The King's Daughter (51 page)

Getting inside had been easy.

For almost an hour Carlos prowled the village, hands slung over his yoke, taking stock of everything he saw. The munitions wagons and the condition of the mules that would draw them. The hundreds of bundles of arrows stacked in the fletchers’ carts. The cache of matchlocks, carefully stored in a tanner’s shed to keep dry their match wicks, presoaked in saltpeter. The forest of newly sharpened pikes ranged in a smithy where the air still held a faintly burned odor from the overworked whetstone. The two small cannon tucked into a byre, which Carlos decided must be the guns the Duke of Norfolk had abandoned at Rochester bridge after his men rushed over to Wyatt. He counted horses, and noted how many were fit mounts for cavalry. Above all, as he edged the market square, he counted soldiers. Despite his concentration, though, he couldn’t help wondering about two young officers he saw talking: either of them could be the man Isabel meant to marry. He forced the thought away.

He reached the town’s northern edge where it dwindled down toward the broad River Thames. Here, a wooden footbridge straddled the frozen stream that fed into the river. He stopped on the bridge and looked out. A straggle of huts and a strip of dun-colored field, its furrows patched with snow, gave way to thick clumps of trees growing along the Thames. Through a break in the treeline Carlos saw a solitary watch fire flickering at the river’s edge. There seemed to be no one beside the fire. He suspected the sentry had come into town for his food instead of waiting to have it brought. No breach of discipline would surprise him among these English farmer-soldiers.

A fitful evening breeze made his skin feel clammy, for the walk through the cold air had done little to dry his clothes. It would be full darkness soon, and he still had to get out of town again and reach his horse. But he had not yet checked the river. He needed to see whether there was any amassment of boats. If so, it could mean that Wyatt intended to ferry his army to the northern shore, to Essex, for his advance on London. Knowledge of that would tip the royalists to concentrate their defenses at the city’s eastern gates and the Tower.

His eyes were drawn to a tithe barn at the far edge of the field, near the path to the river. One of its broad doors stood open, and in the shadows under its slate roof Carlos thought he made out the dull gleam of gunmetal. Maybe just a trick of the failing light, he thought. The sun had dipped below the treetops, but the sky above the river still held a pewter iridescence. He couldn’t see anyone guarding the barn. He decided to investigate on the way to the river.

The path to the tithe barn was lined knee-high with dead grasses that rustled as he passed, like an old man’s death rattle. A gull screeched overhead, swooping in from the Thames. Carlos saw no sign of any soldiers.

At the barn he found he’d been right. Inside, five big cannons rested on five sturdy carriages. And in the straw were bushels of shot and lasts of gunpowder, sound and dry. He wondered where Wyatt could have got hold of such impressive ordnance. He set down his buckets and slipped off the yoke, and reached out to feel the gunmetal, cold against his hands. He recalled Abergavenny saying a naval captain had deserted the Queen’s ships. Had the captain delivered the ships’ guns to Wyatt? As he walked around the carriages he noted the fresh joinery. Wyatt must have had the carpenters of Rochester sweating to build these carriages, but it had been worth the effort. The guns were formidable.

He had to move on. He went down to the riverbank. He saw just one lone skiff, beached in the grass on its side with a jagged hole in its bow. No flotilla. Wyatt would be remaining on the south shore. That was all Carlos needed to know. The only sign of life was that solitary watch fire glowing faintly through the trees.

Then he saw a sentry at the fire after all. Wrapped in a cloak, he sat on a log before the fire, his back to Carlos. His head drooped, but his body seemed alert as if he were studying something he held in his hands.

Apart from the evening breeze sighing through the trees, there was silence. Carlos stood still. Any sudden movement on the twig-strewn path could draw the sentry around. He had to leave quietly.

He was about to go when the sentry abruptly lifted his head and looked sideways. It was obvious he hadn’t seen Carlos in the shadows behind him. He just gazed at the river without moving, intent, like a dog sniffing the air. Carlos froze at what he saw. The man’s profile was clearly lit by the fire. A leather patch covered his left eye. It was Richard Thornleigh.

Carlos’s mind flooded with one thought: a hundred pounds for Thornleigh dead, to be paid at the Blue Boar in London on Candlemas night.

That was tonight. And the Blue Boar was only a two-hour ride away. And a hundred pounds meant freedom.

But he suddenly felt her warm breath against his throat, just as if she were here, just like that night when she’d cried out from her nightmare and come into his arms …

A fantasy. Forget her. She remembers you only to curse your name. Don’t weaken. Not this time.

He could not attack: a fight might bring soldiers. Then he would never get out.

Think of what is possible. Get his trust first. You did it once before.

He had no sword, but his dagger lay in his belt under his sheepskin. It could slit a throat. It could sever a finger. He stepped forward into the glow of Thornleigh’s fire.

Sitting on the log and rereading Honor’s letter, Thornleigh heard a crunch of twigs and glanced over his shoulder.

“Richard Thornleigh,” a voice said quietly from the shadows.

Thornleigh dropped the letter, grabbed his pike and stood, whirling around. A man approached from the path between the trees. Thornleigh could not clearly see his face but he wasn’t dressed like Wyatt’s soldiers. “Stop,” he said, pointing the pike. Its steel blade glinted in the firelight. “Who’s there?”

The man stopped at the rim of the fire’s glow and raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “A friend,” he said. “You do not remember me?”

Thornleigh peered at the shadowed face. Holding the pike outstretched, he had to take a wide stance, for the fever had left him somewhat unsteady on his feet.

“Colchester jail,” the man said. “Remember?”

Now Thornleigh recognized him. The hard face. The strong, fighter’s body. And the accent. “The Spaniard?” he asked warily. He wasn’t sure. He’d seen so many strange and desperate men in the last days, the faces had become a jumble in his mind. And this one, made lurid by the firelight, was still indistinct.

“Let me come closer, into the light,” the man said. He stepped forward, slowly lowering his hands, and approached the log that lay between them. He stopped a few feet beyond the tip of Thornleigh’s pike. “See? You know me. Valverde.” He smiled. “Call me Carlos.”

Thornleigh was amazed. It
was
him—the Spaniard who had tried to arrange his rescue in Colchester jail, the one who’d made contact using the old password. “Christ,” he said, marveling, “I thought they’d hanged you for sure.”

Carlos laughed lightly. “I am not so easy to kill.”

Thornleigh did not laugh, nor did he lower the pike. Why had the fellow been skulking around in the shadows? “What the devil are you doing here?”

“Came to join up. I am a soldier.”

Thornleigh recalled the few words they’d exchanged after being chained together in the Hole. “A mercenary?”

Carlos nodded.

“Have you talked to an officer?” Thornleigh asked, jerking his chin toward the town, its rooftops aglow from the market-square fires.

“Not yet. Saw you first. Good thing, yes?”

“I’ll take you up myself then, soon as my relief arrives. You’ll have to come under guard, though,” he said, still holding the pike rigid. “Orders.”

“Of course.
Gracias
.”

Thornleigh noticed the bruised scar puckering Carlos’s eyebrow and remembered that he’d got that gash in the fight in Colchester jail. He couldn’t help wondering again who had been behind the rescue attempt. It hadn’t been Leonard Legge, after all. In his brief talk with Legge at the Crane his old friend hadn’t known anything about the plan. Yet who else knew the old password? “You never did know who hired you to approach me, did you? Back in Colchester.”

Carlos shook his head. “A servant. A stranger. Sorry.”

Thornleigh let the matter drop.

Carlos took a step forward. Thornleigh jerked the pike. “That’s close enough.”

“But I have news. Let me come and tell you. It is about your daughter. I saw her in London.”

Thornleigh’s mouth fell open. “What are you talking about? Isabel’s in Antwerp.”

“No. In London. She got her mother safely on that ship and then—”

“She’s all right then? My wife?”

“That I do not know. But I do know your daughter has been searching London prisons for you.”

“Bel? Searching prisons? Impossible. She wouldn’t know the first thing about—”

“She has done it. She is very brave. She unlocked my chains in jail. She hired me to find you, to get you free. We have been looking for you. We are … friends.”

Thornleigh tried to take in the incredible tale. “Bel … unlocked you? But … what about the jailer?”

Carlos grinned. “I killed him.”

“Good God,” Thornleigh whispered. He was savagely glad. He could hardly bear to remember the rape of his daughter. No man had deserved to die more than that bastard Mosse. But worry instantly rushed back. “Why have you left her? Where’s she gone? How will she—”

Carlos held up a hand to stop the questions. “She did not want my help anymore. So I came here. I need the work.” He stepped closer, just a hand’s breadth away from the pike tip.

Thornleigh was still appalled by the news. Isabel … in London. What would become of her? “Why did she dismiss you?” he asked anxiously. “She’ll be all alone.”

“She knows she must join your wife and son in Antwerp. That was your order, yes?”

Thornleigh relaxed a little. Of course Isabel would go now. What else could she do? A chill breeze fingered inside his collar, making him shiver. Carlos was slowly moving around the end of the log. Their eyes locked. Carlos stopped. From the town the faint laughter of soldiers drifted down to the riverbank. Carlos bent to tug at the knee of his breeches. Thornleigh saw that the breeches were wet and plastered to his shins, and his sleeves were wet too. Carlos nodded toward the fire. “Let me come and dry out? I thought the ice on the river would be solid.” He gave a sheepish smile. “I was wrong.”

Thornleigh nodded distractedly, still fretting over Isabel. Carlos moved in. He thrust out his hands over the low flames. A thin screech came from the trees. Some creature—a hare?—seized by a predator.

Thornleigh suddenly noticed the letter on the ground where he’d dropped it. It lay near the fire. Too near. He snatched it up for fear it might burn, then straightened quickly, still holding the pike in his other hand. Carlos watched him, rubbing his hands together over the fire.

Thornleigh felt dizzy from standing up so quickly. The last days’ events had taken their toll—the fever, the escape from Newgate on the corpse cart, the furtive dash to the Crane, the frigid ride from London to meet Wyatt’s army on their march. He sat down heavily on the log before the fire, setting the pike across his knees, and drew a long, steadying breath.

Carlos gestured to the paper in Thornleigh’s hand. “A letter?”

Thornleigh stared at it bleakly. “Nine days old. From my wife.”

“A learned lady.”

Thornleigh looked at him hard. “You know a lot about my family.”

“Your daughter told me.” His hand eased into the opening of his coat, then lay still.

Thornleigh looked down at the paper with a bitter smile. “Well, it’s Honor’s letter, yes, but not to me. To a coward named Sydenham.”

“Sydenham?” Carlos said with surprise. “Edward Sydenham? The lawyer?”

Their eyes met. “You know him?” Thornleigh asked.

“I was in jail because I tried to kill him. I had some land and he stole it with his lawyer’s tricks. I went for him but thebailiff stopped me. The bailiff died instead.” His tone was grim, and Thornleigh sensed that his hatred of the lawyer went deep.

Carlos asked sharply, “How do
you
know Sydenham?”

Memories swarmed in Thornleigh’s mind. His gaze was drawn into the core of the flames. “He was once a hunted criminal. My wife used to take pity on such people.”

“Sydenham? Hunted?” Carlos sounded amazed. “Why?”

Thornleigh rested his forearms on the pike across his lap and watched the sparks swirl upward in the air and die, snuffed out like fragments of the past. “For heresy. It was years ago.”

“What happened?”

Thornleigh glanced at him. He didn’t know what made him want to tell the story to a virtual stranger. Except that it made Honor seem near. Near, and vibrantly alive. “Sydenham was on the run after escaping the Bishop’s lockup,” he began. “My wife had arranged to smuggle him out of England in the hold of my ship. I wasn’t there. With the ship ready to sail Honor was about to go back to shore, but the port authorities had been tipped off about Sydenham and they came out to search. On deck, he saw them coming. Like I said, he’s a coward. He wept and wailed to Honor, and she saw that he’d endanger the crew and all our friends in the work if she didn’t do something. So she disguised him in her cloak and put him in a skiff and the officials believed it was her rowing away. When they boarded, Honor was tucked in the hiding hole in the bowels of the ship.”

He turned the letter in his hands, watching the fire shadows dance over it like ghosts. “But the officers suspected Sydenham had stowed away,” he went on, “so they bunked down on board to wait him out. Honor suffered in that cramped hell-hole for three days. Through hunger and thirst. Through a storm. She almost died. All because of Sydenham.
He
went abroad and got rich.”

He glanced up. Carlos stood still, looking enthralled.

Thornleigh went on, tucking the letter back into his tunic. “I came home, and when I heard Honor was in the hold I swam out and set fire to the ship, and in the panic on deck I climbed aboard and got Honor out without being seen. Things went back to normal for a while. But the coward had left evidence on board—his Protestant Bible—that incriminated Honor. A priest named Bastwick got hold of it, a man who’d always been her enemy. He arrested her. They tried her for heresy and chained her to the stake at Smithfield. And they were going to burn her. Until some friends helped me rescue her. Still, we had to leave England, leave everything behind.” He shook his head. “All that misery. All because of the man who was supposed to have received this,” he said, tapping his chest where the letter lay. “Edward Sydenham.”