The Traitor's Daughter (10 page)

A wagon rattled past her mere inches from her toes. She halted in surprise and looked up to see she had reached busy Fleet Street. Stonecutters' hammers clanged to the east where they were rebuilding the stone tower of the Fleet Conduit. It was now topped by a new St. Christopher with stone angels ranged around the bottom. Maidservants and boy water-carriers moved to and from the fountain hefting their jugs of water. Kate turned and started the opposite way, toward the Fleet Ditch. It stank of the effluent from the leather tanneries who used it as a sewer, polluting the brisk autumn air. The Fleet prison lay just a hundred yards north, so some of the stink probably came from there. On the other side of the short bridge across the Fleet Ditch the street went up Ludgate Hill, then on through Ludgate. Just this side of the bridge was the Belle Sauvage Tavern. There, Kate remembered, Griffith had drunk his last tankard of ale. They had killed him on the hill.

She had taken only a few strides when a man came up from behind her and fell into step with her by her side, so startlingly close she thought he might be a pickpocket. She quickened her pace. He did as well, then took hold of her elbow.

“Let go,” she snapped. She tried to shrug him off, but he held her elbow firmly, his fingers digging into her through her sleeve. He was heavyset, with a wrestler's beefiness, far bigger than Kate. She was about to kick his shin, when another man coming from behind suddenly flanked her other side and pressed so close to her she was crammed between them. This one was no taller than she was, and skinny, but as grim faced as the wrestler as the two of them marched her on.

“What are you doing? Let me be!”

Neither man responded. They looked straight ahead as they walked. Then they slowed and she could do nothing else but slow with them, then stop. They turned her, all three of them wheeling as one. Unable to struggle free, Kate was frightened now. “I'll scream for a bailiff,” she said, trying to resist.

“Don't,” the skinny one said. She felt a sharp pressure at her side. A knife. He held it at her ribcage, its tip dulled only by the folds of her cloak.

“This way,” he said. Kate heard the French accent—
thees
way. Fear shot through her.
Castelnau sent them.
The beefy one jerked her to start her moving again.

“Where are you taking me?”

No response. She became stiff with dread.
Castelnau found out about me. Now his men are going to kill me. Like they killed Griffith.

They marched her north on Shoe Lane. The narrow, winding way was puddled and Kate's foot slid on a patch of mud, but the wrestler held her elbow so tightly she kept her footing. The pressure of the knife point at her side did not relent. She frantically stared at the few men and women they passed, willing someone to make eye contact and see her terror and stop these men. But people were few, and the shops—a pewterer, a catchpenny printer, a cobbler—showed no signs of life in the dim recesses beyond their mean windows. A scatter of men shouted at an open-air cockpit, oblivious as the Frenchmen marched Kate on. They reached the tenements of Oldborne House, where a ragged beggar held up his hand and croaked a plea to tell the lady's fortune.

“Let me go and I'll pay you well,” she told the Frenchmen. “This ring is worth—”

They halted her, stopping her words. They had come to a door. The skinny one opened it and the wrestler shoved Kate in. It opened onto a staircase, dark and smelling of something acrid that caused a faint burning at the back of Kate's throat. The smell was somehow familiar. The worn wooden steps creaked as she went up, the men behind her, the knife now prodding her back. The air became heavy and humid when she reached the top stair, where she came to another door.

“Open it,” the skinny one said with a prod of his knife. She opened the door and the wrestler nudged her forward. She stepped into a large room suddenly bright with sunlight from a dormer window. Three women were at work at tubs, scrubbing clothes on washboards. Their sleeves were rolled up, their faces pink and damp. Steam rose from a cauldron suspended over the fire in the hearth. Kate now recognized the acrid smell—the lye used in soap. This establishment was a laundry.

The washwomen idly glanced her way as the Frenchmen marched her through the room. The women seemed uninterested and turned back to their work.

Kate and her captors reached a doorway. The skinny one opened it. He pushed Kate in. It was a storeroom, with wicker baskets and a heap of linen sheets that gave off a rank odor of sweat. A small, high window cast a pale light. She heard the men retreat and she whirled around, about to try to run out the open door. But Ambassador Castelnau walked in. He closed the door behind him. His face bore none of his former bonhomie. His look now was watchful, yet searching, like a card player gauging the hand of his opponent.

“Our conversation was too brief, Mistress Lyon. There are questions I need answers to. First, where is your husband?”

Her heart was banging painfully. Was this questioning a prelude to her death? She thought of the gunman, the would-be assassin, perhaps at this moment being interrogated by men of the royal council with their agonizing methods, and her fear made her tremble. She sensed that her only hope with Castelnau lay in answering with the truth. “He has gone to Sussex, sir. To Petworth. He hopes to get a position as secretary to my lord Northumberland. I told you, as a marked man he must make his way as best he can.”

He considered this for a moment. “Second, have you told your father you intend to visit your relations in the north?”

“My father does not speak to me, sir. He has banished me and my husband from his house. My lady grandmother, Lady Thornleigh, has taken us in and I intend to tell her that my destination in the north is my aunt's house.”

He studied her for a moment. His face was unreadable. Then: “Third, and most important, would you be willing to take Queen Mary another letter along with your own?”

Kate's heart jumped. She forced her face to betray no hint of the thrill that coursed through her. She feigned surprise at the request. “Another, sir?”

At her apparent hesitation he said, “Benign, I assure you. From a well-wisher abroad.”

“Ah, I see. Then yes, indeed, sir. I am most willing to do anything to bring comfort to Queen Mary.”

He held out his hand. “Give me your Agnus Dei.”

That startled her, but she did as he asked, lifting the chain with its locket over her head and handing it to him.

“Now, your signet ring,” he said.

With a chill of understanding she tugged off her ring. The signet, a thornbush, was her family's emblem. Linked together, the two items marked her as a heretic criminal.

“Good,” Castelnau said, pocketing both. “Now we are each other's keepers. Wait to hear from me.” He turned to go, then stopped and turned back. His eyes bored into hers. “One last thing, mistress. Never,
ever
come to my house again.”

7

Through the Enemy's Gates

“H
e is exacting, Lyon, I warn you,” said Arthur Doncaster. “Especially about the men he allows near him. He has already rejected three supplicants for the post you seek.”

Owen nodded. He took his traveling companion's counsel seriously. It confirmed his conviction that gaining access to the Earl of Northumberland would not be easy. Doncaster, the earl's kinsman, would know.

They had slowed their horses to a walk. Doncaster looked weary from their day's ride from London. A flabby minor aristocrat in his mid-thirties, he was unused to physical hardship, and the two months he had spent in prison with Owen had been hard on him. He had not been talkative on their journey, but his energy seemed to have risen now that they were approaching Petworth House. Owen could see the flag on its stone tower rippling in the noonday breeze. He still wasn't sure exactly how Doncaster was related to the earl—a cousin's cousin on the distaff side, apparently—but it hardly mattered. Doncaster had an open invitation to this Sussex stronghold of his illustrious kinsman and that was passport enough for Owen. He was Doncaster's new friend.

“Then I must strive to impress,” Owen replied. “What exactly is he looking for in a secretary?”

“Hmm, I would say a man devout, loyal, courteous, and brave.”

“A paragon, by God! You make me quail, sir. I would not cast myself in the role of
a very perfect gentle knight.
” He had to smile, for in quoting Chaucer he felt he was back again with Kate in the moonlight. Yet these expectations of the earl were no jesting matter if they prevented his employment. “I had hoped he might be satisfied with a creature of mere honest learning.”

“He is a great man,” Doncaster said soberly, “known for alms-giving and piety. A valiant soldier, too. In the war with Scotland twenty years ago he distinguished himself commanding his troop at the siege of Leith. The defeated French commander even asked permission, in a compliment to my lord's valor, to surrender his sword to him rather than to the commander-in-chief, Lord Grey.”

Owen quipped to lighten his worry, “Then I take it he would not approve of my daily debauches?”

Doncaster smiled. “Not until we secure you the post.”

“As you think we shall?”

“Oh, most assuredly. His Lordship values my opinion. And you know in what high regard you stand with me.”

Owen had earned the high regard. In the Marshalsea he had shared with Doncaster the food Kate had bought from the marshal's deputy. Doncaster was such a weakling he would not have been able to defend his prison ration against the pack. Befriending him had been Owen's bid to increase his standing with all the Catholic inmates, for all were aware of Doncaster's connection to the earl. The friendship had served them both: Doncaster had retained his flab, and Owen was riding into Petworth. Yet food wasn't the only debt his companion owed Owen, if only he knew. At Owen's word, Matthew had ordered Doncaster's early release.

“Now,” Doncaster asked, “do you write in Chancery hand or Italian hand?”

“Both,” Owen assured him.

“Ah, that is good. His Lordship admires Italian hand. In fact, he admires all things Italian.”

Owen mused on that. From what he'd heard elsewhere he would not have supposed the earl to value such refinements. In the brief time he'd had since taking this assignment he had learned all he could about the man he hoped to work for. Henry Percy, eighth earl of Northumberland, was fifty years old and had come into his title after his elder brother, the seventh earl, had led a rebel army of several thousand Catholic supporters in a northern uprising against the Queen and was executed ten years ago. A year later, not long after Mary Stuart was taken into the Queen's custody, the new earl showed how much he was his brother's heir in allegiance by opening a clandestine correspondence with the Scottish bishop of Ross, one of Mary's agents in France, and in those letters Northumberland had offered to help Mary escape. But Elizabeth's agents had discovered his intentions and arrested him. After eighteen months in the Tower he was charged with treason. He threw himself on Elizabeth's mercy. She relented, perhaps because executing such a powerful peer would have incensed his supporters, influential landowners she could not afford to antagonize. Northumberland had been fined four thousand pounds and ordered to confine himself to his properties in Sussex.

Was he now conspiring against Her Majesty again? Plotting with foreign powers to assist their invasion? That's what Owen had to find out. Though Doncaster had murmured with approval about a possible future with Mary Stuart as Queen of England, Owen doubted he knew any details about the part his great kinsman might play in securing that future. Doncaster was an amateur academic, not a man of action. Sent as an adolescent to the English college in Douai in the Low Countries, he had entered its seminary run by exiled English Catholics, but had rejected the priesthood, saying the celibate life was not for him. He now lived in London among his books and canaries, contented in a liaison with his housekeeper, and grateful that his indolent life was supported by a stipend from the earl.

The clanging of hammers made Owen look toward the tower ahead.

“His Lordship is abuilding,” said Doncaster. “He means to make the old house grand.”

Old indeed, Owen thought, eyeing the place—a medieval compound, more castle than house. A moat. High stone walls enclosing the compound. Inside it, a square stone tower that rose six stories. A timber-framed gatehouse whose raised portcullis led arrivals through the gatehouse as if through a tunnel into the courtyard. Blocks of living quarters with steeply peaked roofs that, with the tower, were all that was visible above the encircling walls. On the eastern side lay a pond. Behind all of this stretched the earl's forest. Petworth House was an ancient stronghold which the great Northumbrian family of Percy had owned for over four hundred years, ever since Queen Adeliza, widow of Henry I, gave it to her brother as a wedding gift when he'd married Agnes Percy.

Wedding gift,
Owen thought, and again he saw Kate in her dress of cornflower blue the day they'd pledged their vows in quiet St. Olav's church on Silver Street. A simple dress, yet Kate so radiant she would have put a fairy queen to shame. Her dark hair bright with bluebells. Her dark eyes aglow.
For me.
The thought never failed to stir him—that this marvelous woman was his. But always, on the heels of that thrill, came the hard reminder that he had taken her away from her life of ease and plenty. That was clear from the very day of their wedding. No lavish ceremony, as was her due as daughter of a baron. Her father had attended, for he loved Kate, and had been scrupulously polite, standing as a witness with his wife, but Owen had seen in Lord Thornleigh's stern gaze how poor a showing he expected of the hard-up playwright who was now his son-in-law. Owen had made a silent promise alongside his spoken vows. He would win preferment at court somehow and give Kate the life she deserved.

Where was she now? Had she made contact with Ambassador Castelnau? It made him sick to think of her being sent into harm's way. Damn Matthew for letting her do this! Owen wished he'd had more time to advise her, warn her of the traps and pitfalls for a double spy. But he had to push that worry to the back of his mind. Kate was clever.
And my mission is here,
he told himself. He had to accept that Kate was on her own.

He was aware of a low rumbling. It sent a vibration up from the ground, making his horse skittish. He turned in the saddle. A body of cantering horsemen was cresting the rise on the road behind him. They spilled over the crest and he saw there were at least twenty, maybe thirty, pounding on straight for him and Doncaster.

“Are we under attack?” he asked. A jest—but seeing the oncoming horde lifted the hairs on his forearms.

Doncaster was anxiously urging his mount to the side of the road. “Move, Lyon. They won't stop.”

Owen spurred his horse, bounding to join Doncaster on the grassy verge. “Who are they?”

Doncaster didn't speak as the horde thundered past them. Men with mud-caked boots and sweat-grimed faces and blood-streaked jerkins. They were laughing. One tooted a horn in a sound like a fart. More hoots of laughter. They had bloodshot eyes, and a few grinning fellows were riding loose as scarecrows. Owen had enjoyed enough carouses to know what made them so merry. Drunk. A pack of braying dogs tore along in their wake.

Doncaster wiped flecks of mud from his cheek as the pounding of hooves diminished. He spat out a gob of dusty phlegm. “My lord's hunting party.”

The earl! Owen stood in his stirrups, craning to see the lead horseman, but the pack was too far past now, riding straight for Petworth House. In moments the tunnel through the gatehouse had swallowed them, dogs and all. He turned back to see the rear guard come on: over a dozen servants on foot, three leading packhorses slung with deer carcasses, and another horse slung with partridge and grouse. The servants, muddy and blood-speckled, trudged quickly as though anxious to attend their masters or suffer for lagging behind.

“Come on,” said Doncaster, clucking his mount back onto the road. “I'll introduce you.”

They trotted ahead of the servants and reached the gatehouse.

The courtyard was a clamor of dismounting hunters and tired, flubbering horses. Of creaking leather and jangling harnesses. Of tramping feet as grooms rushed to take the men's mounts and servants hurried from the house. Of yapping dogs running in excited circles.

Owen and Doncaster skirted the wall, keeping out of the way as Owen asked, “Which is His Lordship?”

“There.” Doncaster nodded to a tall, lean man striding away from his horse followed by two servants from the house whom he barely glanced at as he tossed his sweat-stiff gauntlets to one and took a goblet offered by the other. He stopped long enough to quaff down the refreshment, probably ale. Owen studied him. So this was the Earl of Northumberland. Ruddy face glistening with sweat. Sharp cheekbones, hooded eyes, bony hands. Short russet beard scraggly with twisting hairs, and a russet moustache, outgrown like two drooping wings. His fawn-colored velvet doublet was daubed with the blood of his prey.

Northumberland wiped drops of ale from his moustache with the look of a man well satisfied. He belched. Then he strode to the middle of the throng, his eyes on the gatehouse, where the servants were straggling in with the packhorses. Half a dozen panting dogs wove circles around him. He stopped, fists on hips, and bellowed, “Where's my buck?”

“Here, my lord!” called a servant. He rushed forward leading a trotting packhorse so the big deer carcass on the horse's back jerked as if still in its death throes. The body was intact, unlike the other two carcasses, which had been field dressed, their organs removed. Owen understood now why the hunters had been in a hurry to get this buck here: if not gutted within an hour or two after death, the meat would taste too gamey.

Servants from the house had carried out a rough wooden table, and now three brawny lackeys carried the buck to the table and slung it down. The body, as huge as a steer, landed with a thud on its back, its antlered head hanging off the table's edge, its tongue lolling. Two lackeys held the buck's hind legs splayed open. Northumberland drew his long dagger and strode to the table, brandishing the blade in a show: the conqueror. His men chuckled.

With a steady hand he slit the buck's belly. He was skilled at this, Owen noted, cutting only through skin and a thin layer of muscle, not near the entrails—a nick in the bladder or intestine would allow urine or feces to taint the meat. He cut around the anus so it was free and could be removed, then severed the windpipe. He nodded to his lackeys, who then let the animal loll onto its side to let the organs spill out. Northumberland cut away the diaphragm and stomach and severed the center of the ribs. He reached up inside with his bare hands. A dozen dogs circled, yelping, frantic at the scent. He lifted out a fistful of gore and held it high. His hunting fellows grinned. Owen saw what Northumberland held: the buck's heart. He slapped it down on the table and with his blade chopped it into four sections. These he tossed into the air for the dogs. They leapt in a frenzy of barking. The bloody chunks landed in the dirt, and the jaws of four victors snapped up the prizes and gobbled them.

Northumberland laughed. An elderly servant shambled forward and handed him a linen towel, which he used to wipe the gore off his dagger. He sheathed the blade, and as he wiped blood off his hands his eyes ranged over his chattering hunting companions who encircled him. Looking past them, his gaze landed on Doncaster at the wall. “Arthur!” he shouted good-humoredly. “God's teeth, man, when did you creep in?”

Doncaster beamed and blushed. He bowed and called back, flustered, “Good my lord, you passed us on the road not five minutes ago.”

“I did?” Northumberland snorted a laugh. “Didn't even see you. So they let you out, eh? A free man?”

“Indeed, my lord, and right glad I am to join your noble self.” As he spoke he hastened forward. Owen judged it politic to follow.

Seeing his kinsman bow as he came, Northumberland's eyes seemed to glint with mischief. He whipped out his dagger again. Turning to the buck he grabbed one of its rear legs, lifted it, and hacked off the testicles. Arm outstretched, he offered them to Doncaster. “For you, Arthur. An inspiration to grow some.”

The earl's men hooted with laughter. Doncaster halted, appalled.

Northumberland grinned at his own jest. “No? Not to your taste? Well, my dogs will enjoy the treat.” He tossed the testicles, and the dogs leapt for them.