The Queen's Captive (34 page)

He looked back at her with unmasked enjoyment at her fear. “Your confederates, you know, have already confessed.”

She could not hide her shock. Who had he captured? Her thoughts flew to Adam. Outside, a troop of the Tower guard clomped across the yard and Grenville moved to the barred window to idly look down at them. In his place the bright sun struck Honor and she had to close her eyes against it, the pure warmth so at odds with the ice water that seemed to fill her veins. Nor could the sunshine’s purity cleanse the stench that rose from the stone floor, the residue of former prisoners who had lost control of their bowels.

Grenville turned back to her. “When did you last see Lord John Bray visit the Lady Elizabeth?”

So he had Bray! Had he tortured him to talk? She mustered feigned confusion. “You mean, at her home in Hatfield? They were neighbors, so Lord Bray came to dine quite often. He brought gifts. Venison. Strawberries. Once, a brace of pheasants. To give strawberries, my lord, is no crime.”

“Treason is,” he said evenly. “Did you see Sir Henry Dudley visit her?”

He had
Dudley?
She could scarcely breathe. Did that mean he had Adam, too? “My lord, you speak of a gentleman I do not know.”

“Dudley’s the ringleader.”

“I see. Have you captured this man?”

He looked away in irritation. It shot a spark of hope through Honor. If he had captured Dudley he would crow about it, would he not?

“You will tell me what men visited the Princess at her London house,” he went on doggedly. “Did you see Sir John St. Loe? You do know
him?
”

“I do, but as far as I know, he has not come to see my lady Elizabeth for well over a year.”

“Sir Henry Peckham?”

“No.”

“Sir William Courtenay? John Daniels? Sir John Perrot?”

Her throat was parched, her palms damp. Had he really arrested all of these men? “I never saw these gentlemen visit, God rest them.”

“God will do no such thing, for they are the vilest of traitors.”

He knows everything,
she thought. He was listing names to prove it, to test her. She was ashamed that her sympathy for them did not go as deep as her burning need to know about Adam. Was he among Grenville’s captives?

“One has proved himself a very
enemy
of God,” Grenville went on, “for we were bringing him into London to stand trial when he took his own life with poison. That proves his guilt and damns his soul for suicide.” He gave her a searching look. “Are you not keen to know who it was?”

If he said Adam she would fall down here and die. “You seem keen to tell me.”

“Sir Anthony Kingston,” he said, watching her reaction.

Richard’s colleague in Parliament! She gripped her hands together to keep from crying out in pity for the brave old soldier. And the thought of Richard himself pushed her to the brink of despair. Was he even alive? Richard…Adam.
Will any of us leave here alive?

Grenville heaved a sudden, angry sigh. “This cat and mouse game grows wearisome.” He pulled a paper from his doublet pocket. “You will sign this.”

“What is it?”

“Your confession. The Princess conspired with these men to overthrow God’s anointed, Her Majesty Queen Mary, and you are the witness, and enabler, of her crime.”

“She has done no crime.”

“Ha! You claim ignorance of the rebels, yet declare her innocent of plotting with them.”

“She has not plotted. I would pledge my life on it.”

He snorted. “Your life is a paltry thing. I would my father had snuffed it out before your husband murdered him.” Honor felt his hatred like a fire reduced to embers but no less scorching. “However, the life of the heretic Princess is worth a great deal. And I will allow you to go on enjoying yours, if you will sign this statement of her crime.”

She could not speak.
Elizabeth’s life for mine.

He held the paper out for her. “There is pen and ink,” he said with a nod at a small table by the window. “Stand, and sign.”

Silence was her answer.

He cocked his head at her. “It disconnects the joints, you know. Shoulders. Wrists. Ankles. Hips. Tears the tissue out of the sockets.” He was looking at her—no need to look at the apparatus.

She
dared
not look. It would force out the scream threatening in her throat.

“I will ask you one last time. One last chance, you understand? Will you sign this paper?”

Yes.
The unspoken word squirmed behind the silent scream.

“It is not a difficult question. Yes or no?”

Yes! Give me the pen!
She did not move.

He shook his head like a teacher disappointed in a pupil. “Your choice.” He nodded to his servants. They pulled her to her feet. Dragged her toward the rack. She knew she could not hold back the scream.

But the rack went by her. They dragged her on, all the way to the wall. Two iron cuffs hung on chains from a high steel frame. She had not seen them before. Had seen only the rack.

They clamped the cuffs around her wrists, their iron cold as stone. The sunshine blazed on her face, making her squint, turning Grenville into a blur. She heard the pulleys squeal and felt her arms lifted. Felt her whole body lifted off the floor like a carcass. Her shoulder sockets screamed. Her panicked brain made her hands grope for the chains to take up the slack, sheer instinct, futile. The pain was so sharp it sucked out her breath and churned her bowels.

“Enough?” Grenville’s face was so close, the bony scar above his lip seemed to smile.

Pain. Panic. “Stop…please…stop!”

“Agree to sign this confession, and it will stop.”

Stunned by the pain, she retched.

“Will you sign?”

She made herself move her head in answer.
No
.

He nodded to the men. The pulleys screeched. The pain was so fierce, bile shot up her throat.

“Think about it,” Grenville said.

Gagging, she saw his blur go out the door. Leaving her. To suffer. How long? Panic overwhelmed her.
Don’t leave me!
But he was gone. Her head lolled in agony between her stretched arms. Leaving her to suffer…to faint…to die.

No.
She had not come this far to abandon everything—everyone—by giving in to death. She forced her head up. Squeezed every drop of strength to fight down the bile and the terror. She blinked in the sunshine. Was it shining on her home? On her garden? On the tender blossoms struggling to live? Even as her shoulders and wrists screamed, the thought of her flowers soothed the core of her suffering. An oasis in the desert of her pain. She gave herself to it. Her roses. Climbing the trellis by the copper sundial. Damask roses, red and white. Yellow pansies with sly, winking faces. Violet nasturtiums fluttering in the breeze…

Her vision darkened. She slipped into the void of darkness.

“Will you sign?” Grenville was back.

Her head jerked up, a snap of pain. His narrow face loomed close to hers. The thin lips, the scar turning white as he smiled. She was disoriented by pain…had he been gone for hours? Minutes? The sunshine had darkened to dusk. A feeble purple light chilled the room. So, hours…

“Enough?” His horrible face! It shot fresh fire through her wrists and shoulders. She closed her eyes and struggled to stay in the oasis. Herb garden. Rosemary, thyme, mint, sage. Brush past them with the hem of her skirt and smell the fragrance. Tap the morning dew off the pink eglantine…stroll past tall, purple-red poppies…tissue-thin white marshmallows…bold oxeye daisies…the riot of daffodils that tumbles down to the water meadow…

“Sign, and this ends.”

His face swam before her. She could barely focus. Barely force out a croak. “No.”

He glanced at one of the men, and she gasped feebly, waiting for the screech of the pulleys and worse pain.

The screech came. But not pulling her higher into agony. Lowering her.

Her feet touched the ground. She staggered. Her legs were afire with the numb torment of pins and needles and would not support her. She pitched forward. Her arms were so stiff she could not break her fall. She twisted just in time and fell on her side.

They hauled her to her feet. Dragged her to the rack. Her mind screamed
I’ll sign! Sign with my blood if you want! Just don’t…

They dragged her past the rack. To the door. “Let her go,” Grenville said.

They let go of her arms. She swayed in place. Instinctively, her hand shot out to Grenville’s arm for balance. She rocked back, sickened by the thought of touching him.

“Walk with me,” he said.

To freedom? She ached for it, ached so hard it was torture.

Down a corridor they went. She shuffled as fast as she could, trying to keep up with him, his two men at her heels. Anything to get free. Yet, how could that be? What could have changed to make him release her? They went down a stone staircase that wound like a corkscrew, and the farther they went, the darker the stone vault became. They carried on down another corridor, narrower and cold as ice, passing occasional torches that flickered in wall sconces, giving just enough light for her to glimpse black slime on the walls. Feeble voices sounded from somewhere, the moans and whimpers of prisoners, sending a shudder through her. The smell was so foul she had to hold her breath.

Terror seized her again. She was not being taken to freedom but to something worse than before. Death? Shivering overtook her. Her legs refused to go on.

The two men gripped her arms and forced her along the last twenty feet to the end of the corridor. They stopped in front of a cell whose door was iron bars. The cell was no bigger than the space for a dog to turn around in. Its floor glinted with black wetness and the stench was putrid. A man sat there, his back against one wall, knees pulled up to his chest, boots touching the opposite wall. It was so dark that all she could make out at first was his hulked shape and the bushy beard that engulfed the lower half of his face. Then he saw her. He struggled to his feet, and a shock knifed through her.
Richard
.

“Honor?” He lurched to grab the bars.
“Honor?”

Tears scalded her throat. “Oh, my love,” she moaned, “my love…” His filthy clothes hung on his bony shoulders like rags. She wrapped her hands around his fingers on the bars, and the familiar roughness of his skin made her tears spill. She pressed her body against the bars to reach in to touch his face, but Grenville jerked her back.

“None of that.”

“Why is he kept like this? He has done no crime!”

“Other than murder my father?”

She wished she could scratch out his eyes. “But it’s information on the rebels you want. He knows nothing.”

“
You
do. Sign, and he’s a free man.”

Free! She looked at Richard’s sunken eyes blinking at her, glinting with anguish, with love, with fury. He had not lost his wits. Despite everything, his fierce spirit seemed stronger than ever. His suffering cracked her heart. She would gladly die to let him live.

“Honor…” His hoarse voice was parched from thirst. “Whatever he says…don’t believe him.”

“Quiet, Thornleigh, or see your wife altered. How fetching do you think she’d look with her ears cut off?”

They both lurched to the bars again, desperate to touch each other.

Grenville’s men hauled her back with such brutal ferocity it brought a roar from Richard. They dragged her away, down the corridor. She twisted to look back at him, but he was a fading shadow among shadows, shouting.

She hardly knew how she stayed on her legs all the way back.

“I have been easy on you,” Grenville said when they returned to the room with the rack. “Perhaps that was a mistake.” He strolled around the apparatus as though appraising it. He patted its wood frame and fingered one of the screws like a master craftsman sure of his work. “Eventually, I promise you, you will sign. Nevertheless, my offer stands. Sign now, and your husband will go free.” He walked past her to the door and beckoned his men to follow. “Take the night to think about it,” he said, as though making a reasonable business offer.

When they left, they took away even the stool.

The long night was more horrible than she could have imagined. She relieved herself, skirts hiked up, into a gutter whose vile effluent streaming from several other cells trickled out a hole in the wall. She lay on the stone floor as cold as a block of ice, and curled up to hold on to a flicker of body heat. Did Grenville have Adam crammed in some foul cell, too? Could Richard survive another week? His misery tore her apart, worse than any rack, as she thought of him in that filth, that cold, that darkness. A corpse in a coffin had more space.

If I leave him there he’ll die, slowly, in agony.

If I sign Grenville’s confession, Elizabeth will die, her head severed by an axe.

Both nightmare images sawed her mind until, exhausted in mind and body, she sank into a pain-fogged drowse. Clanging at the barred door jerked her awake. It was Grenville’s men, banging to keep her from sleeping. Every half hour or so they clanged and shouted, leaving her lurching between desolate nightmares and even more desolate wakefulness.

When dawn lightened the frigid room, they came again. Grenville wore a fresh linen shirt under a sumptuous yellow velvet doublet. Honor struggled to her feet, shivering. Every bone throbbed with pain. Every muscle felt shredded.