The Tudor Vendetta (13 page)

“Nan, I—”

“No, no.” She wagged her finger at me. “It’s none of my business, as that old goat upstairs would be quick to remind me. I’m not to say a word.” She thrust her chin at me. “Except that I will. I do not like it. I do not like it and I never will. He has had enough of the highborn and their intrigues. Almost killed him the last time, that Wyatt revolt; after it was quelled, we spent weeks keeping our noses down so the authorities would not come knocking on our door to ask if we knew something. Lucky for him, he wasn’t seen running around with you, because you’d already gone into hiding and it wasn’t as if grand Master Cecil was about to vouchsafe our contribution to helping save the kingdom.”

“I know,” I said quietly. “He risked his life. I won’t ask him, if it will upset you.”

“Bit late for that now,” she retorted. She went silent again, considering. “I can’t say he didn’t warn me. When you showed up, he told me he was going to do whatever you asked. He says he owes you, as he was not the man he should have been when you were growing up. But whatever mistakes he’s made in the past, he’s different now,” she said, her voice quavering. “He’s a decent soul and God knows there are too few of them these days. Swear to me you will not let anything happen to him. It would be the end of me. I’m not worth a farthing without him.”

“I swear it. I will lay down my life for his, if need be.”

She hesitated, as if she was going to say more, then she turned away as Shelton trudged back down the stairs. He wore outdoor garb: a hooded cloak and sword sheathed at his hip, his battered wedge-heeled boots that balanced his stance. Crum sighed in dejection.

“Not done yet?” Shelton eyed the platter before me. “Best hurry and fill your belly, lad. The day’s not getting longer, or any warmer, by the looks of it.”

Dutifully breaking bread, I averted my eyes as Shelton cradled Nan in his arms and she rested her head on his shoulder.

Chapter Ten

Storm clouds piled in the sky, the sleet and wind tearing through our layers of wool as we made our way through the city to crowded Cheapside, Shelton riding on his large prized destrier, Cerberus, whose very appearance scattered people in our wake. I explained to Shelton the bare facts of my mission, that I was going to investigate a disappearance of one of the queen’s women, but refrained from adding that I suspected there might be more at stake, because for the moment it was only my suspicion.

As usual, however, he sensed what I would not say. “Yorkshire is a long way off, especially this time of year, what with the state of the roads and kingdom at large. Plenty of wolves on the hunt, both of the four- and two-legged kind.” He eyed me over the black cloth tied across the lower half of his face to stop the chill, his ruined visage shadowed by his large cap and his empty eye-socket covered by a patch. “Is this lady so important to her?”

“She is; one of her most trusted. Fever beset the household Lady Parry went to visit, too. Nan made me promise to see you safe, so I think you should know, in case—”

“In case of what?” he growled. “By the cross, I’m not a lily-livered youth. At my age, I’ve had more fevers than most; and worse to boot, as anyone with two eyes can see.”

I had to smile. “I’m only doing as I promised. Nan would have my head otherwise.”

“Aye, she frets too much. She thinks I can’t go to the privy without a hat and scarf.”

“She also thinks you feed that dog of yours too much. I must say, I have to agree.”

Shelton threw back his head in guttural laughter—“Smelled one of his farts, did you?”—and led us through Bishopsgate onto Ermine Street, the old north road that would eventually bring us to Yorkshire.

I had not seen much of my native land. Though I had once rode as far as Framlingham Castle in Suffolk during the struggle between Northumberland and Mary Tudor, like the majority of my fellow Englishmen great parts of the realm remained a mystery to me, a collection of anonymous names. As we distanced ourselves from the serpentine huddle of the city walls and variegated spill of orchard, pasture, and wealthy manors that had sprung up outside them, expanding London’s boundaries, the wind abruptly mellowed, the biting sleet fading into a desultory rain that dampened half-shaped drifts of snow smudging the landscape.

I had already accepted this trip would not be easy. Though the old road had been in existence since Roman times, a carefully patrolled stretch that had conveyed their troops from London to the edge of Hadrian’s Wall bordering Scotland, the passing of the years had eroded it, turning a once well-maintained route into an unpredictable patchwork of mud, baked dirt, and occasional cobblestone. Few people traveled it these days, save for enterprising merchants with packhorses drawing their loaded carts and escorts of strongmen hired to keep thieves at bay. Even so, sometimes they too fell victim to the predations that had resulted from King Henry’s dissolution, which had evicted thousands of friars, monks, and nuns from their ancestral homes to wander the land, begging or stealing, hunters or hunted in a world turned upside down.

Now, the road stretched before us like a frayed ribbon, dense woodlands clustered right to its edges, so that at times it was as though we traveled under a sunless tunnel of leaf and twined branch, the darkness of thickets enclosing us in a feral embrace.

Shelton had been on the road before, he told me, during his time in his former master Charles of Suffolk’s employ. The duke had been an intimate of the king’s, a fellow jouster and ribald companion, whom Henry dispatched to put an end to the rebels of the Pilgrimage of Grace, that massacre that had shocked the country into total submission to the king’s will.

“You were still a boy, barely four,” said Shelton, slouched on his mount’s ample back as though he had no worries, though he kept one gloved fist close to his sword. “But that day will go down in infamy, for Henry had given his solemn word he’d treat with the rebels, who wanted only a return of the old ways and an end to Cromwell’s rapine. Instead, the king betrayed his promise and had over three hundred souls drawn and quartered as traitors.”

He did not betray discernible emotion, as if he recounted something in which he had had no stake, but I glimpsed the edging of his jawline under his scarf and wondered if he had been with Suffolk to witness the executions.

Hours passed without incident. Eventually we outpaced the storm, leaving it to brood behind us in a rumble of angry cloud, but the cold seeped into our bones, icing our feet in our boots and turning our hands numb in our gantlets. We finally stopped at the crossroads of an impoverished hamlet to rest our mounts and sup in a smoke-choked tavern. I had hoped to reach Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, where the road crossed the Great Ouse, but it was twice the distance most men could ride in a day, Shelton warned. He doubted we could get there before nightfall, not to mention that we would overexert our horses and risk our lives to bands of highwaymen who swarmed the road after dusk.

“It’s either that or camp in a field,” I said. I made a subtle motion with my chin, directing his gaze across our table to the corner alcove, where three mean-looking men with the shrunken expressions of those who have nothing left to lose eyed us with that peculiar blend of suspicion and interest that isolation inevitably breeds toward strangers. “I’m not about to let those blackguards slit our throats for whatever we have in our purse.”

Shelton immediately squared his shoulders and glared, causing the men to shift their gazes away. One of the ruffians, however, looked back at me. He was no seedier than his companions yet he had a certain air about him, his ferret-like features and beady eyes alight with a greed that made my nape prickle. As soon as we finished our repulsive meal of unidentifiable meat pie and rancid beer, Shelton pushed back his stool and rose to full height, towering over all in the low-raftered room. Together, we walked into the yard, blades unsheathed. We mounted quickly and cantered onto the road, looking behind us the entire time. I did not settle down until forested countryside wreathed in mist surrounded us.

Shelton turned to me. “Have you truly told me everything I should know?”

I winced, hoping I sounded more nonchalant than I felt. “Why do you ask?”

“Because I think you think those men were expecting us.”

“That’s impossible,” I said at once, even as a shudder went through me. “No one knows where I am.” Except Kate, I thought, and perhaps Cecil by now, given his penchant for uncovering secrets. Much as I hated even to consider it, Kate might have told him anyway.

“You are certain?” Shelton eyed me. “Because if this affair turns dangerous, I’d rather not be caught with my breeches about my ankles.”

I had no choice. “No, I have not told you everything. But I have not only because I don’t know anything else yet.”

“I see. But whatever it is you don’t know anything about yet, I wager it has to do with more than some favored lady’s disappearance.”

“I think it might, yes.” While I disliked going back on my vow to Elizabeth, he did not deserve to be blindsided should our situation take an ugly turn. “I swore not to tell anyone,” I added. “So, no one knows you are with me except Nan.”

He chuckled. “Then I’ll be invisible. Would not be the first time, eh? Scarcliff is not someone most people care to remember.”

I nodded uneasily. People might not want to remember him, but in my experience, he was not someone you could easily forget. It struck me in that instant that I had been more than reckless. I had not thought any of this through. Goaded by Kate and the hurt I felt, I’d tossed caution aside and put Shelton in jeopardy. I did suspect hirelings of Cecil’s had just spotted us. I could not think he would have left my departure unexplored, no matter what Elizabeth told him, and though we had made excellent progress, I had tarried long enough at the Griffin for his informants to gain a head start. For all I knew, he had outliers at every crossroads between here and York by now, primed to report on me—or to do more than report. That, too, was not something I could ignore. If Cecil had decided to interpret my absence as a threat, he would have no compunction in acting upon it.

My life was secondary to his ambition. It always had been.

“Is there another way to Yorkshire?” I asked abruptly.

Shelton’s brow furrowed. “I’m sure there is, through the fens, but it’s not wise. It’ll take us off the main road and those wolves I mentioned earlier—the forests seethe with them.”

I withdrew my dagger, palming it. “Better wolves than Cecil. I think those men in the tavern will come after us. They are waiting until we get far enough from the hamlet that we cannot turn back. Come.” I kicked Cinnabar off the road into the woodland, Shelton riding behind me, grumbling he would have done better to stay in London with his feet propped before the hearth rather than be murdered in some godforsaken field in the middle of nowhere.

I had to agree.

*   *   *

Dusk fell swiftly, dragging a black hem across the horizon and snuffing out the light. We stopped to let the horses graze, while we chomped on dried venison, cheese, and bread Nan had packed for us in Shelton’s saddlebag. After watering the horses in a brook, we located a meadow nestled among a copse of trees, sheltered from the elements, though still icy as a witch’s cunny, Shelton remarked, hauling his saddle blanket to his chin as he bedded on the ground, using his bag for a pillow.

We did not make a fire, in case it betrayed our location. I assumed first watch; within seconds, Shelton was snoring loud enough to make me think we hardly needed anything else to alert our would-be trackers. I had to smile as I remembered the time he had first brought me to London and I dozed off on my horse, losing my cap. Apparently, I was not the only one who could sleep anywhere.

Not tonight. Crouched under a large oak with my sword unsheathed at my side and dagger in hand, the horses tethered nearby in the shadows, I was alert to every sound. In the brush, unseen animals rustled and branches snapped; the eerie ululation of a fox echoed, and the rising wind flushed the sky clear, revealing a black firmament strewn with a thousand stars and a sullen sliver of moon. I might have admired this display of grandeur, which I had not seen in years, living as I had been in crowded cities where thickets of eaves and spires blotted out the sight. Instead, I cursed the way the wind agitated the air and swirled among the trees, scattering leaves and making boughs creak. I could not tell if the sounds I heard signaled a stealthy approach.

Then I did hear it: the unmistakable pad of footsteps. Ducking farther into the shadow cast by the oak, I edged around its wide trunk to see three figures in cloaks creeping toward us, glinting steel in their hands.

In the distance behind them, seated immobile on a horse, was another cloaked figure.

My pulse quickened. I had thought Cecil would have me watched, but now it did not appear quite so simple. Perhaps he had ordered me captured and brought back to court, or perhaps my suspicion that I had outlived my usefulness was on the mark. Whichever the case, I had to assume that mounted figure was not here to ensure my health, and I took up the handful of pebbles I had collected by my sword and tossed them at Shelton, aiming above his head. The rattle as they struck the earth woke him instantly; like the former soldier he was, he did not cry out but was on his haunches within seconds, sword out and ready as he crawled away to hide.

If these fools thought to catch us unawares, they were in for a surprise.

I discerned urgent whispering among them as they neared; some type of argument. They were making more noise than professionals would, I realized in relief; they must be the locals they seemed to be, hired on the spot. As I braced for their arrival, I took another glance at the mounted figure silhouetted against the night sky. He had not moved. He seemed to be studying the impending situation with detachment, restraining his horse with an expert hand.

I could only hope he did not have a crossbow or firearm aimed at us.

The approaching men’s voices became clear: “He says not to harm the younger one. The older one we can rob and kill.”