The King's Daughter (16 page)

Thornleigh looked lost. “But I don’t see—”

Carlos held up a warning hand to silence him, with a nod at the approaching turnkey. He and Thornleigh watched the turnkey as he slowly passed by them, swinging his lantern. The turnkey reached a prisoner under the window where the two talked in low voices. “When he leaves,” Carlos whispered, “follow me.”

Thornleigh said nothing. Carlos looked at him, suddenly anxious again. He had seen resignation like that on the faces of broken men on the battlefield when they knew their wounds were too bad to heal. Was Thornleigh that kind? Had he given up? Would he not even go to the taproom? Carlos had not anticipated that. Well, he thought, hope might get him to move. “I think your friends are coming to the taproom for you, through the other ward,” he said. When Thornleigh still said nothing, Carlos added pointedly, making it clear he meant it as a threat, “You may not want to live,
amigo,
but I do.”

Thornleigh went back to his whittling. But Carlos noticed that his hands were not quite steady. He also noticed that Thornleigh wore a ring on his forefinger, a signet seal of some kind of tree.
Perfect,
he thought.
The proof to take to the Blue Boar. The finger with the ring.

They waited. The turnkey finally left the ward. Carlos heard the echoing slam of the grilled door in the corridor that led to the stairs. Then, except for some prisoners’ coughing, there was silence.

Carlos turned to Thornleigh. “Come.”

They started through the darkened ward. All but two candles had been extinguished. They felt their way slowly past the sprawled bodies and hanging obstacles. Carlos, in front, saw ahead the mouth of the narrow corridor that sloped down to the taproom cave. The corridor was completely dark.

“Go on,” Carlos said to Thornleigh as they approached the entrance. “I will watch our rear.”

Thornleigh started toward the blackness. Carlos reached into his jerkin for the garrote. One moment’s work, and then he could be free. He began to follow Thornleigh.

A blow like a horse’s hoof smashed the back of Carlos’s neck. He toppled. He lay sprawled face-down, blind, paralyzed, unable to gasp breath. A cannon ball knee rammed his back, grinding his hip bones into the stone floor, forcing out what air was left in him. “God-rotting Spaniard!” a voice growled. Hands wrenched back Carlos’s head, then smashed his forehead down on the floor. His eyebrow split. Fire exploded in his skull. “No, use this,” another voice said. The cannon ball lifted from Carlos’s back. His body, like a stretched bellows, helplessly sucked in air and the floor’s dirt.

He heard a loud thud above him and an “Oof!” Boots scuffled by his face. He spat out dirt, found he could move and see, and rolled over on his back. His brain cleared. To his left he saw that Thornleigh had plowed a bearded man against the wall. To his right another man was on his knees, scrabbling in the dark for something on the floor. Carlos saw what the man was searching for—a length of woolen hose bulging with a rock. He suddenly understood. The other man had landed him with this bludgeon and had been about to bash his skull with it, but had dropped it under Thornleigh’s attack. And Carlos recognized both men now. The priest-killers.

Carlos sprang to his feet. The man on his knees found the bludgeon and snatched it up. Carlos kicked it from his hands. Defenseless, the man glanced up in panic. Carlos kicked his face, cracking bone. The man reeled backward, blood spurting from his nose.

There was shouting all around as prisoners nearby, jolted from sleep, scampered to their feet and gathered close to watch the fight.

“Who’s the big one?”

“The Spaniard.”

“Kill him!”

The kicked man, on his back, was trying to get up while still clutching his bloody, broken nose. Carlos kicked him savagely in the side of the head. There was a snap from his neck. The man’s arms and legs flopped out. Then he lay still. He was dead.

The prisoners booed Carlos.

Carlos ignored them. He swiped away the blood trickling from the gash in his eyebrow and swung around to locate Thornleigh. Thornleigh was still grappling with the bearded man at the wall. The two of them staggered out a few steps into the ward, clutching one another as if in a grim parody of an embrace. They stumbled against a tattered curtain, ripping it down. The bearded man finally pulled away and jabbed a fist into Thornleigh’s belly. Thornleigh doubled over and stumbled backward. The bearded man twisted around, ready to attack Carlos.

But Carlos had snatched up the bludgeon. Swinging it around over his head, he smashed it against the bearded man’s temple. The force of it knocked the man sideways. He collapsed and lay groaning on the ground. The prisoners booed and shouted and stamped. Carlos and Thornleigh now stood in the center of a hostile ring.

“Get the poxy Spaniard!” someone yelled. Three or four men lifted their fists, readying to advance on him. Carlos swung the bludgeon in threatening circles overhead. The prisoners crept back.

A bell clanged. The turnkey’s alarm bell. Several prisoners scurried away. The remaining ones parted as Mosse himself came stomping through, followed by the turnkey swinging his bell, then four other turnkeys with chains slung over their shoulders. All carried daggers or truncheons.

Mosse scowled at the man moaning on the ground, then at the dead man. He glared at Carlos and Thornleigh. “Troublemakers,” he growled. “Clap the irons on ‘em and throw ‘em in the Hole.”

11
The Hol

C
arlos watched a rat sniff its way down the stone stairs of the Hole. It stopped on the final dripping step, nose twitching, as if uncertain whether it was worth proceeding.
Madre de Dios,
Carlos thought,
the stench down here is too bad even for a rat.

He was sitting on the floor, his back against the wall, and he leaned forward, away from the icy stone chilling his spine. His head throbbed from the blows of the night before. After the fight, he and Thornleigh and the surviving priest-killer had been chained to the walls here. They were the only inmates.
Now,
he thought,
it must be dawn.

He lowered his head to stretch his neck. Every muscle was stiff. His buttocks felt frozen on the damp earth floor. His bladder was uncomfortably full. There was no window, no warmth, no light except what seeped through the grilled trapdoor at the top of the stairs from a feeble rushlight up there; the rat was a mere shadow among shadows. Carlos extended one arm and then the other to stretch his back, rattling the arm’s-length chains connecting his wrist irons to the wall. Thornleigh, who was hunkered beside him, groaned in his sleep.

The rat scurried across to the opposite wall where the priest-killer lay. He was dead. Mosse had chained him up unconscious and he had died in the night. Carlos knew it because he hadn’t heard the sound of the man’s breathing in hours. He peered at the corpse through the gloom. He could barely make out the shape of the rat near the dead man’s outstretched hand. Then he caught the sound of it nibbling. On a finger? He shivered. He hated rats. That’s why he had stayed awake.

And to think of a way out.

He glanced at Thornleigh’s slumped form. Strange, he thought—the man he’d been hired to kill had saved his life. The priest-killers would certainly have finished him if Thornleigh hadn’t intervened. But in the few words the two of them had exchanged here before Thornleigh had fallen into his fitful sleep, Carlos had not expressed any thanks. Nothing to be grateful for, he thought grimly, flinching at the stab of pain as he eased his bad knee. No pardon. No hundred pounds. No freedom. And with Mosse holding him responsible for the murder in the fight, his next encounter would surely be with the hangman.

He punched the air in fury and winced as the chain snapped taut and the cuff’s iron edge scraped skin off his wrist. There had to be
some
way out! Last night, after agreeing to the visitor’s offer, he had tasted hope, and now he would scrape off every shred of skin before he’d let them haul him to the gallows.

He heaved a sigh of disgust at his forced bravado. Some way out? He knew it was next to impossible.

He forced that thought—too close to panic—to the back of his mind. He fumbled to unfasten his codpiece, then urinated, sending the stream as far as possible, steaming in the cold air. But a rivulet snaked back around his left boot. He clenched his teeth at the indignity.

There was a clang above. Then footsteps. The trapdoor creaked open. Torchlight pooled over the stairs. Carlos fumbled to retie his codpiece. Someone was coming down.

“Careful. Steps’re a mite slippery.”

It was Mosse, sounding uncharacteristically helpful. And someone was following him down. A woman. She flinched at the smell. Her clothes were rich. A lady. Carlos wondered:
What’s a lady doing here?

Mosse stopped on the bottom step. “There he is,” he said, holding out his torch toward Thornleigh, who groaned in his sleep, oblivious, and tried to curl up more tightly on the cold floor. The woman shoved back her hood for a better look. Catching sight of Thornleigh, her hand flew to her mouth. Carlos saw that she was young, dark-haired. Pretty.

“A rough sight, I grant you,” Mosse said. “But rules is rules, mistress. And the Hole for brawling’s one of ‘em. But I’ll wake him for you. Give you your money’s worth at least.” He started forward.

The girl snatched his sleeve. “No. Not yet.”

Mosse shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

Standing on the stair, they’d kept their voices low, and Thornleigh slept on, though he squirmed in restlessness. Mosse and the girl ignored Carlos completely.

“Jailer,” the girl said in a sudden, fierce whisper, “I want him set free.”

Mosse laughed lightly.

“No, listen,” she said. “I’ve brought more money. Plenty of money.” She pulled out a purse, tugged open its drawstring, and held it up to him. “It’s all yours.”

A lady sure enough, with all that cash,
Carlos thought.
And green as a willow sapling. Who else would trust this
bastardo
jailer.

Mosse took the purse. He was not laughing now. “Let’s see,” he said. He moved to a dusty table in the opposite corner, not far from the dead priest-killer, not even glancing at the corpse. Some chains lay on the table and Mosse shoved them to one side and dumped the purse’s coins out to count them. Again, Thornleigh shifted miserably in the confines of his chains.

“Jewels, too,” the girl whispered eagerly, following Mosse to the table. She loosened her cloak at the throat and showed him a sparkling necklace, then held up her hands to display several rings. “You can have everything. Just let him go. Please.”

Mosse was admiring the girl’s throat. And her shape. So was Carlos.
Imagine having a girl like that begging for your life,
he thought. What was she to Thornleigh, anyway? Awfully young to be his wife.

“Please!” she said again.

Mosse looked up the stairs as if making a calculation, then back at the girl. “I’d need something more besides.”

“More? But this is all I—” She stopped herself. “Yes, of course. I could get you more. I’ll bring it later. All right?”

“Not more coin,” Mosse said, very quietly. He tossed the empty purse down on the scattered money. “Something softer.” He fingered the fur at the edge of her hood. “You.”

The girl froze.

“Wha'?” Thornleigh mumbled. His head jerked restlessly on the floor, though his eyes were closed.

Mosse glanced back up the stairs again. “And then,” he said, smiling at the girl, “I’ll let him go, free as you and me. Now that’s an offer more than fair, considering my position, and considering your father’s crime.”

So,
Carlos thought,
Thornleigh’s daughter.

“Is it a bargain?” Mosse asked.

The girl only stared at him, aghast.

Mosse’s eyes narrowed in anger at the insult of her response. “All right, then, visit’s over,” he snapped, grabbing her elbow. “Come on, it’s back home with you.” He started to hustle her to the steps. But his angry voice had woken Thornleigh. He lifted his head slightly, blinking as if disoriented. The girl looked over her shoulder at her father and stopped. “No, please!” she said to Mosse. “Wait!”

Mosse eyed her with a small smile and brought his torch closer to her face. “Reconsidering, are we?”

The girl gnawed her lower lip.

Thornleigh was struggling to sit up. With his back against the wall he stared at the girl. “Isabel,” he said suddenly, blinking in confusion. “What … what are you doing here?”

“Oh, God,” she breathed in misery.

“Well?” Mosse said.

She closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said, the word a whisper. She made a move toward the steps.

Mosse laid his hand on her shoulder. “Not upstairs. Here.”

She turned to him in horror. “No!”

He set his face sternly, adamant.

The girl groaned. “Not here,” she pleaded. “Haven’t you a room of your own?”

“That I have, mistress.” He added with a withering look, “And in it my wife lies snoring a-bed.”

“But … I can’t!”

Thornleigh jolted up straight. “Isabel!” Forgetting his chains, he lurched halfway to standing. But the chains jerked him back and he slipped on the slimy earth and sprawled on his back, his fettered arms splayed apart like a crucified man.

The girl looked frantically between her father and Mosse. “I can’t!” she said to Mosse. “Not here. Not—”

“Then he stays,” Mosse said firmly. He waited a moment. “Look,” he said, tugging a ring of keys from his belt and holding it up. “Here’s your father’s freedom.” He shook the keys enticingly. “Take it or leave it.”

At the sight of the keys, Carlos felt every nerve tighten. Was there some way …?

Thornleigh had struggled halfway up again and sat against the wall. “Go away!” he cried to the girl. He flailed his hands. “Get out of here!”

Mosse took no notice of him. “Make up your mind,” he said to the girl with another glance up the stairs. “I haven’t got all day.”