Suzanne Robinson (16 page)

So great was his own turmoil, Tristan hardly noticed
the quiet that settled over the group on the landing. Then Pen’s trembling voice brought him out of his thoughts.

“No,” she was saying to St. John. “You’re wrong. I know Tristan, and he couldn’t be what this paper says. He couldn’t be a murderer or a spy. Such things are against his nature.”

Tristan smiled at her through his own bewilderment, but she wasn’t looking at him. She was looking at his enemy, who began to speak again with gentle sorrow.

“Forgive me, but you’re not the only woman to fall prey to this man. If I may be plain, you yourself are a witness. Remember the scar.”

“Enough!” Tristan put himself between the two and looked down at Pen. “Pen, you’re right. There’s something wrong here. I—I couldn’t have done the things in those papers.”

“Oh, God.” Pen’s voice was a moan. She pressed her palms to her temples and grimaced in pain as she stared at the papers in his hand. “No, no, no.”

He tried to go to her, but she veered away from him as she moaned again and looked at him with growing uncertainty and confusion.

“It can’t be,” she whispered. “Oh, God, please. It can’t be. But the scar. The scar.”

Wrestling with his own uncertainty and suspicion, Tristan reached for an alternative. “A moment. What if this is all a ruse? What if these papers are false?” He turned on his enemy. “Mayhap he bears a scar as well.”

Pen lowered her hands from her temples and looked from Tristan to the newcomer. After a few moments’ deliberation, she swallowed and spoke.

“Dibbler, take this man into the chamber and look for a scar.”

Tristan gestured with his sword, but his opponent was already headed in that direction. Dibbler followed him, and the two soon returned.

“Well?” Pen said in a faint voice.

Dibbler shook his head and glared at Tristan. Pen caught her lower lip between her teeth, appearing not to notice that she’d drawn blood.

“It matters not,” Tristan said to her, waving the papers in his hand. “He seeks to visit confusion upon us all with these foul documents. Pen, you don’t know what he said to me when we were alone. You have to believe in me. Surely you don’t think I’m such a monster. God, you must believe in me.”

She hadn’t even heard him. When he finished, Pen seemed to wake from a daze. Her face contorted with pain, and she let out an agonized cry. Lunging at him, she snatched the papers and screamed at him.

“May God damn your soul!”

“Pen, there’s some trick here.”

She was shaking. He tried to go to her, but she shrank back. At her alarm, Dibbler, Sniggs, Turnip, and the rest shifted, placing themselves between him and their mistress. He found himself surrounded by rusty pikes and furious stares. He considered booting them all down the winding stair, but in the ensuing brawl, Pen might be hurt.

Fighting his own confusion, desperate to make Pen believe him, he decided to bide his time. He could deal with Dibbler and the rest later. Pen was too upset to make sense at the moment. She was still glaring at him, trembling and shaking her head in a stunned manner.

Tristan was contemplating how best to assuage her pain, when St. John went to her and retrieved the
commission. He brandished its seal at his listeners.

“Behold the seal of the queen’s secretary. William Cecil himself has given me this task. I was pursuing this man at sea, when we were overtaken by a storm, but I’ve found him at last. This man is a priest, a spy for the Queen of Scots and her uncle the cardinal of Lorraine. He’s hatched countless plots against our good Queen Elizabeth and must be stopped.”

“No,” Tristan said. The word came out faint, for St. John seemed so certain, and all he had to deny the accusations was his own horror at the idea of having deserved them.

He tried to go to Pen, but the point of a pike stopped him. “Don’t trust him, Pen. I don’t trust him.”

Tears streaking her face, Pen shook her head. “Have you been lying all this time? Were you afraid I would discover who you were and turn you over to her majesty’s ministers?” She clutched her head as if a sudden pain had lanced through her. “Oh, God, you’ve been playing a part all along to save yourself. Have you been waiting for the supply ship so that you could escape?”

“Jesu! Listen to what you’re saying. Do you believe I would concoct such a passel of lies? How could I do that to you?”

Pen pointed to the commission in St. John’s hands. “That is you in that description, even to the most intimate particular. No one could resemble such a finely wrought portrait by chance.”

“I don’t know how it came about, but can’t you see I’m not that kind of man?” He felt himself losing his temper. “I can’t be a spy, and by God, I don’t feel like a priest. You should know that after enticing me into your bed for the last—” He stopped at Pen’s gasp
that turned into a sob. “God’s breath, Pen, I didn’t mean that.”

Pen turned her back to him and faced a wall. “Get him away from me.”

“I’ll take charge of him,” St. John said.

Tristan snarled at him. “Not if you wish to live.”

Dibbler drew himself up and pounded the staff of his pike on the floor.

“Here now. This lying bastard is our prisoner.”

“The commission says he’s mine,” said St. John.

Pen turned around swiftly. “No. I want him.”

Tristan felt relief that soon vanished.

“I want him,” Pen continued. “When the supply ship comes, I’m going to take him to England myself and give him to her majesty’s minister.”

“You can’t do that,” Tristan said while trying to keep his temper.

She fixed a sightless stare upon him. “I want to see him in chains.”

“Give him to me,” St. John said, “and you’ll see him in chains at once.”

“Sniggs, Turnip, Wheedle—escort Lord Morgan from Highcliffe and raise the drawbridge after him.”

Sniggs and his companions surrounded their charge. St. John swore and tried to knock Sniggs’s pike aside, but Sniggs avoided his blow and stuck the tip of the weapon into his prisoner’s doublet. St. John grabbed the pikestaff.

“Hold,” Tristan said to him. “If you succeed in breaking through them, you’ll still have to face me.”

St. John cursed, then released the pikestaff and turned his back on Tristan and Pen. Tristan watched him leave, then returned his gaze to Pen. She wasn’t looking at him.

“Dibbler, now,” she said.

Dibbler hopped in front of Tristan, raised the staff of his pike, and bashed Tristan on the wrist. His hand went numb, and he dropped St. John’s sword. Pain shot up his arm as Erbut darted around him and snagged his sheathed sword. Gripping his wrist, Tristan could only set his jaw and fight the agony while more of Pen’s minions surrounded him. One of them prodded him with a rusty halberd. Bellowing, he swung around and tried to cuff the culprit, but all of them scuffled out of reach.

“Penelope Grace Fairfax, you call off these armored mice!”

Pen turned her face to the wall and sobbed. “Dibbler, please, go now. Go.”

Dibbler poked Tristan in the back with the tip of his pike. “Look what you done. You bust her heart, you did. Get away from her. A lewd, popish priest in disguise. Makes me want to puke.”

Outnumbered, Tristan knew he couldn’t escape without a fight in which one of Pen’s ungainly defenders would likely fumble and skewer her instead of him. Rather than risk this possibility, he relinquished resistance for the moment and allowed Dibbler to prod him down the stairs, across the hall, and down another flight of steps that led from the well room deep under the keep. Descending into darkness, he was forced down into a room lit by a single lamp.

Someone hauled open a door heavy with iron supports and studs. Dibbler jabbed him, and he stepped into blackness. The door slammed. A bar dropped into place, and he was sealed in a cell without light.

The blackness matched that of his memory. Suddenly he was fighting horror all over again. He quelled the anxiety with his anger.

Pen should have had faith in him instead of believing
the lies of a stranger. They were lies. They had to be. And because of them, Pen had abandoned him.

Somehow that feeling of being forsaken drew forth nightmarish feelings—feelings so unthinkably frightening that he hated her for evoking them. Tristan gasped at the assault, then pounded a stone wall with his bare fist to stop himself from thinking such thoughts. He would think about St. John.

Jesu, what a riddle. Out of everything that had just taken place, the only thing of which he was certain was that St. John wasn’t telling the whole of the truth. If he had been simply a royal agent, then why that wondrous strange conversation when they were alone? No, St. John hated him for far more grievous and personal reasons than political ones. Why? Doubt assaulted him again as Tristan searched his blank memory for an answer. Was he a priest?

“Dear God, no,” he muttered to himself.

Suddenly a small window in the door to his cell opened. Pen’s tear-stained, pale face appeared.

“Why did you have to pretend to love me?”

Still reeling from his own dilemma, he had no patience left for
her
doubts. “God’s blood, there was no pretense.”

He could see more tears glistening at the corners of her eyes. “Don’t, Gratiana. Don’t. I wouldn’t hurt you, ever. Don’t believe him. Believe in me. I can’t be the kind of man who would betray you so. A priest, by the rood. To befoul my vows. Surely you don’t think I could do such things.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Pen said. “But you’re proved false, Tristan, and I think you’ve killed my heart.”

He heard the resignation in her voice.

“St. John is false, not I. You know me. How could
you not after I’ve put myself inside you? I’ve poured myself into your body, given myself utterly. There should be no question in your heart about my honor and what I feel.”

“I wanted to believe you. I wanted to so terribly. I would have, too, if it hadn’t been for the scar. And don’t tell me Lord St. John is the priest.” She leaned close to him, her eyes burning and her voice expanded in the hollow chamber. “He has no scar, and you do. Don’t you think I want to believe you? I tried to prove the man false and failed. And the documents are valid. I know a royal seal when I see it.”

Tristan shook his head. “I don’t know the truth, but I know what I am, and I know St. John knows more than he’s revealed. Don’t you see? There must be some confusion.”

“Yes,” Pen said. “Mine.”

He pounded his fist on the door. “I gave myself to you utterly, but you chose to believe him when you should believe me.”

Pen wiped a tear from her cheek with shaking hands.

“I don’t think you understand,” she said.

“Verily, I don’t.”

“Mayhap I’m a bit unconforming in my ways at times.”

“At times? Most times.”

“I’m of braver and more solid mettle than you think. And I know what passes in the world. I know that popish France is the enemy of England and the queen. And no French spy is going to use me or my island as an instrument in his designs against her majesty.”

Tristan clawed at the door that separated them. “Why can’t you believe in me?”

“I learned long ago to face hard truths. I will face your betrayal and your lies, Tristan. I will do my duty as
a loyal Englishwoman. No doubt her majesty will have her ministers question you. I know what that means, and I can hardly bear thinking of it.”

“Then let me out of this cell.”

“You thought me a fool, a mad, prattling fool. You used my compassion against me, but no more. You’ll see me merry no more. I’ll put away clemency, mirth, and love. And before I’m through, you’ll rue the day you decided to make me your fool.”

Pen opened her eyes with a gasp and looked around her in confusion. She was crouched on the floor of her old room, Tristan’s room, amid the rushes. Sinking back on her heels, she blinked slowly and tried to recall how she’d come to be there. Several minutes’ reflection brought no memory.

Her hands hurt. She looked down at them and found them clenching Tristan’s shredded shirt. They were bleeding and bruised.

Releasing her stranglehold on the garment, her glance fell on traces of red on the floor. She must have pounded her fists there. Her eyes were swollen and burned. Her hair had knotted in front of her face. She dropped the shirt and made halfhearted brushing movements at the tangles.

She must have been weeping, for her face, throat, and the neck of her gown were damp. Vaguely she wondered how long she’d been crying. Glancing out a window, she found that daylight still reigned.

Her legs cramped, so she got to her feet slowly, like an old crone. All the muscles in her arms and legs ached, as if she’d contracted an ague, and her mind ached as well. Thoughts blurred and trudged sluggishly through her mind—meaningless, obscure thoughts.

Her gaze darted around the chamber without purpose,
and finally she wandered out to the landing and up the narrow stair that led to the tower battlements. With weakened arms she shoved open the door and went into the sunlight. She’d forgotten her cloak, and a late breeze nipped at her, causing her to shiver and come partly awake. To the west, the sun sailed low in a blaze of reddening apricot. The sea crashed against the rocks below the walls as if nothing had happened.

Pen looked deep into the churning white froth, watched it crash against stone and batter it. Within her she found a faint echo of the sea’s violence, but it was dying, as her soul was dying. Tristan had killed it, and she had helped him.

She’d fallen in love with a priest. She’d lain with a priest. Growing queasy at the thought, she stumbled to an embrasure between two merlons. Leaning into the gap, she buried her head in her arms and tried to reason with herself. But reason played no part in the tangle of her emotions.

No matter that she wasn’t a papist, she still recoiled in horror at the desecration she’d committed. Priests of the bishop of Rome were supposed to be chaste. Tristan had touched her with an artistry and skill that belied that chastity. He’d taken her love and used it for his own designs, his own gratification. What kind of man took holy vows and then deliberately broke them in the most foul and dissolute way?