the long gallery, the thought of her warmed him like an inner flame. He needed its warmth, for he felt he was still struggling through a cold fog of death. His massacred crew. His maimed ship. It seemed that the torch flames he passed twisted like men writhing, and his every footfall up the steps sent a shudder that brought back torturing images. Howlett’s head torn off by a cannonball. Payne with a Spanish axe in his gut. The spurting red stump where Poole’s arm had been. The starved cabin boy Adam had carried down the gangplank, Sparling, who’d felt like a bag of bones in his arms. He had come to Elizabeth to do more than report the atrocity. She alone could give him what he wanted. He would make the Spaniards pay in gold and blood.

Going up the stairs he followed servingmen carrying up silver dishes of food. The rich smells made him faintly nauseous; he had eaten a little on the way and his stomach, jolted from near starvation, was still at war with the beef and bread. After so long aboard the spare
Elizabeth
these lavish surroundings, too, felt disorienting—the gilt and marble, the music and laughter. He tried to muster the proper frame of mind to go in among merrymaking courtiers. He had little heart for it, with Frances’s plaintive voice—“Why go to
her?
”—still ringing in his ears. He hadn’t told his wife that the Spanish attack had all but ruined him. Fitting and arming the
Elizabeth
for the Indies had put him heavily in debt. The expedition had made a huge profit in the trading, but his share of that gold had been stowed in Hawkins’s ship,
Jesus of Lubeck,
which had sunk in the sea battle. It made Adam sick with rage. His fortune lay at the bottom of the ocean.

A couple of lords going up the stairs ahead of him were laughing at some private jest. They weren’t English; the few words of Spanish he caught were barbs in his brain. He eyed the men with loathing, their black satin finery, their arrogant swagger. What were Spaniards doing here with Elizabeth? Visiting grandees, perhaps. Or part of the Spanish ambassador’s entourage. Adam’s fingers tightened around the hilt of his sword. He would cut down any man who threatened Elizabeth. An unwarranted response, he realized—she was among friends. But he couldn’t help it. Never again would he trust a Spaniard.

He reached the gallery crowded with lords and ladies, and their chatter hit him like a barrage. Their perfume made his stomach rocky. Faces turned to him, and the chatter became an excited buzz. He heard “Spanish Main” . . . “sunk ships” . . . “hero” . . . and realized they were talking about him. He scanned the faces, looking for Elizabeth, but saw only courtiers’ jowly cheeks and goggle eyes. He set a course through this shoal of strangers, but after so long at sea he had not yet got his land legs and knew his stride down the gallery must look as deliberate as a drunkard’s. People made way for him, stepping back as though from a barnyard animal.
Do I stink so badly?
he thought, almost amused. “I washed,” he blurted.
Too loud,
he realized. Their startled looks seemed comical and tugged a hoarse laugh from him. That made them goggle even more.

The roar of the room, the gawping faces, the unsteady floor . . . Adam felt half on land, half at sea. A man’s gravelly voice grated on him like keel scraping rock. Viols spun music like the keening of wind in the rigging. He focused on the glow of candlelight at the far end. Elizabeth must be there. Yes! Through the surf of strangers he spotted her bright face! She had not seen him yet; she was doing a lively dance step, head high, a smile on her lips. She was his beacon through this disorienting fog. If he could just make it to her he’d be all right.

“Thornleigh!” a man shouted.

Adam spun around. Anthony Porteous was pushing past people to get to him. Bald as an egg, lean but muscular, he was Adam’s chief investor in the Hawkins expedition, and he began firing questions even as he pushed through. Was it true he had sailed into Plymouth alone? Where was Hawkins? Where was Drake? Adam barely got out an answer to the first question when men suddenly closed in around him hurling more questions. Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, swarthy and fit. White-haired, paunchy William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Dudley’s austere brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick. All had invested in Hawkins’s venture.

“Thornleigh, come sit down, man,” said Pembroke. “You look like a ghost.”

Adam shook his head, looking again for Elizabeth. “I’ll see Her Majesty first, my lord.”

“You’ll have some wine first, before you fall down.” Pembroke flicked his hand to summon a servant.

“Have mine,” said Leicester, handing Adam a goblet. He added with admiration, “You’ve made the devil’s own time racing from Plymouth.”

“The
Elizabeth,
” Porteous demanded, “is she salvageable?”

“Yes,” Adam said. “With work.”

“The bullion?”

He shook his head, holding back his fury at remembering. “Went down with the
Jesus of Lubeck
.”

Porteous winced. His profit, gone. The others kept battering Adam with questions and he gulped wine, knocking back the whole goblet full, more to keep them at bay than because he wanted it.

“Where
is
Hawkins?” Leicester demanded.

“Don’t know.”

Someone groaned, “At the bottom of the sea, I warrant.”

A man looking over Leicester’s shoulder muttered sourly, “As he deserves.”

Adam stiffened at the accent. Spanish. “What did you say?” he challenged. The man, sunken-cheeked, with a sleek goatee like chiseled black marble, gave no reply, only sneered. In the din the others hadn’t heard his comment about Hawkins. Pembroke was shouting at the crowd to stop pressing Thornleigh: “Let him be!” Adam locked eyes with the Spaniard. He was dressed in the finest black satin, one of the grandees he’d seen on the staircase. Amid the hubbub the Spaniard snaked through the circle of men until he stood face-to-face with Adam. “God sees what you are,” he said with quiet venom. “A common pirate.” He turned and pushed his way out of the circle.

Rage boiled up in Adam. It squeezed his vision into a red haze, blotting out everything but the man strutting away. In that shimmer of black satin he saw carrion hovering over his dead crew, saw beating black wings as the birds settled on corpses to feed.

He rammed through the circle, grabbed two fistfuls of the black satin, and wrenched the Spaniard around. That sneering face! He raised his fist and hammered it. The man staggered back from the blow, blood spurting from his nose. A woman screamed. Adam lunged again and punched the Spaniard’s jaw. The man toppled and sprawled on the floor.

Cries went up. Men swarmed Adam in a blur. He saw only the Spaniard flailing on the floor in a furious effort to get up.
No, you don’t get up. My slaughtered crew will never get up again.
But the Spaniard made it onto his hands and knees, blood dripping from his nose, spattering the floor. He looked up at Adam and hissed,
“Bastardo!”

Adam kicked him in the ribs. The Spaniard sprawled onto his back, coughing blood.

“Thornleigh! Stop!” Hands grabbed him from behind, fingernails scraping his neck. Wrenched from his prey, he fought to lunge again. The Spaniard looked up at him, blood smearing his face. “God curse you, pirate.” He spat blood at him. “May your children sicken and die!”

It made Adam wild. He broke free and leapt onto the man and straddled him, dropping to his knees. He snatched the satin doublet at the throat and made a rock of his other fist and smashed the bloodied face. Bone cracked. Pain seared his hand. He welcomed the pain, a spur to give this devil some of the agony his men had suffered. He punched the Spaniard’s face again, splitting the skin of his knuckles, then again and again until his hand was slippery with blood.

An octopus of men’s arms grappled him, fists seizing him. They hauled him off the Spaniard. Adam kicked and writhed to get free, but they were all around him, dragging him away.

“For God’s sake, Thornleigh!”

“The man’s a lunatic!”

“Don’t let Thornleigh go! Hold him!”

They wrestled him to his knees, hands pushing down on his shoulders, gripping his elbows, his neck, his hair. With his head forced down, he saw nothing but the floor. He fought to catch his breath. Voices ranted at him: Porteous’s, Leicester’s. There were Spanish voices, too, frantic with fury about the man he had beaten.

Suddenly the roar hushed to a murmur. “Her Majesty!”

“Stand back!”

“The Queen!”

Some of the hands holding Adam let go. He rocked on his knees at the sudden freedom. Men around him were bowing, women curtsying, everyone shuffling back to make way. Adam shrugged off the last hand restraining him and shot to his feet. The suddenness of the move made him dizzy. The liquor he had gulped swam in his head. He blinked at his glistening red hand, not sure what he’d done. Spaniards on his ship’s deck? He had fought one of them. But all these people . . .
Where am I?

He turned, swaying. Elizabeth stood before him. His breath caught at the dazzle of her. She wore crimson silk spangled all over with golden suns, and a rainbow of gems gleamed in her red-gold hair. People had ebbed back, and Adam saw the Spaniard on the floor, bleeding, moaning. Men were on their knees beside the fallen man, shouting in outraged Spanish. Adam recognized the crane-like figure of the Spanish ambassador, Guerau de Spes. He was gibbering in fury, pointing at Adam. Feeling confused, Adam looked back at Elizabeth. Had the Spaniard on the floor attacked her?
Have I saved her?
Unsteady on his feet, his bloody hand throbbing, he bowed his head to her. “Your Majesty.”

Silence. He raised his eyes to hers. Her face was a storm. She said with quiet fury, her dark eyes on Adam, “My lord Pembroke, take charge of this miserable brawler.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” The old man gestured to Leicester for help and the two of them grabbed Adam’s arms. He stood still, in shock, as reason flooded back.
Brawler?
Was that what he had done?

“Señor de Spes,” Elizabeth said gently to the livid ambassador, “your noble kinsman has suffered an unconscionable attack and I offer my deepest apology. Do not stand on ceremony, but go, see to his injuries, you and your people. I will send my physicians to wait on you.”

But the ambassador, white-faced in his struggle to remain diplomatic, demanded immediate retribution against Adam. “This very night!”

All faces turned to Elizabeth.

“My lord,” she said, “you have good cause for anger. I value our friendship with Spain above all things, and I swear to you that this wretched troublemaker will be punished. But now, go, see to your noble cousin’s welfare. My lord Warwick, go with him, help our Spanish friends.”

De Spes made a stiff bow to her, barely civil, then whipped a gesture of command to the Spaniards who surrounded the fallen man. They lifted him in a hubbub of indignation and carried him away, de Spes stalking out after them.

Pembroke said to Elizabeth, “Your Majesty, I shall send Sir Adam under guard to my lockup.”

“No,” she said. “The wretch must be interrogated. To the barge.”

 

Adam was marched out the gate to the river surrounded by four of Pembroke’s men-at-arms. He did his best to walk confidently, proudly, not let them see how unsteady he was on his feet, how painful his hand, wrapped with a kerchief that wept blood, his own mixed with the Spaniard’s. He was furious at himself for botching his audience with Elizabeth. The Spaniard could go hang, but Elizabeth . . . he had to make her understand.

The guards took him across a short bridge and down a flight of steps to the earl’s private wharf. Visiting lords’ boats lay alongside, bobbing around the tethered royal barge that rose above the smaller craft with the splendor of Elizabeth herself. Its golden prow glimmered under the wharf torches, and its banners of green silk rippled in the night breeze. Candlelight flickered between curtains inside the glass-windowed stern cabin under a gold-embossed roof. Two steel-helmeted guards stood sentry, at bow and stern. Ten oarsmen sat in the bow, five on each side, hands on oars. Adam eyed the cabin. Was the royal marshal in there, waiting to question him? He felt shaky, humiliated by the weakness in his legs, enraged at his own stupidity. Get through this interrogation, he told himself, then send word to Elizabeth that he
must
see her, to report, to explain. But that could take hours. He didn’t know if he had the strength. The breeze felt cold. The water was black.

Pembroke’s men marched him on board. The captain knocked on the cabin’s mahogany door. It opened and the captain turned to Adam and jerked his chin, a command to enter. The moment Adam was across the threshold, the door closed behind him. He was alone. The cabin was luxurious, an oasis of golden candlelight cocooned by red brocade curtains and tentlike hangings of red silk above a divan plump with gold silk cushions. There was no sound but the faintest lapping of water on the hull.

He heard a rustling and turned.

Elizabeth! It was she who’d closed the door. She pressed her back against it, still gripping the handle as though she needed it to support herself as she gazed at him. In that gaze Adam saw a tortured mix of misery and joy. She took a step closer to him and raised her hand and caressed his cheek. He shivered at the sweet touch of her slim, white fingers. She whispered, “All these months. I thought you were dead.”