The King's Daughter (12 page)

“We’ve been through this, Isabel,” Thornleigh said. “Until you’re Martin’s wife your place is with us. You
will
leave, and now.”

Isabel heard the finality in her father’s voice, like an enemy’s door closing in her face. She saw that he would not shrink from binding her and hauling her away. But her mother? Surely, her mother would not suffer her to be dragged off against her will! “Mother, listen to me, please. I’ve heard some things about … the men following Sir Thomas Wyatt. Their goals are worthy. They want to rescue the Queen from her own folly. Rescue the country from it. We should be giving them all our support.”

“That’s enough!” Isabel was shocked by the anger in her mother’s voice. “You’re a child, Isabel. You’re babbling about things you cannot understand. You have no comprehension of the dangers.”

The insult stung like a slap. “I know this cause is right, Mother!”

“You will not say such things. You will not
think
such things.”

Never had she heard her mother so unreasonable. She looked to her father, but he turned his back on her and walked to the window. Never had she seen him so cruel!

They were closed doors, both of them. She felt hemmed in by their intransigence, trapped. She had to get out. “It’s
you
who don’t understand,” she shouted. “You know
nothing!'”

She turned and ran to the door. But as she reached for the handle the door opened, swinging in, forcing her back on her heels. A man stood there like a wall. An old man, white-maned, but solid, bulky in his furred winter capes. Isabel had seen him pointed out to her in town. Lord Anthony Gren-ville. A sword sheathed in a finely tooled scabbard hung at his side.

Lord Grenville barely glanced at Isabel. And he seemed not to notice her father across the room. His gaze locked on Honor at the hearth, and the look in his eyes was that of a hunter, fixed, obsessed. He walked straight toward her. Not until he’d passed Isabel did Isabel see the glint of a metal tube jutting down below his cape near his knee. He flung the cape off his shoulder as he moved forward.

“Lord Grenville,” Honor exclaimed in surprise as he stopped in front of her. Thornleigh turned from the window. Honor went on, “What an unexpected—”

“I come to execute God’s sentence,” Grenville declared. Isabel, behind him, saw him raise his arm and stretch it out straight. She saw the metal tube at the end of his hand gleam in the firelight. Saw her mother’s face, her mouth an O of wonder.

“No!” Thornleigh shouted. He bounded forward and lunged in front of Honor, his arms flung wide, a human shield. In surprise, Grenville took a startled step back, marring his aim.

A rapid clicking of metallic teeth. A blast from the tube. Sparks and black powder spewed back around Grenville’s head. Isabel saw her mother jerk backwards like a yanked puppet. Thornleigh spun around, reaching out to catch her in his arms, but she fell. She lay on her back, blood oozing from her side, turning the pale blue silk of her dress a glistening wet crimson.

“No!”
Thornleigh threw himself on the hearth by her side.

Isabel stared, unable to take it in. Her mother’s eyes were open, her eyelids trembling in shock, her face white as stone.

Grenville was hunched over his pistol. He was reloading. Only Isabel saw it. “Father!” she cried.

Grenville raised his pistol, aimed at her mother’s head, about to shoot again.

Thornleigh grabbed the iron poker on the hearth and lunged at Grenville and smashed it against the side of his head. Blood spurted and Grenville lurched like a beast gored by dogs at the bear garden. But he held the pistol tight, gripping it with both hands, set to fire again.

Thornleigh swung the poker in a crazed arc and smashed Grenville’s face. Grenville thudded to his knees, dropping the pistol. Thornleigh stood over him and swung again and again, the poker flinging blood, cracking bone. Grenville’s torso swayed, his arms hanging useless, his face a mass of red meat. He crashed backward to the floor and lay still.

Isabel saw her mother’s eyes close. Her legs gave way and she fell to her knees and crawled toward her. “Mother!”

Thornleigh dropped the poker. “Honor!”

Isabel’s hand slid in the blood beneath her mother’s side. She heard a scream. It sounded strangely like her own voice, but it was a child’s … a screaming child … lost.

8
Colchester Jai

T
he county jail had been located in Colchester Castle since the thirteenth century and was in sorry disrepair. As Isabel’s mare plodded under the archway into the precincts, it had to pick its way around a scatter of rubble that had crumbled from the dilapidated walls.

In the jailer’s musty smelling front room two men looked up at Isabel from their breakfast of bread and beer. One of them quickly abandoned his meal, his eyes taking in her furred hood as he rose to meet her.

“William Mosse, keeper, at your service, mistress,” he said, smoothing back his greasy gray hair. His spindly frame supported the paunch of the heavy ale drinker. “And how may I serve you this morning?” His smile showed half-chewed bread around his yellow teeth.

She gave her father’s name and held out a silver crown. The second man rose eagerly from the table at the sight of the money. Mosse snatched the coin. “I’ll take you down my own self, mistress,” he said with a solicitous bow. “And we’ll leave my turnkey to break his fast, shall we?”

She had come with plenty of money. She knew that jail keepers throughout England bought their posts from the sheriff at public auction and received no salary. To recoup the cost of a successful bid, they charged fees from the prisoners for every item of their sustenance.

Mosse led her down a stone stairway to a short corridor. It was cold and smelled of damp masonry and urine. Directly ahead, the staircase continued down—to the dungeon, Isabel imagined with a shudder. The corridor ended in both directions at a closed door, each with a grilled square in the top. From the left grill Isabel could faintly hear low voices, shuffling, and coughing. Judging from the stench that rolled through it she guessed it led to a crowded ward, probably the commons’ ward. Mosse started that way, lifting his heavy ring of keys.

“No,” she said. “My father will be in the gentlemen’s ward.”

“Commons’ and gentlemen’s, it’s all one now, mistress. The rains at All Hallows’ Eve washed clear through the gentlemen’s, ruining all. Standing up to their knees in it, the gentlemen was. Five of ‘em perished. That was money down the drain for me, mistress, and never a truer word. How’s a man to live, I ask you, when half the paying customers is floating belly-up in muck?” He started to unlock the grilled door to the commons’ ward. “Now, if it’d been
this
side you’d not hear Will Mosse moaning of it. Nary a farthing do I get from these curs, above what’s owing for their victuals, and even then not what a man can count on. Yet my lord Sheriff wants the chambers in the gentlemen’s ward yonder made good again by Lent—and all to be wrought from me turning out my own pockets. I ask you, mistress, is this any kind of a fair world? No, it ain’t, indeed. In a fair world the good Lord would’ve sent the rains to wash out this tuppenny ward and not left me to bury five paying gentlemen.”

Isabel was barely listening. She was trying to keep her mind focused, not let it wander into panic. Why was this nightmare happening? But she found it difficult to think at all. It was as though the workings inside her head were clogged, jammed like the paddles in her father’s fulling ponds, weighted down with too much soggy cloth. She longed to have Martin by her side—to hold her, to keep her from sinking, to make some sense of what was happening. But she had no idea where he was, somewhere down in the county of Kent. It was impossible even to send him a message. She tried to imagine him, marching—somewhere—with Wyatt’s rebel army. But all of that—Wyatt’s stand, her own pledge to act as his go-between with the French Ambassador, Martin’s eager commitment to the cause—all of it now seemed utterly unreal. It was as though Martin existed in some other time and place, some bright plane of happy, hopeful excitement where her mother still moved and smiled.

The last ten hours had been hell itself. Her own voice screaming. The servants shouting and running. Her father wildly trying to stanch the blood from her mother’s wound. Her mother’s blood-soaked bodice, her face still as death.

The parish constable had barged in, fetched immediately by Lord Grenville’s waiting servant. The constable and his men had dragged Isabel’s father out of the room. Two serving men of the household had carried her unconscious mother upstairs while another rode to fetch the doctor. Lord Grenville’s body had been taken away. And finally the servants had stopped running. Mechanically, Isabel did as the doctor instructed to help him as he gouged the metal ball out of her mother’s side, her mother waking with a cry, the pain then driving her under again. Isabel sponged the blood from her mother’s body. The doctor bandaged the wound, then left. And Isabel was alone with her mother, who for hoursslipped in and out of consciousness. Isabel sat by her side all night, stiff with fear, gripping her mother’s fevered hand, terrified of closing her eyes and opening them to find her mother dead.

“Now, mistress,” Mosse said pleasantly, “a word of business, if I may.” He had unlocked the door but stood blocking the way. “When your good father was brought in last night he had nary a coin about him to keep the shackles off. I felt sure he would be good for the fee later—that is, his family would if I may be so bold to say so. But what was I to do? Rules is rules, mistress. Where would we be without ‘em? And the rule is: no payment, no easement of irons. So if you’ve the wherewithal—”

“Yes, yes,” she said, impatient. “How much?”

“Two and six, mistress, and I thank you kindly. I wouldn’t ask a farthing more, though some I know of would. No, two shillings sixpence is the rule here, and Will Mosse abides by rules. We’d be no better than the beasts without ‘em, would we now?”

He pocketed the coins from Isabel and swung open the door. Bowing, he extended his arm to indicate that she should lead the way. Isabel saw that, past the door, the corridor continued on, and the ward, dimly lit, lay at the end. The corridor was narrow. As Mosse followed close behind her he whispered by her cheek, “Your cloak’s a mite wet from the snow, mistress.” His breath smelled of beer. “Uncomfortable, that is. I’d be pleased to carry it off for a quick dry-out by my fire.” His hands touched her shoulders then slid down her front to feel for the edge of her cloak. One hand lightly squeezed her breast. She gasped and twisted around. Mosse grinned innocently. “No charge for a quick dry-out.”

Fury fired her cheeks. “I’ll report you to the sheriff if—”

“Ah! There’s your good father, mistress,” he said brightly, pointing. “There in the corner. I’ll just go on ahead and unlock his irons.” He shuffled forward past her and slipped into the ward.

It was a large room, very crowded. Isabel looked toward the corner the jailer had indicated, but could not see her father. There were too many obstacles, and the light was dim. The ward was divided by three thick stone pillars, and ragged blankets and clothing were strung between the pillars and the walls to form crude partitions. Isabel guessed that one such section was meant to separate the commons from the gentlemen in this forced cohabitation. Many of the prisoners lounged on thin pallets of straw on the floor and stared blank-eyed at the ceiling. Others hunkered in circles, tossing dice amid noisy wagering. Others lay in rag-nested corners, curled in restless sleep. Tallow candles in wall sconces gave off a dingy light. There was one small, high window, without glass, level with the ground of the outside courtyard. Ice crusted its pitted bars.

The smell was foul. Isabel had to press her sleeve over her nose to block out the stench of human waste, mousy straw, and unwashed bodies. Her eyes watered as she passed a smoky cooking fire. Strangely, one corner of the ward had been made magnificent by a gentleman’s feather bed, and by the liveried servant who stood guard with folded arms while his master slept. The prisoners were almost all men, although Isabel stumbled over the bare foot of a boy shivering against one of the flaking pillars. She also caught a glimpse, behind a curtain of thin burlap, of two skinny women sleeping on the stone floor, as still as corpses.

And then she saw her father. He sat with his back against a wall, his knees drawn up, his attention concentrated on something he held in his hands. Isabel saw that this posture was necessary because of the short chains that connected his ankle shackles to his wrists cuffs—the irons that the jailer had spoken of. Mosse was sorting through keys for the one to unlock these manacles. Isabel hurried toward her father.

“I’ll just slip these off, mistress,” Mosse said, “and you can have a pleasant visit with your father. And I’ll send my turnkey down to the taproom to fetch some refreshment foryou, shall I? Finest ale in all Colchester town, ask any gentleman here. Brewed by the tender hand of my own dear wife. And for you, only two shillings a pot.”

He selected a key and unlocked the irons on Thornleigh’s wrists and ankles, one after another, still talking to Isabel. “My apologies for the crowd here, mistress. Sheriff tossed in a baker’s dozen last night, what with this rebellion fright. They say the Spaniards are coming to murder us all in our beds, but I don’t pay much mind to it. Still, it’s got folks worked up. The two over there"—he jerked his head toward a couple of men crouched over a card game—"they were thrown in last night after they butchered a priest, so I’d watch out for them. But the rest of these loafers won’t bother you. Debtors, mostly.” Finished, he stood and gathered in the chains. “So you just stay as long as you please, mistress. Good day to you.” The chains rattled as he swung them over his shoulder and ambled away.

Isabel was staring down at her father. He made no effort to stand now that his chains were removed, though he did slowly stretch out his stiff legs, bent all night from the irons. He glanced up at her, blank faced. Almost immediately he looked back down at the object in his hands, a block of wood roughly whittled. He reached inside his boot and drew out a small knife, one he’d obviously been hiding from Mosse, and began to cut at the wood. Isabel could make out the rudimentary shape of a boat. He had always loved ships. A wire tightened around her heart. Was he carving a ship to carry away his heartache and fear?