The Queen's Lady (37 page)

The purse held only a quarter of the amount Thornleigh had demanded, but it was all she had been able to raise that morning by selling the jewelry she was wearing to a Cheapside goldsmith. She could only hope that the promissory note she had tucked inside the purse would satisfy Thornleigh until she could write to the stewards of her father’s estates for the balance. “Now, listen,” she said. “The instructions Thornleigh gave me are these. When you arrive at the wharf, the signal—” She saw him shiver. Her first thought was that it was from joy. Then she realized it was fever. “Brother, it’s at least a two hour ride. Can you make it?”

There was faint barking in the distance.

“I can,” he rasped, pushing himself from the wall in a show of resolve. “More’s bailiff and his dogs are not far behind. I
must
.” He swayed. The purse dropped from his fingers. Honor caught him under both arms and held him up. He weighed no more than a girl.

He pushed out of her embrace and bent to retrieve the purse. He stood up straight, but she saw the effort it required. Sweat was crawling down his cheeks. “I thank you, good lady, with all my heart,” he whispered. “And now, I’ll trouble you no more . . . but say farewell.” He tried to smile, but his fever-blurred eyes could not focus on her face.

Honor grabbed the purse from him. “No, Brother. You’ll not say it yet.”

She threw her arm around his waist. Half dragging him, she staggered down the alley to the waiting horse. She propped Frish against its flank, then braced her legs and bent with hands buckled together, like a knight’s groom, to lift him into the saddle.

Frish hesitated, ashamed.

“There’s no time for this,” she ordered. “Let me help you up!”

With a groan of humiliation he slipped his bloody foot into her cupped hands. She held herself stiff until he had struggled up onto the horse’s back. She mounted in front of him and jigged the reins. Too weak to protest, Frish could not prevent his forehead from slumping onto her back as they started down the street.

The fog lifted shortly after they passed London’s wall. “Small mercies,” Honor muttered as she strained to see signposts in the dusk.

They reached Gravesend harbor three hours later, in darkness.

By the time Honor had tethered the horse, helped Frish down, and hauled him to the wharf, she was chilled with sweat and her legs trembled with exhaustion. She sat Frish gently on a coiled heap of wet rope and looked around. The wharf appeared deserted. Another small mercy. She gazed at the black void of the river. Somewhere out there Thornleigh said the
Vixen
lay at anchor. “I must leave you for a moment, Brother,” she whispered.

She hurried into a nearby tavern and returned with a lantern. Panting, she sat beside Frish on the heap of rope and tried to calm herself with several deep breaths. Frish’s head slumped onto her shoulder. She threw a large handkerchief over the lantern, held it toward the water, and flapped the cloth up and down five times.

She peered out into the blackness for several minutes, then repeated the signal. Could Thornleigh see it? She sat watching, listening to the slap of water against the wharf and to Frish’s ragged breathing. A feeling of dread gathered around her heart. Was Thornleigh out there at all? Or did he lie drunk in some London brothel, a man not fit to pledge his word?

She signaled again. Again, no response.

Frish was shivering horribly. She took his head upon her breast and stroked the blotched face. He was babbling, falling into delirium. “Hold on, Brother,” she murmured. “Hold on.”

But hold on for what? she asked herself with rising panic. What was she to do next? The inn where she had borrowed the lantern was full, and even if she could find another inn they must go back to London eventually if Thornleigh had deserted them. Take Frish back to London now? He would never be able to sit the horse. Even if she tied him to her and they made it back through the pitch of night, where could they hide? A tavern? Holed up inside like rats? Waiting for More’s men and dogs to sniff them out?

A lantern burst of light. Dead ahead. Another, and another. Five of them!

“The signal, Brother! Thornleigh’s on his way!”

She grabbed his tunic collar and jerked him forward to get him to his feet. He was limp in her arms. Together they lurched down to the water steps and there Honor stood holding him upright, tottering with the strain, waiting. She heard oars lapping through the water, and relief flooded her when she saw a winking lantern light bobbing closer like some lost, drunken star. The pointed prow of a skiff broke through the gloom and the boat skimmed alongside the water steps.

The rower had his back to her. A scrawny man with gray hair sprouting below an oily red cap. Not Thornleigh. Honor’s heart thudded. It was a trap! Thornleigh had informed. This was an agent of More’s, come to arrest both Frish and her!

With a soft cry of panic she hauled the semiconscious Frish around and began to stumble with him back up the steps.

“Halt there!” the rower said.

Terrified, Honor staggered on.

“Mistress Larke!” the man called in a forced whisper.

She reached the top stair, gasping under Frish’s weight.

“Stop, mistress! I’m from the
Vixen
!”

Honor lurched to a halt, desperate to flee but utterly unable to carry her burden farther. “You’re not! You’re from Sir Thomas! How else could you know my name?”

The man stared up at her, confused. “Know your . . ? But Master said—”

“What master?”

“Master Thornleigh.”

“But he didn’t know I’d come!”

This appeared to baffle the man even more. He scratched his head, knocking his cap askew. “Master said he gave you his instructions, my lady. Who else would come but you?”

Honor let out a huge breath of relief. It was not a trap after all. This was Thornleigh’s man. Fear, she realized, had blinded her. Though her original intention had been to send Frish here alone, only she had known that. Obviously, Thornleigh had assumed she would accompany Frish.

“Jinner’s the name,” the scrawny man said, setting down his lantern. “Samuel Jinner. At your service, m’lady.” He dragged off his oily cap, but he did not smile. Rather, his mouth drooped. His eyes drooped, too, and his nose, and his mustache. His very beard, a scraggly gray patch in the middle of his chin, drooped in two forlorn wings. But he stood in the skiff, bandy-legged but stalwart, with an arm outstretched for duty. Honor trusted him instantly.

“Master Jinner, you are well met,” she sighed, for the burden in her arms was too much to carry even one step more. “This is Brother Frish.”

Jinner flopped his cap back on. “I’ll take him aboard, my lady,” he muttered, shaking his head as he reached for Frish, “though he don’t look fit to me.” He laid the moaning man in the bow.

“He’s very ill,” she agreed, “but his fate will be far worse if he tarries longer in England. Please, tell your master to give him every care.”

“Don’t you fret,” Jinner assured her solemnly. “I’ve found that several leagues of sea water put between a man and the law does wondrous things for a man’s health.”

Honor smiled. She wiped sweat from her face and was aware of a light-headed exhilaration. She recognized the feeling. It was the same buoyant sense of well-being she had felt the night of the raid at Sydenham’s when she and Frish had crouched in the alley under the soft rain, so keenly alive after the danger—and free.
I did it
, she thought, exulting.
I got Frish away from Sir Thomas. It worked!

Jinner hobbled toward his oars, then touched his cap to her. “I’ll be off, m’lady. A betting man wouldn’t lay down a farthing for my fate either if I tarry longer from the
Vixen
.”

“Is Thornleigh such a hard master?”

Jinner made a vinegar face. “Let’s just say the Devil himself could take a lesson from the master when the mood’s upon him.” He grappled the oars.

“Wait!” she said. She drew the purse from her cloak. “The mood will be on him soon enough if you take him the man without the money.” She knelt on the bottom step and leaned over the gunnel, offering the purse.

Jinner nodded, a gloomy gesture he apparently used instead of a smile. He shipped the oars. “I’m obliged, m’lady. I’d clean forgot.” He took the purse. But instead of tucking it away, he opened it.

Honor held her breath. Would he know how much money Thornleigh was expecting? Could she bluff her way through this? “It’s all there, Master Jinner,” she assured him stoutly, “except for a small—”

“I don’t doubt it, m’lady,” he interrupted. He drew out a single coin. “And now it’s all there but for this. Master asked it, for the service.” He slipped the coin into his pocket, then tugged tight the purse strings and tossed the purse back onto the steps where it thudded at Honor’s feet. He looked up at her wondering face.

“And master bade me give you this message. The price named, he says, was but to establish value. As to the form of payment, he says . . .” Jinner stopped. He let out a deflated sigh and scratched the back of his neck. “Curse the Turk’s mother for a whore, I swear the blasted speech was in my head when I set out.” He leaned over his oars and puckered his face, puzzling to remember. Suddenly he cried, “That’s it!” He closed his eyes and squeezed out the remnant of the message in rapid, concentrated spurts. “As to the form of payment, he suggests that you . . . find a more imaginative method . . . of discharging the debt . . . and . . . he looks forward to settling accounts . . . when next you meet.”

His eyes popped open in relief. “And now I’m lightened of that ballast I’ll say farewell in earnest, m’lady.”

He pulled on the oars, and the skiff nosed out into the river.

Honor stared after it for a long moment, amazed. Thornleigh did not want money after all. He wanted her. With a snort at his insulting suggestion, she snatched up the purse. Did he think she was an object to be bargained for, stamped with a price like the gamekeeper’s blowsy wife? And yet, as Jinner’s lantern faded and darkness cloaked her face, she felt her stiff mask of indignation slip. For imagination tugged like a restless child hand-held by its mother at the fair. What might it be like to settle this account Thornleigh-style.

19

“F
ive pounds. That’s all I need,” Honor implored. “Just enough to transport this cargo to safety. It’s urgent, or I wouldn’t be asking.”

“Nor accepting my invitation to dine,” Thomas Cromwell added dryly across the table. They were eating alone in his office in the King’s palace of Whitehall.

“Don’t think I’m ungrateful for the help you’ve given us,” Honor said. “The intelligence at the harbors, the small checks against the Lord Chancellor’s agents—all these have been a blessed relief. But you can’t imagine the expense of the missions. Wages for the crews. Accommodation in Flanders for the refugees. Citizens’ papers to make up. And all the palms to be gilded along the way. It’s endless.”

“You’ll manage. You always do. Another glass of burgundy?”

Cromwell’s ink-stained fingers reached across the remains of his meal for the decanter. The dishes of stewed beef, leeks, partridge, figs, and sweetmeats were shadowed by stacks of ledgers and papers which, here and on other tables, crammed his small office. “Or I have a fine malmsey if you’d prefer,” he said. “A gift from Lady Hales.”

“How good of her,” Honor murmured. Her politeness was strained, for she was biting back the urge to continue pressing for the money. But Cromwell, she had learned, could not be rushed. She had organized four escapes since Frish’s flight to Bruges six months ago—eleven people dispatched to safety on Thornleigh’s ships so far—and Cromwell had often been an asset, even if his pace of doing things was never quick enough to satisfy Honor. She held up her hand to refuse the wine. “And what’s the attorney-general’s wife angling for these days?”

“Tin mining license,” Cromwell said, cutting himself a slice of cheese. “On land I own in Devon.”

“Formerly Cardinal Wolsey’s?”

He grunted assent as he savored a mouthful of the cheese. Honor could not help smiling, intrigued as always by the man’s coolness. At the mention of his profit from his former master’s fall he showed no sign of remorse—nor, indeed, of triumph, although Wolsey’s death had been Cromwell’s making. He had organized the disposal of the Cardinal’s vast lands to the great financial benefit of the King—the renamed Whitehall Palace had been Wolsey’s York Place—and Cromwell had proceeded to put on the dead Cardinal’s status and power like a discarded cloak. But he wore it with indifference. Honor knew his gratification lay elsewhere. Wolsey and Cromwell were utterly different men.