Kissed by Shadows (31 page)

“Sire, I have sent men on the road to Oxford, and also as a precaution there are patrols covering all the major highways leading from Aldgate. He cannot have had more than a two-hour start. He will not escape us.”

Philip crossed the chamber to where Renard stood against a bookcase. He pushed his face close to the ambassador's. “If you value your head, Renard, you will see that he doesn't.”

Flecks of the king's spittle glistened on Renard's cheek but he didn't dare to wipe them off in the charged silence. Then finally Ruy Gomez spoke. “Where we find Ashton we will also find the woman.”

Renard sidled along the bookcase away from Philip. “I have also sent men to cover the major ports,” he said. “They will not be able to leave the country by ship. Not the woman, not her brother, not Ashton.”

“And Ashton's ward. She's missing too. We have to assume she's with them.”

“Four people are more easily tracked than one, or even two,” Gomez pointed out. “There is the carriage, for a start, and with the women they would have had to stop for the night. They will be asleep in some inn somewhere and by dawn or soon after we shall take them.”

Philip gave him a bleak stare, then strode from the council chamber.

Renard at last wiped the spittle from his cheek. “How did we miss it, Gomez? What did we miss? We suspected nothing.” His tone was almost pleading as he threw up his hands in a gesture of bewilderment and despair.

“My spies found nothing in their investigation. Ashton was a friend of the Mendozas; his credentials were impeccable. He loves Spain; he's a devout Catholic; his dearest wish is to see his own country return to the old religion.”

“Or so he
said,
” Gomez pointed out with careful emphasis. “I don't know how he deceived us, Renard. But the king will not soon forget.”

“I suppose 'tis not possible that we are mistaken now. That he has gone in search of the woman to bring her back?”

Gomez gave him a pitying look. In the face of the unthinkable the arrogant, ruthless diplomat was a mere shadow of his former self. “You know that is not so, Renard. We do not know who or what he is, but we can be certain he is no friend to Philip or to Spain.”

Renard nodded slowly with an air of defeat. In a lifetime of service to the Holy Roman Emperor, his family, and his religion, he had now made an error that would wipe out that career, destroy its manifold successes, and tar him permanently with the brush of failure.

Lionel set a punishing pace and by noon the horses' flanks were dark with sweat, their breathing labored. Pippa had ridden easily for the first four hours, but it was harder to ride pillion at speed than in the saddle; she couldn't adapt her body to the animal's gait in anything like the same way.

She used Lionel's back for support and made no complaint. She concentrated on the one blessing: despite the jolting she had no nausea.

Lionel kept a grim silence. He felt her weight sagging against his back and knew how fatigued she must be. But she had to hang on and endure until they were forced to stop and change the horses.

Robin kept his own horse up with Lionel's except when the path became too narrow, then he fell back a few feet. Luisa clung on, pale, frightened now by an adventure that had taken on a deadly seriousness, and terrified that she would lose her grip on Robin as fatigue threatened to overwhelm her.

There was a cold wind, and the skies were overcast, the fields brown with stubble. Crows circled in the pine trees, and pheasants started in the hedgerows as the horses thundered past. They kept to the byways and met few people.

At noon Pippa shouted into the wind that snatched her words, “Lionel, I have to stop for a few minutes.”

“What? I can't hear you.” He didn't slacken his pace and his voice was impatient.

She twisted sideways until she could yell into his ear. “You have to stop. I have to get down for a few minutes.”

“I know you're tired,” he yelled back at her. “We all are. But we can't stop yet. Just hold on for another hour, then we'll stop to change horses.”

“For God's sake, I can't wait that long!” she cried in some desperation. “It's not that I'm tired, but my bladder is bursting. I think it's pregnancy, but all this jolting is agony.”

Lionel could see no alternative. He swore under his breath but he slowed his horse and veered off into a small spinney beside the cart track.

He swung down and reached up to lift Pippa down. Her knees almost buckled as her feet touched ground. “I thought I was stronger than this,” she muttered crossly as she hung on to his arm for a minute.

“Just be as quick as you can. Robin and I will water the horses. There's a stream over yonder.”

Luisa, stumbling a little when her feet touched ground, followed Pippa into the seclusion of the trees. “I wish we could get horses of our own,” she called from behind her own bush.

“We're going to,” Pippa stated, emerging from concealment. “I have no intention of riding pillion any farther than I have to.”

Pippa spoke with such confidence that Luisa had no doubt at all that she would arrange matters to their joint satisfaction.

Lionel was pacing the stream bank while Robin held the horses as they drank. Lionel regarded the women with an impatient concern as they rejoined them.

“Ready now?”

“Yes,” Pippa responded, a little taken aback by the sharpness of the inquiry. She put her hands into the small of her back and stretched her shoulders. “How soon before we change horses?”

Lionel wearily pressed his fingertips into his eyes. It was a reasonable enough question but for some reason it exasperated him, as if she was somehow questioning his decisions.

“I haven't decided,” he snapped.

“I doubt they can go on much longer with a double load,” Pippa pointed out, annoyed now by this dismissive impatience.

Lionel took a deep breath. “We'll go on to the next hamlet. I don't suppose we'll find an alehouse, but there'll be a farm or cottage that will give us some food. Then we'll head across the fields in search of a horse exchange. With fresh beasts we should get at least to Whitchurch by nightfall. And with luck and a rest they'll take us to Southampton tomorrow, where Malcolm will be waiting. Now let me put you up.” He lifted her onto the pillion pad without ceremony and Pippa wisely held her tongue.

Lionel regretted his ill-temper as soon as they were once more on the road. He was finding it hard to maintain his usual calm in the face of his growing anxiety. He told himself that they would not yet be missed, but he could think of any number of ways in which their flight could have been discovered and the pursuit hard on their heels.

And he knew with grim certainty that he would have to use his knife on them all and then turn it on himself before they were taken by Philip's men.

Twenty-four

They rode on for another five miles untl they came to the tiny hamlet of Beedon Hill. A humble alehouse stood at a rudimentary crossroads just outside the hamlet.

Lionel dismounted and with a nod to Robin that he should keep his place in the saddle ducked beneath the low lintel into the dark interior.

“Anyone at home?” he called into the recesses of what seemed to be a single ground-floor chamber.

“Who wants to know?” An elderly man shuffled into view from the inglenook. “Nuthin' but visitors these days. Can't think what's goin' on.” He peered at Lionel from beneath an ancient wool bonnet.

“Have you no candle, man?” Lionel demanded impatiently. “'Tis black as pitch in here.”

“Ain't got money to burn,” the man said, not moving. “Who be you an' what's it ye wants?”

“Who I am is none of your business. What I want is food and ale for four travelers. You'll be well paid.” He clinked the pouch of coins in his doublet.

“Four is it?” The old man scratched his head, bald beneath the bonnet. His rheumy little eyes glittered in the dimness.

“That's what I said.” Lionel examined him closely. “What d'you mean, nothing but visitors?”

The man shrugged and his eyes slid around Lionel. “Nuthin',” he said with a shrug. He bent and spat in the sawdust at his feet. “Don't get no passersby 'ere, 'tis all I meant. Locals come in fer a drop o' October ale now an' agin', and a bowl o' punch when I've the makin's.”

He looked up at Lionel again. “So what was it ye said ye wanted?”

Lionel was aware of a vague unease. “Ale, bread, cheese, anything like that. Can you provide it? If not I'll be on my way.” Again the coins clinked in the pouch.

The gaze shifted into a far corner of the room and Lionel controlled the urge to follow it. If there was one of Renard's spies crouching spiderlike in the dark waiting for a fly he would not betray himself. He slid a hand down towards his boot and the dagger it held. One move from the corner and the dagger would find its mark so quickly no one would see it coming.

“Eh, Betsy, show a leg there,” the old man shouted with surprising force from such a bent and decrepit figure.

Now Lionel turned seemingly casual to the corner and made out what looked like a bundle of rags. The bundle wheezed and took on the shape of a woman of indeterminate age.

“Fetch provisions fer the gennelman. What we got?”

“Cold tripe, morsel o' pig's 'ead.”

“Bread,” Lionel demanded brusquely. “Bread and cheese. Don't tell me you don't have that, woman.”

“Aye, might 'ave.” She shuffled off into the dark recesses of the room and the old man returned to his inglenook.

Lionel stood foursquare in the center of the room, every nerve stretched, his ears straining to catch any untoward sound.

The crone shuffled back and pushed at him half a wheel of thickly rinded cheese and a rather ancient loaf of wheaten bread. Lionel examined the offerings with a grimace but it was the best they were going to get in this miserable hovel. They would have to scrape off the mold, both on the bread and the cheese.

He looked around and spied a flitch of smoked bacon hanging from the rafters. “I'll take some of that.” He took his knife from his belt and cut off a third of the flitch.

The woman whimpered but produced no words.

“Ale?” Lionel demanded. “I need a pitcher of ale, and I need to fill water flasks at the well.”

“Ale's in the butt out front.”

“I'll fill a flagon on my way out.”

“Well's in the village. 'Ave to get yer water there.”

Lionel threw a handful of coins in the general direction of the old man. “That should more than cover your generosity, my friend.”

Wrapping his prizes in his cloak, he hurried outside again, nearly banging his head on the lintel in his haste.

“Where the hell is Pippa?” he demanded, seeing his riderless horse.

“She went in search of the privy,” Luisa told him.

“What,
again
?”

Robin answered him, staring straight ahead between his horse's ears. “She said that in present circumstances and in her present condition she was not going to pass up an opportunity when it arose.”

“She'll be back in a minute,” Luisa offered, seeing that her usually imperturbable guardian looked about to explode.

Pippa at that moment was standing at the corner of the hovel, staring towards the door to what she assumed was the privy at the rear of a small weed-infested yard. A man had gone into the privy just as she was about to hurry across the yard. Instinctively she stepped back into the shadow of the cottage's mud-plastered wall.

She saw now that there were three other men in the yard. They were eating apples. They were dressed in the buff leather jerkin so often worn by soldiers, and carried sword and dagger at their hips. There were four unsaddled horses with nose bags in a lean-to shed. The man emerged from the privy lacing his hose and an old man came out of the house, limping across the yard towards them.

Pippa could not put her finger on what was wrong, but she could smell the danger like a rotten carcass. She turned and ran to the front.

Lionel had just finished loading the food into his saddlebag and was thrusting the stopper back into the neck of the refilled flagon of ale. “God's bones, Pippa! Where the hell have you been?”

“Men,” she said succinctly. “Four of them. Armed. Some old man's talking to them.”

Lionel wasted no words. He caught her up, almost threw her onto the pillion pad, and mounted before her, shoving the flagon into a saddlebag. Robin was already galloping onto the narrow lane and Lionel whipped his horse into pursuit.

Neither Lionel nor Robin spared the whip on their tired mounts and the animals pounded down the lane, raising clouds of dust. A shout came from behind them, and then the dull pop of a flintlock pistol. Lionel did not concern himself with the gun. He had little time for the newfangled weapons. They were impossible to aim and far too clumsy unless they were almost pressed against their target. But it told him that these had to be Philip's men. The Spaniards favored firearms and they would probably ensure that anyone working for them carried one.

“Their horses,” gasped Pippa. “Their horses are stabled. They'll have to saddle them.”

Lionel nodded his comprehension. He knew they could not outrun this pursuit, not with weary horses carrying a double load, and he didn't fancy the odds of four against two in a fight. But they had a few minutes. He drew rein abruptly and flung himself from the saddle.

Robin followed suit. “What are we doing?”

“Unsaddle them and send 'em on,” Lionel instructed even as he tore at the buckles of his own tack. “With luck they'll follow the tracks for a mile or two.”

Pippa was already hauling the saddlebags off and Luisa followed her example.

“Get in the field!”

Pippa obeyed Lionel's instruction, using the saddlebags to push her way through a small gap in the bramble hedge into the field beyond. The bags protected her face from the thorns, but her hands were scratched.

Luisa was behind her, breathless, white, terrified, yet determined. Blood oozed from a long scratch on her cheek.

Robin scrambled through the hedge with saddle and bridle and Luisa's embroidered bag. In the lane, Lionel cut both animals across the flanks with his whip and they took off thundering down the lane, snorting with fear. He joined the others in the field, laden with his own tack and Pippa's leather bag.

He looked around. They had no time to run. “In the ditch.” He gestured to a deep ditch that ran the length of the field just below the hedge. “Get in, quick.”

Robin threw his burdens in and jumped down. He lifted up his hands for Luisa and she jumped down beside him. Pippa threw the saddlebags down after her and slid into the ditch on her own.

Lionel drew his dagger and began to slash long grasses and weeds from the edge of the ditch, great handfuls of them. Cow parsley, ragged robin, yarrow all mingled with the grasses. He threw these down and no one needed instruction. They lay down on the bed of the ditch and covered themselves with the grass and weeds. The ditch was narrow, the ground damp, but there was no standing water.

Lionel slid down after them. He took Pippa in his arms and held her sideways against his body so that they could squeeze together into the narrow space, then he covered them both. He held his drawn dagger tucked into his sleeve.

And they waited. Pippa could hear her heart, or was it Lionel's? Perhaps it was both. The pounding was so loud in her ears she was sure it would be like a signal, drawing anyone nearby to the ditch.

And then they heard the sound of hooves. Galloping. The crack of a whip. Lionel put a hand over Pippa's mouth. She tasted the salt sweat of his palm.

The hooves stopped abruptly, the other side of the fence. “Looks like they stopped here,” a voice declared. “See the tracks. Horses were stopped right there.”

“Aye, but they've gone on again. See the tracks,” a second voice said. “Galloping like all the devils in hell were on 'em.”

“Aye, and so they are.” There was a humorless laugh. “What's up ahead?”

“Nothing much. We'll catch 'em soon enough. There's nowhere to go.”

“Let's just have a look-see over here.”

They heard booted feet on the dried mud of the lane. A whip thrashed at the bramble hedge.

“Can't see anything here.” The voice was almost on top of them. One of the men had entered the field. Pippa opened her eyes in the greenish light beneath the weed coverlet and could make out a pair of boots standing at the very edge of the ditch. Her heart seemed stuck in her throat.

Luisa bit back a sob of terror. Robin's arms held her tightly, her head pressed into his chest. She closed her eyes and prayed with all the fervor of Bernardina with her rosary.

“Let's go on now, George. Time's a-wasting and they're putting miles between us.” The first voice sounded impatient.

“All right, all right. Just making sure, that's all.”

“In a bramble hedge!” one of his companions scoffed. “Anyone would think we were out here picking blackberries.”

And then the horses started up again and the sound of their hooves receded into the distance.

Lionel released Pippa and climbed to his feet, grass clinging to his shoulder.

Pippa stood up beside him. “I was not about to make any noise,” she said, referring to the hand across her mouth. She reached up and plucked a yellow yarrow stalk from his hair.

“Pure reflex,” he said without apology. He addressed Robin. “Once they catch up with the horses they'll come back here and start looking properly.”

“Then we need fresh horses at once.” Pippa gazed around the empty field as if she could somehow conjure up the necessary beasts. She was surprisingly calm now, her head clear, her heart once more beating steadily.

“We have maybe ten minutes. We can't stand in the middle of this field.” Lionel picked up the tack and the bags at his feet. “Let's get into those trees. They'll give some kind of concealment.”

He gave Luisa a long, appraising look. She was white and shaking, but her eyes were steady, no hint of terror or wildness in them. It reassured him but it did not surprise him. Luisa was a Mendoza, in whose veins ran the pure courageous blood of Castile.

He spoke rapidly, giving voice to his decisions as they were made. “We can't risk an inn from now on, they'll be in every village and hamlet from here to Southampton. We'll have to sleep in the open tonight.”

“Surely they'll be watching all the ports,” Pippa said, voicing a fear she had hitherto managed to suppress.

“No doubt,” Lionel agreed, starting off across the field.

He sounded to Pippa completely unconcerned and she found it both heartening and annoying to have her legitimate fears dismissed so casually. It was one thing to have a cool head in a crisis, quite another to behave as if they had nothing really to worry about. With a troop of pistol-wielding ruffians out for their blood and on their heels, it seemed a little optimistic, to say the least.

She hitched the saddlebags onto her shoulder and set off after him, half running in an effort to keep up with his long stride. Luisa trotted beside her and Robin brought up the rear, every few seconds glancing over his shoulder towards the lane.

They reached the small stand of birch trees. It offered scant concealment but they could probably mount a defense here if they had to, Lionel decided. In extremis and with adequate warning, he and Robin could take on four men, although he didn't care for the odds. But they could pause here and take stock, knowing they would not be taken unawares.

Luisa sank down on a tuffet of moss among the roots of a spreading birch. Lionel regarded her thoughtfully. If Renard's men knew she was with him, she could never again pick up the threads of her previous innocent existence. She was now in as much danger as the rest of them.

He cast a glance towards Robin, who stood staring fixedly in the direction of the lane, his hand resting on the hilt of his sword. It struck him that he didn't have to worry too much about Luisa's future, just as long as he could ensure she stayed alive to have one.