The Virgin's War (29 page)

Stephen had seen men whipped before. It was sometimes necessary in a military company. But the thought of his little sister—lovely, mischievous, generous Pippa—beneath the lash of a whip made him want to put his hands around Navarro's throat and choke the life out of him.

Instead, he channeled that fury inward, and by the time he was admitted to Arundel's presence, Stephen had enough control of his temper not to begin yelling immediately.

Arundel looked up sharply at the interruption, clearly prepared to snap at the intruder. But it took only a moment for him to recognize Stephen, and his irritation gave way to alarm. “Leave us,” he commanded the boy, who scampered away gratefully.

Philip Howard was a few years older than Stephen, the son of oft-rebel and executed traitor Thomas, Duke of Norfolk. Once a somewhat wild youth, he had been firmly converted to Catholicism in 1581 and had held on to his beliefs in the face of increasing pressure from his second cousin, Queen Elizabeth. His title, inherited from his mother, made him a significant power amongst the recusants.

“By your attire,” Lord Arundel said drily, “I assume you did not announce your name. Where did you leave your Scottish company?”

“Where did you leave my sister?” Stephen shot back.

“You've heard.” Arundel sighed. “I'm truly sorry, Courtenay. Navarro is…unreasonable. With soldiers to back him, he thinks himself invulnerable.”

“Where. Is. Philippa?”

“I don't know.”

“You gave her back to Navarro?” Stephen ground out, and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. He could see red at the edges of his vision.

“I did not,” Arundel snapped. “She is gone, Courtenay, no one knows where. I took her out of that courtyard and put her in a comfortable chamber here with her husband and the Spanish woman. Three hours later they were gone. I assure you, if you don't believe me, ask Navarro. You'll have to find him, though. The priest is on their trail.”

“If you are lying—”

“How do you think they were able to get out of this castle unseen? I ensured they had a degree of privacy and time…and they used it to their advantage. I am glad of it. I think Queen Elizabeth dangerously hostile to her Catholic subjects, but I am not stupid enough to take out my anger on a single woman.”

Stephen couldn't quite bring himself to thank the man. “I don't suppose you have any idea which direction I should look for them?”

“Not the sea,” Arundel said cynically.

Stephen headed for the door, not waiting for more. But he hesitated at the last minute, the fact that there was more at stake than simply his sister returning forcibly to his mind.

“What will you do now?” Stephen asked abruptly.

“Now that the princess has slipped the attempted Spanish snare, and is no doubt well on her way to alert Lord Bolton and his army?” Arundel spoke cynically, but reasonably. “As little as I like this present queen, I have no wish for civil war. I cannot bring myself to support a side I despise, but no more can I bring myself to oppose it with blood. I will, at the least, hold my men neutral, and so you may tell your princess and your queen.”

It was as much as they could hope for at this point. Stephen nodded once, in grudging acknowledgment of Arundel's conscience. “Thank you,” he at last managed.

Stephen was out of the castle, out of the city, and back to his company as fast as he could move. Splitting the company in three, he sent them in different directions and began to scout the countryside for Pippa—and the man hunting her.

Everything that happened after the courtyard etched itself into Pippa's awareness like a steel-point engraving. A black and white procession of events, stripped of colour and texture, but perfectly clear in detail. Arundel's blunt courtesy trying to conceal his distaste, Matthew's distress manifesting itself in stark lines on his bone-white face, Madalena's gentle care as she bathed Pippa's flayed back.

Through it all, her vision was clear and her thinking sharp. There was pain, but no fear. Pippa knew absolutely that everything that had happened was meant to happen—and everything that was to come was equally necessary. She did not bother herself trying to anticipate events. God would ensure the end.

She slept on her stomach for an hour or two and ate what was brought. Matthew and Madalena had a low-voiced, urgent conversation trying to figure out what Arundel would do next. Pippa was the only one who was not surprised when the earl himself returned to the chamber where he'd left them.

He spoke in as few words as possible. “I tried, and failed, to persuade Navarro to return to the ship. He will not leave the castle without Lady Philippa.”

“And so?” Matthew, as he rarely did, rose to his full height. She had never seen him look so much like his intimidating father.

“And so,” Arundel rejoined coolly, “Lady Philippa must leave the castle without his knowledge.”

“Can you do it?” Madalena asked.

“Give me an hour. I'll quietly have my men get horses outside the city. I know this castle better than the Spanish—I can get you out. But once I do, you'd best ride as fast as you can for safe haven. I will keep Navarro in ignorance as long as possible. But make no mistake—he will come after you.”

He addressed that last directly to Pippa. She smiled gently. “I know it,” she said. “I am not afraid.”

With one nod, Arundel turned to go.

“Philip,” she called after him. They had known each other for years, if not especially well. As she'd intended, her use of his name stopped him. And when he looked back at her, his expression had been stripped of its arrogance. He looked like a young man trying desperately to live his religion in an often hostile environment, not always sure of what was right and not overfond of interfering foreigners.

It moved Pippa enough to stand with care and take his hands in hers as she might have one of her brothers. “Thank you,” she said simply.

“Be careful,” he said in return, then left as abruptly as he'd come.

Matthew worried about her ability to ride, but Pippa assured him she would be well. She did not think he believed her. Just over an hour later, the three of them had been smuggled out of the castle and town through low windows and crooked alleys and mounted the horses left for them. The direction had already been decided by Pippa—west to the royal castle of Pontefract. They would have to come at it obliquely to draw off any pursuit, making the distance perhaps sixty miles. But there were hamlets along the way, and Arundel had sent them with minimal supplies to make camp.

They'd ridden for four hours and were just thinking of stopping when Matthew reined in hard and motioned the women to do the same. A low mist swirled against the ground, hampering sight. But Pippa heard it at once—or perhaps merely felt the vibration in her bones. The rumble of mounted men, coming fast and hard.

“Navarro,” she breathed out.

Matthew hesitated only a moment. If they stayed on the road, they'd be caught. There were no nearby manors or churches where they could make a stand. In that moment of hesitation, Pippa realized exactly where they were and almost laughed aloud. As if the location was burned into her brain, she could see the stark, unfriendly walls of the abandoned medieval tower they'd come across just weeks before. Where better to face off against Navarro?

“Witch Willow,” she called to Matthew. He swung his gaze at her, then realized what she meant and subtly adjusted direction.

It was a flat-out run for the tower. Pippa could feel each open wound on her back and gritted her teeth. She would not be the cause of their failure to reach safety. By the time Witch Willow could be seen through the gathering dark, Navarro's horsemen were nearly within arrow range—a fact forcibly brought home by several distinctive swishes through the air.

Abandoning their horses and supplies, Madalena quickly led the way up the rickety exterior stairs while Matthew kept hold of Pippa's arm. An arrow arced through the darkening sky and struck Matthew in the back, sending his body falling hard against Pippa. Even as he fell, a second arrow hit him in the arm. Madalena grabbed for him but his weight was too much for the women and Pippa was driven to her knees halfway up the stairs. The wood groaned and swayed alarmingly beneath them.

Another arrow clattered against the stone above them. “Go,” Matthew urged tightly. “Get inside. Bar that door.”

“Get up!” Pippa commanded.

Navarro and half his men were off their horses and crossing the ground. Only a hundred feet until the priest reached the stairs.

Matthew gripped her hand so tight her bones cracked. “Run!” he commanded, in the words that had sent her fleeing from him when she was fifteen. The message of the stars, the echoes of her vision. “Pippa, run now.”

To hell with the stars. “Matthew Harrington, if you do not get to your feet this second I will walk straight down these stairs and into Navarro's hands. Get. Up.”

He got up. With Madalena's help, they somehow managed to get him the rest of the way. Each step was an agony for Pippa, but she set her jaw and kept going. As the first Spanish boots touched the bottom of the stairs, Matthew collapsed on the floor of the tower and Madalena shot home the bolts of the door.

Between them, the women did the grim but necessary work of pulling the arrows out of Matthew. Madalena had managed to keep hold of her pack so they had a little water to clean him as best they could. She tore strips from her shift to bind the wounds that were, blessedly, not bleeding too freely. Then she turned to Pippa.

“Let me see your back.”

“I'm fine.”

“Pippa,” began Matthew, but she abruptly hushed him.

What windows there were in the tower were too high for her to see out of. She'd been listening to the Spanish coming up the stairs, trying to break down the door. Fists, feet, even a makeshift battering ram made little headway. The door was more than a foot thick and barred with iron in two places.

But none of that could stop fire.

Pippa closed her eyes. “They're going to burn us out.”

A moment later came another pounding on the door, followed by an unmistakable voice. “Smell the smoke, Lady Philippa?” Tomás Navarro called. “My men have started a little fire. Little for now, at least…and at the bottom of the stairs. It will consume this old wood fast enough. The door is thick, I know, but fire purifies everything.”

They kept silent, since there was nothing to say.

“Here is my offer, Lady Philippa, made this once only. I'm going down now and will wait for five minutes. For those five minutes, the fire will be kept controlled at the foot of the stairs. If you surrender yourself within those five minutes, I will put out the fire. And I will let your husband and the renegade Spanish woman go free. If you do not appear, you all three die together.”

They heard his footsteps, good as his word, retreating down the stairs.

There was nothing to consider. Matthew had time only to say, “Don't even think—” before she had unbarred the door and stepped out.

Madalena and Matthew scrambled after her, but she ignored their cries of protest. There was only this moment and then the next. Each moment so clear and perfect that she seemed hardly to be moving.

When she reached the ground, Navarro gestured to his men to douse the flames. She walked directly to him, completely and absolutely unafraid. He gripped her by the arm at the very instant the sounds of more horses galloping at breakneck speed came through the rising fog wreathed around them. Even before Pippa could see, she knew it was Stephen.

She could almost follow the trail of Navarro's calculations. Enemies on horseback, Matthew coming blood-streaked down the stairs like vengeance personified—there was still one thing the priest could do.

Pippa didn't see the dagger. It would not have mattered. She did not flinch when Navarro drove it toward her chest, but he misaimed. Rather than piercing her heart, she felt the dagger catch against a rib.

Before Pippa lost awareness, she performed her last critical act. She dropped every barrier in her mind, loosed every tie of control, and with everything in her heart and soul, reached for the thread that had bound her since birth and sent a call winging across the miles.

Kit
.

Kit jolted out of an exhausted sleep in a cold sweat, heart pounding and pulse racing. It was dark before his eyes—all he had was an impression of fog and horses. It looked nothing at all like the inside of a tent.

Kit
—a call, a plea, a flood of pain and fear.

In two minutes he was pulling on his boots, shirt thrown on and jerkin unlaced. Because he was concentrating on trying to reach Pippa, to let her know he was coming, Kit didn't notice anyone entering his tent.

Until Anabel spoke, bewildered and wary. “What are you doing?”

“Leaving.”

“Now? Lord Scrope's men won't be ready for another hour.”

“I'm not going to Hull.”

He flinched when she touched him, and forced himself to meet her eyes. He knew she could read the terror in them.

“Kit, what is wrong? What's happened?”

“Pippa.” He couldn't speak more yet, had to shake his head to clear his throat. “She's hurt, she's…I have to go.”

She didn't hesitate. “I'm going with you.” And then she did hesitate, long enough to be practical. “Do you know where?”

He did know, the same way he knew Pippa was gravely injured. “Pontefract.”

T
he only reason Stephen Courtenay didn't kill Tomás Navarro where he stood was because he didn't want to spare time—or thought—for anyone while Pippa lay bleeding on the hard ground. His own men expertly took the Spanish soldiers, and if they handled Navarro particularly roughly, no one was going to complain.

He knelt by his sister and didn't know whether to be relieved that she was unconscious. Better for her, probably.

“I can help,” Madalena Arias said at his shoulder. “And someone should see to Matthew. We had to pull two arrows out of him.”

Stephen raised his head. “Is he all right?”

She nodded toward the tower, and Stephen saw his brother-in-law coming rapidly to his wife, bloody bandages on his shoulder and arm.

Between the three of them—and, best of all, the Scottish surgeon Stephen had prudently brought with him—they got the wound cleaned. They were just arguing about where to take her when her eyes fluttered open.

“Matthew.”

Instantly he was there, then Pippa's eyes turned to her brother. “Stephen,” she acknowledged. “Take me to Pontefract.”

“That's twenty miles—”

“Pontefract,” she insisted firmly. “I shall reach there perfectly safely. I know it.”

Stephen met Matthew's eyes and waited. When Matthew reluctantly nodded, he sighed. “You'd damn well better be right,” he said grimly to Pippa. “I'm not explaining to Kit why I hurt you any more than necessary.”

Her smile was faint but genuine. “I'll be sure to tell him it was all my fault.”

They reached Pontefract around midnight. Stephen was not familiar with the castle, but Matthew and Madalena both knew it well, for Anabel had often been here. The governor of the castle met them outside the walls and quickly had Pippa carried to a spacious chamber.

Both Matthew and Madalena went with Pippa, but when Stephen made to follow, the governor touched his arm.

“They're in the solar, Lord Stephen.”

He blinked. “Who is?”

“Your family.”

Stephen shook his head, certain that exhaustion had made him mishear the man. But he did not retract the surprising statement, and so Stephen followed him, bewildered. And sure enough, there were four people waiting in the solar who he knew perfectly well: his mother and father, with Lucette and Julien. His mother and Lucie paused just long enough to hug him and then followed the governor to the chamber where Pippa had been taken.

Stephen remained in the solar with his father and Julien. “How…” he began, and couldn't finish his sentence.

He was suddenly aware of how utterly exhausted he was, and tense with it. His muscles were cramped from riding and subdued panic, and his father must have seen it, because he said abruptly, “Sit down before you fall down. Then tell us.”

He told his story succinctly, from Kit and Anabel's arrival at his camp, to his dash for Hull and the subsequent hunt for Navarro and the Spanish on Pippa's trail.

“We were just too late. Another minute earlier—” He broke off. “Navarro got his damage in right before I reached him.”

“Where is he?”

“My men are bringing him in.”

“Good.”

From the way his father pronounced that single word, Stephen thought it was not at all good for Tomás Navarro. He didn't much care.

Again he asked, “How? How do you happen to be at Pontefract? Shouldn't you be in Dover or Portsmouth or even Tilbury?”

“I should always be where my children are in danger. As to the how…” Dominic scrubbed his hand through hair the same black as Stephen's, now liberally streaked with silver. “We had letters from Dr. John Dee. Your mother and I, and Lucette.” Dominic nodded to where Julien sat silent in this face of family crisis.

For the first time, Stephen looked closely at his father and realized that he was, indeed, growing older. Dominic said flatly, “Dee told us to be at Pontefract on this day. He did not tell us why—only that it was of vital importance. I wish…If I find out that he knew what was going to happen and did not warn us, there will be a reckoning.”

Every minute spent nursing Pippa was an agony for Lucette. Not because Pippa complained—she could not have been sweeter-tempered. Partly it was the natural protectiveness of an older sister. Partly, it was the nature of Pippa's injuries. It was one thing to tend a person who was ill, another matter entirely when the damage had been wrought by human hands. Once before, Lucette had tended someone deliberately and maliciously injured, when Julien had done battle with his brother. But to see the stripes on Pippa's back and the terrible wound made by a dagger—both injuries done by a supposed man of God—made Lucette's jaw ache from holding her tongue so as not to pour out invectives before her sister.

Those she saved for her husband, in the short spaces when her mother insisted she leave Pippa's bedside to eat or rest.

Her mother, Lucette noted, did neither.

Matthew was also a constant presence, and Madalena a godsend for her calm manner. She would whisper sometimes to Pippa in a soft and sibilant Spanish. And the Scottish surgeon from Stephen's company was a steady and practiced man who spoke bracingly to Pippa when she was awake.

The problem was, Pippa had already been seriously weakened by a prolonged illness that they were only now told was consumption. The surgeon could only shrug when asked how it might affect her healing. But his face was grave. Less than forty-eight hours after being brought to Pontefract, the first dangerous signs of infection were already pronounced.

What frightened Lucette most of all was Pippa's serenity. She tried once to task her sister with the need to fight, but Pippa simply smiled. “I will not go, Lucie, until I have finished.”

She would not be drawn further.

They had sent riders to alert Kit, but he arrived faster than they could have hoped. He barely paused to speak to anyone, so it was left to Anabel to explain. She looked wraith-thin from long riding at a punishing pace, and her eyes followed Kit with a queer mix of fear and love as he left for Pippa's bedside.

“He knew,” Anabel told Lucette and Stephen. “He woke from a dead sleep—it must have been when Pippa was…when Navarro stabbed her. We were on the road in less than twenty minutes. I don't think he's slept, even when we were forced to stop to snatch food and change horses. I have never seen him so…inward. As though only his body were moving while his soul was already here with her.”

Lucette said roughly, so as not to cry, “Come change, Anabel, and at least wash your face. It will help.”

“May I see her?”

“Of course.”

Anabel shivered, and Lucette saw beneath the regal princess to the little girl who had come to Wynfield Mote so long ago for friendship. And had found a family.

Gently, Lucette noted, “You are afraid. Why?”

The answer was simple, and devastating. “Because Kit is afraid.”

Pippa died as the hush of night gave way to the earliest call of the morning birds. With Matthew supporting her on one side and Kit on the other, God allowed her to slip away peacefully. She was conscious until nearly the end, her breath slight and shallow enough that it took Kit a minute or two to understand when it ceased. Then his mother put her arm around his shoulders. Despite her tears, Minuette spoke clearly. “Come away, Kit. She is gone.”

He allowed himself to be passed from hand to hand until Stephen took his arm and led him unseeing through the castle. Dimly, he was aware of his brother talking, but could make no sense of the words. Then there was a quiet, darkened room and a soft bed and someone tugging off his boots, and then only darkness.

An hour later—or two—or possibly a lifetime—Kit woke choking on his own breath. He'd heard that sometimes when people woke after a death it would take a moment for the memory of loss to return, but it was not so for him. How could it be? Even in sleep, part of him had been achingly aware of what was missing. It was as though half his world had blinked itself out of existence.

He felt the unshed tears thick in his throat but could not cry. After sitting with his face buried in his hands for some time, Kit got up in a sudden burst of frantic energy. There was water in a bowl, and he stripped off jerkin and shirt and washed himself as best he could, splashing water through his hair and letting it run down his face in place of crying. Stephen had put him in his own room, and Kit found a clean shirt in a pack at the end of the bed.

Outside the room, he hesitated. He didn't really want to talk to anyone but Anabel, but he didn't know where she had been put. Except that…he did. Kit stood still, hardly daring to move for fear of losing it, but where there had once been the silk and diamond tie that bound him to Pippa, there was a slender silver thread pulling at him from someone nearby.

When he let his feet follow his instincts and knocked on the door they took him to, it was Anabel who answered.

She took one look at his face and made an inarticulate sound of distress. She pulled him into the room and closed the door, then guided him to a low couch upholstered in velvet. Sitting as close to him as she could get, Anabel laid her head on his shoulder.

He closed his eyes. “I don't know what to do,” he said. “What do I do now? I've always had her, from before we were even born. She…”

Kit swallowed against a low sob, then another, and tears found their way from behind his clenched eyelids. “I can't breathe, Anabel,” he gasped. “I don't even know how to breathe without Pippa.”

He slid from the bench and laid his head in her lap. As he wept, Anabel ran her hands lightly over his hair and his shoulders. And Kit knew that she was the only thing anchoring him to this world.

23 June 1586

Pontefract Castle

It is over. Tonight we laid my little girl to temporary rest in All Saints' Church. There is no time to take her home, no time for an appropriate funeral. But what would that even be? What service—in any religion—could possibly ease our grief? As Dominic wrapped me close while I wept, I had a vivid memory of a similar night thirty years ago. The white garden at Hatfield, sitting beneath an arbor, sorrowing for the loss of what would have been our first child.

I have been lucky, I know that. So few children lost…

I do not feel lucky.

But it is Kit I truly fear for now.

24 June 1586

Pontefract Castle

Public danger makes no concessions to private grief. We woke this morning—those of us who managed to sleep a little—to urgent riders from both north and south. From Brandon Dudley, Dominic's chief lieutenant, came word that the Spanish Armada has left Lisbon and is sailing for England.

Even as Dominic and I made plans to make all haste south, an outrider came from the northeast coast. Almost twenty ships are rapidly approaching Berwick. Those missing ships from Ireland—including the three sent away from Hull by the Earl of Arundel. The Spanish intend to land along the northern border, threatening Scotland so as to pressure King James to keep his men at home.

Stephen has already ridden out with his men for Carlisle to ensure that Lord Scrope can hold the West, for almost certainly the remaining Spanish in Ireland will try to land there as well. Lucette returns to Kenilworth to keep the information passing quickly, while Julien will fight with Dominic. Anabel and Kit will go with all haste to Berwick, to rally the forces of the East and Middle March…and to use whatever means necessary to persuade King James to lend England his army.

But first the Princess of Wales will pass judgment.

The trial of Tomás Navarro lasted less than thirty minutes. There had been a brief discussion about the propriety of Anabel presiding, but the princess had watched her mother for many years and knew how and when to exploit her authority.

“I preside over the Council of the North,” she said sharply. “It is my prerogative to conduct this trial.”