The King's Daughter (2 page)
Read The King's Daughter Online
Authors: Barbara Kyle
I
sabel Thornleigh had treason on her mind. It was hardly the normal preoccupation of a well brought up girl of nineteen who planned, within the month, to marry the man she loved. But Isabel’s upbringing had hardly been conventional. And these, as she reminded herself, were hardly normal times.
Isabel slapped her palm down on the open book her father was perusing at an outdoor stall beside St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Father, we’re late,” she said. “We were supposed to meet Martin at the Belle Sauvage at noon. I won’t wait for you a moment longer.”
Her father peeled her hand from the page. “Why not?
He’ll
wait. If he won’t, he’s a fool. And if that’s the case, perhaps I shouldn’t be letting him have you after all.” He casually flipped the volume shut. “No, Martin will wait,” he saidwith a smile of challenge. “Even if
you
can’t.” He winked at her with his one good eye.
Isabel felt a blush flare her cheeks. She looked down, letting the furred hood of her cloak hide her face. A stupid reflex, she told herself; no one else was watching.
They were standing in the part of the busy churchyard where bookstalls were snugged between the cathedral buttresses and against the precinct’s wall. The churchyard hummed with the drone of trade. Men and women strolled and haggled. Sellers coaxed, buyers dithered. It was a clear, bright afternoon in the middle of January and half of London seemed to be milling through the churchyard, energized by the reprieve of sunshine after ten days of snow, sleet, and fog. A scrawny woman on a donkey harangued the browsers clogging her way, shouting abuse at them with surprising vigor. A yapping spaniel chased a sparrow and almost caught it. Everyone seemed enlivened and purposeful. But Isabel was afraid her father would never move on. She watched, exasperated, as his gaze roamed over a set of Chaucer’s works as if he had all the time in the world. “Besides,” he said, fingering the spine of an
Herbal
with an exaggerated show of procrastination, “I can’t go back to the inn without finding that volume your mother asked for.”
“The
Cosmographia?”
Isabel asked slyly. She pulled from her cloak the very book. “I’ve just bought it for her.” She held it up, victorious.
“Now
can we go?”
Richard Thornleigh smiled, acknowledging defeat, and before he could muster another defense Isabel steered him out of the honeycomb of stalls. But at the last one, a display of religious books and tracts, he dug in his heels and cried “Ah!” with extravagant delight. Isabel groaned as he lifted the book that had caught his eye, a massive volume entitled
The Whole Duty of Woman.
“A wedding gift, Bel?” he teased. He leafed through the pages, simpering and sighing in a schoolboy’s parody of an ecstatic bride. More than six feet tall, looming over Isabel with his sea-weathered skin, storm-gray hair, and a leather patch on his blinded eye, he looked instead like a bridegroom’s worst nightmare. Isabel could not help herself—she laughed. Loudly enough to make heads turn. The earnest buyers of religious instruction were not amused, and that made Isabel laugh more.
Thornleigh chuckled. “Well, I can see this weighty tome is what you’d really like,” he said.
Isabel saw his delight at teasing her glitter in his eye, its color mirroring her own eyes, cobalt blue. She had inherited that from him; her dark hair from her mother. But there the similarity with her parents ended, a fact that Isabel noted with relief. She loved her mother and father, but they lived such quiet lives, so retired, so dull. She wanted far more from life. And with Martin St. Leger she was going to have it.
Thornleigh pretended to stagger under the book’s weight. “Hefty, though,” he said. “An awful lot of duty here. We’ll have to have it specially carted home for the wedding.”
“There won’t be time,” Isabel said, still smiling.
“How’s that?” He was setting the book down under the bookseller’s frosty glare.
“It’s in three weeks,” she reminded him.
“What is?”
She rolled her eyes. “The wedding, Father.”
Thornleigh looked surprised. “Is it? So soon?”
Isabel watched the mirth drain from his face and uneasiness flood in. She always thought of her father as a hardy, handsome man despite his fifty-five years, but this sudden wash of worry seemed to bring into unkind relief all his age and cares. “Father, what is it?”
He hesitated. “It’s just that—” He smiled gently. “That you really
are
in a hurry.”
His smile was fleeting. “Like Queen Mary,” he murmured. “They say she prays every day for good weather to send the Prince to her.”
It was Isabel’s turn to hesitate. Should she confide in him about the exciting, secret plans? No, she had promised silence. “Then the weather had better oblige soon,” she said with mild scorn for the Queen, “for she’ll refuse to be married in Lent. Besides, she’s almost forty, for heaven’s sake. At her age she
mustn’t
wait.”
Thornleigh laughed, his good humor rushing back. “Oh, yes, Her Majesty is ancient.” He grasped his daughter’s arm. “Come on, let’s meet Martin.”
They pushed their way out of St. Paul’s crowded precincts. Under the shadow of its great spire they headed west along Paternoster Row, equally crowded with strolling shoppers, gossiping priests, wandering dogs, and pigeons pecking at patches of brown grass in the trampled snow. Their destination, the Belle Sauvage Tavern, lay next to Ludgate in London Wall, only a long stone’s throw from the cathedral. They went down Ave Maria Lane and turned the corner to approach Ludgate.
Isabel heard the mob before she saw it.
“Spaniard papists!” a man shouted. “Be gone!”
“Aye, back home with you!” a woman cried. “We want no Spanish vultures fouling London!”
Isabel felt her father’s hand clutch her elbow and yank her aside. Too late. From behind, a running youth thudded against her side, almost knocking her down. Ignoring ThornIeigh’s curses he scrambled on to join the angry crowd ahead. On a slight rise in the street, fifty or so people had formed a ragged circle and were shouting at someone trapped in their midst. They were so packed shoulder to shoulder that Isabel could not see the object of their insults. “Father,” she asked, wincing at her bruised ribs, “what’s happening?”
“I don’t know.” Thornleigh’s face had hardened with mistrust at the mob and he kept a protective hold on Isabel’s elbow. More people were running to join the crowd, drawn from nearby Ludgate and from the western gate of St. Paul’s, making the scene in the narrow street even more chaotic. From the crowd’s center Isabel heard the frightened whinnying of horses and saw the steam of horses’ breath roil into the cold air. Then she glimpsed in the crowd the top of a young man’s head capped with thick brown curls. “Martin!” she cried. The head bobbed, then disappeared. Isabel broke free of her father’s grasp and ran forward.
“No, Isabel!” Thornleigh shouted. “Stop!”
But she was already pushing her way into the dense knot of bodies—men, women, and children—trying to reach Martin St. Leger, her fiancé. She glimpsed his face—was his nose bleeding?—but he instantly disappeared again among the shouting people. Was he hurt? Isabel shoved her way further into the mob.
A gaunt man beside her yelled at the trapped victims, “Get you gone, papist pigs!”
Isabel was now close enough to see the objects of the crowd’s rage. The people had surrounded a half-dozen horsemen, all nobles. Their style and bearing reminded her of the Spanish overlords in the Netherlands where she had lived as a child. Their clothing—brilliant silks and velvets, plumed hats, jeweled sword hilts—was a shimmer of color above the winter-drab Londoners, and their magnificent mounts were caparisoned with silver trappings. But the nobles were in a panic to rein in those mounts, which danced nervously and tossed their manes and snorted as the crowd hemmed them in. Beyond them, arched Ludgate stood open. The gate had clearly been the Spaniards’ destination. Or rather, the route to their destination; about a mile beyond it lay Queen Mary’s palace of Whitehall.
Again, Isabel saw Martin. This time he saw her, too. Her way to him was blocked by a huge woman clutching a child on each hip, and by men crushing in on either side. But Martin was plowing through toward Isabel. “Stay there!” he shouted to her. He lurched back as a man hoisted a club in front of his face, crying, “Down with the Spanish vultures!” This brought a cheer from the people, and the man with the club marched forward. Others fell in beside him. But suddenly a man flanked by two burly youths blocked the aggressors’ path. “The Spanish lords be Her Majesty’s guests!” one of the defenders shouted. “By God, you will not harm them!”
The two factions fell on one another. Other men barreled into the fray. Isabel saw fists swing, heard bones crack and men yelp in pain. She saw Martin watch the skirmish, his dark eyes glistening with exhilaration. “Down with them!” he yelled. A fist struck his jaw. Isabel gasped. Martin rocked on his feet, blood trickling from his lip. Isabel dropped her mother’s book in the snow and clawed around the fat woman, trying to get through to Martin. He squared off to fight his attacker, but was suddenly jerked backward by a hand grabbing the back of his collar. Isabel looked behind Martin. There stood the lanky, sad-faced figure of his older brother, Robert. Father Robert. A man of God, he did not attempt to engage his brother’s opponent, but simply yanked Martin further backwards by the collar, away from the mayhem. Martin, off balance and scuffling, was protesting—though whether to return for Isabel or for the brawl, she could not tell.
“Isabel!” Her father’s face, pale with worry, rose above the skirmishing men. “Take my hand!” he called. He was reaching out to her, pushing through to reach her. Isabel stretched her arm toward him through the thicket of bodies. “It’s Martin and Robert!” she cried as Thornleigh caught up to her. “They’re over there!” She pointed to the mouth of an alley where Robert had dragged Martin. Thornleigh scowled. “Come on, then,” he said. Together, they hurried toward the alley.
Seeing Isabel approach, Martin finally, violently, shrugged off his brother. “I
told
you she was out there,” he said, then called to her, “Are you all right?”
“We’re fine,” she called, running to meet him. As she reached him she saw the bright blood dripping from his lip. “Oh, Martin!”
He grinned. “It’s nothing.” But Isabel pulled off her glove and reached inside her cloak for a handkerchief.
Thornleigh was catching his breath. Here at the mouth of the alley, the four of them were well beyond the fracas. “What in God’s name is this all about?” Thornleigh asked with a nod toward the skirmishing mob.
“Spanish bluebloods,” Martin said with a sneer. “The Emperor sent them to sign the royal marriage treaty. He can’t have his son, the high and mighty Prince Philip, arrive before every ‘i’ is dotted and every ‘t’ is crossed—and, of course, every royal post handed out to Spanish grandees. The arrogant blackguards act like they own the country already.”
“Hold still,” Isabel ordered, dabbing her handkerchief at Martin’s cut lip. He grinned at her, and she couldn’t resist a smile back, thinking how handsome he looked, his brown eyes sparkling from the excitement, his thick unruly curls as shiny as chestnuts in the sun.
There was a scream. The four of them looked out at the mob. One of the Spaniards’ horses had reared and its hoof had smashed a woman’s shoulder. She lay writhing on the ground. As the nobleman jostled to regain his seat, a boy pitched a snowball at the horse’s nose. The horse reared again, hooves pawing the air, eyes flashing white. The Spaniard tumbled to the ground. The crowd let out a loud, low groan of thrill. As the nobleman lay thrashing in the snow, slipping as he tried to get up, a dozen hands grabbed his horse’s reins. The horse was pulled among the crowd. Its silver-studded harness was stripped. A cry of victory went up.
People ducked to scoop up snow. Volleys of snowballs pelted the Spaniards. Shielding his head with his arms, the fallen lord hobbled toward one of his brother noblemen who swooped him up onto the back of his horse as if they were on a battlefield under attack from French cannon, not from London citizens. A huge snowball spiked with a rock smashed the rescued man’s temple. Blood spurted. His head slumped onto his rescuer’s shoulder.
The Spanish horseman nearest Ludgate broke throughthat end of the crowd. His sword was drawn and he was shouting in Spanish. Sensing escape, the other nobles spurred their mounts and bolted after him. The people in their path scattered, several tripping and falling in the crush. As the lords dashed toward Ludgate a hail of snowballs drubbed them from the rear. They galloped under the arched gate and out to safety, the loose horse following. The few citizens who had been resisting the mob gave up, turned, and ran back toward the cathedral. The victorious faction, having won the field, crowed insults in both directions, after the fleeing lords and the losers.