The King's Daughter (13 page)

“Father,” she whispered. She went down on her knees and laid her arms around his neck. He did not move. Isabel stiffened. Had this vile place already driven off his wits?

He stared at his block of wood and his voice came out flat, sounding hollow. “She’s dead then?”

Isabel drew back and quickly assured him, “No! The doctor came. He took out the ball. But, Father, she’s barely conscious … and so badly hurt. I don’t know if—” Her throat tightened. She couldn’t go on.

He looked at her quickly, a feverish hope in his eyes. “Stay with her. Don’t leave her. Make her recover.
Make
her.”

She thought she would cry. She forced back the tears. Tears would only hurt him more.

“Sir, I’ve … I’ve brought you this.” She held up the purse of coins. He glanced at it, then went back to whittling with a new intensity. Awkwardly, Isabel tucked the purse into his tunic. She sat back on her heels, feeling adrift.

Her father whittled his wood. His boat.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said. “I heard the servants whispering. Griffith said that if … if mother dies, the priest will make them bury her in unconsecrated ground. I don’t know how they can say that. It’s awful. And they say that you—”

“Unconsecrated?” He suddenly looked at her hard. He spoke as if working out an urgent puzzle. “The Grenvilles must have alerted the Queen. Through Grenville’s daughter. She’s the Queen’s friend.” He added grimly, as though to himself, “So, it’s begun.”

“Begun? What has?” She almost wailed, “Father, why is this happening?”

He gripped her hand. “Isabel, you must get your mother to Antwerp. Get away, now, both of you.”

“Antwerp?” She was stunned. “Good heavens, not while you’re—”

“No discussion. I want you both gone. As soon as you can move her. Understand?”

“But, Father, what
happened?
What do the Grenvilles—”

“No discussion!” His booming voice made a knot of prisoners turn from their gambling. At his blast of anger, Isabel looked down, silenced. The gamblers went back to their dice. Isabel stared at her father’s hands. They were streaked with dark red stains. And on his cuffs and sleeve were dried red-brown speckles. Blood. She had a queer thought, as though her brain would go no further:
I should have brought him clean clothes.

Thornleigh suddenly slumped back against the wall, his energy spent. “Listen to me,” he said flatly. “There’s no hope for me. You’ve got to save your mother and yourself.”

“But you’ll have a trial! What you did was self defense.”

“A
fair
trial?” He shook his head. “Not a chance. The Grenvilles have half the county judges in their pocket. The Queen will stand by Grenville’s widow.”

“I can hire lawyers—”

“No,” he said, holding up his hand to stop her. “I’m a dead man.” He spoke without intensity, almost without feeling, as if it were another man’s life he was talking about, a stranger’s. Isabel remembered once seeing a man in an alehouse fight who was punched so hard the consciousness had drained from his face, but he kept standing for several moments. That was how her father appeared. Struck, but not yet toppled.

“These are my instructions,” her father was saying. “You will contact Master Legge at the Crane Inn in London. You know him well. Tell him what’s happened, and that I want him to arrange passage for you and your mother to Antwerp. You will clear out all the cash from my strongbox at home. You will pay Legge for your passage, and hire a nurse to accompany your mother, and take the rest of the cash with you. I’ll send orders to Calthrop to sell my property here and send you the proceeds. You will settle in Antwerp. You know our friends there to rely on. You will make a life there, you and Adam—and your mother too, I pray God. And you will forget me. Now go.”

He turned back to his whittling, done with talking.

“But, Father, I can’t leave you!”

“You have no choice. Facts will come out now. About our family’s past.”

She didn’t know what he meant. She felt like she didn’t know anything anymore. She wasn’t sure she would not yet awaken from this nightmare. “But surely there’s some way—”

“There isn’t.” He turned to her, his face softening with a look of tender concern. He lifted his hand and slowly, lovingly ran the back of his fingers down her cheek. “Poor Bel. No wedding … I’m sorry. I’d hoped to see you happy with Martin. See Adam marry his Margriet, too. He loves the girl—” He stopped, his words choked off. Anguish flooded his eyes. “See to your mother, Bel.
Please.”
He quickly looked down at his wood and tightened his grip on the knife. “Do as I tell you,” he said harshly. “I command it. Now go.” He began whittling, channeling his energy into the wood.

“Father, don’t,” she begged. “Please, talk to me. Please!”

His face registered nothing but concentration on the mindless task of paring off wood chips. Nothing else seemed to matter to him. Not her pleas. Nor his fate.

But Isabel saw that his knife was gouging ugly bites of wood at random, disfiguring the boat. “Go, Bel,” he whispered hoarsely. “For the love of God, go.”

9
Chaos Unleashed

I
sabel stood alone outside the village churchyard looking across the waist-high stone wall as the last mourners shuffled out the wicket gate in the far wall. She did not know who the dead person was, but she could not tear her eyes off the fresh grave hacked out of the half-frozen ground. In the breeze, drifts of the dirt mounded beside the grave migrated aimlessly across its surface, and the sight scraped her heart like a claw. Would she soon be standing beside a fresh grave herself, dumb with grief as they lowered her mother into the cold earth?

She shivered. Earlier, on her way to Mistress Farquharson’s cottage, she’d passed the two gravediggers at work here, and the strong late-afternoon sun had forced them to shed their jerkins for their task, but now heavy clouds crowded thedarkening sky, darkening the snow-shrouded tombstones. Was this changeable weather normal?

No, nothing was normal. Nothing was right. Incomprehensible things had happened—were happening. Her mother not yet out of danger, fevered, and clinging to life. Her father cut off from them and in despair. She tried to take comfort in at least having accomplished what he had ordered. She had just left Mistress Farquharson’s cottage, having hired her to attend her mother as nurse. Margery Farquharson, a stout widow with a ready wit despite her hard, solitary life, had nursed Isabel herself through measles and other childhood agues, and Adam through his convalescence after breaking his leg. The whole family loved her like a favorite aunt. Gripping Isabel’s hand beside the cold hearth in her cottage, she’d promised to come this very evening, and to stick with her charge whether in England or in Antwerp, saying with tears in her eyes, “Your good lady mother was ever a true friend to me in my hour of need.” Isabel was vastly relieved, knowing her mother would be in competent and kindly hands. Also, as her father had ordered, she’d sent a message to Master Legge of the Crane Inn in London. But would the old innkeeper really help them in this crisis? Would his friendship with her father stretch that far?

She felt utterly adrift. She found herself gripping the top of the cold stone wall, unable to leave it, this ancient part of the village that was her family’s home. It was just a short walk across the hill to her house. She and Adam had raced it once. He’d got there first, of course, but at their house gate he’d trotted around her in a loop to let her walk through first, and win. A short walk—yet every step she now took away from this wall would separate her forever from home. Each step would feel as wide as a world.

But she must go. She had to see to her mother. And evening was creeping closer. A storm was coming. Already, noisy rooks had alighted on the sanctuary of the church belfry, and other birds were gliding over the steeple on their way home to the safety of the forest. The Grenville’s forest. Isabel shivered again.

Hugging herself, she forced her legs to take the first steps to leave the wall. And leave the village. Leave England. Underfoot, the snow squealed merciless accusations that she was deserting Martin, deserting Sir Thomas Wyatt’s great cause. But what was she to do? She was so alone! She walked on, turning the churchyard corner, still skirting its wall. As she passed the wicket gate she had to fight back the urge to turn back and cling to the wall and never move again.

She heard voices and turned. Two men and an old woman were slowly walking up the path toward the churchyard from the road. The men were supporting the woman as though she would sink if they let her go.

The woman looked up, saw Isabel, and stopped. Isabel recognized her. Lady Maud Grenville. They stared at each other.

There was no way to the road except past Lady Grenville. Isabel forced her feet to move forward. The old woman’s face, coming closer, was as gaunt and bitter as the face of a witch. Isabel felt its hatred stop her like a wall.

Lady Grenville halted an arm’s length away. “Devil’s spawn.” She said it like a curse.

Isabel mustered what dignity she could. “Madam, let me pass. I must go see to my mother.”

“Your mother? A she-devil.” Lady Grenville screwed up her face and spat.

“Mother!” the younger man cried in horror, pulling her back.

The spittle, hot with hate, scalded Isabel’s cheek. With a trembling hand she wiped it off.

“Your mother was a God-cursed heretic!” Lady Grenville cried. “A demon! When God’s servants chained her to the stake, Satan himself came to stamp out the fire beneath her. Satan, saving his own!”

Isabel’s mouth fell open. “Madam, you rave.”

“Rave? Your family’s abominations have destroyed my husband!”

She wrenched free of the two men and stretched up her arms, her fingers rigid as talons. She flew at Isabel, and the talons struck, tearing back the hood that sheltered Isabel’s face and ripping off the headband that held back her hair. The fingers stiffened afresh, the nails poised to rake Isabel’s cheeks.

“Mother, stop!” The younger man wrenched down her arms, and he and the other man restrained her.

Isabel staggered back a step, fumbling at her disarrayed hair, stunned.

Lady Grenville squirmed in the men’s grasp. “You gape,” she sneered at Isabel. “What, did you not
know?
Idiot! Not know you were the whelp of a she-devil? She carried heretics away on ships, a fiend at work for Satan, her master. Oh, merciful Lord Jesus,” she moaned, rolling her head, “if only they had burned her all those years ago, burned her to a cinder.”

“No more!” the older man cried. “Christopher, take your mother into the church.”

Lady Grenville shrugged free again, and Isabel stiffened, ready to defend herself, but the woman did no more than step nearer. “Hear this, fool. Your father murdered a servant of God and he will roast in hellfire for all eternity. But before he goes to his punishment I promise you I will make him pay on earth.”

“Christopher, you must take her—”

“I know! Mother, come away.” The young man pulled her toward the church.

“He’ll pay with his life!” the woman cried over her shoulder, stumbling away against her will. “As God is my witness, I’ll make him pay!”

Isabel tried to stand firm, but her legs felt suddenly weak, and her vision was darkening.

“I am so very sorry, Mistress Thornleigh,” the older man said, his voice full of sympathy. “Please, accept my apologies on behalf of the family. Lady Grenville is unwell. This dreadful tragedy—” He stopped and gripped Isabel’s elbow just as she began to fall. He held her up.

Isabel felt the rush of blackness recede. She straightened and stepped back, ashamed, unwilling to let one of
them
see how deeply Lady Grenville’s venom had stung.

“Believe me, mistress, I am more sorry for all of this than I can say,” the man murmured with feeling. “My name is Edward Sydenham. If there is anything I can do, please—”

“I thank you, sir,” Isabel said, moving away from him. “There is nothing.”

Edward watched Isabel Thornleigh as she walked away from the churchyard under the glowering sky. She moved stiffly, as though summoning every ounce of effort to remain upright and follow the path. Edward felt sorry for her.

What chaos his disclosure to Lord Grenville had unleashed! Yet, who could have foreseen it? Who could have imagined that his words about Honor Thornleigh would inflame Grenville to such an act of madness? If only the old man had stuck to the plan that Edward had so carefully devised. An orderly separation of the families—that was all he’d intended. All he had wanted was peace, security. But now—Lord Grenville dead, Honor gravely wounded, Richard Thornleigh in prison, both families aggrieved. Chaos!

He caught up with Lady Grenville and Christopher in the church porch, Christopher about to go in to arrange his father’s requiem mass with Father Gilbert.

“Edward,” Christopher said, “my brother is in London with the archers, but I know he would agree with me. I’ve decided what we will do. I want Thornleigh brought to trial without delay. I want my brother-in-law, Rutland, to preside as judge. And I want Frances to alert the Queen about the urgency of the case.” He paused to control his rising emotion, but without success. “I want that murderer’s head on a pike by Lent. Arrange it, Edward. For my father’s sake.”

Lady Grenville pulled open the church door. “Trial?” she said, staring down the nave where the altar cross glimmered in candlelight. Her voice was steel. “There are other ways to skin a rat.” She started forward and Christopher followed her inside.

Blood pounded in Edward’s temples. A trial? Thornleigh giving public testimony? Thornleigh cross-examined about his heretic wife’s past, and her former associates?
Testimony about me?
It was the very catastrophe he had tried to avoid.

In his saddle Martin St. Leger threw back his head and laughed with joy. He drained the goblet—his third—and tossed it down to a foot soldier, then had to tighten his knees on either side of his mount, for the wine was already heating his brain. Laughing, he drew his sword, held it high, and crowed, “Wyatt and England!”