The Traitor's Daughter (4 page)

The ale arrived, brought by a pale-faced girl who set the two tankards on the table. Owen ignored it. Kate paid the girl, who left. Kate sat down again, her mouth so dry with dread she could not even swallow.

Footsteps sounded outside. A heavy tread, coming up the stairs. Kate jumped up. Owen came to her side and put his arm around her shoulder, his every muscle tense as they both watched the door open.

Matthew Buckland walked in. He stopped, and looked at them glassily as though in shock. Kate's hand went to her mouth to block a gasp.
Her Majesty . . . dead?
Her heart was a stone in her throat.

Matthew lowered his gaze to the tankards on the table. He moved toward them like a sleepwalker. He lifted one and brought it to his lips. His hand was trembling and foam spilled, sliding down the tankard sides. He forced control over his arm and took a long, steadying draft of ale.

Kate thought in horror:
Dead!

Matthew lowered the tankard and looked at her. His first words were surprisingly calm, his voice low. “She lives.”

The gasp Kate had bottled up burst out in joy. She twisted to Owen. “She lives!”

He beamed in relief. “She lives!”

They sounded like two idiots. It made her laugh. Owen laughed, too. Even Matthew—careful, deliberate Matthew—grinned.

The door banged open farther and Mistress Tern marched in, a wooden bowl of stew in each hand, a spoon set in each bowl. Oblivious, she thumped the bowls down on the table. “Tuppence each.” She looked up, her hand already outstretched. The three grinning faces finally registered on her. She frowned. “What's funny?”

“Mistress Tern,” Kate said, “Her Majesty lives!”

The woman gaped. Tears suddenly brimmed in her eyes. Her face reddened with emotion. She flopped down on a stool, overcome. “God bless her!” she cried. Her tears spilled and she buried her face in her hands.

Owen let out a laugh of astonishment at her outburst. “Why, Mistress Tern! A secret acolyte!” He threw Kate a look of delight at the paradox. He handed the blubbering Cornishwoman a tankard and said with a kindly chuckle, “Best calm yourself. You'll soon have a rush of customers pounding in to rejoice.”

She gulped the ale, then wiped her eyes, sniffling. “Mayhap I'll stand 'em a round,” she said cheerfully.

Owen laughed again. “Wonders never cease.”

Kate's own mirth was quenched by burning curiosity. She said meaningfully to Matthew, “You are well met, sir.”

Owen took the cue. “Go now, good Mistress Tern, and spread the joyful word.” He helped her to her feet and showed her out.

“No charge for the vittles,” she said, sniffling happily as she left. “Lord, what a day!”

Owen closed the door. The moment the three of them were alone Kate burst out to Matthew, “What happened?”

“It was a shot from the Joiners Hall. It missed Her Majesty, but wounded one of her oarsmen in the shoulder. She drew her handkerchief and bent to stanch his wound.”

Kate imagined the frantic scene: Elizabeth pressing her handkerchief against the man's bloody shoulder, her men-at-arms urging her to take shelter, mayhem in the riverside garden of the joiners' livery company. “You were there?” she asked.

“No. I was on my way here from the Exchange when I heard the shouting. I ran along Thames Street with everyone else, to the Joiners Hall. Heard what happened from a Dowgate alderman. He
did
see it, then saw Her Majesty's barge turn back toward Whitehall. Her guards surrounded her by then, but she was waving at the people on shore to show she was unhurt.”

Owen asked, “Have they caught the gunman?”

“Not yet.”

“Escaped,” Owen grunted. “Devil take him!”

“But the city gates have been closed.”

“I doubt he'll get that far,” Kate said, thinking of Londoners' love for the Queen.

Matthew said, “You may be right.”

She nodded. “Someone will snatch him and hold him.”

“No, I meant the contrary,” Matthew told her, looking worried. “If he has accomplices, they will hide him.”

Kate had not thought of that. She felt a fool. Matthew never underestimated the strength of England's adversaries. She told herself that she must not, either. Beyond her quiet world of decoding there were ferociously dedicated enemies at work. One slip by her, one misjudged word, and they could find her out, unmask her. Owen, too.

Matthew sat down on a stool as though glad to be off his feet.
Relief is exhausting,
Kate thought, feeling sapped herself, overwhelmed with happiness at the Queen's escape. She sat on the stool beside him. He gave her a small smile, complicit in their shared emotion. Then he looked up at Owen. “Welcome back, Master Lyon.”

Owen made a gracious bow. “Your servant, sir.”

“It is good to see you a free man. It will save me hearing your wife's pleas that I send you cartloads of beef, French wines, and a feather bed.”

Kate had to smile. No doubt she
had
been a nuisance.

“The sight of her is all the sustenance I need,” said Owen.

She tingled at his look. “Nevertheless,” she said, “I'll fatten you up yet.”

As if obeying a queen's command he bowed again, sat down beside her, pulled a bowl of stew toward him and dug out a spoonful and ate. His eyes widened in surprise. “Another revelation! The Red Cow can cook!”

It did Kate's heart good to hear him jest.

Munching, Owen asked Matthew, “Any idea who the villain might be?”

Matthew shook his head with his customary sober manner. He was thirty-one, older than Owen by just two years, but Kate felt the men could not be more different. Owen, dirty and thin from prison, his clothes begrimed, but his whole being exuding energy, an exuberant self-confidence that no adversity could extinguish. And those clever dark eyes that sent a thrill through her whenever his gaze touched her. Matthew, his fair short beard neatly barbered, his clothes immaculate as befitted the right-hand man of the Lord Secretary of the realm, but with a solemnity always lurking in his gray eyes. Matthew was only a little taller than Kate and slightly built. His stick-straight hair the color of sand was cut very short, as though to cause him the least bother, and lay flat and brushed forward like a monk's. His tidy beard almost covered the skin scarred by burns from a gunpowder blast. Kate understood it had happened when he'd volunteered to fight in the Netherlands with a private expeditionary force to support the Dutch rebels against their Spanish occupiers. That had been ten years ago, but the Dutch people still suffered under the boot of Spain. And Matthew still suffered from his freak wound, for the blast had damaged a tendon in his neck, leaving him unable to fully raise his head. It made him look at people from under lowered brows, as though watching them with suspicion. It had unnerved Kate when she had first met him two years ago at her father's house over an evening at the card table playing trumps. But after a pleasurable hour as his partner she'd got used to his odd posture. He had approached her as the other guests were leaving. “You excel at the game, Mistress Thornleigh,” he had said earnestly, eyeing her under his brows.

“A favorite pastime in our family, sir,” she said airily, and added with a smile, “My father says I was playing with cards before I could talk.”

“They seem to speak to you. Numbers. Patterns.”

Direct, persuasive, determined, he had drawn her into a discussion about the danger England faced from the pope's inflammatory pronouncement against the Queen in which he had urged Catholics to oppose her authority, a danger Kate agreed was only too clear. She had accepted Matthew's invitation to visit him at Whitehall the following day before she quite realized that she had been recruited. The first assignment he gave her had been to decode a Spanish merchant's letter on its way to the French ambassador in London, intercepted by one of the “watchers” employed by Sir Francis Walsingham, the Lord Secretary. Kate had discovered, with a stirring of pride, that she was swift at deciphering the code. She had been decoding letters for Matthew ever since. He had others doing this work, too; men who were part of Walsingham's web. The original letters were always sent back on to their intended course so that neither the sender nor recipient knew they had been read by English eyes. So far, the letters Kate had worked on contained nothing actionable, but Matthew had assured her that every piece of information helped Walsingham build dossiers on England's enemies. A quiet man, Matthew watched more than he spoke. Kate trusted him completely.

“I need your report,” he said now to Owen.

Owen drew his dagger, lifted his foot, and with the tip of the blade pried open the heel of his boot. From inside the heel he withdrew a square of paper folded several times. Opening it, he handed it over. “The names you wanted, all there.”

Kate gathered it was a list of Catholics Owen had befriended in the Marshalsea. His arrest had been contrived for this reason, to gather information about the international Catholic network. Matthew flattened the list on the table as he perused it and Kate could see that Owen had written notes beside each name, no doubt concerning the threat he felt the individual posed to England, or, in some cases, the likelihood of their being turned to the government's side. Such turncoats were rare, but valuable. Throughout the realm Walsingham's web hummed with the murmurs of countless minor informants. Beyond England, too. Walsingham's spies prowled city streets and wharfs in Spain, France, and the Netherlands so that he could, as he put it, feel the pulse on the other side.

Matthew took his time studying the list. Methodical as always, Kate thought; it was his legal training. Owen had gone back to spooning up stew. He caught Kate's eye as he ate and they shared a happy smile. Now that he had done his duty he could take a rest.
When I get him back to Thornleigh House,
she thought,
I'll have the kitchen prepare his favorite dishes.
She was excited about having him all to herself. Excited imagining their lovemaking.

“This is good, Lyon,” Matthew said as he finished his perusal, drawing Kate's attention back to the present. He dug into his doublet and pulled out a purse and handed it to Owen, the coins softly jingling.

Owen took the payment with a gallant bow of his head, then tucked the purse into his own doublet.

“Any here we need to watch especially?” Matthew asked, looking back at the list. “Calkins, for example?”

“Him, yes. And John Wye. The rest are tame enough.”

“Or wear masks of tameness,” Matthew suggested, though without malice.

“That's not all,” Owen went on. He shoved aside his empty bowl. “Something big may be brewing. I heard talk of an invasion, financed by Spain and the pope, led by Westmorland.”

His words made Kate shiver. England's worst nightmare: invasion by a Catholic alliance. It was all too possible the Earl of Westmorland was involved, a man exalted among the English Catholic exiles living abroad. Thirteen years ago he had fomented an uprising in England's north. It failed and he fled. Kate had met him once, in Antwerp, when she was a child. A scowling, driven man, always stirring the resentful passions of fellow exiles like Kate's mother. “Westmorland will never give up,” she warned Matthew now. “Not until his head is on the block.”

Matthew, unperturbed, folded the list and tucked it into his pocket. “Rumors of invasion are as constant as English rain.”

Kate knew his calm exterior masked a deep concern. The exiles' goal was well-known: to depose Elizabeth, free Mary Stuart from house arrest in Sheffield, and set her on England's throne. Every plot the exiles hatched with their foreign supporters aimed for this objective.

“This time,” Owen said, “they may have local help in high places.”

Matthew frowned. This was serious: traitors at home. “Names?”

Owen shook his head. “They're careful. No names spoken. But I believe the man at the top may be Northumberland.”

Matthew's wince betrayed how grave he felt this was. Henry Percy, the Earl of Northumberland, hailed from an ancient family notoriously loyal to the Catholic faith, though he made a show of conforming to the law that had made the realm Protestant. Was he preparing a treasonous move? Kate wondered. He was a powerful lord who could rely on the allegiance of hundreds of influential men, each with scores of supporters of their own, some believers in the Catholic cause, some merely gambling to be on the invaders' side when they installed Mary as England's new monarch.

“This time the rumor may have teeth,” Matthew grimly confirmed. “Other sources have reported it, too. From Spain.”

Owen went on. “I got friendly in the Marshalsea with a kinsman of Northumberland, name of Doncaster. He was bragging about the invasion. He's close to the family at Petworth.”

Petworth House, Kate thought. The Earl's stronghold in Sussex, where he now lived.

“We know about Doncaster,” Matthew said. “A cousin of Northumberland's wife. Arrested for shouting tavern insults about Her Majesty. I judged him a lackbrain, harmless. Am I wrong?”

“No, you're right, he's a fool. But he's close to the earl, so I recommend you keep a watch on him.”

Matthew looked him in the eye. “It's Northumberland we need to watch. I want you to do it, Lyon. From inside.”

“Inside Petworth?” Kate said in alarm. “Matthew, no! He just spent six months in the hell of the Marshalsea. He needs to rest, build his strength. You
promised
him a rest.”

Matthew gave her a sad smile. “Kate, the enemy sleeps not.”