The Spymaster's Daughter (31 page)

She shivered a little and prayed that they had only brigands to fear, and not desperate men trying to save themselves from the rack in the Tower.

After what seemed hours, she could sense in the dryer, warmer air that they had moved away from the Thames and into the woods on the road north. Clamping her teeth together, she hung on to the swaying, lurching wagon, hitting every bump and hump in the road. Surely she was being pulled by the most cloddish, ill-gaited horses in the realm. She would complain to Robert Pauley about his taste in horseflesh, if she were still able to speak when they stopped. She grimaced to herself. Perhaps complaints were not called for from an unwanted passenger.

She shivered a little, knowing she could not pretend even to herself that this was a jest on Robert. The road ahead was too full of danger. All the local sheriff's men could not protect the roads from bands of thieves that would as soon take lives as a wagon and horses with empty ale casks.

Still, she understood why he had chosen the big Percherons. They could pull heavy loads and make seven miles an hour, day after day.

She shifted here and there, but still could not get herself comfortable. Endurance was called for, a quality every intelligencer must have. In this ale wagon, that important skill found her.

Frances guessed it was near three hours, with the sun beginning to sink down to the western treetops, before Robert stopped in an inn yard to water the horses and his throat. She welcomed the opportunity to assess her bruises, though she wondered at her ill planning—a flask of ale, some bread, and cheese had been forgotten in her haste.

Robert had not been so negligent. She heard the sound of ale leaving a flask and making its way down his throat. Next the scent of the sun-warmed bread and ripe cheese reached her, and her stomach rumbled so that she thought sure to be found out. Another hour, she promised herself, her lips pressed tight, and it would be too late to return her to Greenwich…just until the sun was truly gone. She hung on.

Last light was still shining through the wooded verge some time later, when Robert hauled on the reins and the wagon stopped so suddenly that Frances was thrown against the barrels. At her outcry she was discovered.

Robert jumped down from the seat and climbed onto the wagon. “What folly is this?” His hand grabbed hold of her leg and pulled. “Come out of there, boy!”

“Stop!” she shouted, as if he still followed her orders.

He began to shake her hard and her cap flew off. “Frances?” He stared at her, dropped his arms, then reached to touch her hair. “Your lovely hair…”

“Off to the wig maker's, in anticipation of my return,” she answered, brushing the dust from her breeches, trying to show a casual manner she did not feel. “I asked you to take me,” she reminded him.

“Ah, I see. This deception is a fault of mine.”

She nodded vigorously, trying to hide her fear and rubbing her arms contritely, hoping that the sight of her bruises would elicit some forgiveness.

“I could put you on the next cart going toward the river.”

“Aye, you could, but I pray you won't.”

He frowned. “Prayer is indeed called for, my lad.”

“I pray that I will be an intelligencer in all ways once in my life.” Her voice trailed away, though he heard her next words, which were scarce more than a breath: “Until Philip returns and I am shut away forever.”

He took hold of the lead horses' lines and pulled the wagon farther onto the verge, where all four began to crop the grass.

Robert turned his stern face to her. His words were harshly spoken. “Now, lad, we need wood for our supper fire.”

She lifted her head, hope in her voice. “So you will allow me to be an intelligencer in truth and be part of this deception?”

“Since you act deception so well…” He bit down on his angry
words, but continued firmly. “I will allow you to get the firewood, boy, and mind you it be dry.”

Frances walked about, gathering twigs as large as she could, piling them in the crook of one arm, almost wishing she had an apron to fill. A little proud, she raced back and dropped them in front of Robert.

“Two times as much,” he said without looking up at her.

He was testing her, and she knew it. However, she was determined not to fail, and this time took off her doublet, filling it with all the dry wood she could find, though it grew darker as she bent to her work, aware with every low bow that she was aching in almost every joint.

“There!” she said, triumphantly emptying her doublet on the ground in front of him, expecting his praise.

“Did you see a stream?”

“Aye.”

“Fill this pot,” he said, pointing to a small black iron pot hanging on a hook from the side of the dray. He rested his back against a tree trunk, a contented smile on his face.

“What are
you
doing?” she said, tired of being used like a…well, like a servant.

“I am resting, my lad, since I'm the brewer and you my apprentice. It is a position you sought, is it not?”

In ill temper, she snatched the pot from its hook, washed it in the stream, and filled it with water. If he thought to show her a servant's way, then she would be a good one. An intelligencer, like an actor, must learn many parts.

When she returned with the pot full, he motioned to the buckets hanging alongside the dray. “Fill them several times for each horse. These big horses need thirty gallons a day.”

She held their pails while they drank, lest they turn them over, Claudius nudging her shoulder for more. “You big clod,” she whispered,
as he flicked an ear closer. She liked him. He was warm and friendly, and she needed both.

It was full dark when Frances finished, having damned herself a dozen times for this fool's errand and having no kind thought of Robert. She shivered a little.

“Come to the fire if you need to warm yourself,” Robert said, compassion in his voice. “When the sun goes down it can be cold nights.”

“I am
very
warm,” she said, watching him throw some grain into the boiling pot hanging from a wood tripod. “I've worked like a horse; now will I eat like one?”

“They have been kind enough to allow us some of their grain and dine only on grass.”

“Grain and water?” Her stomach spoke its hunger.

“Perhaps some bread and cheese, as well.” He grinned. “Then I'll send you packing back to Greenwich on the next decent coach. By this time, I think you are eager to go.”

His words erased her aches. She knelt near him, prayerfully. “Please, Robert, please give me this one chance to show what I can do.”

“I would think you have shown that by now.” He knelt to stir the pot, the grain beginning to thicken. “If I allow you your desire, Sir Philip—your husband—will see I never come out of Fleet Prison.”

She sat suddenly. “He will not care so long as I do not make him a cuckold.”

He did not look at her, continuing to stir the pot. “I cannot promise that.”

Frances stared at him, her heart beating so wildly that he must see it, her lips trembling, all the while searching for something to say and finding only the ridiculous. “Then you make no mind of my short hair.”

Robert handed her a spoonful of hot oats, which she was hungry enough to eat. And another after that. “Can you perform apprentice work with a better will?”

“Yes.”

“And cease to talk when I ask it of you?”

Her answer came more reluctantly this time. “Yes.”

“A lad may be needed. I do not know, but sending you back could make gossip that could reach the Plough Inn and alert the plotters when now they are sure of their success.” He looked into her face. “You make a right handsome boy, Frances, but a far prettier maid.” He knew to turn his back at the look on her face and roll up in his cloak. “We'll start again as soon as the horses rest,” he muttered.

“Where will I sleep?”

For answer she heard his steady breathing and crawled under one edge of his cloak, her back to his, his warmth her mantle. The earthy green scent of trees and grass cooling after a warm day filled her lungs, reminding her of the woodland at Barn Elms. Behind her an owl hooted.

With difficulty, Robert breathed steadily as if asleep, until sleep came truly.

O
N THE
R
OAD TO
C
HARTLEY

T
he brewer and his apprentice had filled their ale barrels and loaded the dray at the Burton Brewery, where some of Walsingham's Staffordshire men had taken charge. Frances's shoulders ached from carrying the smaller kegs, including one with the cipher for Queen Mary, from the brewery to the dray, as any good apprentice would. A deeper ache came from sleeping on the cold stone floor.

For half the night she had wondered why she had ever thought a man's life was easier in this world. In the morning, she had waked to find Robert's doublet tucked about her shoulders and the man scent of him in her nostrils. When had he placed his doublet there? Had he watched her sleeping? She smiled at such a thought and knew the wondering would stay with her far longer than her aching shoulders.

She averted her eyes from the man beside her driving the dray, yet saw all of him, his image engraved on her mind, his strong hands grasping the reins in front of her. He began to sing as he had that first day on their way from Barn Elms to London.

He was teasing her. A man who was on a mission to fool the Scots queen, and almost surely to save the queen of England's life and her realm from papist conquest, could yet sing a joyous song. She could sing one as well. So she did, lifting her voice to blend with his.

He turned his face to her, smiling, and despite the woodland's shade, she saw that his eyes were bright with good humor.

“By my faith, lad, you are a daring woman,” he said, laughing at the absurdity of his words.

“Some would call me foolish, mad even.”

“Aye, that, too,” he said, opening his shirt to allow the cooler air under the trees to reach his skin. “And you should never wear the white mask again over your…lovely face. Why pretend youth when you own it?”

Frances turned her head from his sweet words, but not before she had allowed herself to look upon his broad, muscled chest with a swatch of dark hair disappearing lower under the linen.

Her life was not over, she thought, hugging the idea to her heart, not over before it began, as she had feared. Then with one special insight came another: She could not turn aside from him, from what she now saw so clearly as a great and deeply felt love for Robert, a love she had felt for no other man, nor ever thought she could. Aye, Lady Frances Sidney, the wife of the realm's most admired
poet of love, a lady of the queen's presence, yearned for the arms of a bastard and landless commoner, a servant. She ached with a love that ravaged through her like a sweet plague.

She had not been able to accept her forbidden feelings at court, but here in the countryside atop this dray in disguise there were no distinctions of rank. In truth she had new sight to see what had ere now been so poorly lit.

Once, she had thought that being an intelligencer was all she wanted in this world, having given up hope of more.

Yet the hope had returned with Robert. She wanted more. It was not greed, but need that had grown in her since first she had looked on him. She had not known it at once, indeed had misnamed such shadowed feelings, and pushed them away when they first began to clear. How blind she had been. What months she had wasted.