The Queen's Exiles (4 page)

“So, you’ll go?” he urged. “Immediately?”

She nodded. “Yes. I don’t know how to thank you.”

“No thanks needed.” A change came over his face, and in his voice was a new urgency. “The fact is, now I need
your
help. I need to take one of your boats.”

Why?
she thought. “The
Elizabeth
will be ready in—”

“I can’t wait for that. There’s a . . . private matter I must see to.”

She longed to ask what the private matter was, but clearly he didn’t wish to elaborate. “Of course,” she said. “Take the Swedish caravel.” The vessel was Fenella’s best—and the least she could do for him.

He shook his head. “Too fine a vessel. And too big. I’d need twenty crew, fifteen at the least. Dangerous. The Spanish port authorities know me.”

She didn’t understand. “Spanish port?”

“Spanish-occupied. I’m bound for the Netherlands. I’ll leave my crew here and Curry will oversee the work on the
Elizabeth
. I need to get to Brussels. So I’ll buy that little fishing smack of yours, if I may.”

“Brussels?” She was astonished. “But surely that’s too dangerous for you.” The Spaniards were already offering a bounty for him, Johan had said, decreed by the Duke of Alba himself. The danger was even greater now that Adam had sunk a Spanish ship. “Alba wants your head.”

“That’s why I need to slip in unnoticed. A modest craft and a couple of seamen, that’s all. I’ll be a fisherman bringing a catch into Antwerp.”

What personal business was so crucial that he would take such a risk? It baffled Fenella. But the mention of Antwerp ignited a stirring thought. Perhaps she would not have to abandon everything after all. “My lord, I’d like to get to Antwerp, too. I’ve been sending my profits to a banker there. I want to get my money.”

“Leave it. I’ll give you the money. Just get yourself to England.”

“No, damn it, it’s mine.” The steel in her voice clearly took him aback. She regretted speaking so harshly, but she had worked and sweated for that profit and was not about to let the bloody Spaniards confiscate it and leave her penniless. She would take to England what was hers. To soften her outburst she said, “You’re already doing enough for me, my lord.” She added with pretended bravado, “And what kind of partner would I be if I didn’t bring investment?” He didn’t smile, and she saw that he was still concerned. Before he could speak again, she pressed on. “When do you plan to take the
Odette
?”

“The what?”

“My fishing boat.”

“Ah. Soon as she’s provisioned.”

“I’ll have that done for you at first light.”

“Good. Then I’ll sail with the morning tide.”

“And I’ll sail with you.” She held up her hands to forestall his protest. “Never fear; I’ll collect my gold, slip out of Antwerp, and cross to England before the Spaniards get word of Don Alfonso. Besides, my lord, you could use my help to sail in under the nose of the customs. You, the fisherman. Me, the fisherman’s wife.”

“And me,” said a voice at the door.

Fenella whirled around. Johan stood in his nightshirt. When had he opened the door?

“God’s hand is in this, Nella—the
Odette,
His Lordship, and you, bound for the Netherlands. Take me, too, and leave me there. I’m not going to England. I’m going home.”

C
arlos Valverde, commander of cavalry, judged the assembled crowd of Brussels townspeople to be over a thousand. He swept a sharp glance of appraisal over his mounted troop posted along the west edge of the Grote Markt, the town square. It was a sweltering day, freakish for spring, and sweat slicked the brows of his men beneath their helmets. Carlos’s own back prickled with sweat under his leather jerkin, and his palms were slippery inside his gauntlets. Even his destrier, a fiery-tempered Andalusian stallion, twitched in the heat. The horse was a gift from the governor, the Duke of Alba, and Carlos wished he were cantering down a shady country lane to give the fine animal his head rather than standing on parade for the unveiling of a statue of the duke. But duty was duty, and Carlos noted with satisfaction that his troop sat their horses with disciplined stillness alongside the sweating infantrymen, four hundred of them posted to keep the peace, including fifty musketeers.

With any luck,
he thought,
keeping the peace won’t be my concern much longer.
The duke had sent Carlos a note this morning telling him to see him after the unveiling ceremony.
There is news,
Alba had written, terse as always in his communications. Carlos so hoped it was the news he’d been waiting for. The reward he’d been promised. He was eager to tell Isabel and end the tension that for months had been building between them. She was English and had made no secret to him of how she hated Alba’s policies of subjugating the Dutch. Almost a thousand had been hanged and the property of over ten thousand confiscated—“Because I cannot execute them all,” Alba had dryly told Carlos. Isabel never complained for herself, but after sixteen years of marriage he could read the silent signs of her unhappiness at the year they’d spent here, Carlos enforcing Spanish martial law. Tonight, God willing, that would change. He would take her in his arms and tell her they were going home.

Trumpets bleated from the center of the town square where musicians stood beside the canvas-shrouded statue. Elevated high on a marble pedestal, the statue formed a triangle with the square’s two other focal points, the raised pulpit and the gallows. Sermons and hangings were regular occurrences here. Workmen with ropes stood ready to pull away the statue’s canvas covering, and the flock of priests around it shuffled in anticipation, along with city councillors, leading guildsmen, and magistrates.

Carlos watched the townspeople. Trouble from this placid lot didn’t look likely. They stood waiting in patient, orderly blocks, perspiring under the noonday sun. Wealthy burghers, beneficiaries of the Spanish occupation, sat on tiers of benches where the ladies, suffering in their finery, fanned themselves in the heat. Visiting grandees from the court of Philip of Spain sat on a separate, higher bank of tiers under a shady canopy alongside the duke’s lordly lieutenants and advisers. All eyes were on the shrouded statue, whose sharp peaks beneath the canvas put Carlos in mind of the bony old man himself. Dressed in black satin embroidered with gold like glints of sun on shadow, the duke had settled his long, lean frame on a throne-like chair on a dais among the grandees. Alba had always been thin, even when Carlos had last fought for him in the German campaign over twenty years ago, and a recent illness had left him gaunt. His close-cropped hair and trim beard seemed every day more wiry with gray. Still, Carlos knew the old man was feeling better. Commissioning this statue had helped revive him.

The show was pure Alba. He’d ordered the thing made from melted brass cannon captured from rebel fighters when he’d marched into the Netherlands four years ago. That was before Carlos had arrived from England, but he’d heard how Alba had crushed his enemy at Jemmingen: twelve thousand green rebels led by the brother of the exiled Prince William of Orange against Alba’s fifteen thousand battle-hardened troops of Spanish
tercios
. Over six thousand rebels had died that day; just eighty Spaniards. Impressive, Carlos thought. Another victory to burnish the old man’s military record, already legendary. Carlos had been less impressed at hearing how Alba’s soldiers had pillaged all the way back to Groningen. People said the sky had turned red with the flames of burning houses.

Carlos glanced at the stands, looking for Isabel. She was with child, their fourth, and he hoped this sweltering heat wasn’t making her too uncomfortable. He wanted nothing to upset her in this pregnancy. Two years ago they had buried a newborn baby daughter, and he still felt the shadow on his heart. He knew it was worse for Isabel. A scar of grief.

No sign of her yet. Not surprising, really, since she was coming with the Viscountess Quintanilla, a well-fed matron who moved as slowly as a baggage-train mule. She was kind to Isabel, though, and Carlos was grateful for that; the grand lady didn’t slight his wife because of
him
. He glanced at his counterpart, the captain of the infantrymen, Don Felipe, son of the Count de Gortera. Carlos himself was plain Señor Valverde; he had no title and likely would never win one from his queen, Elizabeth. Despite all his years in England and his unwavering loyalty to the English Crown, she had not admitted him to the rank of peers alongside Isabel’s brother, Adam, Baron Thornleigh.
Because I’m Spanish
. It galled Carlos. And Philip of Spain would never ennoble him, either, although for a different reason. Spaniards were fanatical about lineage. The lords among Alba’s commanders acknowledged Carlos’s exceptional military experience and of course they bowed to the duke’s judgment, but they would never consider Carlos one of their own. Their ladies, meanwhile, could be ruthless, snubbing the wife of any man as baseborn as Carlos, the son of a camp follower who hadn’t been sure which of her customers had fathered him. It rankled him to see even the lowest lordlings’ wives outranking Isabel when they were seated at Alba’s dinners. She laughed it off, saying the women’s arrogance was envy because they wished they had husbands who were half the man Carlos was. When she said things like that, so stirringly loyal, he knew he had something more precious than a noble title. He had Isabel.

What he didn’t have, and what he needed for his growing family, was money. Two years of evil luck had all but ruined him, starting with disastrous harvests on the manors he owned in Northumberland and Yorkshire. Then plague had killed a third of the tenants on his Somerset manor; he’d visited the hollow-eyed survivors and doled out what relief he could. Last spring his Cornish tin mine flooded, and then the ship with his last stock of tin bound for France was lost in a storm off the Normandy coast. All these losses had left Carlos deep in debt. So, from Yeavering Hall, their home in Northumberland, he’d written to his old commander, the Duke of Alba, offering him a company of horse: English, Italian, and German mercenaries. Carlos had handpicked them, an elite troop, outfitted at his own expense. The duke had welcomed Carlos to his Brussels palace, eager to put him in command of cavalry patrols to hunt down dissidents. Isabel had joined him, bringing their two younger children, Andrew and Nell, while their eldest, Nicolas, stayed in London as company for his grandmother, the Dowager Lady Thornleigh. But Carlos had never dreamed the Brussels posting would cause such tension in his marriage.
Alba’s reign of blood,
Isabel would mutter. Her unease had deepened as soon as she knew about the coming child.
I wish this baby could be born at home,
she had said last week.
Alba can’t expect you to stay forever.
He hadn’t told her he couldn’t afford to disband his troop. He was doing this military service for Alba for one reason only: to win a princely pension from the king of Spain. Alba, as close to the King as a brother, had promised Carlos the pension.

There was a flurry among the ladies in the stand: The viscountess and her entourage had arrived. Carlos glimpsed Isabel taking a seat. She looked straight at him and smiled. He had told her this morning about Alba’s note and his hope about what it meant. With a royal pension they could go home. At her smile, Carlos felt all the promise of this boost in his fortunes. The coming child was a happy sign. He hoped it would be a girl, for Isabel’s sake.

The trumpets blared again. The workmen hauled on the ropes and the canvas slid off the statue. Sunlight gleamed off the bronze figure, larger than life: Alba with his sword arm raised, the blade pointing to heaven, and his booted foot trampling rebellion in the form of a writhing mass of ferret-faced wretches. The burghers and grandees in the stands applauded. The townspeople looked on in silence, a vacant daze on most faces, like cattle. The duke gave the slightest bow of his head in modest, pleased acknowledgment.

Beside the statue a city official, feminine looking in his flowing robes of office, held up a scroll and read from it, raising his voice so it carried across the crowd on the windless air. “ ‘This monument is erected to Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of Alba, governor of the Netherlands, for having extinguished sedition, chastised rebellion, restored religion, secured justice, and established peace.’ ”

Polite applause. Carlos had his eye on the street beyond the square, gauging how quickly his troop could file out and return to barracks once the ceremony ended. There would be speeches and prayers first, of course. Still, he could probably make it to the governor’s palace before supper to meet with him.

An odd sound, a
splat.
A gasp from the crowd. Carlos stiffened in his saddle and his attention snapped to the statue. Something dripped, yellow and viscous, from the bronze arm. A raw egg. His gaze swept the crowd. Who had thrown it? A few titters came from the throng as eggshell slithered off the bronze duke. The city councillors glared at the people. In the hush, every face looked up to the flesh-and-blood duke on his dais. Alba did not move, but Carlos saw a twitch of the thin mouth.

Another
splat
. This time, not an egg. Horse shit fouled the bronze Alba’s chin. No twitters from the crowd now. A hum of horror rose as, again, every face looked to the living Alba.

Councillors scurried in the square, shouting orders to the militia and pointing at the crowd to reveal the culprit. But they were all pointing to different spots, no one sure where the dung had been hurled from. At the shouting, Carlos’s horse tossed his head in nervous excitement, silver harness jangling. Carlos stood up in his stirrups to get a better look at the crowd. A movement caught his eye across the square: the throng parting. Someone running away? He could see no runner, only the effect, like that of a varmint scurrying through a field of grain.

He kicked his horse’s flanks and the stallion bolted forward. Carlos called to his lieutenant, “Martinez!” and pointed to the street behind the crowd. That’s where the runner was heading. Carlos crossed the square at a gallop, Martinez falling in behind him, hooves clattering. Councillors and priests lurched out of their way. He and Martinez raced past the statue and reached the far edge of the crowd. Guards stiff-armed the people to hold them back and let the horsemen in. Carlos plunged into the mass of people. They stumbled out of his way, a woman screaming. He still could see no one running; he was just following the ghostly path he’d noted. Under his breath he cursed the people for not moving aside fast enough, slowing him. The path had already closed in. He was losing the culprit.

Then he saw a man burst out of the rear of the throng. Skinny like so many of the poor, in grubby homespun clothes, he was racing to escape, not looking back. Carlos kicked his horse and barreled through the last rank of people, finally clear of them. He galloped after the culprit, past houses and shops and pedestrians, gaining on the man. The culprit swerved and ducked down a side street. Carlos reached the intersection and saw the culprit weaving past carts, people, dogs, a farmer with two pigs. With a glance over his shoulder Carlos motioned to Martinez to follow the man. “After him!”

Carlos turned down a lane that ran parallel to the side street. Galloping, he swerved left and bolted through a garden, and when he reached the street he drew rein, halting his horse. The culprit was running straight toward him, so hell-bent on escape he’d almost reached Carlos before he saw him and lurched to a stop. Carlos drew his sword, ready to strike if the culprit made a move to run. The fellow looked up at him, fear in his sunken eyes. Carlos froze. It was a boy. Tall, but still a boy. No more than twelve. Like Carlos’s son Andrew. The boy stood frozen, too, trembling. Carlos, shaken, lowered his sword. In the silence between them his horse heaved bellows breaths.

The boy’s eyes went wide in surprise, as he sensed he was safe. He bolted for a gap between houses. But Martinez was now bearing down on him. Martinez’s horse’s chest hit the boy with a thud, knocking the breath from him and sending him sprawling in the dust. Both horsemen trotted up to him.

“Get up,” Carlos said.
Run, boy,
he wanted to say. If he’d been alone he might have. But Martinez was already prodding the boy’s back with the flat of his sword as the captive struggled to his feet, and people in the street had stopped to watch, others leaning out of windows.

Carlos and Martinez brought the boy back to the market square, swords drawn as they rode behind him. The crowd let out a roar of anticipation when they saw the two horsemen lead in their prisoner. Some of the burghers were on their feet in the stands, applauding. The councillors at the statue glared at the boy, indignant at the disruption that had marred their ceremony.

Guards took hold of the boy. He looked up at Carlos, his face white with dust and fear. “Please, sir . . . they hanged my father . . . and my brothers. Please . . . I’m the last.”

It pressed a weight on Carlos’s heart that made him angry.
Then why poke the hornet’s nest, fool?
Guards dragged the boy before the city officials. The officials looked up at Alba on his shaded dais. They sent a messenger running up the stands to him. Alba exchanged a few words with the messenger, then gave a nod.