The Queen's Lady (36 page)

She was about to march over and bang on the door when it suddenly flew open. From the dark interior Thornleigh’s bare arm shot out to still the door against the wall. His other arm, culminating in a bottle, was wrapped around a young woman, a plump, peaches-and-cream beauty. Her yellow hair tumbled over a shoulder bare above her rumpled chemise. She clung to Thornleigh’s naked torso and together they staggered out a step or two, squinting at the light and laughing.

Thornleigh stopped, cupped the woman’s chin, and bent to kiss her. Her hand slid down his backbone until it reached the waist of his breeches. Her fingers wriggled inside. He shivered. She went up on her toes to whisper something in his ear. Thornleigh threw back his head to laugh, and then he noticed Honor. He blinked in surprise. He shut his eyes and shook his head as if to toss off an hallucination. He looked at her again, raked fingers through his tangled hair, and let out a laugh of amazement. “A pilgrim is come among us!” he cried.

Honor glared at him.

Thornleigh turned to his companion with a look of mock piety. “No one told me this ground was hallowed. Why, Mistress Farquhar, have you some holy relic secreted away that pilgrims travel to touch? Some sacred treasure? Under your pillow, perhaps?” He chuckled and massaged her buttocks through her chemise with playful roughness. “Though God knows there’s treasure sweet enough right here.”

The woman half-heartedly slapped his hand. “Pish!” she said with a giggle. Thornleigh nuzzled her neck, then looked out through the curtain of yellow hair at Honor’s stormy face. He straightened.

“I won her,” he protested innocently. “At cards.” He nodded toward the gamekeeper who sat moodily engrossed in the gambling. Thornleigh grinned. “Her husband lost.” He tugged his warm winnings closer, and the gamekeeper’s wife gazed up at him with heavy-lidded eyes, obviously satisfied with her husband’s debt-paying arrangement.

Honor considered leaving then and there, but Thornleigh leaned out to her, suddenly serious, and whispered behind his hand, “It’s not what you think, mistress. This is not a night of debauchery.”

Honor looked at the woman nestling against his chest, then back at his face. Her eyebrows lifted in skepticism. “Oh?”

Straight-faced, he assured her, “Far from it.” His stifled grin broke free. “The agreement with her husband was for one hour only.” He laughed loudly at his own joke.

Honor turned on her heel.

“Wait,” Thornleigh said, still chortling. “Do wait, Mistress Larke.”

Honor kept walking. She was almost out of the room when Thornleigh called after her, “Come now, you’re not going to leave just like that, are you? After you’ve come all this way to find me?”

She stopped. He was right. Infuriating though he was, it was pointless to go. Frish was depending on her. And who else could she approach?

“Do forgive me,” Thornleigh said with exaggerated civility to her back. “Such bad manners.”

She turned stiffly.

“And I haven’t even offered you a glass of sack,” Thornleigh said. He loosed the gamekeeper’s wife and lifted the bottle he held towards Honor as if it were a peace offering. He brought it close to his eyes with a frown. “Empty,” he muttered. He tossed it on the floor and looked around for another and spotted one beside the hearth. He strode past Honor, but before he reached the bottle his bare toe stubbed against the handle of a poker left on the hearth. Its tip nosed up red-hot out of the flames. Thornleigh hopped back, the handle apparently so hot it had almost burned him. With a soft curse he shoved his hand into a leather hearth glove, grasped the poker handle and picked it up. He studied the glowing prong for several moments, apparently forgetting both the bottle and Honor. She watched his face darken.

He looked back at her and said, as if their conversation had been unbroken, “That is, I assume it’s me you’ve come searching for. Or”—he flashed her a conspiratorial smile that crinkled the skin around his eyes—“is it that you’ve fallen into depravity since we last met? Stalking midnight revels now, are you? Well, mistress, you’ve found the right place.” He bent to pick up the bottle and held it toward her, then spread his arms as if offering himself as well. “Join me?”

Honor simmered at his insolence. She was provoked, too, by the smirk on the face of the gamekeeper’s wife who was leaning against the door jamb, watching. Honor stepped up to Thornleigh and pushed away the proffered bottle. “Save your bawdy offers for your strumpets,” she said. “I have other business with you. Where can we speak privately?”

“Oh, this is privacy enough,” he said with a laugh. Still holding the hot poker and the bottle, he stepped over the wolfhound bitch and flopped into a chair. He set the bottle on the floor. The dog continued to snore at his feet. He stretched his long legs across her back as if she were a footstool. “Don’t worry about them,” he said, jerking his head toward the gamblers. “They wouldn’t hear the crack of doom. Not unless it was followed by God in person, come to sit in on the game.” He scratched his lean belly absently as he chuckled. “The presence of the Lord might raise the stakes, though, eh?” He looked up at Honor. “Now. What can you possibly want of me?”

She stepped closer, unwilling to be overheard despite his assurances. He made no move to rise.

She crouched at his side. “I want your ship,” she said.

“Ha! You, and all my creditors.” He smoothed one bare foot along the dog’s fur, making her shiver in her sleep.

“Hear me, sir,” Honor said. “A man’s life is in peril. I must arrange his passage to Flanders. Immediately. Can you take him? Have you a ship near London?”

“‘Immediately!’ ” he mimicked her. “What,” he said, scratching his stubbled chin, “have I not time to shave and throw on a shirt?”

“Then you do have a ship nearby.”

“Snug and safe at anchor in the estuary. And I mean for her to remain so.”

“I am willing to pay. Handsomely. In gold.”

“You’d better be, mistress, for passage ‘immediately.’ The channel’s a cauldron of spring storms, fouler than an old maid jilted at the altar.” He studied her face with suspicion. “And who’s this mysterious cargo? Don’t tell me you’re still sneaking around, stirring the pot behind your kind mistress’s back?”

She stood, furious. “Look who talks of sneaking!” she snapped, tossing a glance at the gamekeeper’s wife. The woman stood braiding her hair in the bedchamber doorway.

“I had her with her husband’s blessing,” Thornleigh protested, amused. He craned his neck to look past Honor at the gamblers, and raised his voice. “Isn’t that right, Farquhar.”

Without looking up from his cards the gamekeeper stabbed the air with his finger obscenely. “Pox on you, Thornleigh!”

Thornleigh grinned and spread his arms to Honor in a gesture of triumph. “You see?”

“I see a drunken sot,” Honor flared. “A lousel not fit to entrust this mission to.”

The light of enjoyment died in Thornleigh’s eyes. He bent for the bottle and took a long pull from it, then wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. “An accurate assessment, mistress,” he murmured to the bottle. His eyes flicked up to her, hard with scorn. “So find some other fool.”

He put down the bottle and turned his attention grimly back to the hot poker. He was holding the handle so that the glowing tip pointed directly between his eyes, and he glared at it, absorbed, shutting out the room. He seemed locked in a contest to stare it down, Honor thought, as if it were a living creature that was challenging him. Slowly, deliberately, he lowered it until it pointed at his breastbone. Both hands were grasping the handle, and the tip was poised inches from his skin. It was as if he intended to brand himself.

Honor watched, appalled. What was this perverse game he was playing? Was he daring himself to suffer pain? She recalled seeing the same steely challenge in his eyes that day at Greenwich when he had finally dropped all bravado and thudded his fist onto the block, ready to let his hand be severed. She remembered thinking then that he seemed somehow to be welcoming the punishment.

“There is no time to find help elsewhere,” she said fiercely. “The friar’s life rests in your hands.”

Thornleigh blinked. He looked up at her. “Friar?”

She knew she should not have said so much, but at least her declaration had broken his malevolent trance. “His name is Brother Frish,” she answered, hazarding all. “The Lord Chancellor is on his heels for heresy. He was convicted once before and escaped the Bishop of Lincoln’s prison. A second conviction will send him to the stake. Brother Frish does no man harm, but the Chancellor will burn him unless you carry him to safety.”

For a moment she thought she saw real interest glinting in the blue depths of his eyes.

“You’re risking a lot for a raving friar, my lady,” he said. But the interest quickly drowned, and mockery again washed shallowly in his eyes. “The Lord Chancellor, you say? The mighty Sir Thomas?” He whistled softly through his teeth. “You seem to make a habit of biting hands that feed you.”

Honor felt like slapping him. “If it’s money you need to stiffen your backbone, I’ve told you I will reward you well.”

“Let’s see it.”

“See what?”

“Your gold, woman,” he growled.

She was taken aback—by the request and by the bitterness that fueled it. “I haven’t brought it here,” she stammered. “I need time to—”

“A pity,” he cut in. “Good night.” It was a clear termination of the interview.

He again moved the poker tip toward his chest. He stared down at it as if mesmerized, slowly drawing it closer until it was only a finger’s breadth away. She knew he was going to sear himself.

It was exasperation that made her strike. She kicked the poker, knocking it sideways from his grasp. It clattered to the floor. With a yelp the dog sprang to its feet. The men at the table looked up.

Thornleigh sat stunned, mouth open, hands still uplifted as though the object he had been holding had inexplicably vanished. He gaped at Honor, his face as clear and wondering as a child’s.

With a jolt of energy concentrated in one fluid movement he rose and stood over her. He stared into her eyes with a naked intensity that could have been fury, or contempt, but which Honor somehow knew was nothing more than astonished curiosity. It charged his face, his body, his breathing.

She stared back at him, as unnerved by his sudden proximity as he had been by her action. He loomed over her, but she stood rigid, her curiosity equal to his.

She spoke first.

“Why do you seek to hurt yourself?”

“Why do you seek to risk yourself?”

She heard his breathing slowly becoming steady. As his chest heaved and settled, she was aware of firelight gleaming off his skin. She felt warm blood sting her cheeks. She dragged her eyes away from him, but it was only to catch the smirk of the gamekeeper’s wife at the bedchamber doorway. The woman winked at her as if in understanding that they appreciated at least one thing in common.

“Thornleigh!” one of the gamblers shouted.

Honor and Thornleigh turned. The gambler was pointing at them. “Behind you!”

Thornleigh looked behind his feet. Smoke was curling up from the floor. The fallen poker had set the floor rushes alight, and small teeth of flames were eating a widening circle across the stone.

Thornleigh swooped for the sack bottle, upended it, and sloshed the wine over the fire. Instantly, the flames died. The damp rushes at the edge of the blackened circle smoldered. The men at the table went back to their game.

Thornleigh picked up the poker and replaced it safely on the hearth, then turned to Honor. He folded his arms across his chest and studied her. Honor had the unnerving sensation that it was she who had now become his challenge.

“This is my proposal, mistress,” he said. “I’ll tell you my price. Then you tell me if this friar’s skin is worth saving after all.”

Her comment to Frish had been well founded. Thornleigh did want a king’s ransom.

Honor stood alone, hugging herself outside the doorway of the Blue Boar Inn near Botolph’s wharf. The fog around her glowed with a sickly phosphorescence, made murky in patches by lights on London Bridge, though it was only three by the clock. No, more like four, she realized. It must be an hour she’d been waiting.

The tavern door opened and a customer ambled out. Honor turned her face away. The customer padded off homeward and was swallowed by the fog. His footfalls faded. All was silent again.

Her ears picked up a soft scuffling of feet, then a scraping along the stone wall of the alley. Then a cough. She stepped around the corner and peered into the gloom. A man’s face emerged. It was Frish.

Relief converted her tension into a steam of anger. “Where have you been?”

He shuffled up to her and she gasped at the sight. His face was as white and damp as raw pastry. His eyes were black smudges. His white-blond hair, ragged with bits of straw, was matted to his skull. His hand was bandaged with a strip torn from the hem of his tunic, the strip grimed with dried blood. A ripped sandal clung to one foot. The other foot was naked and bleeding.

He read the shock in her eyes. “London is a dangerous place for fugitives,” he murmured.

“Your foot . . .” she whispered.

He shrugged. “A contest with a dog over a bone. The dog won.” He slumped back against the wall, eyes closed, as if this slight effort at speech had sapped him.

“My God,” she said, “you haven’t rested since leaving Mrs. Sydenham’s, have you?”

“Who can rest and stay one step ahead of More’s men, and alive?” His eyes sprang open showing pinpoints of fear. “Why have
you
come?” he asked. “I said, send a message. Has the plan foundered? Has Thornleigh refused? Is it—”

“All’s well,” she quickly assured him. “I simply thought it was safer to see the thing through by myself. I’m my own messenger.”

“Then . . . it’s really arranged?” he whispered, trembling.

“Yes. Thornleigh’s ship, the
Vixen
, waits for you off Gravesend. You ride there now and sail for Bruges tomorrow with the tide. Take my horse. She’s tethered at the end of the alley. No, don’t worry, I’ll hire a barge to carry me back to Richmond.” She handed him a purse of coins. “Give Thornleigh this.”