The Traitor's Daughter (31 page)

22

Red Moon

K
ate steadied herself against a yew tree on Tower Hill. Breaths sawed her throat, raw from her haste, her fear. Her legs felt spongy from shock. Robert . . . with five other men on horseback! They had taken Owen. Marched him into a stand of trees. Moonlight whitened the grass to a frost, but did not penetrate the huddle of trees. It was a shaggy darkness spiked by a tangle of brambles.

Who were they? Why was Robert with them? Her mind was a roaring blank. All she knew was that Owen was in trouble.
My fault . . . my fault! I made him come!

She relived the events of the last few minutes, as if by halting them in her mind she could change the terrible thing that was happening.

“Where are you going at this time of night, my dear, all alone?” Marie de Castelnau had asked.

Kate had forced a pleasant smile. “Oh, I am not alone. My husband is with me. He's just ahead, but didn't see me stop. Please excuse me, I must make haste to join him.”

And she had carried on along Hart Street to catch up with him and Robert riding south on Seething Lane. Five horsemen had galloped past her. She saw them turn down Seething Lane. Nervously alert, she followed them. When she reached Tower Hill she saw with a lash of dread that they had surrounded Owen, an aggressive encirclement. And Robert had joined them! Stunned, she had held back. They had not seen her. They took Owen in among the trees, all of them still mounted except him. When they disappeared into that darkness she slid off her horse and tethered it to a bush, her hands trembling. She crept to the yew. Now, pressed against its knotted bark she strained to hear the men. Low words, like animal growls—too faint to tell what they were saying. Then a louder voice. Robert's.

“Whom do you report to?”

Silence.

“Tell me! Who? Who knows about me?”

Low words from Owen. She could not hear!

Robert's voice rose. “Speak now, you double-dealing heretic, or never speak again.”

A faint curse from Owen. A rising confusion of voices. “Pull out his tongue,” Robert ordered. “You won't need it, Lyon, if you won't speak. So tell me. Now!”

A cry from Owen. It ripped Kate's heart. She thudded her forehead against the tree to keep herself from rushing to him. She wanted to run in screaming her fury. But against six men? She would not get past the first.

She twisted around, looked toward Tower Street. Houses there. People. Run—get help! She pushed off from the yew tree, about to race to the nearest house, when a horse bolted out from behind her. She froze. The horseman pounded past, bent over the animal, oblivious to everything in his headlong dash.

Kate's heart sprang into her throat in joy.
It's Owen! Escaping!

But . . .
was
it him? Moonlight washed the figure white as a ghost. She could not tell. No one followed him.

An explosion of hoofbeats. Horses crashing through the wood. But not toward her—the opposite direction. The rumble of hooves broke out past the trees, became muffled, then faint. The men were riding north.

She held her breath. Had they
all
gone? Silence. In the distance a dog barked. From the houses on Tower Street came a faint trill of music. A flute. A spirited tune.

Wait,
she told herself.
Be sure.

But she could not wait. She had to know.

She moved into the trees. The naked branches cut the moonlight into a jagged netherworld of light and dark. Hard to see. She stumbled on a tree root. Brambles snagged her skirt, her sleeve. A horse snuffled. Kate twisted around. The animal was a silver chestnut, a white blaze down its nose. Owen's horse. Kate's heart plunged. The rider who had dashed past her was not him.

She softly called his name. “Owen?”

No answer.
Did he get out on foot? He's so clever, he surely found a way out.
“Owen?” The silence crowded into her ears.
Yes, he got away! That's why they all rode off—he escaped them!

Ahead something glinted on the ground. A rivulet, black as night. It snaked out at the base of a tree. Kate approached. A coldness squeezed her heart.

She rounded the tree. Her heart stopped.

Owen lay on his side, hands trussed behind his back. Blood blackened his open mouth. His tongue . . . hacked off. Blood blackened his throat . . . slashed.

Later, she would remember the savage colors. Silver blades of moonlight in his open eyes. Gold bubbles of moonlight in his blood. Blood-red vapor behind her eyes when she cast a wild, sightless glance at the moon. Blue-black pain in her chest where her heart thrashed like a caged beast.

She would not remember thudding to her knees. Pressing her sleeve against his throat as if it might seal up that obscene gash. Gasping for breath between the sobs that choked her. Grief and rage warring inside her like molten steel, shooting hot vomit up her throat. Heaving on all fours . . .

All she would remember was her stick-pale fingers shaking as she closed his eyes . . . fingers cold against his still-warm skin. And her words to Marie ricocheting in her skull:
I am not alone. My husband is with me. I must make haste to join him.
Words that would torture her until her dying day.

The notes of the flute on Tower Street flitted like bats across the barren waste ground and looped through the brambles.

Music.
Robert's letter scythed through her battered mind.
Look for joyful news the day after St. Crispin's Day. It will reach you as sweet music. . . .

She dragged herself to her feet, swaying as the truth cut into her. The man who had galloped past her was her brother. Owen's murderer. On his way to make another kill.

23

To Kill a Queen

T
he snow had stopped, but a cold wind had risen. It kicked up choppy waves that hacked at the bow of the wherry. Kate sat shivering in the stern, one hand gripping the gunwale, her knuckles as white as the moonlight. She had abandoned her horse on Tower Hill. Riding through the city would take too long. She was not a skilled horsewoman; Robert was. Riding fast, he would soon reach their grandmother's house. Kate's best hope was the river.

She had walked west on Thames Street, then down to the water to hail a wherry at the first landing past the bridge, the Old Swan Stairs. She had moved in a daze, her limbs stiff, her mind narrowed to a tunnel.
Think of what has to be done, nothing else.
If she let herself think, let herself see again Owen's gashed body lying in the darkness, the earth soaking up his blood, she would sink to her knees and wail like a soul deranged. She fought back scalding tears, a struggle that squeezed her breath like a hand at her throat. She would not weep. Not yet.

The wherryman, plying his oars, anxiously eyed her disheveled hair, her bloodied sleeve. Owen's blood . . . still damp from her wild effort to stanch his blood. She stared back at the wherryman and made no move to cover the stain with her cloak. What did it matter. Nothing mattered now except the mission. She was not acting for England now or even for the Queen. She was doing this for Owen. She would stop his killer.

She did not know how she would do it. Not yet. Robert was on his own murderous mission and had become such a monster he might kill her, too. She knew only that Owen lay dead because of her. It was a weight so crushing she could not imagine living with it. She would welcome death. Her words to Marie de Castelnau pulsed in her head:
My husband . . . I must make haste to join him.
But first she had to stop her brother. If she was not already too late.

“Hurry!” she ordered the wherryman. She yanked the purse from her cloak pocket and tossed it at his feet. “Row faster and it's yours. All of it.”

His eyes went wide at the windfall. “Aye, mistress!” He doubled his effort at the oars.

With her hair streaming in the wind, she looked ahead at the highway of black water. The waves punched the craft head-on as if to thwart her, but the flood tide was more powerful and it was with her. She felt as though the sea, with its last gasp, was pushing her toward her grandmother's house.

The city's landing stairs slid past. Cold Harbour. The Steelyard. Three Cranes. Queenhithe. Paul's Wharf. Blackfriars. Temple. Behind the deserted wharfs the lights of London flickered. The wherry passed a poor fisherman's smack struggling against the current, then passed a tilt boat making for Southwark, the male passengers under its canopy laughing drunkenly, off for a night's carouse. Moonlight glinted off the writhing river and grief slashed through Kate as she saw again the blades of moonlight glinting in her dead husband's eyes. In moonlight she saw only death. She would hate and abhor moonlight forever. As much as she hated her brother.

The jumbled lights of London were behind her now. The stately riverside mansions loomed on the shore. Leicester House. Arundel House. Somerset House. The Savoy.

There, at her grandmother's landing! The Queen's barge!

“Faster!” she cried to the wherryman.

He hauled on the oars, wheezing at his labor. Kate saw soldiers of the Palace Guard on her grandmother's landing. She counted fifteen, standing stolidly at their posts. The royal barge bobbed alongside, resplendent with golden prow, glassed cabin, and fluttering red silk banners. Aboard it the Queen's oarsmen lounged on their benches, and their voices carried by the wind, though faint, were relaxed. Kate's worst fear lifted. If the Queen had been killed the landing would be in a frenzied uproar. She was not too late.

Torches on posts lined the water stairs, the flames flaring in the wind, and also lined the path leading up through the sloping gardens. The light glinted off the steel helmets of soldiers posted along the terrace. Kate scanned the grim martial phalanx. They would not let her in. Her grandmother had told her she was not welcome tonight, and the captain of the guards would not let anyone through whose name he had not been given.

Should she land and inform the captain of the danger? But what could she say? That an assassin might be near?
Might
be—how foolish that would sound. He would detain her, question her, and precious minutes would slip by. And what evidence did she have? None.
She
would be the one who looked suspicious.

“Carry on!” she told the wherryman.

“But this be Lady Thornleigh's home. You said—”

“Carry
on!
”

He grunted and rowed on. She looked ahead to the next great waterfront residences: the Savoy, Russell House, Durham House, York House, then the river's scything curve that led to Whitehall Palace. She scanned the property adjoining her grandmother's, the Savoy. A derelict hulk, it lay dark. Unlike the neighboring mansions whose gardens sloped gently to the river, the Savoy stood with its feet in the water, which lapped the walls now at high tide. Once a grand palace, the Savoy had burned centuries ago and been rebuilt as a hospital, but that had been dissolved and the place had fallen into decay. Vagrants were known to camp within its barren rooms.

“There!” Kate told the wherryman, pointing. “Put in at the Savoy.”

He shot her a look that said he thought she was mad, but he obeyed and hauled for the Savoy landing. The moment the bow nudged the stone water stairs Kate scrambled out. “Keep the purse.”

The lower stairs were awash with cold water that soaked her shoes. The upper stairs, long disused, were filmed with river slime. She almost slipped as she reached the top and hurried along the landing. The wherryman's oars splashed as he turned back toward the city.

Kate looked up at the black bulk of the onetime palace. The arched river entrance was barred, and rising above it the wall loomed like a cliff face. The naked windows above were dark, but through one on the ground level a dim glow flickered. A dog inside barked. Kate flinched. The barking, aggressive, threatening, rumbled as though from a cave.

At the eastern end of the landing a flagstone walkway led around the side of the building. Kate passed it, hastening toward the adjacent property, her grandmother's. She stepped off the stone landing onto spongy ground. It was overgrown with weeds and low brambles, the spillover from the abandoned garden whose gray stone walls had crumbled to uneven levels like rotted teeth. It was not difficult to squeeze through a gap in the ruined wall. Above it she could see the night-dark roof and chimneys of her grandmother's house. She crossed the tangled garden, passing a collapsed garden shed. Its gray boards were splayed among the weeds and she had to slow down to pick her way over the planks slick with a film of melted snow. She reached the garden's far wall, thankful to find that it, too, had half crumbled. She clambered through a gap, then pushed through a swathe of brambles that pricked her hands and snagged her skirt. Before her rose her grandmother's garden wall of trim red brick.

The wall was higher than her head. She looked to the top where the black sky met a faint glow from the torches of the soldiers on the riverside terrace. Behind her, the dog's barking had stopped. Music, soft as summer wavelets, washed over the wall. Kate imagined the people inside blithely enjoying the remembrance supper. Her grandmother. Her father and stepmother. The Queen. And Robert? Had he arrived? He had an invitation so the soldiers would let him in. Their grandmother would welcome him. Would introduce him to Her Majesty. And then . . .

Frantically, she felt the wall for a way to climb over: a chink in the bricks, or a thick climbing ivy—some way to purchase a foothold. But in both directions as far as she could see the brickwork was bare and smooth, bleached by moonlight to the color of dried blood.

A ramp? She hurried back to the collapsed shed. Gripping a board, she wrestled it from the clutch of weeds. Splinters gouged her palms. The dog inside began barking again, making her skin crawl. She half expected the creature to bound from the building, snarling, and snatch her ankle in its jaws. She dragged the plank across the waste garden, hauled it up through the gap, then through the brambles. She was breathing hard by the time she got it to her grandmother's wall. Positioning it to make a ramp, she let go the top end and it clattered against the brickwork. She held her breath. Had the soldiers heard? The barking had abruptly stopped as though the animal was straining to hear the noise. An owl hooted in the distance. The dog set to barking again, more urgently than before.

Kate scrambled up the ramp. The board, half-rotted, creaked and bowed under her. Would it hold? She reached the end with a grunt of relief and stepped onto the top of the wall. It was so narrow she had to balance herself with arms akimbo like a tightrope acrobat she had seen as a child. Then, quickly, she crouched lest a soldier see her.

Her grandmother's grounds spread out before her, still and quiet except for the faint music from the house. The rose garden and its treed alley, the knot garden and its pathways—all were dark. To her right the soldiers on the riverfront terrace were lit by the flaring torches. To her left soldiers stood guard in the courtyard that fronted the Strand, the cobbled yard lit by more torches. In between lay the house. A scatter of soldiers were posted along its side, but, as she had expected, far fewer than those posted at the entrances on the river and at the street.

She looked straight down. She had no ramp on this side to ease her descent. The rose garden's perimeter path lay directly beneath her, a walkway of chipped stone. The gardener had left a wheelbarrow. Straightening, she moved a step sideways to avoid it, took a deep breath, and jumped.

She landed hard on the flinty path, pain flaring up her shinbones. Her bunched skirts hobbled her and she almost lost her balance. She crouched again, terrified that she'd been seen or heard.

Silence. Even the Savoy dog had stopped barking.

She hurried into the treed alley that led from the rose garden, making her way to the house. The trees formed a dark, leafless tunnel, their trunks close together, hiding her from view. In a flash of horror she saw again the dark trees that hid Owen's body . . . the ground soaking up his blood . . .

She reached the end of the alley and stopped to gauge the way ahead. The perimeter path ran parallel directly in front of her and beyond it rose the house, just a long stone's throw away. The ground-level window to her right was her target. It opened onto the wine cellar. She saw no soldiers along this section of the house.

She darted diagonally across the path and reached the wall. Pressing her back against it, catching her breath, she glanced both ways. No one. She turned and kneeled at the window. Unglazed, it was barred only by wooden shutters. How well she remembered this window from her childhood. When the wine merchant's men delivered the barrels they rolled them down a fixed ramp and she and her little brother would use it as a slide, careering down with whoops like bloodthirsty pirates boarding a prize vessel.

She pushed in the shutters. The stone wall was four feet thick. Through it the cellar lay in darkness. Kate sat and swung her legs over the casement, stretching them to feel for the ramp. When she felt it beneath her feet she pushed off. She slid down into the blackness. Her body was heavier than in those carefree childhood days, her slide now a slow descent. When she reached the bottom and got to her feet a sick feeling shuddered through her. Robert used to stand here with his boyish grin, poised to attack her with a hickory-stick sword. Was he here tonight, upstairs? Ready to attack her with cold steel?

She had no weapon. She had only her hate.

It took a few moments for her eyes to adjust to the blackness. The window was a pale square of moonlight. She wished she could close the shutters, but she needed the light to see her way. She could only hope no soldier would patrol along the house and notice the shutters were open.

She looked around. The cellar was a stone-ribbed, brick-vaulted undercroft. At the far end was a small, dim glow. The air was as cold as outside and tanged with the sweet-acidic smell of wine. The stronger odor was of damp masonry, cold and musty as a grave.

The music sounded louder here. Muffled by the floor, but more pronounced.

Kate made her way past the stacked barrels, making for the dim glow. When she turned the corner she came to its source: a candle on the table of the small room that was the domain of Her Ladyship's cellar man. She had taken a gamble that he would not be here. The wines for tonight's supper would have been decanted earlier. The cellar man, his work all but done, was likely relaxing with a pot of ale in the butler's pantry, on hand in case any change was requested.

Up the stairs she went. As she opened the door at the top the music instantly swelled. She was in the corridor between the kitchens and the great hall. Two servant girls bustling with platters disappeared into the screened passage that led to the hall. They hadn't noticed Kate. She heard the voices of the guests and their soft laughter.

Following the servants along the screened passage, she emerged at the foot of the hall. She stopped. The far end blazed with hanging candelabra above the four diners, who sat at a table covered with a white damask cloth spread with aromatic dishes. Her Majesty glittered in a black velvet gown embroidered all over with silver stars, and pearls glowed in her hair. She was laughing. Kate's father, beside her, was making gestures like a painter's brushstrokes as he regaled her with some tale. The others were laughing, too: Lady Thornleigh at the Queen's other side, and, beside Kate's father, her stepmother, elegant in green satin. Footmen and servant girls moved about, serving food on platters, removing plates, pouring wine. Behind the table, on either side, two guards stood like statues with upright pikes.