Face Down among the Winchester Geese (23 page)

Whatever the reason, Susanna did not for a moment believe Robert had experienced any calling to the religious life. That had been an excuse to get out of the betrothal, nothing more. The man she'd married was not the devout type. Since she'd known him, he'd always attached himself to whatever faith was most politically expedient at the time. If Turkish pirates conquered England, he'd happily turn Mussulman.

"What more can you tell me of Senor Cordoba?” she asked, dismissing this aspect of Robert's past as irrelevant. “Has he ever talked to you about his childhood? And what about his eye? Did he lose one or is the patch part of a disguise?"

"He lost an eye.” Susanna heard the pain in Petronella's voice and realized she cared more deeply for the Spaniard than she wanted to admit. “'Tis most terrible to look at. Scarred and puckered."

"How did he lose it?"

"In a tournament."

So he said, Susanna thought. But what if a woman had been to blame? “He is a fighter, then? A killer?"

"He is always most gentle with me."

Resigned, she told Susanna what little she knew. Cordoba had been born into the lower level of the Spanish aristocracy, a second son whose parents had both died when he was young. He'd entered tournaments to earn money and gain the attention of royalty, and his performances had pleased King Charles, King Philip's father. When he'd lost his eye, he'd been offered an opportunity to serve the younger man.

The decision to leave him in England had been made because Diego Cordoba genuinely liked the English people. He was comfortable with them, and could pass for a fellow countryman with a minimum of effort.

"He charms them,” Petronella said.

"Every man on this new list, save for Jerome Elliott, is a most charming fellow. We seem to be at an impasse."

"Are we?” Petronella challenged her. “What of your husband, Lady Appleton? Is he a paragon of virtue at home?"

"No, he is not. Robert resents me for being well educated and clever. He holds the queen in much the same contempt, but he is careful not to let her see it. He no longer cares what I perceive, which makes me believe that if he meant to kill any woman, it would be me."

"Or the queen,” Petronella murmured.

"He is not a violent man. Not with women. He simply does not like to give them much credit."

They shared a sad smile at that truth.

"Shall we stop asking questions?” Petronella asked. “'Tis possible the man who did this has gone away and will not return until next St. Mark's Day. Indeed, much of London prepares to flee."

"Robert told me some time ago that we will not remove to the country until the queen leaves Whitehall for Greenwich.” Sometime within the next two weeks, she thought. The first plague crosses had already gone up in the city.

"The queen,” Petronella murmured. The odd look on her face drew Susanna's attention.

"I do not think Robert means to kill the queen,” Susanna said, forcing a smile. “That would be treason, and my husband has the best of reasons to know that attempts to disrupt the succession can be fatal. He was once a follower of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, who paid with his life for his attempt to put one of the Grey sisters on the throne."

On Monday, the fourteenth day of June in the year of Our Lord 1563, the Lady Mary Grey received a most peculiar missive, a letter signed by Susanna, Lady Appleton. It asked the Lady Mary to come to the Appletons’ Catte Street house. Alone. A postscript reinforced the importance of this meeting and the need for secrecy. It also suggested that she plead illness in order to avoid leaving Whitehall aboard the royal barge with the queen. She might, the note suggested, requisition one of the queen's coaches for the journey.

Lady Mary had learned to be careful. She still had the earlier missive Lady Appleton had sent to her, the one requesting a meeting at the Lady Mary's convenience. She compared the handwriting and saw at once that two different people appeared to have written the letters. The penmanship was similar. Both wrote with a clear Italian hand, easy to imitate. Lady Mary knew she might be mistaken, but some instinct told her she was not.

She considered carefully. She was curious, and had often regretted the lack of adventure in her life. She spent an hour deciding how to rid herself of her tiring maid, and finally did so by sending her with the court to look after the belongings Lady Mary took with her from palace to palace on each move.

As the letter recommended, she pleaded illness and asked for the loan of a coach. Then she took the precaution of sending a note of her own to Lady Appleton in Catte Street to say she was on her way. If, in fact, the invitation sent to Lady Mary was a ruse, she reasoned that message would alert Lady Appleton and prompt her to investigate.

Nothing untoward happened at first. The coach was brought for her. The horses drew it smoothly enough through Whitehall's precincts and reached the place where the driver must guide his horses north toward the Strand and London and, ultimately, Greenwich, or southwest through Westminster and into the countryside.

The door beside her opened.

"Good morrow, my lady,” Sir Robert Appleton greeted her, polite as always as he climbed into the coach and took the seat opposite her.

"Sir Robert."

"May I beg a ride with you, since we travel in the same direction?"

There was something about the way he spoke that she did not like, but she had little choice about allowing him to stay. The coach was already moving again.

It pulled past the royal coachman, lying unconscious ... or dead. Whatever man had taken his place turned the horses away from London.

"And where is it,” she asked politely, “that we are going, Sir Robert?"

He smiled. “To Spain, my lady. I am going to make you a queen."

When the plague struck a house in London, a white paper was attached to the door. Beneath a painted blue T, which was supposed to represent a headless cross, it bore the words Lord Have Mercy upon Us. Every morning, each parish clerk had the onerous duty of making sure none of these quarantine signs had been defaced or removed during the previous night.

Except for those confined to their homes, most of the city turned out to watch the royal progress from Whitehall to Greenwich. Susanna Appleton and her household walked to Thameside to view the great, gilded state barges from a spot near the Custom House. Propelled downriver by rowers, they were filled with important personages. When the sun glinted off the glitter of jewels on their apparel, the crowds roared their approval, most especially when they caught a glimpse of the queen. She was an awesome sight, all in green and gold and white, the Tudor colors. Even from a distance she had a regal air about her, a presence.

Susanna returned to Catte Street in a cheerful mood, ready to finish the last of the packing, but in her absence a most strange message had arrived from the Lady Mary Grey. It implied that a royal coach should already be standing in front of the house. Susanna read the missive twice through, puzzled and growing alarmed. She had never invited the noblewoman to visit her, and had she ever thought to, it would not have been when she was about to remove to the country.

Something was very wrong.

Her uneasiness grew when she realized Robert had taken Fulke with him that morning. Fulke, who had accompanied him to Scotland and to Spain, but had always before stayed near Catte Street when the Appletons were in London, assigned to look after Vanguard and Lady Appleton, in that order.

She was in Fulke's sleeping quarters, staring at the empty space where the groom's belongings had been kept, when Jennet came in with Lionel.

"He's gone, madam.” Lionel's face had an odd, crumpled look, as if he fought not to give way to unmanly tears.

"Gone where?"

"Foreign parts,” Lionel told her. “He did not tell me what land, only that he does not want to go."

"He is with Robert, then.” Susanna spoke to herself but Lionel answered her.

"Aye, madam. With Sir Robert."

Confusion warred with concern. She'd long since given up expecting Robert to confide in her, but he usually paid her the courtesy of telling her when he was about to go abroad. She feared this oversight was more than mere slighting of a wife. What was he involved in? And what did the Lady Mary have to do with it?

Susanna had just confirmed that Robert's clothes and jewelry were missing when Sir Walter Pendennis arrived. Colorful curses greeted the news that Robert was not there.

"What is it, Walter?” she demanded, so far forgetting herself as to drop his title and grasp his arm. “What has Robert done?"

Murder, she half expected to hear.

"Treason,” he said in a stone-cold voice.

"No.” The idea was unthinkable. Beyond belief.

Or was it? With a deepening sense of dread, Susanna drew the letter from the Lady Mary from the deep placket in her skirt and stared at it, then turned it over to Sir Walter. “Does it have aught to do with this?"

No sooner had he read the missive than he was turning to go. Again Susanna caught his sleeve. “Take me with you."

To his credit, Sir Walter hesitated only a moment. “You will have to ride in front of me."

She nodded. His horse waited in the street. Within moments they were mounted and riding through London. Susanna gritted her teeth and said nothing, but this position was not comfortable, physically or otherwise. She perched sideways, crushed between the saddle horn and Sir Walter. This enforced intimacy did not matter, she told herself. It could not matter. The only thing that did was finding Robert without delay. If she was quick enough, perhaps this situation could still be salvaged. Amends made. Mistakes undone.

"What does he intend?” she asked, looking up into Sir Walter's stoic countenance.

"The Lady Mary is heiress presumptive. If he has her, he means to take her to Spain. Marry her off to some Spanish princeling that Spain may claim the throne when Elizabeth dies."

"You suspected Robert was plotting something. Why did you not try to stop him sooner?"

"Your husband is a clever man, Susanna. It was not easy to guess what his plans might be. We had to wait until he acted."

They fought their way through crowded streets, but Susanna paid no attention to pedestrians, or to the shouts of abuse they leveled at the horseman in their midst. Sir Walter stopped at the city gate only long enough to inquire if a coach had passed into London in the last few hours. None had.

"Cordoba,” Susanna murmured. “Does Cordoba have aught to do with this?"

"Aye. Your husband met with him several times in recent months."

"And did Cordoba leave England?"

"No, though I do think Robert believes he has. Cordoba was being watched. He went only as far as a brothel called the Sign of the Smock, where he has been ever since."

Susanna accepted the news that Petronella's establishment had been under surveillance with mixed emotions. Watchers afforded the brothelkeeper some measure of protection, and might even explain her conviction that she was being stalked, but Susanna had to wonder what else Sir Walter's men had seen and reported. Had Susanna herself been recognized? Had Jennet?

The Royal Mews, used for stabling the queen's horses, was located at Charing Cross, north of Whitehall. There they found the royal coachman, William Boonen, holding his aching head. Sir Walter's men seemed to materialize out of thin air to keep everyone else away while the Dutchman blurted out his story.

The Lady Mary's coach had been stolen by two men, one of them a gentleman. The words tumbled out in a mixture of English and his native Dutch, but the gist of the tale was clear. Robert had taken the coach Boonen had brought over from Holland three years earlier ... and the Lady Mary, as well.

Swearing Boonen to silence, Sir Walter commandeered the remaining royal coach, an earlier model acquired during Queen Mary's reign. While two horses were brought out and hitched to it, fastened first by a strap fixed to the shaft and attached to their horse collars and then by traces attached to swingletrees, Sir Walter's men discovered that a maidenhair-colored velvet saddle and an Andalusian jennet were also missing from the queen's stables.

Susanna stared at the vehicle with distaste. High, ornamental pedestals surmounted by the queen s heraldic devices, sat upon front and back axletrees. The body of the coach hung suspended by means of leather straps attached at the tops of these pedestals, an arrangement that struck her as perilous at best. One of Sir Walter's men climbed to an even more precarious perch, sitting on a stool placed upon a board with a footrest attached to the front of the triangular underframe.

"Are you coming?” Sir Walter asked, opening a door situated between the wheels. Like the panels at side, front, and back, it was elaborately decorated with scrolls and other figures. “Where one coach can go, another can follow."

She got in.

"As they have done, we'll bring mounts with us."

Two outriders trotted up alongside the coach, leading Sir Walter's horse and another, a little gray mare.

"We will finish the journey on horseback if need be."

The coach lurched into motion.

How extraordinary, she thought, that Sir Walter had agreed to bring her with him. Did he hope she would have some influence over Robert when they caught up with him? Or was there some other reason for this unexpected concession?

Unable to find an answer immediately, Susanna resolved to consider Sir Walter's motives at some later date. For the present, she was grateful he could tolerate her presence. She vowed not to cause him any delay.

"Do you know where Robert is headed? Other than Spain.” England had no shortage of coastline.

"South,” Sir Walter said without hesitation. “He'd make himself too conspicuous trying to circle London to reach other ports. And lose too much time."

Susanna tried to clear her mind, to think. Would Robert confound them and head north? Toward Appleton Manor? Then she remembered something Fulke had mentioned weeks before. “Hampshire,” she said aloud. “Did you send him there, Sir Walter? Just before I arrived in London?” And perhaps afterward, too. Was Hampshire where he'd gone all the times he'd seemed to vanish for days on end?