The King's Daughter (64 page)

“What?” he called back.

“East, to Billingsgate Wharf!”

“No, Southwark, across the bridge. We have a chance there.”

“No! A ship is waiting for us! Go to Billingsgate!”

But they sped on southward, and Isabel was about to shout at him again, frantic that he wasn’t following her directions, when he suddenly turned east on Thames Street. She groaned with relief. Though the merchants’ houses that crowded Thames Street obscured the water, the fishy reek of the river was unmistakable. Isabel craned over the side of the speeding cart. A thicket of masts rose up ahead, bobbing around Billingsgate Wharf. She looked out behind the cart. The horsemen were back!

“The guards again!” she yelled to Carlos.

He bent over the horse’s neck and whipped the animal on. They were nearing the turn to the wharf. But Isabel suddenly had doubts. Billingsgate Wharf was a market. It would be congested with people and stalls and mules. To get through it Carlos would have to slow to a crawl, and the horsemenwould surely catch up. “Keep going!” she shouted. “To the Customs House!”

“Customs? But—”

“Do it!”

Carlos cursed in Spanish, but he kicked the horse on. The thicket of Billingsgate masts passed by. It was not far to the Customs House. Isabel shouted, “Here! Turn!”

Carlos swerved sharply. Isabel was thrown against the side of the cart. Thornleigh moaned. His eyelid fluttered. He was groggily becoming conscious. The cart lurched to a sudden, creaking stop, and Isabel got up on her knees to look out. They were on the customs quay. Heavy river fog lay above the water. Behind them, the narrow street leading to the quay was empty. Directly ahead, the Customs House appeared closed. Isabel realized with relief that she’d been right: the day of executions had brought a holiday to the officials. She moved to rouse her father.

Carlos had jumped down and tied the horse to a rail, and was now running back to the cart, tearing off his cumbersome tabard. “Which ship?”

Isabel looked out at the river. Under the overcast sky, fifteen, maybe twenty large foreign ships lay out at anchor, scattered from Billingsgate near the bridge all the way out to the estuary. Those farthest eastward toward the estuary were almost obscured by the river fog, with only the odd streak of a mast or a bowsprit visible. Isabel scanned the ships closest to Billingsgate. Was van Borselen’s carrack there? She could not tell. In the still, damp air, all the ships’ flags of identification were hanging limp.

Horses’ hooves clattered in the distance.

“Which one?” Carlos urged again. He hopped up into the cart and moved past Isabel and Thornleigh toward the jumble of longbows. He snatched up a bow and looked back at her. “Hurry!”

Isabel frantically looked out at the ships. They all looked so similar! Then a caravel pivoted at its bow anchor, revealing, behind it, the Flemish carrack. The fog was already creeping toward it, but visible on its foredeck was a sloping canopy with the Emperor’s symbol proudly displayed: the black eagle. Isabel pointed. “There!”

Carlos glanced at the ship. “Good. Get out.” Standing on the cart, he had braced the longbow against his instep and was forcing the string into the bow’s grooved tip. That done, he ripped open a bundle of arrows. “Get a boat,” he said.

Isabel glanced down to the water stairs where three skiffs nudged the stone wharf, their painters tied to iron rings embedded in the stone. She looked back and gasped. The horsemen were barreling through the narrow passage onto the quay. The sergeant had picked up more guards on the way. There were at least ten of them.

“Go! Now!” Carlos yelled. He had fitted an arrow into the bow and stood aiming over the cart horse’s head toward the horsemen. He let the arrow fly. It whirred through the air and pierced a guard in the chest. The man jerked back in the saddle as if punched, his arms flung wide, and toppled from his mount. Carlos fitted another arrow and loosed it, and this one struck a guard’s shin, making him scream. The other horsemen halted in an abrupt clatter of hooves and harness.

Isabel shook Thornleigh. “Father, come! Hurry!”

Thornleigh slowly tried to get up, but Isabel saw that he was too weak from the beating, too dazed.

An arrow thudded into the cart’s seat back.

Isabel ducked. Carlos dropped to his knee behind the seat and quickly fitted another arrow. He glanced at Isabel. “Go!” He straightened up above the seat back and loosed the arrow then ducked again. Isabel heard a muffled cry from the street.

She hopped out the back to the ground and leaned in to grab her father, hoping to drag him to the edge of the cart. But he was too heavy for her.

Carlos saw it. He threw a furious frown at Thornleigh, then glanced back at the horsemen. They were fanning out at the street passage, dismounting, seeking shelter in doorwaysand alleys from Carlos’s fire. Carlos quickly fitted another arrow and loosed it, then slung the bow over his shoulder. He grabbed a quiver and slid it along the cart floor to the back and jumped out to the ground. He hauled Thornleigh out between himself and Isabel. Thornleigh staggered. “He can’t walk!” Isabel said. She and Carlos each threw one of Thornleigh’s arms around their neck and they ran with him, dragging him, toward a skiff at the water stairs. Carlos dumped Thornleigh into the skiff’s bow.

An arrow thudded into the side of the skiff. Carlos and Isabel whirled around. Isabel caught the flash of a green tabard behind a chimney on a smithy’s low roof. Another arrow splashed into the water. The cart horse was straining at its tether at the rail, its eyes white with fear.

Carlos looked at Isabel. “Get in!”

She clambered into the skiff.

“Take the oars!” Carlos said.

She realized he was making no move to get aboard. “But you must come with—”

“Row!” he said. He jerked the painter knot free of the iron ring and tossed it aboard.

Isabel watched dumbfounded as he ran back to the cart, reached for the quiver, grabbed another arrow, and fitted it into his bow. He stepped out into the open, aimed, and let the arrow fly. It clanged off the smithy chimney and rattled on the roof. Carlos ducked back behind the cart just as an arrow whizzed over his head. Another hit the water step, its tip screeching along the stone. Carlos hunkered behind the cart. Another arrow clattered into the cart wheel spokes.

Isabel watched in horror. He was so exposed, even behind the cart. And the guards had all found sheltered positions to fire on him. She glanced at her father. He sat slumped against the gunnel but was struggling to get up as if to help. “Stay here, Father.” She scrambled out of the skiff, looped the painter through the ring, and ran back to the cart. She crouched beside Carlos, panting.

He waved his arm angrily at her. “Get out of here!”

“You can’t stay!”

“You need cover to get out into the river. I will hold them off. Go!”

“But they’ll kill you!”

Ignoring her, he dumped the quiver of arrows, slewing them out along the lip of the cart floor. He whipped out his sword and laid it among them, readying it, then fitted another arrow, stood out, fired, and ducked back.

Isabel stared at the sword, incredulous. “What can you possibly do with that?

There are at least eight men left.”

He glanced at the sword as he snatched another arrow. “Last resort,” he said, almost to himself. “Now go!”

“No, I won’t leave you. Not after what you’ve done for me and my father.”

“Not for him,” he said, fitting the arrow. He looked at her. His voice was low. “I do this for you. Go.
Ve tu con Dios
.”

Isabel felt her heart in her throat, as if it had swelled inside her breast. “But … you’ll
die
if you stay.”

“That is my work.”

“To die?”

He smiled grimly. “It was only a matter of time.”

“No! I won’t have it!” She grabbed his sword. She was surprised how heavy it was. An arrow thudded into the cart floor inches from their backs and Carlos twisted around to gauge its source, and before he could stop her Isabel had moved to the wharf edge. Holding the sword with both hands she heaved it around in a wide arc and let go of it. It splashed into the water and disappeared. Carlos stared after it in appalled disbelief.

“Now come with us!” Isabel cried, rushing back to him.

Two arrows whizzed by. Carlos looked at her, his eyes wide. “No … they will fire on you as you go. I must—”

“They won’t be able to
see
us. Look!” She pointed out to the river. The fog had rolled in swiftly, and now it shrouded all the ships in the middle of the river. Van Borselen’s carrack could no longer be seen. Only a band of water was still visible between the wharf and the bank of fog.

Carlos blinked at the sight.

“Come!” Isabel said. She took hold of his sleeve and pulled. He took a step forward, but then, unsure, turned to look at her. She turned too, about to push him toward the skiff.

The arrow pierced her thigh from the back. Its force, like an ice pick, buckled her leg and pain like lightning jolted up her backbone. She fell forward, limp, the arrowhead buried in her flesh.

Carlos caught her. “Isabel!” He lifted her in his arms and ran. With her face to the sky, Isabel gazed at the pearly vista yawning overhead.

Carlos reached the skiff. “Thornleigh! Take the oars!”

“My God … Bel!”

“Move!”
Carlos yelled.

“Yes … yes!”

Isabel was jerked in Carlos’s arms as he kicked free the painter. She felt the wobble of the skiff, felt his arms tighten around her to cushion their fall as he thudded with her onto the bow seat. Fire blazed through her leg. Holding her on his lap, Carlos flung her arm around his neck for her to cling to. Her head lolled against his chest. An arrow crunched into the skiff’s gunnel.

Carlos’s voice, loud above her ear: “Row to the Emperor’s ship!”

Her father: “But … where is it?”

Isabel lifted her head. The fog was coming at them like a white wall. There were no ships. There was nothing but the fire raging in her leg and the wall of pearly moisture about to suck them in.

“Just take us into the fog!” Carlos ordered. “I must get the arrow out.”

“Oh, God, is she—?”

“Row!”

The splash of oars. The boat rocking wildly. Guards’ shouts from the quay. Arrows hissing overhead. A tearing of cloth as Carlos’s dagger ripped her skirt to reach the protruding arrow. Cold air swept the burning skin of her naked thigh.

Then, suddenly, the arrows stopped hissing. The oars stopped splashing. They were inside the fog.

Gasps of exhaustion came from her father, and ragged breaths from Carlos, his chest hot against her cheek. Faint curses came from the quay. For several moments there was no other sound, except the lapping of low waves against the skiff.

Carlos gently lifted Isabel’s head. “The arrow,” he said to her. “It must come out. If I pull backward, it will be worse. I must push it through. You understand?”

She blinked, afraid. The pain was fire. His face stared at her through a flame of red and orange.

He said, “Hold on to me.”

She sat up and placed both trembling hands on his shoulders. He reached over her leg and grasped the arrow at its feathered end and snapped it off. The vibration quivered up through the arrow’s shaft into her thigh. He clenched his teeth, preparing to push the arrow through. She closed her eyes tightly, anticipating the agony. She did not think she could bear the pain.

“No,” he said quietly. “Look at me.”

Their eyes locked. Under her hands on his shoulders she felt his breath drawn in and held. Her eyes did not waver.

He jammed the arrow shaft upwards. The arrowhead slit through the skin at the top of her thigh. Fire raged down to her calf and up to her hip. Her fingernails dug into his shoulders. His eyes never left hers as he wrapped his hand, wet with her blood, around the arrowhead. He wrenched it up. The shaft sucked out of her thigh. The fire became lava boiling through her. She gave herself to Carlos’s eyes, craving their cool gray depths.

Her neck muscles gave way. Carlos whipped his arm around her back just before she went limp against him. He cradled her head against his chest. Her eyelids trembled, and she saw her blood, bright on his fingers. But the edges of her vision were darkening.

“She must have help!” her father said hoarsely. “Where in God’s name is the ship?”

Isabel forced her head up. Over Carlos’s shoulder, she saw it. The Emperor’s black eagle on the awning, blurred by fog like a spider trapped in ice. “There,” she said. But she was not sure her voice had come out beyond her lips. There was no strength to make it more than a whisper. She lifted a hand as heavy as a hanged man, and pointed to the eagle. “There …”

The blackness overtook her.

37
New Loyaltie

I
t was a familiar sound, and comforting. The creak of wood on wood of a ship making good way in partnership with the wind. As a child Isabel had listened to it often enough at night as she drifted into sleep, snug on a berth in her father’s caravel.

She opened her eyes to the ceiling, suddenly awake. This was not her father’s ship. A desk sat at the foot of the berth she lay in, and on the desk was a leather logbook with a black eagle embossed on its cover. This was van Borselen’s ship. This was his cabin.

We made it.

Yet she could remember nothing of coming aboard. How long had she been lying here? The cabin’s window was shuttered, but rosy sunlight seeped around its edges. Was it morning? Had she been unconscious, asleep for a day andnight? The faint splash of waves against the hull and the soft
whump
as a puff of wind hit a sail told her they must be out in the Channel.

A dull pain throbbed through her left leg. She pulled herself to sit up. She lifted the blanket, and then her skirt, splotched reddish-brown with dried blood, and looked at her leg. A fresh white bandage was wound around her thigh, its ends neatly knotted on top. She saw, in a flash of memory, the bloody arrowhead breaking through her flesh as Carlos had pulled out the shaft. Carlos. She leaned back against the wall behind her and saw him. He was asleep, sitting low in an armchair by the head of her berth. His legs were stretched out before him, his arms folded over his chest. His head rested on his shoulder in sleep.