The Traitor's Daughter (33 page)

“And then . . . oh, Mistress Lyon, it's too funny!” Jane clapped her hand over her mouth to bottle up her mirth, but she could not hold it back. “Absalom decides to get even with Alison for her prank, so he comes back to her window with a red-hot poker to burn her and calls to her, saying he has brought her a golden ring and he'll give it to her for one more kiss. But then Nicholas decides to make Alison's prank even funnier and he puts
his
bare behind out of the window, right in Absalom's face . . . and lets fly a fart!” She let out a snort of laughter that sent mucus flying, speckling a swathe of the desk. “Oh!” she said, mortified. “I beg your pardon, mistress!”

Again, Kate had to smile. “Wipe that up with your handkerchief, Jane, but do not rue your pleasure. ‘The Miller's Tale' has made folk laugh for a hundred years and I daresay it may for a hundred years to come.”

Voices sounded at the front entrance of the house. The library door was open and through it Kate saw Matthew crossing the great hall, coming this way, batting snow off his shin.

She closed the volume. “That's all for today, Jane. Tomorrow, shall we begin ‘The Reeve's Tale'?”

“Oh yes, please, Mistress Lyon! Thank you!” Passing Matthew on her way out, she bobbed him a shy curtsy.

He scarcely glanced at the girl, making his way straight to Kate. He had brought a rose-colored muslin bag the size of his hand and deposited it on the desk before her. It was tied with a yellow silk ribbon. “Sweetmeats,” he said. “Candied apricots, I believe.”

His grave look in speaking of sweets amused her. Practical, businesslike Matthew. “You believe?”

“So I was told. By my sister. She makes them.”

His little gift touched Kate. She hadn't even known he had a sister. That gave her a pang.
Brothers . . . sisters.
That drift of thought was painful, and to halt it she focused intently on Matthew's face. His trim, sandy beard. His keen gray eyes. She realized that from her position on the chair, looking up at him, the oddness of his perpetually head-bent posture vanished. Looking down at her, his gaze was like that of any man. Except that today he seemed somehow different. More alert.

“Chaucer?” he asked, his eyes flicking to the volume.

“Yes. I have an apt young pupil. She is much amused.”

He gave her a look that was both probing and gentle. But his tone when he spoke again announced that he was back to business. “It is good to see you up and about.” He glanced at the window as though expecting to see something there. “How are you?”

“Better. Better every day.” A lie. Her body was mending, but her soul, she felt sure, never would. Both were beyond her control.

“Good. It's time for you to leave.”

“Leave?” His statement, out of the blue, surprised her. “Why?”

He went to the door and closed it. Coming back, he looked more serious than ever. “It's not safe for you here. They know about you.”

Now she understood. “Northumberland's men, you mean.” She had already thought about the problem. Robert would have told them, that night on Tower Hill, that she had enticed him to flee with the lie that the Queen's men were after him, so they likely now considered her a spy. When they'd discovered Owen was a spy they had killed him.

“And Mary's,” Matthew said pointedly. “We have to assume that word has reached them. So you cannot stay here. It's too dangerous.”

Kate shook her head. “It's been several weeks. If they wanted to kill me, they would have sent someone to do it by now.”

“We cannot know if that is true.”

“Goodness, Matthew, I live and breathe. What more proof do you need?”

“That is not proof that they did not come. I took measures.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I have had this house surrounded, watched night and day.”

She stared at him, amazed. She'd had no idea.

“Twice,” he said, “my people turned men away, strangers who could not account for themselves.”

“Strangers? You mean . . . assassins?”

“I believe so. I had both men followed. They melted into the tenements of Blackfriars. We are watching them still.”

She felt a fool. And very lucky. “You . . . saved my life. Twice.”

His earnest eyes held hers. “I told you, Kate. I will always take care of you.”

The warmth in his voice tugged a memory of Owen. His voice. His swagger. His love. Tears threatened, hot pins at the back of her throat. She looked away, unwilling to weep in front of Matthew. If she did she might lose control.

“You mourn Lyon,” he said quietly. “Believe me, so do I.”

She could not hold back the grief. “I killed him, Matthew! He warned you about my brother, sent you word that he'd seen him visit Northumberland. Owen told me. But I didn't listen to him. I sent you that hasty message that Robert was loyal, had been sent by my father to report on Northumberland.” She groped for his arm and shook his sleeve, impotent with anguish and self-fury, as if by shaking him she could erase her sin. “If I hadn't done that you would have stopped him and Owen would still be alive!”

“No, Kate. You are not at fault for that message.” He lifted her hand from his sleeve and his fingers closed around hers to still her. “Listen to me. I may not always be free to tell you everything, but what I do tell you will always be the truth. And the truth is, I paid no heed to your message. I was already watching your brother. I had decided to leave him where he was.”

“What? Leave him . . . ?”

“I hoped he would lead us to Northumberland. Or even all the way to Mary. But I misjudged how dangerous he was.
You
found that out. And
you
stopped him. Good God, you were ready to
die
to stop him.” He squeezed her hand. “Truly, you are a wonder.”

She stiffened. She deserved no such praise. And she realized that his judgment to leave Robert in place was a tactic she should have foreseen. Yet it did not change anything—his decision did not absolve
her.
She had killed Owen, and that was a wound that would bleed forever. But the earnest light in Matthew's eyes was genuine and she was grateful for his kindness. It occurred to her that he was the only person she had been completely honest with. During his previous visits she had told him everything: her appalling, blind faith in Robert, and her fatal decision to withhold from Owen her suspicion of Robert's murderous design on the Queen. Matthew should despise her. That he didn't—that he seemed, in fact, to understand—gave her a bleak touch of comfort.

Voices sounded in the hall. Matthew looked sharply at the door.

“The servants,” she reassured him. “Preparing for dinner.”

He turned back to her. “Two strangers coming near you is two too many. I could not move you when you were so ill. But now, you must leave.”

She nodded. “Yes. You need to employ your men more productively than in watching this house. I'll go.” She looked up at him, feeling suddenly at a loss. “But where? I cannot go to my father's house. Or even my aunt's. Those are the first places Northumberland would look. Besides, it could put my kinfolk in danger.”

He frowned. “Do you imagine me so unprepared? I have arranged a safe house.”

“Ah. Where?”

“A remote hamlet in the highlands of Scotland.”

Scotland! She tried to conceal her dismay. This was banishment! But she made no protest. She had brought this on herself. In justice, she deserved far worse, deserved a prison cell. She swallowed and told herself to accept her lot. “Very good. I promise I shall live so quietly no one will notice I'm there. In truth I shall be glad to do so, and to give you no more trouble.”

He smiled and shook his head as though indulging a backward pupil. “You really do not know yourself.” He glanced at the volume of Chaucer as though it might be a witness for his argument.
The Canterbury Tales.
He laid his hand flat on the book. “Is there anything more English than Chaucer's folk? You have much in common with the author, Kate. Like him, you love England. I know you. And I—”

He seemed to catch himself, as if anxious he had said too much. When he spoke again it was calmly and deliberately, to give instructions. “You sail tomorrow night. The ship is Danish, its captain English. It will call in Hull and Newcastle, then Dundee, Scotland, where you will disembark. You will be met by my agent, who will take you inland. The safe house is the home of a crofter and his wife. He is a cousin of my sister's husband. You will join his modest household as a widowed relation. You will maintain that identity and live quietly indeed, going nowhere, seeing no one, until I send you word.”

She felt a tingle at the back of her neck. “Send word? To what purpose?”

“That it is time for you to slip back into England and resume doing your job.”

Her thoughts tumbled, eddied, would not cohere. “I . . . do not think I am able. I have misjudged things so badly. Besides, my shoulder—”

“Will heal. And we have all made mistakes. Kate, I know you have been laid low, both in body and in spirit. But it is time for you to rally. England is in danger. Your brother was not the only one of his faction I left in place. Fortescue has been in contact with a young Catholic named Babington who has ties to Thomas Morgan. My lord Walsingham has kept a watch on Babington and we suspect the foulest of plans.”

She felt a prickle of dismay, but was not surprised. “Their target is Her Majesty?”

“Yes. If they succeed in murdering her you know what will follow. The Catholic gentry will be emboldened to arm their tenants to rise up. The royal council will prepare the realm for war. Orders will go to the governors of the Welsh borders and Ireland to prepare for insurrection. Here in London the city militias will muster, unprepared as they are. There will be panic. The realm, rudderless without our monarch, will see government cease as we face riot, rebellion, civil war, and invasion. Because that moment when we are at our most vulnerable is when Philip of Spain will strike. His troop ships, swollen with battle-hard German mercenaries, will march through Kent. Our countrymen will skirmish with them and be cut down. The invaders will march on to London. Within a week the city will fall. England will belong to the King of Spain. Kate, we must do our all to prevent that catastrophe. We are the bulwark against it, you and I and all who love our country. I need you back. England needs you.”

He fell silent, waiting for her response. Still, she could not order her thoughts, her feelings. She felt so unready!

Voices sounded beyond the door. Women's voices. “My lady grandmother,” Kate said distractedly. “She may ask you to stay to dinner.”

He frowned, annoyed. “Dinner? I cannot think of dinner. Come, give me your answer. What say you?”

She had never seen him so keyed up, though still deliberate, resolute. Just like the first time she had met him, at her father's house over an evening game of cards. He had recruited her almost before she knew it.

She knew more now. Knew the dangers, and the stakes. And knew, beyond her troubled thoughts, what that faint tingle at the back of her neck was. A longing to be active. A longing for justice. For Owen's sake.

She had to smile. Matthew had recruited her again.

She rose from the chair, forcing herself not to flinch at the pain in her shoulder. Matthew was taller, and even with his bent-head posture they stood eye to eye. She felt the bond between them. Honesty. Solidarity. Purpose.

It was enough.

“What is this Danish ship's name?”

 

The Custom House quay looked ghostly in the moonless dead of night, but the seamen loading cargo aboard the merchant ship
Katten
were loud and lively. Under lanterns hung in the rigging they hefted crates and rolled barrels and slung sacks, lowering them through open hatches into the holds.

Kate stood by the mainmast, obscured in the shadows of stacked crates, and gazed out at the flickering lights of London. Matthew's instructions had been to get belowdecks immediately and stay there until the ship was out in the estuary, but she felt she had to have this last look at the city she loved. Soon she would be heading into an unknown world of Scottish strangers. She did not understand the language of the Danish seamen tramping past her, intensifying her isolation. The English captain had spoken only a few gruff words to her before stomping away, cursing the pilot who had not yet come on board. The ship could not leave without the pilot.

Kate shivered in the night wind edged with December's steel. Christmas was coming, her first Christmas without kin, without friends. She had told her grandmother the story she and Matthew had agreed on: she was going to France to visit a friend in Toulouse, to recover from her wound and her grief. Her message to her father and stepmother had told the same tale. That had been hard, leaving them without saying good-bye.
Stealing away like a thief in the night,
she thought. Like the last time she had left London, dragged away by Mother. With Robert.

No,
she told herself sternly
. This is different, this time I go willingly. There is important work to do. I will heal in Scotland and be ready for Matthew's summons.
This last look at home gave her a pang, but in that pang was something bracing.
I am leaving England so I can come back and
help
England.

Yet her inner sermon did little to cheer her bleak spirits. The wind keened in the rigging above her, making the lanterns sway. She hugged herself for warmth. Come dawn it would be warm in the bakehouses along Thames Street, she thought, gazing at the winking lights of the city. On London Bridge to her left, so near she could see the torches at the northern arch waver in the wind, there would be the banter of traders as the sun rose. At the Tower looming to her right the guard would change, and the night watchmen, cold and weary, would head home for a warm bowl of porridge. The taverns and shops, the breweries and the companies' halls would be warm with the season's good cheer.