The King's Daughter (65 page)

Her eyes traveled over him. The familiar, scuffed riding boots. The new breeches, their fine black wool speckled with dried mud after the frantic ride from Smithfield. The tooled leather scabbard at his hip, empty of sword. The rich black velvet doublet, its new sheen marred, like the breeches, with the dust of dried mud. She looked at his large hands, one tucked under his folded arm, the other resting in the crook of the opposite elbow. She looked at his face, his chin shadowed with stubble, his right eyebrow puckered with the scar from Colchester jail. She had to admit something she had never before allowed herself to acknowledge. Rugged and strong, he really was a most beautiful man.

And astonishing. He had given up everything. All that the Queen had just rewarded him with. Riches, status—everything he had craved. She remembered lying on her back in the cart as they fled Smithfield and seeing him upside down. She thought:
That’s how everything has been for two weeks—upside down.
Her parents’ newly revealed characters. Martin deserting her. Sydenham’s false friendship. Carlos rescuing her father. No one was the person they had
said
they were. Isabel wondered, was she? She recalled Carlos saying, that night in the stable,
“Words. They mean nothing. It is what people do that counts.”

He
had done something extraordinary. He had given up all his hard-won rewards, just to save her father. And the fact that he had made this sacrifice—had been ready, in the end, to give up even his life—amazed her now with a rush of happiness that seemed to swell her breast and force out her breath.
“I do this for you,”
he had said on the wharf.

His eyes opened and focused on her. He sat up quickly and rubbed a hand roughly over his face. For a long moment they looked at each other. The ship listed gently, creaking.

“How do you feel?” he asked.

Thankful,
she thought. “Alive,” she said quietly, and then remembered with a stab of guilt:
Unlike Wyatt’s men.
She closed her eyes at the thought.

“Pain?” he asked.

Pain, indeed—the torture of knowing she had done a terrible thing. An unforgivable thing. She had destroyed Wyatt and his cause. Tears pricked her eyes as she thought of his trusting men … of good old Tom. Her chin trembled.

Carlos jumped up. “There is a doctor. I will get him, yes?”

“No. No, it’s not my leg.”

He sat and pulled the chair closer to her, frowning with concern. “What then?”

She bit her lip to hold back the tears. “I was helping Wyatt. Taking him messages. But in the end I betrayed him … to save my father. Because Sydenham had set archers at Ludgate to kill him.” The baseness of her act struck her now with its full impact. “I shut the gate. Wyatt’s men died because of me.” The look of surprise on Carlos’s face made her torment cut deeper. She turned away.

“Not because of you,” he said. “They were going to die anyway.”

“No, not if the French army had come. And if—”

“There was no French army. They would never invade to help such a revolt. Englishmen were not enough behind it. A French force, alone in hostile territory?” He shook his head. “Suicide.”

Isabel stared at him, and realized, with a slight shock, that it must have been true. That the help coming from France had only been the wishful thinking of Ambassador de Noailles. A fantasy. “But … Wyatt
did
have a strong following,” she insisted. “He and his men could have done it alone. They were so dedicated.”

“In war, that is not enough.”

“It might have been, if London had been opened to them. You told me Pizarro did it. You said he conquered Peru with less than two hundred men.”

“Pizarro struck like lightning. His attacks were ruthless. And once he had stunned the enemy, he had the might of all Spain behind him.” He leaned closer to her, his arms resting on his knees. “Wyatt took Rochester, then he waited. The worst mistake. It gave his enemy time. Then he came to London with almost no support. And would not use his big guns to kill.” He shook his head again and said definitively, “Wyatt did not have a chance. From the very beginning.”

Isabel felt a wave of pity for the leader of the doomed rebellion. But she felt an overwhelming release, too, like a dam breaking. This absolution from Carlos broke her heart. Her tears spilled. Her very relief made her weep in shame.

But weeping would change nothing. She knew, deep in her bones, that there was no solace for her. Even if her closing the gate had had no bearing on the outcome of Wyatt’s rebellion, the fact remained that she had betrayed him. Her culpability for that, she knew, was a burden she would have to live with for the rest of her life.

As she wiped the tears from her cheeks she was aware that Carlos was studying her face in wonder. “You really shut the gate?” he asked.

She looked down, acutely aware that her mere acceptance of guilt did not entitle her to any kindness. “Like my father, you think I’m wicked. So disloyal.”

“No. I think you are …” He hesitated, searching for the word. He did not find it. Instead, he reached out and touched her cheek gently, uncertainly. “I wish …”

A spark shot through her body, firing her blood. His touch had always had that power over her. Carlos swallowed, but said no more. He did not have the words. But Isabel didn’t need words. She knew what he wished.

He wiped the trace of a tear from her chin. “Is this for your man?” A wrangle of emotions played over his face: tenderness, jealousy, hope. “You cry because he was hanged?”

Isabel realized he meant Martin. He thought Martin had been executed as part of Wyatt’s army.

He added awkwardly, “I understand. It makes you sad.” He tried to force somberness into his voice but did not do it well. His satisfaction at Martin’s removal rang through. His hand rested on the bed beside her.

“No, Martin didn’t hang,” she said, wanting to make it clear that she was no longer betrothed. “He left England days ago.” Aware that she and Martin shared the shameful distinction of disloyalty, she added soberly, “Like me, he’s safe.”

Carlos’s face darkened. He drew back his hand. Isabel saw that he had misinterpreted her words. He didn’t know that Martin was gone from her life forever. She longed to explain, and was about to speak, when there was a knock at the door. It opened, and her father’s pale face peered in. Carlos got up.

Thornleigh’s expression was full of relief at seeing Isabel conscious. A sigh shuddered from him. “Thank God,” he whispered.

He came to the foot of her bed. He shot a glance at Carlos. Carlos moved away to the window and opened the shutter. Thornleigh came hesitantly to the chair and perched tensely on its edge, as if not sure that Isabel would suffer him so near. His shoulders were hunched. “How are you, Bel? Is the leg terribly painful?”

She was struck by how much weight he had lost. During the crisis she hadn’t noticed it. Saw, too, that his face was haggard. A scab had formed on his lower lip where Carlos had struck him at Smithfield, and there was a purple bruiseon his forehead where the bald man had kicked him. She recalled seeing him in Colchester jail the day after her mother had been shot, and thinking he’d seemed like a man who had been punched but had not yet toppled. That same look of dazed uncertainty hung about him still.

“It’s not too bad,” she answered quietly.

He plucked at the edge of the bedcover, avoiding her eyes. “The doctor on board says you’re strong. Says the wound will heal in no time.”

She nodded.

“Bel, I … I want to say—” He stopped and glanced over at Carlos. Carlos turned and walked out, closing the door behind him.

“Bel,” Thornleigh said, “there’s so much to say …” He shook his head, despairing of finding a way to begin. He looked down at the floor, distractedly rubbing one hand over the back of the other. “I couldn’t forgive you … for Ludgate. And I was trying to steel myself to be hanged … and then you saved me and—”

“It was Carlos who saved you.”

Ignoring this, he repeated, “I couldn’t forgive you and that was wrong. But you were wrong, too, Bel. Sacrificing Wyatt and his men, just for my sake. That was not justified. Do you see that now? See how wrong it was?”

She watched him. His brow so furrowed, his fingers aimlessly rubbing the back of his hand. Wrong, she wondered? She was only too aware that her act at Ludgate was a weight that would always be on her—but wrong? That judgment seemed somehow simpleminded, childish. She had made a decision at a moment of crisis, nothing more, nothing less. No “right” decision had been available. Faced with the fact that choosing either way would make her responsible for someone’s death, she had made a choice. That was all.

She would not apologize. She would live with what she had done, live by her actions. She was a child no longer.

Her father’s gaze was on her, a parent awaiting her contrition. She struck back. “Were
you
not wrong all these years—and my mother too—to keep secret from me the facts of your past? Keep me a child?”

She saw that she had amazed him. “Master Legge told me,” she said. “The dangerous missions you and Mother ran to rescue heretics. Mother condemned and almost burned at the stake.”

“We thought it best. Keep you ignorant … to keep you safe. Was that … wrong?”

Seeing him struggle for the words as though overwhelmed by it all, Isabel felt a rush of understanding. Of true kinship. “No, sir, you were not wrong. You made a choice, and stuck by it. It is all any of us can do.”

He shook his head in wonder. “So like your mother,” he murmured.

Mother,
Isabel thought. In her recurring nightmares during these past two weeks, over and over her mother fell, just beyond her reach. And what had driven her on since her father’s arrest was her will to save
him
from falling too. Now he was here with her, safe, and they were on their way to Antwerp and her mother. Would they find her alive or dead? Her father’s anxious face told her that the same fear gnawed at him.

Isabel reached inside her bodice and took out the crumpled page she had torn from her mother’s book in Sydenham’s parlor, and saved. She unfolded it and tried to smooth it out as best she could. In the sunlight that streamed through the window the beautiful blue painted speedwell shimmered on the page. She held it out to her father, offering it.

He recognized it instantly and reached for it like a man reaching for treasure. Tears gleamed in his eyes.

Isabel said, “She survived so much. She will again. I doubt it not.”

She stepped out on deck into bright noonday sun. The white sails aloft gleamed against a cloudless, bold blue sky. A crewman jogged past her, heading for the fo’c'sle, andblinked at her bare feet. True, the air was cold in the chill breeze, but the deck underfoot had been warmed by the steady sun. Besides, her mind was not on such things. She was looking for Carlos.

She stopped below the quarterdeck. Further forward, past the mainmast, Captain van Borselen stood with a crewman up on the forecastle deck. They were pointing at shrouds, discussing some matter of rigging, and did not notice Isabel. She saw Carlos at the port railing, looking out to sea. She started toward him, limping. The dull throbbing in her thigh had swelled to a drumming, but it was not too terribly painful if she kept her weight off it and favored her good leg. Over the sound of the waves and sails, Carlos did not hear her approach.

“Bel, wait,” Thornleigh called, coming after her, a blanket in his hands. Isabel stopped several paces behind Carlos. At Thornleigh’s voice he glanced at them both over his shoulder. But he did not turn.

“It’s too cold,” Thornleigh said, wrapping the blanket around Isabel’s shoulders. “You shouldn’t be out here.”

She said nothing. She was looking at Carlos. Thornleigh’s gaze followed hers. He whispered to her, “I think he’s in love with you, poor fellow.”

“Poor fellow?”

“Well, I mean Martin.” His tone became earnest. “Bel, there’s no reason why your happiness should be denied you. We’ll bring Martin to us in Antwerp. He won’t want to stay in England now, in any case. He can work for me. Adam and I could use the help. We’ll send for him immediately. All right?”

Isabel realized he didn’t know that Martin had ever joined Wyatt, and she had no wish to go into that now. Her eyes had not wavered from Carlos’s back. Her father had spoken clearly and she felt sure that Carlos had heard him. “Martin is in France, Father,” she said with equal clarity. “He left days ago. And I won’t be sending for him. I wish him well. But I never expect to see him again.”

Carlos turned around at the railing.

Thornleigh blinked at Isabel. “What? Martin and you are not …?”

He looked quickly at Carlos, then back at Isabel, his face registering a growing suspicion. But on Carlos’s face Isabel saw hope.

Thornleigh took Isabel’s elbow and lowered his voice. “This is no man for you. You’re grateful to him, of course, I know that.
He
knows that. And I’ll reward him for what he’s done. But don’t let gratitude blind you to reality. He’s a rootless mercenary. He has nothing.”

Isabel and Carlos continued to look at one another. “Bel, listen, I … I don’t feel entitled anymore to dictate to you … or withhold my consent, but this—”

“I’m glad to hear it, Father,” she said, glancing at him with a smile. “The only consent I need is his.”

She turned back, catching Carlos’s look of wide-eyed surprise.

“Master Thornleigh!” van Borselen shouted from the forecastle deck. He stepped forward and called out in his heavily accented English, “I am told you own ships, yes? Would you come look at this halyard?”

Annoyed at the distraction, Thornleigh called back, “What’s the problem?”

“Refitting done in London. I want to hoist the spritsail but the rigging is"—van Borselen shrugged in bafflement—"English-fashioned.” His crewman had turned too, and they both stood watching Thornleigh, waiting.

Thornleigh cast a final bewildered look at Isabel, a final frown at Carlos, then heaved a sigh and went to join the captain at the bowsprit.

Carlos moved toward Isabel. They stood together awkwardly, gazing at one another, silent.