The Queen's Exiles (12 page)

“Lessons?” He was struggling to think of how to get her to come. How to break through her resistance.

“Perfection of our daily duties. Purity of intention. The patience and perseverance of prayer.”

He whistled in mock bemusement. “That’s a lot of
p
’s.” A thin jest, a desperate jest.

She glared at him and went on doggedly, “The ceremony for taking the first habit. The needed virtues of a sister.”

“Habit? You don’t mean . . . a nunnery?”

“Of course. The Cistercian abbey at Ixelles. Robert’s there, too; we’re staying at the school.” She raised her chin proudly. “In two weeks I’ll enter the order as a novice.”

He was appalled.
A nun?
It was grotesque. “This is your mother’s doing.”

“God’s doing,” Kate said with spirit. “I have a calling, sir.”

“You have a scheming mother. She can’t marry you off since you have no dowry and no family connections, so this is her solution. But I’ll see hell freeze before I let her entomb you in a convent.”

She gaped at him, appalled and angry and hurt. Her chin trembled. “My mother loves God. And you, sir . . . you should fear Him for your sins.”

“My sins? I’m here because of your damned
mother’s
sins. She’s a traitor.”

She gasped. “How dare you!”

Good Christ.
She had no idea what Frances had done. “Why do you think she snatched you and Robert and fled England?”

“She said you . . . abused her.”

He could hardly breathe for fury. “She tried to kill the Queen. She fled to escape being hanged!”

Kate’s face was pale, her eyes deep pools of confusion. It broke Adam’s heart. His rage at Frances drained as love for his daughter flooded in. She was really still a child and he hated to hurt her. The church bell clanged, startling him, a clangor like thunder in a cave. Bells across the city pealed as if in echo, ringing the hour. Ten o’clock. He gently reached for her hand. “Kate, I’ll explain everything. How she’s lied to you. But not now. Now we have to go, before—”

“No!” She snatched back her hand again. She gripped her cloak tightly to her chest. “I will not stay and hear this.” She bolted out of the chapel. Turned down the nave. She was heading for the front doors.

“Don’t!” Adam ran after her, hurrying past rows of empty benches. “Kate, stop!”

But she was swift. She had one of the double doors partway open by the time he reached her. He snatched her by the shoulders and yanked her backward. She stumbled against him with a small cry, her back to his chest, and he held her to steady her. He looked across the top of her head through the half-open door and froze at what he saw. Armed men. Six of them in the green livery of the Duchess of Feria, their swords at the ready. The bearing of soldiers. They stood with the two retainers and the serving woman who’d come with Kate. And beside them another woman, her back to him, richly dressed in a cape of blue silk. She turned sharply to look at the street, her face in profile. Adam’s stomach lurched.
Frances.

She hadn’t seen him. She and the soldiers had moved a little away from the church doors and were watching the street.
Waiting for me,
he realized. The truth came crashing in on him. He’d been betrayed. But how? Who?

The church bell stopped its clangor. Adam ducked behind the open door. They had not heard Kate open it amid the noise of the bells, but closing it now might draw their attention. “Kate,” he whispered, “there are soldiers outside. Do you see them? They must not find me.”

She looked at them. At him. “Why not?”

“Just trust me, please. Come with me now, quietly, out the back.”

“What have you done?” She shook her head. “No, I told you, I’m not going.”

She wasn’t budging. He had to shock her to move. “Your mother is out there, too. Do you see her? She brought the soldiers.”

Kate looked out again. Then back at him, blinking, struggling to make sense of it. “Maybe she’s come to fetch me.”

“So she sent you here?”

“Yes, who else?”

“But you said you’re staying at the convent. How long have you been there?”

“Since Friday.”

The day after he’d landed. How could Frances have known that?

“Or maybe,” Kate said innocently, “she’s come to speak to Father Hubert.”

“Where
is
Father Hubert? Not here, because she told him not to come, to keep the way clear for the soldiers to take me. Why do you think the church is empty? They sent everyone out.”

Her eyes darted from him to the group outside and back again, like a hunted doe hiding in bracken. He reached out for her, a silent request that she give him her hand. She did not move.

“Kate, listen to me. Your mother has used you to lure me here. Used you as bait.”

She was as still as if caught in a spell, her eyes huge. He felt that if he said one wrong word he would lose her.

“Think,” he whispered. “Have I ever lied to you?”

Her mouth trembled. She swallowed. “You’re lying now.” She pulled open the door with such force it scraped the stone and the handle clanked.

Adam saw Frances whirl around at the sound. She pointed to him and cried, “There he is!”

The soldiers rushed up the steps, raising their swords. Adam grabbed Kate’s arm and ran, pulling her. She kept pace with him to avoid stumbling, but she was straining back, resisting. He dragged her on past the empty benches. Heard the soldiers pounding after them. “Halt!” the leader yelled.

Adam and Kate were almost at the crossing, the rood screen and choir stalls just ahead. His only hope was to get out the way he’d come, around the apse, through the sacristy, and out into the lane. But Kate was balking and squirming, holding him back. She grabbed hold of a bench and anchored herself, wrenching Adam to a halt.

The soldiers pounded closer, their swords gleaming red from the light of the stained glass windows. Every instinct told Adam to protect his daughter from their weapons. He turned to face them, dragging Kate behind him, screening her with his body. He whipped out his dagger.

The benches on either side forced four of the soldiers to bunch up behind the first two, so the rear ones veered sideways, two to the left, two to the right, to attack his flank. Impeded by the benches, they jumped over them but were still slower than the front two who came straight at Adam. One lunged at him. Adam lunged at the same moment with a stab that missed, but it surprised the man enough that his sword sliced the air wide of Adam’s shoulder and the man stumbled aside. The next one swung at Adam, and his blade tip gouged the side of Adam’s neck. It felt like a punch. Blood wetted his shirt.

“Father!” Kate cried at seeing his blood. She reached out for him.

“Stay back!” he said, pushing her clear of the two men coming from the right.

She whirled off her cloak and threw it at the two men. It fell on the sword of one. He struggled to disentangle it.

Kate cried, “Go, Father! Run!”

He looked at his daughter for one agonizing moment. Then he turned and crashed through the rood screen. A soldier pounded after him to the altar. Adam grabbed the golden cross as long as his arm and hacked at the man’s sword. The sword fell with a clatter and the man staggered, off-balance.

“Don’t let him escape!” Frances shouted, rushing down the nave. She reached Kate and snatched her.

Two more soldiers charged Adam.

“Run, Father!”

He turned and ran.

H
er horse plodded through Brussels, head down, under heavy rain. Wet and saddle-sore, Fenella kept her head down, too, though much good it did. One shoulder of her cloak was soaked through, and water dribbled down her hood and found the opening under her chin, letting chilly drops snake down her neck. She shivered and with one sodden leather glove bunched the fabric more tightly at her throat. Plodding on through the half-deserted streets, she thought wryly,
Sensible people are indoors
.

My own fault,
she told herself. She’d be dry and comfortable if she had stopped at an inn on the road when the downpour started. But she was impatient to get her business here in the capital done and over with. In Antwerp she had returned to her banker and taken a portion of her gold, which now lay tucked inside her saddlebags, destined for the Brussels group of the Brethren. Claes had insisted that she take a servant as an escort, but the fellow slowed her down, slogging behind her, hunched over in his saddle, looking glum in the rain. So she had left him at an inn outside Antwerp and told him to return to Polder. Good riddance. She was used to taking care of herself. She just wanted to get her task done and get back to Antwerp to rendezvous with Adam Thornleigh on the boat. Then she would be off to England with him. Baron Thornleigh
. Call me Adam
. The thought of him buoyed her spirits. She lifted her shoulder to shrug off the drenched patch of cloak, telling herself,
It’s only water.

Drumbeats sounded, and Fenella’s horse shied back a step. She steadied the animal as a small troop of soldiers marched out from a side street. A captain led the way, followed by five foot soldiers, then another horseman leading a prisoner by a rope. The rope ended in a noose around the prisoner’s neck, and he staggered along, wrists bound at his back, his filthy clothes drenched. Five more foot soldiers brought up the rear, followed by two drummers. A straggle of people plodded behind, among them a weeping woman with a child clutching her hand. The drummers beat out the flat drumrolls that signaled an execution. The prisoner was on his way to hang.

What had the poor fool done? Fenella wondered. Stolen a rich man’s purse? Spoken out against the Duke of Alba’s tyranny? Those crimes were nothing compared to hers. She had murdered Alba’s kinsman. And she was about to commit another crime, bringing aid to men who were fighting Alba. She shuddered, thinking of that noose around the prisoner’s neck. She could see herself on the scaffold . . . the scratchy rope . . . you dropped so violently it snapped your neck.

Stop it,
she told herself.
No good will come of frightening myself
. She was about to turn her horse and carry on when her eyes were drawn to the captain on the lead horse. He wore a breastplate and a helmet with a white plume. She’d been in the city long enough to know that the plume marked him as one of Alba’s commanders. He looked familiar. Where had she seen him before? A young man on the street lurched forward as though to stop him, and the commander scowled and his fighting hand went to his sword. Then his expression relaxed, for it was clear the young man was no threat, weeping and pulling his hair and swaying on his feet. The commander’s hand settled and he looked forward again.

That martial action of his jolted Fenella’s memory.
Edinburgh
. The garrison at Leith! She’d been eighteen and so miserably poor she had let the garrison commander, a Frenchman named D’Oysel, make her his mistress. But he’d turned out to be a brute, and when he cut her face she’d been so desperate to escape him she had asked for help from a captain of cavalry—this same commander who was riding toward her now. His name came back to her in a rush.
Carlos Valverde
. She blushed to remember how she had offered him her body in asking for his help. But help her he did, in exchange for
her
help in getting his kinsman out of jail. Adam Thornleigh. That was the first time she had ever seen Adam. She struggled to remember exactly how the two men were related. Cousins? No, brothers-in-law, that was it. Adam’s sister was Valverde’s wife. Questions reared up. What was he doing in Brussels? How had he come to work for Alba?

Her horse jerked up its head with an anxious whinny. That drew a glance from Valverde, and Fenella quickly turned so he would not see her face. She could not risk him noticing her. She had killed a Spanish don and Valverde had the power to arrest. Her horse danced nervously on the spot, a rear hoof skidding on the wet cobbles. She tightened her grip on the reins and got control of the horse. The execution party carried on, swallowed by the gray rain.

God, get me out of here,
she thought. She kicked the horse’s flanks and it broke into a trot. Her heart was beating fast, out of time with the drums fading behind her. When she was well past the party she reined in her horse to a steady walk.
Finish what you came for, then get out of this God-cursed country
.

She was determined to see her task through. She’d promised this to Claes, her contribution to his cause. It was the least she could do, she had told him, and now she felt how true those words were. Guilt needled her. Hers was a paltry contribution. In fighting Alba, Claes was risking his very life.

But it’s not my cause,
she thought irritably. Claes had agreed.
Go to England,
he had said.
Be safe there. Be happy.
And go she certainly would. It was the only sane thing to do. Yet guilt had wormed its way into her heart and settled there. She could not shake the sense that she was abandoning her husband.

He had given her directions to the house of the Brethren. It lay just inside the southern wall, by the Anderlecht Gate. Her route would take her right through the city, and Fenella was aware that she must look unusual, even suspicious, riding alone in a downpour when most people were indoors. She could not afford to attract attention. She would be glad, too, to change into dry clothes before going to see the Brethren. So she decided to go first to her old friend Berck Verhulst. He and his wife might offer her a bed to return to for the night after she’d concluded her business with the Brethren. If they were not home, she would finish her business and then find an inn.

The Grote Markt was behind her now, and the Bourse, too. Water trickled off the slate roof of a house to her right and poured from the eaves of a cobbler’s shop to her left, splashing mud up to her stirrups. Between the buildings she saw the bridge ahead, a skeletal shape in the rain. It led to Sint-Gorikseiland, the island in the shallow Zenne River that wound through the city center. Her horse clomped onto the bridge, its hooves sounding hollowly on the wooden planks. The island was home to fishermen and fishmongers, and Fenella smelled its fishy reek and heard the
plash
of a watermill. The Low Countries had been well named. This marshy country, level with the sea, was a world of water.

And of rubbish, by the stench. People seemed to use the river as a sewer. She saw the half carcass of a pig, the nether half, floating toward the bridge. Overhanging branches on the riverbank snagged it, and the leafy tips trailing in the water covered it, only a black hoof protruding. That pig will stink come Sunday, Fenella thought as she reached the other side and turned her horse.

She stopped beside a couple of muddy children on their knees in the grass, harvesting worms wriggling to the surface from the rain. She asked if they knew Meinheer Verhulst. “The
Pelican,
” they said, and pointed down the path that ran beside the riverbank.

Fenella carried on down the path, past dripping trees and dripping cottages, until she reached the jetty where Berck Verhulst’s barge was tethered, a long, low vessel with two stubby masts. Berck, the gentle giant, she thought with a smile as she tied her horse to the rail under a tree. She hadn’t seen him in over five years. In Polder he had been one of her best customers at the chandlery. He owned the
Pelican
and lived aboard it, ferrying cargo between Brussels and Antwerp—grain, sheep, ale, horses, whatever paid—and had often come to buy Fenella’s gear. So often, in fact, she remembered Claes once muttering,
Verhulst again?
But Claes had had no reason to be jealous; she thought of Berck like a brother. Not long before the slaughter of Polder he’d married a woman from Brussels and they’d moved here. Fenella had never met his wife. Did they have children now? Bairns brought up on a barge? Well, she thought, they’d see more interesting sights than many a pampered young lord in a moat-bound castle. She crossed the spongy grass and stepped onto the jetty.

When she came alongside the boat and took in its condition she felt a pinch of worry. It hadn’t left shore for some time; that was clear from the slime of black mold on the lines that tethered it to the bollard. And the furled sails, dripping with rain, sagged with age and neglect. Did Berck not live aboard anymore? She heard sounds belowdecks, a faint clanging and scraping. Hard to tell what caused them with the rain drumming so loudly on the deck.

She lifted the wet skirt of her cloak to step safely onboard and went amidships to the small cabin and knocked. “Hello?” she called. The clanging and scraping went on. She opened the hatch. The cabin was not much bigger than a closet and empty but for a begrimed stool and a heap of frayed hemp line. She closed the hatch, happy to be out of the rain, and threw off her sodden hood. A companionway led to the lower deck. She went down the steps, blinking as her eyes adjusted to the dim light, and found herself in the galley. A low brick hearth. A scatter of splintered crates. A hanging lantern in which a guttering candle gave off the only light and its tallow a rank smell. And there was Berck, on his knees at the cold hearth, his back to her, laying bricks with a clang and scrape of his trowel. He hadn’t heard her with the din of the rain above.

She came to him. “Berck.”

He swung around. A beard covered half his face, a ragged bush like black wires, and his black hair, too, was shaggy and unkempt. His eyes lit up. “Fenella Doorn?” He got to his feet, looming over her, his head brushing the deck head. Legs like tree trunks and hands like hams.

“None other,” she said with a smile.

He grinned. “Christ on the cross.” His voice was a deep rumble. “You’re a sight to make a man dance a jig.”

She grinned back but thought with a sad twinge that Berck’s jig days seemed over. His wrestler’s body had gone to fat. He was sweating from his labor, and his dingy linen shirt, big as a sail, clung in damp patches to his paunchy torso. She playfully poked his belly. “Someone’s been feeding you well, my friend.” She glanced around for his wife.

He winked at her. “And someone needs to fatten you up. Come, sit you down, Fenella, and tell me what brings you here. Christ almighty, you’re soaked as a stowaway rat.”

She laughed. “God’s truth, I’ll be glad to get myself dry.”

The moment she mentioned the baggage on her horse he was on his way to fetch it. He climbed the companionway with unexpected liveliness for a man so big. She heard his thumping gait across the deck. Waiting, she took in her surroundings. Unwashed wooden cups and trenchers. Mud-matted straw on the floor. A threadbare blanket on a berth that was littered with cracked blocks and broken sheaves. A sour smell like old cheese. The squalor surprised her. Berck used to be a proud seaman and kept his vessel in good order.

When he came back she changed her dress and stockings in the privacy of the stern cabin where his berth was a narrow, lumpy bed. The cabin was as dirty as the galley, but the dry clothes felt very good and she was happy to return to the galley and sit at Berck’s scuffed table and accept a mug of ale that he drew from a keg almost half his size. He thudded down on the bench across from her with his own full mug and told her he had heard about the tragedy in Polder five years ago. “Lost your man, I heard. Bad luck, Fenella. A hard blow, I warrant.”

She looked down at her ale. No need to tell him that Claes had survived. Claes was safer if everyone thought him dead. She told Berck how she’d gone to Sark and established her business there.

A grin spread under his bush of beard. “Aye, you’re a woman bound to get on in the world wherever the devil drops you.” He raised his mug in a salute.

She smiled and clinked mugs with him and they drank. He downed his ale in four huge gulps, then refilled it from the keg. An oversized thirst, Fenella thought wryly. Now she knew where that big belly came from. “Shall I meet your wife?” she asked. “She hasn’t been caught out in this downpour, I hope.”

He spat into the hearth. “Caught by the devil, for all I care.” Fenella listened with growing concern as he told her how his wife had left him three years ago. “Said I was always at the cockfights, always off wagering.” He upended his mug to finish the ale and his eyes grew misty with anger. “God knows I only did it to keep her in style. Her with her frippery and gewgaws.”

So his gambling had ruptured his marriage. She guessed why. “You fell into debt?”

He nodded. “Deeper than a sea sinkhole. And then, when I hit the bottom, she ran off with a hot-gospeller. A right knave, babbled like a baby about being saved by Jesus. And she fell in with his claptrap. Bah! The devil take ’em both.”

A melancholy tale, Fenella thought. She reached across the table and took his hand. “I’m sorry.”

He looked at her morosely and then with sudden energy clapped his big hand over hers. There was a new gleam in his eyes. “We’re both of us alone now, eh, Fenella?”

Uneasy, she slipped her hand back, not answering, and took a swallow of ale. “And your business, Berck? How does it fare?”

He heaved himself up from the table and shuffled to the keg to refill his mug. “Gone, three years now. I couldn’t pay the license to work the boat. That’s over.”

She was shocked. “How do you live?”

“With my hands. Dug the canal, me and a gang glad of the wage. There’s many in this city that grouse about the Spaniards, but I say the Spaniards have put bread on many a workingman’s table.”