The Traitor's Daughter (3 page)

She was not surprised.
Because of Father.
Yet still, it stung.

“Ah, wife,” he said, his voice suddenly loud and sorrowful, loud enough for the spy to hear, “a prison is a grave for burying men alive. It is a little world of woe.”

His theatrical words were deliberate, Kate knew—a poetic lament that might be expected from a playwright, for until a year ago that was how he had made his living, meager though it was. He could bewitch you with words. He had bewitched Kate from the moment she'd been introduced to him at the playhouse called the Theatre.

“And how are
you,
my love?” he asked. This time his simple sincerity rang through.

“Well. Very well.”

“And your lady grandmother?”

“A rock.” Her gratitude to her grandmother was heartfelt. The lady was an island of tolerance in a sea of mistrust. “You will be welcome in her house.”

“We'll find our own house soon, I promise.”

She smiled at him for that.

The bells of St. Saviour's chimed the hour. The young man selling crucifixes moved away. Kate watched him go. He was well beyond hearing them now, but still she lowered her voice to a mere whisper. “Owen, we are summoned.”

It startled him. “Now?”

“Now.”

He ran a grimy hand over his stubbled chin. “I need to wash. Shave.”

“You need to
eat.
” Fury at his mistreatment shot through her again. “They starved you!”

He shrugged. “No more than the others.”

If only he had let her give that wretched deputy more silver! For another few pounds he would have had meat and drink fit for the Masters. But she knew why he had refused. He'd needed to bear the misery, because it was essential that the Catholic inmates accept him as a fellow sufferer. What those inmates did not know, and must never know, was the real reason he had agreed to suffer. In this battle for England, Owen had pledged himself to protect Her Majesty. And so had Kate.

“Come,” she said, “I have a boat waiting.”

He took her elbow. The squeeze he gave it told her how much he would rather be alone with her than hurrying to a meeting. But he said steadily, “Lead on.”

2

Enemies of the Queen

K
ate and Owen took the wherry. As they were rowed across the Thames they were so locked in looking at each other she scarcely noticed the river traffic. She had a hundred questions for him, but they could not talk openly in front of the wherryman. Nor could they touch the way they longed to. She felt Owen's hot impatience to be alone with her, and she could only tell him with her eyes:
Soon, my love.
She had made Matthew Buckland promise to assign him no more missions until absolutely necessary. A few weeks of peace and quiet would do her husband a world of good. Heaven knew he had earned it.

“God bless her!” the wherryman blurted. “Look, that's Her Majesty, yonder!” He nodded westward.

They looked upriver. The magnificent royal barge was unmistakable even at this distance. The crimson silk banners rippled in the breeze and sunlight gleamed off the dazzling gilt prow and the dozen pairs of oars arcing and dipping. Kate thought it looked like some golden insect gliding over the water. Small craft swarmed around it, with wherry passengers and fishermen alike eager to see Her Majesty up close. The barge was passing Blackfriars where people cheered from the riverbank. More people were rushing out of houses and shops all the way east to the Steelyard, the Baltic merchants' wharf where a loading crane was noisily at work. Someone there tooted a horn. Kate and Owen shared a smile. The people of England loved their queen and none were more effusive in their affection than Londoners. Cries of “God save Your Majesty!” always rang from the riverbank whenever her barge brought her from Whitehall to dine at some friend's riverside mansion, or merely to take the cool river air on a sultry summer night while her musicians serenaded her.

“It's early for her to be abroad,” Kate said. Everyone with any connection to the court knew that the Queen did not enjoy rising early. On the morning of Kate's sixteenth birthday her father had presented her to Her Majesty, the start of a busy day for the sovereign, and on the way he had cautioned her that their royal hostess would not be at her best.
Downright grumpy,
he had said with a wink. It had made Kate nervous. But Elizabeth, in welcoming her to Whitehall Palace, had been gently cordial—for Father's sake, Kate had quickly realized. She had been in awe at the easy camaraderie between the two. “Your father is my well-beloved friend,” Elizabeth had said with such quiet sincerity that Kate, making her curtsy, had swelled with pride.

“Even a queen must revel in the glory of this morning,” Owen said. The warmth in his voice told Kate how thrilled he was to be free and with her again. He was looking at her, not the Queen. She grinned. A glorious morning indeed!

They alighted at the Old Swan Stairs in the lee of the bridge. Buildings crammed the riverside, houses cheek by jowl with businesses: a cooper's shed, a tavern, a chandlery, a brewery that belched steam from its boiling cauldrons. Seagulls wheeled and screeched. More wherries nudged the stone steps, depositing or taking on passengers at the busy landing, but many had come to the water's edge and peered upriver at the progress of the Queen. Neighbors chatted with neighbors, pointing at the royal barge. Women came out of doors wiping their hands on their aprons, eager to have a look. A couple of cooper's apprentices emerged, hammers still in hand. Three boys halted their makeshift game of football with a pig's bladder and one shinnied up a post for a better view. Shutters banged open. An old couple gazed out from a second-story window. Even the squeak and grind of the Steelyard loading crane went silent.

Owen and Kate, though, could not tarry. He took her hand with a gleam of impatience in his eyes that told her he was as eager as she was to get the meeting with Matthew over with. They headed north on Swan Alley, passing under laundry strung between houses. The breeze lifted the clothes, making shirts and hose seem to dance a jig. The moment they passed the eaves of the first houses he tugged her into a narrow lane. He backed her against a recessed doorway. “My Kate,” he said, half moan, half sigh.

Their kiss was long and deep, fired by six months of pent-up yearning. Heat coursed through Kate from her lips to her toes. Any lingering worry that Owen's ordeal had damaged him dissolved in the loving crush of his arms. When he finally eased his embrace it was only to kiss her throat, murmuring, “I wanted to do that from the moment I saw you at the gate.”

She let out a laugh of delight, still catching her breath from their kiss. “All wives should send their husbands to prison if such passion is their reward.”

“Then all husbands would have to be married to you, for you alone can light this fire.” He chuckled even as he frowned at his own words. “Now, that's a thought to drive a man mad!” He gazed at her and his tone became serious. “No, Kate, you are mine, all mine. And as soon as I get you alone at Her Ladyship's house, I'll—”

“Wash?”

He winced. “Do I stink so badly?”

“Most foully, my love.” She wrapped her arms around him.

“Foul or sweet, you are my heart's desire. Kiss me.”

He obliged with fervor.

A scream from the riverbank broke their kiss. Curious, they stepped out of the lane and looked back down Swan Alley. People were shouting in alarm, running, pointing westward. Kate and Owen exchanged a glance. Was a thief on the loose? A man burst from a doorway at her elbow. Owen grabbed her to keep the man from knocking her down. “Watch where you tread!” Owen warned him, his voice a snarl, a sound Kate had never heard from him before.
He needed it in prison,
she thought with a shiver.

“What's amiss?” she asked the man, a baker by the look of his flour-dusted jerkin. He looked strangely distraught.

“Lord save us!” he cried. He jerked his thumb to the second story behind him. “I saw it from up there. Saw with my own eyes!”

“Saw what?”

“Her Majesty's been shot!”

Kate's heart thudded. She groped for Owen's hand. They shared a horrified glance.
Assassinated!
In her mind she saw the Queen lying on her gilded barge in a crimson pool of blood. They looked toward the river where the people's shouting had become louder, panicky.

The baker dashed toward the crowd and so did Kate and Owen. They found people crowded to the very edge of the water stairs, everyone shouting, gesturing, alarm on every face. A woman stood weeping, hands helplessly on her head. Men were running west on Waterman's Row.

“Is she dead?” the baker called out.

“Aye, murdered!” a woman wailed.

“No, but deathly wounded!” a man said. “She's taken a bullet in the head!”

“No, she's drowned!” someone cried. “Look!”

Utter confusion, Kate thought. She and Owen had pushed through the crowd to the water's edge, straining to see the royal barge. It had stopped and was slewed sideways in the water. Impossible to make out faces at this distance, but the hectic activity on it and on boats all around it was clear. Soldiers of the Palace Guard moved quickly along the barge's side decks. Its many oars were flailing in disorder. Dozens of small boats had swarmed closer and people on them stood shouting, wildly gesticulating, causing their craft to wallow dangerously. A man who'd fallen overboard splashed with piercing cries.

Everyone around Kate was shouting, some saying the Queen lay dead, some that she was bleeding from the head, some that the bullet had torn into her chest.
But how can they know?
she thought. The barge was too far away.
Panic is making them see things.
Panic thrashed inside her, too, and she struggled to subdue it.
Real information, that's what we need. From a trusted source.

Owen demanded of the man next to him, “Where did the shot come from? The barge? A boat? The riverbank?”

The man threw up his arms in despair. “Who knows?”

“The Steelyard, looks like,” a fat woman answered. “From my window I saw folk there scurrying about. It's the poxy foreigners. They've murdered Her Majesty!”

Owen turned to Kate. “Go back to Her Ladyship's. Stay there.” He pushed back through the crowd.

She called after him, following him, “Where are you going?”

“After the villain.” He was making for Waterman's Row, which led to the Steelyard. “Go back, Kate. Stay with Lady Thornleigh.”

“No!” She caught up with him. “You can't do this.”

“Yes, from the Steelyard he can't have got far.”

“Don't! You'd be showing your true colors.”
Showing you're loyal to the Queen,
she meant, but could not say that with so many people near. “Come with me to our friend.” She hoped Matthew could tell them what was happening. “Owen, we might be needed now more than ever.”

He stopped. She saw that her words had sunk in. He threw a tortured glance toward the Steelyard. “But if he escapes—”

“He may have already. Or he may have been captured. Either way, scores of men will be dealing with it, all of them closer than you to where it happened.”

He looked at her, torn. She knew how hard this was for him—to abandon action, to simply wait. But he gave a tight nod. “You're right.”

A woman dropped to her knees at the edge of the crowd, hands clasped in prayer as Kate and Owen hurried up Swan Street.

 

The alehouse was snugged into a recess of Little Elbow Lane. Its customary afternoon trade was a thin scatter of workingmen, but when Kate and Owen arrived it was well before noon and no one was there but the barkeep, Mistress Tern. She owned the place.

“Well, what news?” she demanded gruffly as she mopped the bar. She was a blowsy Cornishwoman with unkempt red hair and a short temper. When Kate and Owen had been here before she had never asked their business, just took their coins with a scowl. Owen called her the Red Cow. “They say Her Majesty's dead,” she said. “Is it true?”

“We know no more than you do,” Owen said.

“My man's run off to see for himself,” she said, flapping her gray rag toward the door. “Ran out like a headless hen, the fool. I told him word will come raging in here soon enough.” She resumed mopping the bar. “Your gentleman friend ain't come yet, if that's who you've come to see.”

“Thank you,” Kate said. “We'll wait.”

They went up the stairs to the back room. It was small and dark, a scarred wooden table and three stools by the hearth its only furniture. Kate went to the window and closed the shutters. The window, unglazed, overlooked a smithy. When she'd been here before there had been a strong smell of charcoal. Not this morning. No clanging of the anvil, either. The whole city seemed quiet, as though holding its breath, waiting for the dreaded report of the Queen's death to be confirmed.

“He's late,” Owen said, beginning to pace.

“Caught up in the panic?” Kate did not dare speak her fear: that Matthew and the Queen's councillors at Whitehall Palace lay dead, too. A unified assault.

Owen ran a hand over his stubbled head, looking shaken. “Christ, I wish we knew!”

A knock on the door. Owen wheeled around. Kate's eyes locked on the door.
Matthew?
“Yes?” Owen said.

Mistress Tern came in. “You'll be wantin' ale, I warrant.” She stood with her hands on her hips as though in a challenge. “The world don't stop for one woman's passin'.”

“No, we want nothing,” Owen said harshly, then muttered under his breath, “Heartless cow,” as he went back to pacing.

“Yes, ale, please, mistress,” Kate said. “And have you some meat?”

“Aye, rabbit stew, made it m'self. Or there's cold pig's feet.”

Kate ignored Owen's grimace. “We'll have the stew,” she said. “Bread, too, if you have it.” When they were alone again she said to him, “You need food.”

“Hers will be a witch's brew.” He stopped pacing, and his tone turned deadly serious. “Kate, if he's not coming we need to find out for ourselves.”

“I know,” she granted. “Eat. Then we'll decide.”

She sat down on a stool by the cold hearth. Owen came to her and took her hand to give comfort, and to take it. They both held tight. Far-off church bells blithely clanged the hour. The ringers could not yet have heard the news. Part of Kate's brain registered the ring pattern:
3-1-2-1-3-2.
Her fear churned.
Queen Elizabeth, dead.
There could be no greater disaster. She imagined the horrifying future unfolding. Elizabeth was childless—had never married—and her undisputed successor was her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of the Scots, in Kate's eyes the most dangerous woman in England. Elizabeth and her council considered Mary such a menace to Elizabeth they had kept her under house arrest for over a decade. Now, Mary would rejoice in ascending to the throne she had endlessly plotted to seize. But that would split England apart. Elizabeth had kept a firm hand on both radical religious factions, the Catholics and the Puritans, but without her steady authority they would leap at each other's throats. Throughout England Protestant nobles like Kate's father would oppose Mary and raise their retainers and tenants to fight, while the Catholic gentry and nobles would support her. There would be riots. Rebellion. Civil war. With the realm weakened, the mighty Philip of Spain would seize the opportunity to invade as he had always hungered to do. Mary would welcome his army. The pope would support him, too. In her mind Kate saw Spanish troop ships cutting through the narrow Channel . . . thousands of foreign soldiers roaring onto English shores . . . butchering villages on their march to London. England's green pastures would run red with blood. She saw loyal lords like her father leading out the ill-prepared city militias and being cut down . . . saw her father's head on a pike on London Bridge....