The Traitor's Daughter (6 page)

“Yes, God keeps me in health. My wife He took to her rest last year. I grieve her still, but I want for nothing. Tell me, how fares your good father? Goodness, I should say His Lordship, for he is Baron Thornleigh now.”

“He is indeed. We lost my grandfather that same year my sister and I left England.”

“God rest his soul,” Prowse said gently. “Well, well, thirteen years.” He thought a moment, then went on with pedantic exactitude, “If I am not mistaken that was the year the Scottish Queen Mary came into Her Majesty's realm. What a to-do was there. As it happens, I went on to tutor the grandson of her friend, the Countess of Arundel.”

A warmth leapt in Robert's chest at hearing Mary's name. Mary, that angel among women! He would never forget the first time he saw the portrait of her at Charles Paget's house in Paris. Her shining eyes. Her alabaster skin. When she had taken up her birthright as Scotland's queen at eighteen many had called her the most beautiful woman in Europe. But she had lost her kingdom to her half brother's army and had fled to England, trusting that her royal cousin, Elizabeth, would protect her. Instead, Elizabeth put her under house arrest. For thirteen years no one had seen Mary but her jailers. Robert had never seen her in the flesh, but to him she was beyond beautiful. She was celestial. He was sworn to free her. That was the mission he'd been sent here to do. Then, backed by a Spanish army, Mary would take her rightful place as queen of England.

“Well, well, my dear young fellow,” Prowse was saying, looking him over. Respectfully, he corrected himself. “Forgive me. Master Robert.”

Respect,
Robert thought with bitterness. He had, in fact, no position at all in society. His father had got the queen to annul his marriage to Robert's mother, and Robert he disinherited. The news had reached them in Brussels, shattering them.
The vile insult to Mother. And my inheritance, lost.

Well, he had come back to right those wrongs, and more. But had the first step succeeded, the letter to Kate? He tried to imagine her reading it. Did she suspect that Prowse had not written it? She was clever. But Robert had worked hard in composing the wording to sound old-fashioned and authentic. Kate was clever, but she was also trusting.
She loves me. She will have believed it.

Prowse lifted the cane he held. “You have found me about to take the air with Smoke. He loves a romp this time of day. But here, let me put my stick by and welcome you to take your rest.” He snugged it into the corner beside the door. A walking stick, Robert realized, not a cane. “Come, sit you down and tell me what brings you to my door.”

Robert hesitated. He would rather not deal with the old man in this cramped room. The familiar old volumes put him on edge, for they reminded him of Kate. A memory flashed of the two of them grinning over the Latin rhyme they had composed together, an exercise set by Master Prowse. They hadn't let their tutor hear the naughty words of substitution they had giggled over when his back was turned.
Kate,
he thought with a twinge.
Such a merry playmate.
It gave him a pang like a shard in his chest. With these books so near he could not do what he had come to do. It was as if Kate were watching him. She must never know what had brought him here.

“Do not let me keep you from taking the air with your hound, Master Prowse,” he said. “It would be my pleasure to accompany you.” He picked up the old man's walking stick and offered it to him. “Shall we walk and talk?”

Prowse looked pleased. “To be sure, sir. The very thing. I would enjoy hearing the news from Flanders.”

They set out up the track toward the top of Seaford Head. The dog romped ahead, now bounding after a bird, now sniffing a shrub, now gamboling around the old man in wide, restless circles. Prowse moved with surprising briskness for one who looked so frail. The only sign of his age was a slight shallowness of breath from the climb. Robert's breathing was shallow, too, but not from exertion. His heart thumped as they crested the cliff. He stopped, and looked out at the sea. Prowse stopped as well, taking in an expansive breath of contentment as he beheld the view he clearly loved. The narrow beach lay far below. Waves rolled in with a booming, monotonous cadence. Seagulls swooped and screamed. The dog, accepting the halt, sat on his haunches beside the old man, panting, and looked out, too, watching the birds.

Prowse pointed with his stick to a small boat bobbing on the sea. “Cormorants.”

Robert, his thoughts churning, made a pretense of scanning the sky for the birds.

Prowse chuckled. “Not the avian kind, sir. The human kind. The people hereabouts have been dubbed ‘cormorants' because of their enthusiasm for looting ships wrecked in the bay. Residents have even been said to place false harbor firelights on these cliffs to cause ships to run aground. I've never witnessed it myself, but true it is that my neighbors grimly exploit their rights to flotsam and jetsam, for whenever a ship is grounded here the cormorants strip it of its cargo.” He shrugged and gave Robert a philosophical smile. “I leave it to God to judge the actions of needy folk.”

To avoid the old man's eyes, Robert lengthened his gaze across the water. He could not do what he'd come to do while he felt those gentle eyes on him. “Look,” he said, pointing at the wavering horizon. “The air is so clear you can make out the coast of France.”

“A mirage only, sir,” Prowse said, turning his head to look. He spoke as one who knew this landscape well and added pedantically, “
Videre sicut nos videmus.
”

Robert knew the Latin:
We see what we want to see.
He took a final look at the horizon. There lay France, and his mother, and their community of English exiles led by Westmorland. His mother's determination was no mirage. The exiles' grand plan was no mirage. The invasion fleet, when it sailed, would be no mirage.

“My boot is caked with dog muck,” he said, frowning at his foot.

“Let me have your stick, Master Prowse. I'll knock this mess off.”

Prowse handed him the stick with a chuckle. “I told you Smoke needed his airing.”

Robert made a show of using its tip to scrape the sole of his boot. The moment he felt Prowse turn away again to look out at the sea Robert raised the stick high. The blow to the old man's head cracked the still air. How thin the skull! Robert held his breath as his tutor staggered. He dropped the weapon and caught Prowse as if to steady him. Prowse's eyes rolled. He was too dazed to stand. Robert half-dragged, half-marched him to the cliff edge. One push. A bag of bones, frail after all. Not even a sound as he plunged.

Robert forced his thoughts to Kate as he hurried back down the hill's track.
Take the bait, dear sister. Let today's work not be in vain.

Seagulls swooped and screamed behind him. And another sound that seemed to pursue him. A dog, circling in agitated confusion on the cliff's edge, crying.

4

Blood Ties

T
hames Street was abuzz. Everyone Kate passed was talking about the Queen's brush with death on the river a mere two hours ago. News of her survival had swooped through the city like a shorebird on the wing. Men and women had hastened from the narrow streets and lanes into broad Thames Street to gather in clusters, and their keyed-up chatter sounded to Kate like the clamor of starlings. Their excitement was palpable. It was as though Londoners felt that they, too, had just escaped death and were now reveling at being alive.

Kate felt abuzz herself from the emotions that had tumbled through her all morning. Astonishment at Prowse's letter about Robert . . . the thrill of Owen's kisses . . . horror about the assassin . . . joy at hearing the queen was unhurt . . . dismay at Owen's new mission. He would be leaving for Petworth in a day, two at most. They'd scarcely had three weeks as man and wife before his arrest and the thought of being separated again wrenched her heart. What a bittersweet homecoming!

But overpowering all this was her somersaulting doubt about her
own
mission—one she could now scarcely believe she had volunteered for.
Am I mad?
Until today, her work for Matthew had been confined to decoding in safe anonymity. If she were to become the new courier between the French ambassador and Mary Stuart she would be perilously visible.
I'll be riding into the jaws of danger.
And that was only the
final
danger. First, she would have to convince Ambassador Castelnau and Mary's people of her dependability, a fearsome challenge. They had found out Roger Griffith's double game and murdered him. In her mind she saw Griffith sprawled on the muddy cobbles at Ludgate Hill, eyes staring as his life's blood gushed from his slit throat. He had been cunning, experienced in subterfuge, vigilant about his adversaries, knowledgeable of their ways.
If Griffith could not survive them, how can I?

“Rosemary and bay! Rosemary and bay!” a woman cried, hoisting her basket of herbs to show passersby. Another called, “Buy my pudding pies!” The street was alive with vendors hawking their wares, making the most of the sudden increase in potential customers. Housewives, servants, gentlemen, shopkeepers—all were cheerfully chattering, common folk and gentlefolk alike enjoying the festive mood.

In gaps between houses Kate saw sunlight silvering the river and caught the fishy reek of the mudflats as she approached the Old Swan Stairs. There she would take a wherry back to her grandmother's house and wait for Owen. He had left the alehouse before her, gone to buy a horse for his journey to Sussex.

“There's no need to buy one,” Kate had told him. “Take a mount from my grandmother's stables. I told you, she has accepted you.”

“For your sake,” he had said pointedly.

“It's the same thing.”

“No, Kate, it's not. You are her kin. I am charity. And I will not beg.” He patted his doublet where the purse of gold from Matthew lay inside and said with a wry smile, “I'll visit a bathhouse and barber, too, and a tailor. When Her Ladyship sets eyes on me I shall be presentable, if not transformed.”

He had said the last words lightly, with a twinkle in his eye and an actor's flourish of his hand, but Kate knew the truth: Owen hated being without money. Playwriting had hardly paid him enough to maintain his modest house on Monkwell Street, even when he had let out rooms to lodgers. The house was gone now, sold to pay the huge recusancy fine at his arrest. All that, of course—the arrest and fine, the house sale, his incarceration—had been to build the cover for him that he and Matthew had devised, but even when Matthew reimbursed him for the fine he would still be far from well-off. As the fourth son of a Bristol magistrate he'd been given only enough funds to pay for his Oxford education, not to set him up in life.

Kate thought of the first time she had seen him, during the applause for a performance of his play
The Prosperous Apprentice
at a playhouse called The Theatre just outside London's wall. She had come with her cousin Nicolas Valverde, who had acquaintances in this exotic theater world. From their gallery seats Nicolas had pointed out to her the playwright below chatting with friends among the groundlings. Kate's eyes had taken their fill of the dashing, lanky form and the devil-may-care smile, the tousled black hair and self-assured swagger, but she had also noted his plain serge doublet worn almost threadbare at the elbows and the boots so worn the leather was cracked. The thought had sprung upon her that Owen Lyon was exactly the kind of clever but impoverished young man Matthew had asked her to be on the lookout for: well-educated, open to adventure, and able to move easily between social levels. A playwright, she reasoned, would have a foot in two worlds, the highborn one of his theater company's patron, the Earl of Leicester, and the shadowy world of actors, masterless men who had empty pockets, but plenty of energy, wit, and verve. Daring to take a risk, she had asked Nicolas to introduce her. And in that moment of meeting, when Owen Lyon's smiling eyes had fallen on her, she had known the heart-stopping truth of what poets call love at first sight. He had felt it, too, he told her later—a lightning bolt to his heart, he'd said. Kate's gamble had borne thrilling fruit. She had not only recruited him for the Crown; six months later she had married him.

But she had not anticipated the fire of ambition she had ignited in him alongside his fire for her. In those six months Matthew had sent him on an intelligence mission to Paris, where Owen had contacts among lawyers at the English embassy, friends from his Oxford days. He had thrown himself into cultivating acquaintances with French officials and reporting any information that concerned threats to England, and had quickly become one of Matthew's most valuable agents. But he wanted more than the occasional purse of coins Matthew paid him. He hungered for advancement, the kind that the Lord Secretary Sir Francis Walsingham could give him, recommended by Matthew. The kind that brought rich posts at court and eventually the security of rent-generating land, putting him on a footing almost equal to Kate, daughter of a baron. He told her this on their wedding day, assuring her that he would not be satisfied until he could provide the manner of life she had enjoyed in her father's house. “I want it for you,” he had said. “For us. For our children.” Kate herself would have been content to stay away from the competitive arena of court-climbing, but she was no fool. Having sparked ambition in her husband she saw that his inferior status would eat at him, and bitterness like that could erode even the happiest marriage.

Owen's parting words to her as he'd left the alehouse had been most sober. “When we're back at Her Ladyship's house we'll talk, you and I. About telling Matthew you have changed your mind. You leapt at the chance to help Her Majesty, I understand that. You have a generous heart, Kate, and I bless you for it. But this danger is not for you. Not while I have breath to prevent you and protect you.” He had kissed her again, ardently. And then he was gone.

Passing Fishmongers Hall she realized she was obsessively fingering the row of buttons on her cloak. An unconscious habit that surfaced when she was anxious. The smooth, small buttons slipping over her fingertips felt comforting.
Like rosary beads,
she thought with a prickle of alarm, and instantly dropped her hands to her sides. Her father had brought her up in the English church, a Protestant, but when her mother tore Kate and her brother from England and settled them in Brussels she had immediately sent them for instruction in the Catholic catechism. Kate's mother had been about to place her in a convent when her father tracked them down and forcibly took Kate back to England. In Kate's mind, Catholic ritual was now fused to the image of her traitorous mother.

Enough disturbing thoughts,
she told herself. They led to nothing good. She set her mind to the huge task ahead: how to become the new courier. Owen would not dissuade her. He was worried about her safety and she loved him for that, but she now knew that her mind was made up. The decision was sealed by the excited mood of the people in the street who so loved their monarch. It matched her own admiration for this queen who had been kind to her. Her Majesty had escaped a bullet today, but Catholic radicals would continue to try to murder her. They just kept coming. One day one of them might succeed. And if the rumors Owen had reported were true the would-be assassins might be the vanguard of an invading army. England would not win such a contest. Then, the victors would exact vengeance on people like Matthew and Owen and Kate. Nooses would snap their necks.

No, nothing would dissuade her. Not even Owen.

But now, how to proceed? Matthew had suggested she visit Ambassador de Castelnau using her acquaintance with his wife and make her case to him as a good Catholic who could no longer abide Mary's imprisonment, and present herself as ready and willing to act in Mary's interests. But, thinking it through as she walked along Thames Street, she rejected so direct an approach. It could look suspect, especially so soon after Griffith's death. No, her best entry into Castelnau's confidence was probably a more subtle route. She had first met Marie de Castelnau at a banquet Kate's father had hosted three years ago. Marie was Kate's age, four decades younger than her sixty-two-year-old husband. They had quickly become friends. It had been months since Kate had seen Marie, who had gone into her confinement with her third child, but Kate had sent her a note of congratulations at the baby's birth. Those good wishes had been sincere.
Now,
she thought with some discomfort,
I'll have to dissemble.
She decided that from her grandmother's house she would write Marie a note saying she would love to call and see the baby. But the real object of her visit would be the ambassador.

She was about to turn down the lane to the Old Swan Stairs when a commotion to the west made her stop. Near the mouth of London Bridge people were running toward the bridge. She heard shouting. A blue-smocked apprentice bolted out of a doorway across from her, caught her eye, then hurried toward the uproar.

“What's happening?” she called after him.

He didn't stop, just called over his shoulder, “The villain who tried to kill the Queen! He's running for Southwark!”

Kate's heart jumped. Could they catch the man? If he reached the other side of the bridge he might lose his pursuers among Southwark's warren of alehouse lanes and alleys. A new energy surged through her. This gunman must not escape! If he was part of a cabal his information could be crucial. She found herself running toward the crowd.

When she reached the bridge its entrance was crammed with shouting people. Beyond their backs and heads she saw several horsemen armed with swords holding the crowd back. Halfway across the bridge a half-dozen more horsemen had taken up positions to block the way to Southwark. Between the two groups of mounted men the bridge had been cleared of foot traffic except for a lone young man. Slight, fair haired, well dressed, he stood half-crouched, panting, eyeing his pursuers with a wild look like a hunted animal. He brandished a pistol. Kate took in all this even as her heart raced in surprise at seeing the badges the horsemen wore on their sleeves: a thornbush. The Thornleigh emblem. These were her father's men. She spotted their swarthy leader, Captain Lundy.

She craned to see if her father was with them, but the crowd blocked her view. People leaned out from windows in the houses four stories high that lined the bridge, the buildings so tightly packed they blocked the sun. A handcart and a mule-drawn wagon stood abandoned by their drivers, who had crammed themselves into doorways. The mule cast confused eyes on the tense scene and brayed. Someone had left a packhorse mare hastily tethered to a post. It shuffled nervously.

Kate needed to get closer for a clear look at the gunman. She squeezed between the backs of people and the doorways, edging forward until she was a long stone's throw from the cornered man. The tethered mare was to her right. Looking across its withers she saw her father. He sat astride his bay stallion, unmoving, his sword drawn, eyes fixed on his quarry. The three of them formed a triangle: Lord Thornleigh at the west side of the bridge, Kate at the east, the hunted man halfway to Southwark, his way barred by her father's mounted men. He was trapped. But he held his pistol rigid to fend off attack, jerking it erratically back and forth between the horsemen at the bridge's London end and those at the Southwark end.

The mare tethered beside Kate danced nervously in place, swinging its rump around, again blocking her view. Cursing in frustration, Kate moved the few steps to the back of the mule-drawn wagon. Its load of firewood and bundled faggots was low enough to see over.

Her father raised his sword in a gesture of authority, its tip to the sky, like a priest raising a crucifix. “I arrest you,” he commanded in a clear, calm voice, “in the name of Elizabeth, by the Grace of God queen of England and Ireland, defender of the faith. Lower your weapon.”

“A pox on your hellcat queen! A Jezebel!”

An angry roar rose from the crowd.

The gunman suddenly swung his pistol at the Southwark-side horsemen and shouted, “Move, you filthy heretics!” He aimed, his hand steady now, at the mounted man in the center, Captain Lundy. The crowd gasped.

Lundy and his horsemen did not move. But none of them had firearms, only swords.

“Surrender to Her Majesty,” Thornleigh commanded again, “for I swear you shall not pass.”

The gunman swung his weapon straight toward Thornleigh. Kate gasped. Her father did not flinch. The man took steady aim.

Lundy kicked his mount and bounded forward, sword raised high as though to cut the felon down. The gunman saw him coming and cringed.