The Traitor's Daughter (32 page)

No sign of Robert.

Kate stood still, tense and bewildered. Had she arrived here before her brother? Directly over her head was the gallery where the musicians played on, the music so loud she found it hard to think. Robert was coming, of that she was sure. She had to warn her grandmother. Warn Her Majesty.

“Kate!”

She flinched. Her stepmother had spotted her and called to her, smiling in amazement.

Her father cut short his tale and stared at Kate with equal amazement. “Kate!”

“Goodness, Lord Thornleigh,” said the Queen in surprise, still smiling from his tale, “is this who I think it is? Your daughter?”

He glanced at the Queen with a look of alarm, then back at Kate, a scowl of mistrust darkening his face. “It is, Your Grace.”

Her Majesty's smile turned wry as she regarded the new arrival. “An interesting costume.”

Kate was aware of her wild hair, her ripped skirt, her bloodstained sleeve. The look of a madwoman. She stood frozen, in awe of the queen suddenly so near, resplendent. Yet so vulnerable. So human. The focus on stealth that had possessed Kate up to this moment burst. Nothing mattered now except protecting Her Majesty. “Is he here?” she cried, rushing across the hall toward them.

“Who?” Her grandmother was on her feet, angry, mortified. “What is the meaning of this, Kate?” she demanded. “Have you no sense?”

“Has he come through here?” She barged past servants, making a maid holding plates stumble backward. The plates hit the floor, smashing. All the diners rose in consternation, even the Queen. Kate ignored them and made for the two guards. “Has he passed you?”

They grimly lowered their pikes, blocking her way.

“Enough!” her father shouted. He strode around the table, coming for her.

“What's amiss?” the Queen asked her hostess, anxious now.

“Kate, are you ill?” her stepmother asked in concern.

“Brainsick!” her father growled, taking hold of Kate's elbow. “Have you indeed lost your mind?”

“Let me go!” She tried to shrug out of his grip. “Let go! I will find him!”

He held her fast. They were all staring at her. The music dwindled. Maids struggled to clean up the smashed crockery and mess of food. Her grandmother started toward her, fuming. “Out. I will have her out.”

That's when Kate saw the movement across the hall. A man with his back to her, quietly opening a door beside the gallery. He wore the tabard of a musician with her grandmother's colors, rose and green. The sight of the back of his head sent a shock through her.

He closed the door behind him and disappeared.

Kate threw off her father's hand. She dashed across the hall.

“Guards!” called her father. “Follow me!”

Running, Kate heard him pounding after her and the guards clattering forward. She reached the door and threw it open. A staircase rose to her left. She looked up it, one flight to the musicians' gallery. She bolted up the steps and burst out onto the gallery. The musicians stared in bewilderment at her and at the confusion in the hall below.

She looked behind them, up the three steps that led to the back of the gallery. Robert stood in the shadows at the top, lifting something from a box. Kate's heart kicked. A pistol. The musicians at the back saw it, too. They jumped up and scrambled out of the way, making for the door. Kate heard her pursuers pounding up the steps.

She twisted around at the hip-high railing. The Queen, on her feet at the table, was turning to speak to Kate's stepmother. A clear shot.

Her father burst into the gallery. The fleeing musicians jammed his way forward as they scrambled to get to the stairs. He fought to get past them, the guards behind him. “Robert!” he cried in surprise.

Robert pointed down the three steps at Kate and shouted, “Stop her! She's come to kill the Queen!”

Their father, aghast, broke through the musicians. He reached Kate and snatched her arm. She clawed his face. He flinched as her nails drew blood and she wrenched out of his grip. The last musicians scrambled past him, knocking him back a step.

She twisted around to see Robert. He was taking aim at the hall. With his shot the Queen would die.

Kate lurched forward, her body between him and his target, as he fired.

The bullet slammed into her shoulder, throwing her back against the railing. She was pinioned against it, disoriented by shock. Hip high, it barely kept her from falling. Pain seared her side. She felt the hot wetness of blood.

There was screaming. “Stop her!”

Robert was coming down the steps, reloading his pistol. Their father gaped at Kate, stunned. The guards were still engulfed by the escaping musicians.

Robert reached Kate at the railing. Ignoring her, he raised the pistol and aimed at his target below.

She struggled past the pain. She knew what she had to do. Justice. Death for Robert. And for her.
My husband . . . I must make haste to join him.

Kate heaved herself toward Robert. She flung her arms around him, an embrace that would carry them both to death. With a sudden, savage wrench she lurched with him, pulling him over the railing.

He screamed as they fell. She saw the wild terror in his eyes. His pistol smashed on the hall floor.

She did not release her brother. She held him tight. Justice.

24

After the Storm

T
he night's snowstorm had battered London, a December gale that had snapped tree boughs, ripped thatch off poor folks' roofs, and buried churchyard tombstones under snow. Having done its worst, the storm then rampaged east. Londoners awoke to an eerie morning calm.

The stable courtyard of Adam Thornleigh's house lay muffled under its thick, white burden. No breeze clattered the winter-bare branches of trees that had survived the onslaught. All was silent but for the scrape of shovels on the cobbles as servants cleared snow off the walkway from the house, and the quiet talk of other servants picking up strewn branches.

Snow crunched under Adam's boots as he surveyed the damage on his way to the stable, his two greyhounds trotting behind him, sniffing the path. Snow drifts white as stormy sea foam obscured the stable wall almost to its roof where icicles hung like spear tips. Across the courtyard a beech bough had crashed onto the dovecote. In sliding to the ground it had ripped off some roof slates, and the shattered pieces pocked the snow. One of the dogs bounded toward the debris. Adam saw why—a dead dove lay there, its soft body bloodied by the jagged shards. A shudder ran through him.
Kate.
He saw again the horror of her and Robert falling, joined in an embrace, hitting the stone floor. Heard again that nightmare
thud.
Several weeks had passed, but Adam relived that terrible moment every day. The image of them falling was branded on his mind. His children.
One dead . . . one living.

He looked up at the cloudless blue sky. Sunshine, bright and strong, was already melting the icicles with a gentle
drip, drip, drip.
The calm was so complete, the sun so blithe, it was as though the world had no memory of the night's storm.
Is that how life is supposed to go on?
he thought bleakly.
Are we supposed to just forget?

The dog had the dead bird in its jaws. “Fleet, leave it!” Adam commanded. But his voice didn't come out as he'd expected. He sounded hoarse. Watching Fleet obey and trot back to him, he thought:
Three weeks, yet I still don't sound like myself.

He met Lundy, the captain of his troop, inside the stable. Lundy was brushing his chestnut stallion and the strokes sent dust motes dancing in the filtered light. He was expecting Adam and jerked his head in his customary token bow. “My lord.”

Adam handed him a purse heavy with silver coins. “This will cover expenses for the ride to Portsmouth. Leave with the men as soon as you muster them. We sail for Cork on Friday.” Adam's new orders from Elizabeth were taking him to Ireland. His commission was to hunt down the rebellious Earl of Desmond, who had sacked Kinsale and devastated the countryside and was now hiding out with his fighters in the mountains of Kerry. Bringing him in would be a challenge, but Adam was not sorry to have a job that would tear his mind off his children.
How could I have been so wrong about Kate? So wrong about Robert?
“I'll ride from Whitehall tomorrow after my meeting with Her Majesty. I'll join you in Portsmouth.”

“Very good, my lord.” They had already planned this. Lundy needed only the silver.

Adam glanced through the gloom toward the open door. The bright square of cheery blue sky seemed counterfeit, like a showy painted backdrop in a play. “At the ships have Phillips manage loading the horses.”

“Aye. He's best.”

“And give that new man, Harcourt, some responsibility.” A good fighter, Harcourt. Adam could use ten more like him. As if ambushed, his thoughts leaped to Kate.
She always was a fighter.

Lundy cleared his throat. “Harcourt is laid up, your lordship. Broke his leg in the exercises Saturday, if you recall.”

Adam looked at him, chastised. “Pardon me, I'm getting forgetful.”

“Understandable, my lord. Grief can do that to a man.”

Adam caught the sympathy in Lundy's eyes. It pained him and he turned away. “I'll see you in Portsmouth.”

 

The dogs romped up the stairs to the bedchambers. Adam climbed the steps after them. He needed to talk to Fenella. There was one last thing to arrange.

The dogs bounded down the corridor, always eager to see her. He heard her greet them with a laugh. He came in and found her on her knees, packing his clothes into a trunk with the help of her maid.

“Pack your own clothes, too, my love,” Adam said. “I want you to come with me.”

Fenella stood, surprised. “To Portsmouth?”

“To Ireland.”

“What?”

“You'll be comfortable in Cork.”

“While you're out ranging the mountains of Kerry?”

“We'll be together while I'm in the city. The rest of the time you'll be near, at least. Come, please.”

“Oh, Adam, you know I'd love to, but we agreed about Kate.”

“I've changed my mind about that.” He turned to the maid, who was pretending not to listen. “That will be all, Susan.”

“Yes, your lordship.” The girl curtsied and pattered out. The dogs flopped down beside the hearth where a low fire warmed the room.

“Adam,” Fenella said, “what prompted this? We decided I should stay, for Kate, and it really is the right decision.” Her eyes softened in sympathy. She caressed his cheek. “This action in Ireland will be good for you. I have watched you these past weeks. You grieve your son too deeply.”

He took her hand to halt her caress. “It is not grief.” Robert, the son he had welcomed home, had played him foul. Had come close to killing Elizabeth! These wounds were too raw for Adam. He would not speak of Robert. “It is not grief,” he said again. “It's horror at how close we came to losing Kate.”

“But we did not lose her. She lives.”

“Yes. Thank God.” She was still at her grandmother's house, recovering from the bullet wound in her shoulder. Fired by Robert. It made Adam almost sick to remember that gunshot. And what Kate had done in the next moment still astounded him. Her sacrifice. When she had seen Robert aim again at Elizabeth she had pulled him over the railing with her, knowing they both almost certainly would die. Falling with him, she had held him tight. He had hit the ground on his back, snapping his neck. His body had saved Kate's. The one good thing he'd done, Adam thought with the biting ache of bitterness and sorrow that never left him these days.

Later, when Kate was well enough to speak, he had learned the extraordinary truth about her husband. Lyon had been a spy in Elizabeth's service! It pained him to remember his antipathy to Lyon and his threat of disinheriting Kate unless she abandoned him, while all the while Lyon had only been pretending disloyalty in order to get close to Northumberland. Kate had known that, and protected his secret. But Northumberland's men had found it out. In Robert's company. So Robert murdered Lyon. And would have murdered Elizabeth, too, if Kate had not stopped him. The monstrous evil of his son's actions nauseated Adam. And Kate's loyalty and bravery had brought tears to his eyes more than once these past weeks. How he had misjudged her!

“So, my love,” Fenella said, “go and do your duty and I'll do mine. Mine is a happy one. I shall go today, as we agreed, and ask her to come back to live with us. She is still weak and once here she will need care.”

They had indeed agreed to invite Kate home. But that was in the first days after the horror, when he was so overwhelmed with gratitude that she had survived and so racked by Robert's treachery and death he could hardly think straight. Since then, though, he had been thinking hard. He took Fenella's hand. This is what he'd come to say. “I have decided we should not ask her.”

“What? Why not?”

“She may not be able to come.”

“But she is much better, according to Lady Thornleigh. Well enough to make the short journey here. And once she is here, I promise I shall take good care of her.”

“I know that.” Just as he knew that he could trust Fenella with anything. But if the conclusion he had reached about Kate was right, it was best for everyone that even Fenella remain innocent of the truth. So he held it back. “I have abused her with my mistrust,” he said, “and it may be a long time before she can forgive me. So, for now, let her remain where she is. She is in good hands with her grandmother. There will be time for healing the breach when I return from Ireland. Let her be. And come with me to Cork.”

 

The girl reminded Kate of herself at that age. Thirteen, no longer a child but not quite a woman, and slyly curious. Jane Fowler was her name. She was the daughter of her grandmother's chamberlain and Kate had been giving her lessons from her bed at her grandmother's house. Today, the morning after the snowstorm, they sat at the desk in the library. This was the first time she had felt strong enough to come downstairs. It was a relief to be out of the sickroom where her thoughts had free play to torture her. Nevertheless, she sat gingerly, her wounded arm in a sling and her bruises still tender. She would not defy her grandmother's command that she spend no more than three hours out of bed.

Kate watched the girl read. Over the past two weeks she had set her lessons from the library's volumes: mathematics, geography, Erasmus's
Praise of Folly.
Kate had always admired Erasmus's gentle wisdom. Broadening Jane's education had been her grandmother's idea as a way to keep Kate occupied, keep her mind off her loss.
My loss.
Strange word. As if it were a bracelet or a hat she had mislaid. Not the hole in her heart where winter wind blasted through.

Reading, Jane giggled. She darted a shamefaced look at Kate. “I'm sorry, Mistress Lyon, but it's so funny!”

Kate managed a small smile. The reading lesson she had assigned was from the second chapter of
The Canterbury Tales,
and who would not delight in Chaucer's wit? “No apology is necessary. Your enthusiasm is a tribute to the author.”

Given this license, Jane beamed. “What a lark!” She eagerly flipped back a few pages. “First, Nicholas tells old John there's going to be a huge flood that will swamp the world and he gets him busy building a boat, just so he can get John's wife, Alison, alone!”

Kate remembered her own glee the first time she had read the tale of the crafty young lovers, right here in her grandmother's house. “And does he?”

Jane's cheeks went pink. “Yes!”

“As for that boat, who is famous for building one for a flood?”

“Noah.”

“Have you seen the carpenter's guild here in London present their play about Noah?”

“No.”

“They portray him as a plain fellow, mocked by his neighbors for neglecting his fields and wasting his time building a silly boat.”

“Ah, but Noah knew better!” Jane's eyes then went bright with a discovery. Shyly, she tested it. “Is that the carpenters' theme?”

“It is. Do you think it a shrewd device?”

Jane considered this. “I do.”

“Why?”

“Because people watching may think that they, too, have sometimes been mocked, but feel they are right. Like Noah.”

“Clever girl.” She reached out to point to a passage, but pain flared through her back from her stitched shoulder. She sat back, trying not to wince. “Go on. Tell me what happens next.”

Jane launched into the tale's development about the fastidious young neighbor, Absalom. “He's in love with Alison, too, and he comes to her window and begs a kiss. But she wants nothing to do with him, she loves Nicholas. So to get rid of Absalom she agrees to kiss him and she comes to the window, but instead of bringing her lips to his she sticks out her bare behind!” Red-faced, she sputtered a laugh. “And he
kisses
it!”

Kate let the girl laugh and chatter on. It was good to hear laughter. She saw enough sad faces these days. Her grandmother's anxious solicitude, though kindly meant, was sometimes trying. Matthew Buckland had visited several times, but always stiffly formal, standing at a respectful distance from her bed, his face grave, and his affliction, that perpetual bent-head posture, marking him like a mourner. As for Father's visits, he was shattered by Robert's treachery, and his sorrowful looks dragged her spirits down. It was some comfort that at least he now knew the truth about Owen. Matthew had allowed her to confide to him and her grandmother that Owen had been acting in the service of the Queen. But none of her kin knew about
her
involvement. Matthew had been clear in instructing her to maintain silence on that matter.

Jane's voice chirped on, and Kate's eyes drifted to the window seat. There, she and Owen, smiling about Chaucer, had made love. There, the moon had slipped past the casement as though to give them privacy. No moonlight now. Bright sunshine sparkled off the snowdrift that rose to the window ledge, the legacy of last night's storm. Jane's laughter . . . the sunshine. It almost made Kate believe that a day might come when grief, finally, was drained. When nightmares about Robert falling with her would no longer leave her writhing, his eyes wild, his cry in a child's voice,
Kate! Help me!
A day when she didn't wake every morning and remember Owen's blood, black in the moonlight.
I killed my brother. And I killed my husband.
Both were with her every hour, waking and sleeping. On the surface, bewilderingly, life smiled at her. The Queen had handsomely rewarded her for saving her life. A heap of gold delivered in a golden casket. The deed to a rich manor in Kent. A personal letter with Her Majesty's heartfelt thanks.
I have all the wealth Owen wanted to give me,
she thought in misery,
and would drop it in the Thames and beg in the street if it would bring him back.