The King's Daughter (18 page)

He reached inside Mosse’s jerkin and pulled out the purse. By its feel he judged it held no more than ten pounds. He tossed it to the girl, a show of his trustworthiness, then kicked Mosse’s body so that it rolled once and lay face down in the mud. “And you are lucky,” he said with a half smile. He rested one boot on the dead man’s shoulder as if on a trophy. “Because today, I am for hire.”

12
The Road to Londo

M
artin St. Leger ran through the snow-packed precincts of Rochester Castle and on toward the town’s busy western gate. A horse-drawn wagon clattered across his way and suddenly halted, forcing Martin to such an abrupt stop in the slushy mud that he almost slipped. A cart following the wagon rattled to a halt too, the carter jerking his horse sideways to avoid a collision.

“Let me by!” Martin called up to the wagoner. “I bring a message for Sir Thomas Wyatt!” He had to shout above the din of voices all around, including a lieutenant barking drill orders at a company of soldiers.

The wagoner called down to Martin, “Can’t budge, sir. Not till the farrier’s dray ahead moves on.”

Martin, panting steam into the cold morning air, impatiently surveyed the commotion in the shadow of the castle’s towers. The inside approach to the gate swarmed with wagons, horses, mule-drawn carts and men-at-arms. Lieutenants called orders at men on ladders propped against the town wall and at others laboring on top of the wall, where hammers clanged and saws rasped. Martin found the sight of Wyatt’s army at work richly satisfying despite the delay it meant—despite, even, his puzzlement over Wyatt’s orders for such extensive strengthening of Rochester’s fortifications. Why bother, he wondered, when any hour now they’d be marching out to join the Duke of Suffolk’s army coming down from the north, and then march on together to London? Yet what a fine start they had made here! Their army of close to three thousand had marched into Rochester two days ago to cheering citizens, gushing wine casks, and hearty fare laid on at the castle, which had quickly become their headquarters. True, the mayor had fled to London. But the rest of the townspeople had welcomed them as if they were liberators.
And so we are,
Martin thought with a surge of energy as he squeezed past the wagon.
As Wyatt promised, we’ll liberate all of England!

He pushed past a knot of men hauling lumber, and bumped shoulders with a tall old soldier. The man’s weather-cured face reminded Martin of Isabel’s father, who spent so much time on his ships. Martin chuckled as he hurried on. Cautious old Master Thornleigh, he thought; he wouldn’t dream of taking action against the Queen, but he and Isabel’s brother Adam, and her mother too, would be the first to thank those who were doing so. The thought of the gratitude of Isabel’s parents—and of Isabel’s pride in him—warmed Martin and spurred him on.

He spotted Wyatt. He was standing on top of the wall by the gate, directing the placement of a wide-mouthed mortar to overlook the Strood bridge. Martin jogged toward the wall.

“Sir Thomas!” he shouted up.

Wyatt turned, wiping gun oil from his hands on a rag.

Martin grinned and called, “News!”

* * *

A hundred and ten miles northeast of Rochester, the Duke of Suffolk was shivering uncontrollably, though the sun was rising almost in his face. He had just spent his second night huddled in the huge hollow tree near Astley church. His feet were numb. His teeth chattered. The strengthening sun exposed his hiding place as mercilessly as a bailiff’s torch. And the yapping dogs were getting closer.

How had everything gone so sickeningly wrong? Only days before, he and his sons and the men of his household had ridden into Bradgate, the very heart of his lands. They had roused up the town, and it seemed that every man there had jubilantly agreed to march south to join Wyatt and fight the coming Spaniards. But when the Duke and his sons rode out to alert more of the countryside, few were riding with them.

The Duke had ridden to the gates of Leicester—Protestant Leicester, where all within should have been his friends. But though the Duke had ridden around its walls, Leicester’s gates were shut to him.

Word came that Coventry would welcome him. He galloped on to Coventry. But Coventry was shut. And its mayor proclaimed the Duke a traitor.

The Duke had ridden back with his entourage to his own house at Astley. No help came from Bradgate. No help came from anywhere. And when a messenger galloped in with news that Bishop Gardiner in London had sent forty horsemen to arrest the Duke, the only thought at Astley became flight. The Duke’s sons ran through the house snatching the servants’ clothes as disguises. They divided up the cash, horses, weapons. And then they scattered.

The Duke had thrown himself on the mercy of his gamekeeper, who had hidden him in this hollow tree a longbow-shot from the church. The Duke had waited, shivering under the naked boughs, eating snow, despairing over all that had gone wrong.

The dogs’ barking became louder. He grasped his trembling knees to his chest and squirmed as far back as possible into the tree-cave’s shadows. He held his breath to stop its tell-tale steam. His gamekeeper had betrayed him. The dogs were closing in.

Martin hurried up a ladder against Rochester’s wall and came beside Sir Thomas Wyatt.

“Good
news, I hope, St. Leger,” Wyatt said, tossing aside his oily rag. “I could use it today.”

“Aye,” Martin grinned. “Sir Henry Isley’s messenger from Sevenoaks just rode in. The fellow was famished, so I set him at table and came across myself. Sir, the word is that Lord Abergavenny and Sheriff Southwell cannot raise above four hundred men between them for the Queen in this county. And the ones they do raise desert as soon as they have the chance.”

“That’s good,” Wyatt said quietly. “Is that all?”

“No, sir.” Martin beamed. “The messenger also reports that Sir Henry Isley has mustered over six hundred men for us. They’ll be marching today to join us here. It’s just as we said, sir. Englishmen will flock to us to keep the Spaniards at bay.”

Wyatt frowned. “Only six hundred?”

“Only? Why, that’s just from around Sevenoaks! Sir Henry’s brother in Tonbridge will be bringing more. With them, and the thousands Sir James Crofts is bringing from Wales, plus the Duke of Suffolk’s army coming from the north—why, we’ll be unstoppable!”

Wyatt said nothing. Frowning, he looked out over the snow-rutted stone bridge beyond Rochester’s town wall. Behind them, men continued to pull up ropes hoisting baskets of shot.

Martin looked out at the bridge, too, to hide his disappointment. He had hoped that the good news would jolt Sir Thomas into action. They must march out! Why was he delaying? It was not that Martin doubted the commander’s expertise. Wyatt, he knew, had spent seven years fighting in France for King Henry and then for young King Edward, serving with distinction at the siege of Landrecies and in the capture of Boulogne as lieutenant of a strategic harbor fortress. Martin acknowledged that he himself had none of Wyatt’s military experience. But he wished Wyatt had more zeal. Could it be that he had lost the stomach for this fight?

Wyatt suddenly turned to him. “Where’s that blasted girl of yours? She should have come by now with news from Ambassador de Noailles.”

Martin did not appreciate Wyatt’s tone. “Isabel will come, sir,” he said stiffly.

“She’d better. And soon. I
must
know the details of our French support.”

“You can count on Isabel.”

Wyatt looked at him skeptically, and then, again, stared out over the sluggish river and the snowy bridge. From the bridge, the road led up Spitell Hill to the Thames port of Gravesend five miles to the north, then on to London thirty miles westward.

Martin could hold back no longer. “Sir, why do we not march on London?”

“With only this?” Wyatt said, jerking his chin toward the men laboring below the wall.

“These men are ready and eager. We should head out now and have Isley come after us. Then we can converge on London with the others. Hit the city before the Queen can even muster.”

“Good God, St. Leger, are you blind? Converge on London with what?”

“Why, with the Duke’s army coming from Leicestershire. And Crofts’s coming from Wales.”

“And where are these phantom armies? Tell me that!” He stared belligerently at Martin’s blank face. “That’s right, man. You’ve got it now.
No one
is coming from the north, nor from Wales.”

“But—”

“Yes, yes, those men were with us in the planning. But Courtenay’s blabbing forced us to begin this enterprise too soon, and now …” He threw up his hands. “Crofts seems to have vanished. As for Suffolk …” He shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine what’s happened to the Duke.”

Martin felt panic knife his bowels. “And our support in London?”

“That, thank God, is sure. London is for us.”

Martin’s panic subsided. The other news was a terrible blow, but not fatal. London was what mattered. If London opened to them as Rochester had, and if they could take the Tower and stand firm, then the Queen was lost. Martin was no commander, but he knew this to be true. Because this fight was a contest of wills—the will of all patriotic Englishmen against the will of a half-Spanish Queen. Turning, he caught sight, at the inside base of the gate, of his brother Robert holding communion services for about two dozen men standing in the dirty snow. Martin had forgotten it was Sunday. He had a sudden, thrilling vision of himself and Isabel standing before Robert in a church, pledging their marriage vows while her mother and father and brother looked on, all smiles. He remembered standing as witness when Robert and his Meg had taken their vows. Martin felt a rush of happiness. Robert had the will. Isabel had the will. And the three thousand men who had rushed to follow Wyatt here had the will. “Sir Thomas,” he said with feeling, “if London is ours, we cannot lose.”

Wyatt looked at him. “You really believe we can do it? With just this force?”

“Isley
is
coming, that’s sure. And men keep joining us. And, damn it, our cause is right!”

Wyatt looked out at the bridge for several moments in silence. “St. Leger,” he said with the sudden, brusque voice of command, “I’m sending you now to stop Isley.”

He beckoned to a young clerk further along the wall, and the clerk hurried toward him, opening his portable escritoire on the run.

Martin had blanched.
“Stop
him, sir?”

“From marching immediately to join us. There are several manors around Sevenoaks with good armories. Sidney’s at Penshurst, for one. Tell Isley we need all the weapons he can get—bows, swords, pikes, pistols—anything.” Wyatt was scribbling the order on the escritoire. “No destruction of property, and no looting of anything else. Tell Isley I forbid it. But we must have more arms before we head for London. Stay with Isley and help him.”

Martin nodded eagerly. Though this meant more delay, at least Wyatt was preparing for action.

Wyatt handed Martin the order. “Go now. And hurry.”

Martin was hurrying back toward the castle’s lower ward for his horse when he heard his brother’s voice, breathless, at his back. “Slow down, Martin. I’m not the sportsman you are these days.”

“Can’t stop, Robert,” Martin said, striding on. “I’m off to Sevenoaks with urgent orders from Sir Thomas.”

“I’ll come and help you.”

“I don’t need you.”

“I’ll come anyway.” Robert reached Martin’s side and affectionately cuffed the back of Martin’s head. “Without me,” he said, “you might get lost.”

A hand jostled her shoulder roughly. Jerking awake from a troubled sleep, Isabel was unable to grasp what was happening, or even to remember where she was. She knew only that she was lying on a hard, cold floor and that every muscle ached. She turned her head in the gloom and saw four scabbed welts on the back of the large hand that was shaking her. Yesterday’s horrors came swarming back to her mind. This was the Spanish mercenary. He was crouching beside her. The welts were the wounds the jailer had clawed as he thrashed in the savage stranglehold of these very hands.

Isabel blinked up at the mercenary’s shadowed face, for his bulk blocked the source of what little light there was. His square chin was dark with over a week’s growth of beard. A livid purple scab gashed through one eyebrow. The scab etched up his forehead and faded into dun-brown hair that looked like the bristles of a wild boar. The eyes looking down at her were the color of gun metal. An instinctive shiver of fear rippled through her. She tried to stifle it, acutely aware that fear of him was a response she could no longer indulge. This killer was now her accomplice and partner.

“Get up,” he said in a rough whisper. “Eat. Then we leave.” He stood and moved away.

Leave? Isabel still could not recall where they were. There was a heavy smell of wood smoke and cow dung. A scuffling sound made her turn her head, and she felt a jab of pain, for her neck was very stiff. The sound came from a smelly mongrel hound energetically scratching its chin with its hind foot. Bits of debris from its matted fur showered Isabel’s face and she quickly sat up, picking specks of the filth from her eye. Beside the dog, four huddled forms lay on the packed earth floor: three children nestled together, and a gaunt old man in the corner, his toothless jaws gaping open in sleep. At the far wall, dawn light seeped around the solid shutters that covered the room’s only window. Finally Isabel remembered. Driving snow had forced her and the mercenary to stop overnight at this alehouse in a hamlet on the road to London. In the frigid two-room cottage, the family was accustomed to huddling around the hearth to sleep. Isabel and the mercenary had crowded in with them.

She rubbed her neck and looked around. The low-beamed room was murky with smoke. The mercenary, seated at the single, plank table, had dug a spoon into a wooden bowl and was lifting a mound of porridge to his mouth. The woman of the house, shapeless beneath layers of threadbare wrappings, was bent before the sooty hearth, poking brushwood into a smoking fire. A cow stomped in the adjacent byre, and its steamy breaths gushed in through the crumbling lath wall that separated the byre from the family’s quarters. Or itmight have been her own mare, Woodbine, stomping, Isabel thought. She and the mercenary had ridden the mare together away from Colchester jail.