The King's Daughter (44 page)

Startled, she looked up at the musicians. They had launched into a galliard, a sprightly dance tune. It had broken the fragile mood of languor with which Edward had hoped to soothe her. Angrily, he clapped his hands to silence the musicians. A decaying spiral of sound wheezed from their pipes and lutes and rebecks. Edward waved a hand at their leader, dismissing them. The musicians quietly shuffled out.

“Forgive me, mistress. You were saying?”

“The landlord of the Crane Inn. Master Legge. He is one of my father’s oldest friends.”

“Ah. And the Crane would be a fine spot to hide in, so busy a place.”

“Yes. I’ll go there in the morning.”

“I shall accompany you.”

“No.”

“Pardon?”

“It’s best if I go alone, sir. Master Legge, as I say, is a friend, and if he knows my father is wanted for treason he will certainly not consider
you,
a lieutenant of the Queen, a friend. If he is hiding my father, he may not speak if you are present.”

“Very well,” Edward conceded. “But if your father is there, send me a message instantly. I have a meeting at Whitehall in the morning, but believe me I can drop everything to come and assist you both out to a ship, and safety.”

“I shall. Thank you.” She said it with a simple sincerity that Edward found quite touching.

“Now, we should also be checking with the relative you mentioned. Your late aunt’s husband is it? I know you said this uncle lives a long way out, in Somerset. Nevertheless, it’s worth—” He stopped. Palmer stood the doorway. Edward frowned at the interruption. “Pardon me, Mistress Thornleigh. My steward requires a word with me.”

The exchange with Palmer outside the door was enough to take away Edward’s appetite. He returned to the table. “That Spaniard,” he said to Isabel, sitting heavily. “After we left the Anchor he escaped custody.”

Her knife clattered to her plate. She looked up. Her face was very pale.

“What’s more,” Edward added, “he has stolen your horse.”

She had tasks to do. First, she sat at the bedchamber’s desk and wrote out the list of names and addresses Sir Edward would need of her father’s friends and associates. She worked at this, forcing all other thoughts at bay, while the maid quietly bustled to prepare the chamber. The girl refueled the silver brazier with coals to radiate a soft glow of heat. She untied the gold silk cords that held the bed’s crimson damask curtains, and turned down its crimson silk coverlet. She closed the shutters on the mullioned window that overlooked Sir Edward’s quiet back garden. She left the basket of clean rags that Isabel had requested, for her monthly flow had begun. Its arrival among her welter of worries had brought a great relief. The alternative that its absence had threatened since Mosse’s penetration was a dread she’d been living with for almost a week. She finished writing the list and asked the maid to carry it down to Sir Edward. The girl took it, bobbed a curtsy, and left.

Now she was alone. Carefully, meticulously, she laid out on the bed her meager belongings fetched from the Anchor by Sir Edward’s servant. Her blue gown, still soiled from the Fleet prison … with Carlos. Stiffly, she laid the gown aside on a chair. Sir Edward’s housekeeper could see to its cleaning.

She carried the other few items to the carved cherrywood chest left open for her convenience by the maid. Kneeling at the chest, its lining fragrant with cedarwood, she set in her belongings. Her hairbrush. Her depleted purse. Her mother’s book, its two brass clasps securely fastened. These things were all she had left of home. The tunic she’d brought for herfather was gone, traded for the sheepskin … for Carlos. The shirt she had brought for her father was gone. Carlos was wearing it. She shut the chest.

She stood still in the middle of the room, forcing her mind ahead. Was there nothing more to do? No. Yes, she must sleep. That was important. She tugged off her clothes and finished her toilette. She needed rest, for tomorrow there was much to do.

Think only of sleep. Blow out the candle. Pull down the sheet. Climb into the bed. Think only of tomorrow: the Crane, to fetch Father. Then the Flemish ship, to send him away. Then off to Ambassador de Noailles. Receive his information to take to Sir Thomas Wyatt. Yesterday Wyatt had said, “Come again as soon as possible.” Much to do.

The goosedown pillow was plump and soft. The linen sheets were perfumed with the scent of roses. Everything here was elegant and restrained. Like Sir Edward himself, she thought.
Everything the opposite of Carlos. The assassin.

Eyes closed. Think only of the challenges tomorrow.
Challenges to face alone. She would make use of Sir Edward’s kindness and generosity, yes, but she knew she was alone.

“This man has used you in the hope of reaching your father, to murder him.”

And now he’d escaped custody.

Eyes open, she squinted in the bright moonlight that knifed its way through a crack between the shutters, a beam to spy on her privacy. On her misery. He had escaped. The man she had trusted. The man whose hands had touched all the secret places of her body. She hated him. Every part of her hated him—the man who was pledged to kill her father.

26
The Ambus

E
arly the next morning Isabel made her way along busy Thames Street toward the Crane Inn. Its brightly painted overhanging sign depicting one of the river’s three famous loading cranes glinted at her through the morning fog, as though beckoning her. She was full of hope that she would find her father there.

A troop of armed London Guildsmen marched by in their new uniforms of white coats bearing the cross of St. George on breast and back. Isabel watched them—"Whitecoats” the people called these soldiers—counting them as they passed, knowing she must soon report all that she saw to Wyatt. A flock of boys zigzagged after them chanting falsetto war cries and brandishing sticks as swords. If only the real troops readying to attack Wyatt had nothing more than sticks, Isabelthought. But, on the contrary, it seemed like the Queen’s nobles, finally committing themselves, were drawing more of their men as soldiers into the city every day and arming them formidably. Their cries of muster could be heard in all of London’s wards, and cannon blasted regularly in the fields beyond the city walls as artillery officers tested their guns. The faint odor of the burnt gunpowder drifted constantly in the air. It reminded Isabel of Lord Grenville’s gun flaring orange sparks as he’d shot her mother. A terrible memory, but it jolted her back to her purpose this morning. She hurried along to the inn.

The Crane’s common room hummed with guests and travelers busily eating breakfast despite the rebellion crisis. Isabel gave a servant boy her name and sent him to fetch Master Legge. She hardly had time to shake the snow from her hem before the landlord pushed through the kitchen door and came to her with an anxious look on his florid face. Holding a finger of warning to his lips, he jerked his chin toward the chattering guests. “Come” he whispered, turning.

Isabel followed him up a staircase to his counting room. It lay in gloom, with heavy curtains drawn across the window to mask the inn’s strongbox. Isabel could hardly wait as Legge looked out to check the stairwell, then closed the door. “He’s here, isn’t he?” she blurted.

Legge turned with a look of consternation. “Why are you still in England? What of your mother? My God, did she not survive the—”

“Sir, my mother is alive. And recovering, I pray.”

“You do not know?”

She quickly explained how she’d sent her mother in the care of the nurse to Antwerp, where Adam would take care of her.

“But you stayed? In this dangerous time? Against your father’s express command?”

“To save his life!” she cried, and immediately regretted her outburst. But instead of making him angry it brought from him an odd, mournful smile. He came to her and folded her in his beefy arms. “Like your mother,” he murmured. “Just like your mother.”

For a moment Isabel drank in the familiarity of his fleshy warmth and oniony aroma. Then she pulled out of his embrace. “Master Legge, please tell me. Is my father here?”

“He
was
here, Bel. He’s gone.”

“Gone? When?”

“First light this morning.”

While she was rising from her soft bed at Sydenham’s house! If only she’d come last night, not sat at his sumptuous table, brooding and waiting for morning. She had missed her father by mere hours!

“He’s weak as a colt,” Legge went on anxiously. “He came here staggering with fever. I tucked him up and ladled broth into him, and he slept a sleep like death the whole long day and night. And then this morning …” He made a vague gesture of flight toward the door, and helplessly shook his head. “I could not stop him.”

“But where has he gone?”

Legge shrugged his ignorance. “Stubborn old bear. I told him he was in no condition to leave, but he was bound to walk out of here whether I said aye or nay, walk right out into the snow. So"—he threw up his hands with a sigh—"I gave him a horse and warm clothes and he lit out.”

“But where to?”

“Child, I know not.”

“Master Legge, I
must
find him. He is in terrible danger, from the Queen’s men no less!”

At this he looked even more alarmed, and Isabel sensed it was best not to mention that her father was now wanted as a traitor. “If you hear anything from him,” she entreated, “please let me know immediately. I am staying … with a friend.” She told him Sydenham’s address.

He nodded. But he was looking at her in a mournful, abstracted way. “It’s passing strange,” he said. “Years ago, yourfather and I searched across the Low Countries for your mother, searched through the bodies and the rubble of Münster, afraid that she was dead. Bad times, bad times. And now, here you are, searching for
him.”
He crooned sadly, “Poor little Isabel.”

She stiffened. No one had ever told her that, about searching Münster for her mother. She felt a stab of resentment. No one had ever told her
anything.

A cannon boomed from Finsbury Field.

“I must go,” she said.

Legge laid a heavy hand on her shoulder. “Be careful, Bel. The renegade Wyatt is on his way. If he broaches the city walls, no Londoner will be safe in his bed. That rabble will fall to sack and pillage.” He glanced uneasily at the strongbox on his counting table, then added stoutly, “But the Queen’s forces gain strength every hour. And we Londoners with families and property to protect, we too will do our duty.”

Isabel felt a chill. How could she tell anymore who were friends and who were foes? People’s loyalties seemed to cross like outstretched hands in a mob. She could no longer see clearly. Only duty was keeping her on course.

And she had hers to perform, to Wyatt and to Martin. Sir Edward Sydenham must continue the search for her father, for his agents could cover far more territory, and far faster, than she could. Meanwhile, she must go to Ambassador de Noailles.

“Sir Henry!” Martin St. Leger shouted. He kicked his horse’s flanks as he galloped along the road’s edge, passing the column of foot soldiers as they trudged through the morning fog. Martin cantered toward the rear of the column, his horse’s hooves flinging clots of mud that spattered the soldiers. One of them, wiping mud from his cheek, grumbled an oath after Martin, then darted a sheepish look at the priest marching beside him. Robert St. Leger let the man’s blasphemy pass, but without breaking his stride he looked over his shoulder to watch his brother gallop past.

“Sir Henry!” Martin called again. He could just make out the commander’s mist-shrouded figure near the end of the line.

Sir Henry Isley was sitting his horse and scratching out a dispatch with a quill, using his thigh to support the paper. Beside him a courier sat astride the fast pony that would carry him and the commander’s dispatch to Rochester ahead of the main body.

Martin reached Isley and reined in his mount. The horse heaved bellows breaths, making its leather cinch creak and crackle as it snorted steam into the cold air. Martin was panting, too, after his scouting foray. He’d ridden hard all the way back from Malling, a fast eight miles. “Sir! Lord Abergavenny left Malling two hours ago!”

“Good,” Isley grunted. He scrawled his signature and shoved the dispatch at the courier, who bounded off on his pony. Isley frowned at an overloaded wagon lumbering past, its cargo of arms clattering as the wheels sloshed through a muddy pothole. “St. Leger, go and organize that munitions detail. They’ll capsize at that rate, the fools.”

Martin hesitated. He was watching the courier gallop into the obscurity of the mist. Half the marching column had disappeared into it too. “Sir Henry,” he ventured, “may I speak?”

Isley turned to him. “What is it?”

Martin wiped flecks of mud from his lips, salty with his sweat. “I think Abergavenny means to engage us. On the road ahead.”

“What? Nonsense. He’s on his way to Gravesend to meet the Duke of Norfolk’s Whitecoats. He’ll be there by dark.” Isley was stuffing his hand back into his gauntlet.

“I know our man in his camp told us that, sir. But I saw signs of their departure that lead me to believe otherwise.”

“Signs? What d’ye mean, boy? What signs?”

“Their food wagons did not leave with them. The wagons were just starting out when I reached the town. Why would they split up unless the fighting force wanted to get away quickly—to meet us?”

Isley considered this. “Did you hear anything from the townspeople?”

Martin shook his head. “No one would say, of course. They’ve been cowed. Except—and this is another odd thing—a smith told me he’d been wakened before dawn to mend rivets on a slew of breastplates. Why prepare armor with such haste unless they thought a fight was imminent? There are smiths aplenty in Gravesend.”

“But you didn’t actually see Abergavenny’s army, did you? See him in our path?”

“No, sir. But I hurried back on the main road, knowing you’d want confirmation of his departure. The idea of his intercepting us only occurred to me on the way.”