Blood Between Queens (31 page)

Whatever the reason, she was not surprised that he had requested the meeting after dark. It was for her own security. She had often attended mass in his embassy’s chapel, but always in secret, since it was illegal for English subjects to celebrate mass. The ambassador had been allowed the privilege as a mark of his rank, but only for himself and his embassy people. Frances knew she was taking a risk in attending and was very careful to keep Adam from knowing. Yet she had embraced the risk. It made her feel a kinship of suffering, in her own small way, with the blessed saints who had given their lives for their faith, some in unimaginable agony.

Tonight Frances was especially glad to get out of the house, even in the cold, for it kept her mind off Adam. She had not seen him for almost three weeks, not since he had stormed off after their awful quarrel over the new wing to the house. Worrying about him had kept her awake night after night. She had complied with his wishes, of course, had sent the masons and carpenters away, though it broke her heart to leave the wing half-finished. But when had she ever denied Adam anything he wanted? When had she ever been anything but a dutiful and loving wife? Much good it did her. He never noticed. And this time he hadn’t come home.

Where had he spent these last weeks? After their quarrels in the past she knew he often went to his ship, staying aboard for days under the excuse of refitting or repairing things. It hurt her deeply that he preferred those rough, close quarters with smelly seamen to the comforts of home and her company. But at least those separations had lasted only a few days. This time it had been weeks.

Was he with Elizabeth? The thought turned Frances’s stomach. She suspected that Elizabeth saw plenty of Adam, whenever and however she wanted him. It made her so sick with anger and frustration she sometimes found it hard to think straight. Some nights, in the dead small hours, she admitted to herself the painful truth: that he came home—when he did come home—only for the children. But she still felt sure that if she could just
keep
him home, could obliterate the lures of the outside world, she could make him happy. Make him, finally, hers. She did not expect a miracle. After ten years of marriage she knew that his habits, and his heart, were not likely to change. But she clung to the possibility. She loved him too much to give up hope.

This time, though, there was another worry to torment her. Had Adam stolen King Philip’s gold? All of London had been abuzz at the firecracker of news about the piracy and agog at the report that followed like a cannon broadside: Elizabeth was in possession of the gold and was keeping it as a banker’s loan! Londoners had cheered their queen’s audacity, for they felt no love for the mighty Philip. Yet Frances had immediately suspected who the truly audacious one was, the man who had delivered the windfall to Elizabeth. Adam had all the seafaring skills. The motivation, too; she had seen his smoldering hatred of Spaniards. Had Elizabeth enticed him into this terrible danger, though he risked paying the price for piracy?

The boat nudged the embassy water stairs under the wharf’s torches, and Frances stepped out, wincing at the sharp pain in her back. Composing herself for the meeting, she looked westward. Around the river’s bend lay Elizabeth’s palace of Whitehall; farther on, Elizabeth’s palaces of Hampton Court and Richmond. To the east lay her fortress, the Tower of London, and beyond it her palace of Greenwich. Elizabeth was everywhere, with all the enticements of her court and her person laid out to snare Adam. Frances was near blind with hatred for the woman who had taken his heart. It made her nauseous to think that Elizabeth might one day cost him his life.

Durham House was a riverfront mansion, and its many windows blazed with light. The ambassador and his people were working late.
No wonder,
Frances thought. She had heard her steward and chamberlain heatedly discussing the Spanish seizure of English goods in the Netherlands. “God-cursed papists,” the steward had called the Spaniards, which made Frances wince. She endured Elizabeth’s regime of heresy because it was the law and she was compliant, but within her own house she did not tolerate blasphemous insults to the true faith. Tomorrow she would sack the steward.

She did not go in by the main riverfront entrance but walked quickly along the gravel path that led around the building to a door that opened to the kitchens. She asked a footman for the secretary, Señor Guzman, as the ambassador’s letter had instructed. The footman took her to wait in the butler’s pantry. Guzman arrived within minutes. He welcomed Frances and took her, along with a torch, down to the wine cellar.

Frances followed, intrigued by the secrecy. What could be the meaning of it? They passed casks that gave off the damp and musty odor of oak, and shelves stacked with bottles, and reached Ambassador de Spes. He rose to greet her from a table that held the cellar ledgers and a single candle. Guzman went back up the stairs with the torch, plunging the casks into a gloom that the candle’s light could not penetrate.

“I thank you for coming, Lady Frances,” de Spes said, offering her a dignified bow of the head. “Forgive this rude meeting place. It was necessary.”

Still cold from the river, Frances would have preferred his cozy chamber off the great hall with a roaring fire, but curiosity pinched her. “Why, sir? What can I do for you?”

“Ah, not for me, dear lady, for the Church. You have proved your abiding faith by celebrating mass with us despite the danger to yourself. I hope and trust that your devotion will guide you now, in a crucial effort for God.”

His hushed words thrilled her. “I am God’s servant, sir. But what do you mean? What effort?”

“Nothing less than liberating England. We intend to free this benighted realm from the darkness of heresy and bring a new dawn of truth and faith.”

Before she could say another astonished word, he indicated the shadows behind him and a man stepped forth from between the casks.

Frances peered at him. The light was so dim, and his face was further shadowed by hair that reached his shoulders. But in the glint of the candle she could tell that the hair was blond. He lifted his head and the light caught his eyes. Frances gasped. Christopher! She jerked backward a step in shock and her leg hit the table with such force the candle rocked. De Spes snatched it before it fell.

Christopher smiled. “I always could surprise you, Frances.”

“You . . . you died,” she stammered. Eight years ago she had seen the blazing mill at Yeavering Hall crash down around him. “You burned to death.”

He put a hand to the hair beside his cheek and lifted it. “Burned, but still of this world.”

She winced at the sight of his ear, the scarred flesh. She realized she was trembling. It wasn’t just the shock of seeing him alive, it was the memory of his treason. His terrible threat that she cooperate or else see her baby harmed.

He pulled out a chair by the table. “Sit down, Frances, before you fall.”

She spat at him.

“Good God,” de Spes whispered.

“That is for my child,” Frances said, shaking. She would never forget how her brother had held his hand over Katherine’s small mouth and nose, pressing down, stopping the baby’s breath. Frances had lunged and stopped him. And then, in terror, obeyed him.

Christopher calmly wiped her spittle from his chin. With his eyes on her he said, “Señor de Spes, would you kindly leave us for a moment?”

“Grenville, are you sure you—”

“Thank you, my lord ambassador, my sister and I have much to discuss.”

De Spes gave a grunt of concern, but seemed to accept Christopher’s authority in this. He bowed again to Frances, then marched toward the stairs.

Christopher pulled out the chair for Frances. She felt rocky enough to need it. He took her arm and guided her down onto the seat.

“How is she, your daughter? Katherine, that’s her name, isn’t it?”

“She thrives. No thanks to you.”

“Come, come, sister, I would never have let the child perish. You must know that. She is of my blood. We are kin, you and I and she. I simply had to jar you into doing your duty.”

“Duty to you?”

“To your country and your faith. I was trying to rid England of our tyrant queen. I still am.”

The words sent a shiver through Frances. Rid England of Elizabeth? Eight years ago she had refused to take any part in his treason, quelled by her fear that Adam would be suspected of abetting her brother’s crime. But now? She had suffered so long from Elizabeth’s hold on Adam. How she would cheer her death. “Why have you brought me here? Where have you been all these years? What do you want?”

“What we all want. The return of the true faith. I have been living in France, and I serve the queen who
should
sit on England’s throne. The queen who would reign as a devout Catholic. Mary.”

Frances was stunned. “Queen of the Scots? You . . . serve her?”

He bent close to her and rested his hands on the table on either side of her. “Then, Frances, there would be no more skulking into mass here with the ambassador.”

She stiffened. It sounded like a threat. She could be arrested for attending mass.

“Just think, you could worship again in the great cathedral of St Paul’s,” he said soothingly, painting a bright picture of the future. “All of London would worship with you, pious and pure again in their faith.”

Frances could not hide her interest. “But . . . how can it be done?”

“We have friends. Powerful nobles in the north where people love the old church. And powerful friends abroad. Spain is keen to wipe out heresy in England, Frances. All of them, these true patriots and foreign friends, are ready to join forces with us.”

“An uprising?” she asked in astonishment. Her thoughts were tumbling wildly trying to take it all in. Christopher alive . . . an uprising . . . backed by Spain. It was all too much to grasp. But one thought pierced through. “Can this truly destroy Elizabeth?”

Christopher’s eyes gleamed. “If you will help us.”

“I? What can I possibly do?”

“Make your house available to me. That is where I will kill Elizabeth.”

E
nough tears. Justine was through with tears. She had cried so much since she had been brought back to London she felt as hollow as a husk. The headache that had pounded for days pounded still, and her stomach was rocky, but she rose from her bed in the Thornleighs’ house and went to the window and peered through the frost-blurred glass. Was it safe now to leave? Snow swirled past her, looking as restless as she felt. She itched to get out.

All the way from Bolton Castle, escorted like a prisoner by Sir Ralph Sadler, she had been terrified that he would hand her over to Elizabeth’s officers, who would cast her into jail. The journey had taken twenty-two days, yet the details of roads and bridges, inns and meals seemed a blur, so all-consuming was her fear. Sadler had told her nothing of her fate, leaving her to ride in suspense alone behind him as he spent the journey in desultory talk with his men-at-arms while the servants brought up the rear. They had traveled right through Christmas—the most cheerless, cold, and frightening Christmas Justine could have imagined.

But when they reached London she had not been cast in jail. Sadler had delivered her to the Thornleighs’ house on Bishopsgate Street. Seeing their stricken faces, Justine had almost wished she
were
in a jail, some place where she could hide away. She had felt Lord Thornleigh’s condemnation like a lash. She had abused his trust, he said, and his words had stung more deeply than any whip. Lady Thornleigh’s anger was more straightforward, but just as cutting. Defending herself, Justine insisted that her only intention in trying to get the letters had been to speed Mary’s going to France, which would be a boon to Elizabeth, but in her turmoil she also blurted that she felt Mary was being treated unjustly. Lady Thornleigh had cut her short. “Affairs of state are not
your
affair.”

What was Justine’s affair was Will, and the memory of York, of Will’s shocked face at realizing how she had deceived him was still the most painful. She had not heard from him since then. Every night the memory pricked fresh tears from her swollen eyes.

Everyone she loved thought she had betrayed them.

She was empty now from crying. Sick of it, too, for she still believed that she had done her duty and that her goodwill efforts had been blocked. She stood at the window, determined to cry no more. Peering though the lace of frost, she was trying to see if Lady Thornleigh’s footman still stood waiting in the courtyard. Justine could not see him. She hoped that meant that Lady Thornleigh had finally gone, the footman with her. Justine had overheard her and Lord Thornleigh discuss their plans this morning. He had left for Westminster to attend a meeting about the Spanish trade emergency. Lady Thornleigh was on her way to Hampton Court to see Elizabeth, who, they said, was highly vexed about the situation with Mary.

Justine turned from the window. The time to go was now. She got dressed with a purpose. There was one duty she meant to see to its end. Justice for Alice.

She rummaged in her satchel and found the book in which weeks ago she had slipped the note from Jeremy, the carpenter at Yeavering Hall. She read again the message in his wobbly handwriting:

Justine tucked the paper into her pocket with a shudder. Had Rigaud strangled Alice? If so, why? Who was he, this “wine man”? When she last talked to Jeremy he said his informant, the farrier, had told him Rigaud might have been in Kirknewton on business. She wanted answers, and now that she was back in London she might get them.

She whirled her cloak around her shoulders. Would the chamberlain stop her? Had Lord Thornleigh left orders that she was not to be allowed to leave the house? His command to Justine herself had been plain: no communication with Mary. Beyond that, she had no real idea where she stood.

She went down the stairs and through the great hall. She had always loved the merry season of Christmas through to Twelfth Night when the Thornleighs’ house rang with their grandchildren’s voices and the laughter of guests, and the hall was scented with evergreen boughs and the kitchen’s aromas of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves. The house was not merry now. She saw no guests, only a couple of maids sweeping the floor, a clerk whose pen scratched lazily over a ledger, and the two dogs asleep at the hearth. She did not see the chamberlain. No one stopped her.

It was snowing heavily, and Bishopsgate Street was slick with a treacherous film of ice. As she started south on foot a frigid wind sent snow needling her face. The cold bit her nose even in the short distance she covered to Threadneedle Street. People tramped past her in the grimy slush, their heads down. Men on wagons and those on horseback squinted against the wind-driven snow. Cloud cover blocked the sun that shone feebly between the houses and shops and over barren gardens. Justine passed an old woman whose overturned pushcart had spilled loaves of bread into the slush. The woman shrieked at two dogs fighting over a loaf.

Just before she reached Broad Street, Justine turned into the yard of St. Anthony’s Church. Everyone in London called it the French Church because it was the religious center for hundreds of French immigrants, Protestant Huguenots, who had fled the religious wars in their homeland. Justine pushed open the heavy oak door, and snow darted in as if seeking sanctuary. The church, devoid of all its former rich Catholic trappings, was cold and austere. Her footsteps on the stone floor echoed starkly. An inhospitable place, but she hoped that someone here might know of Rigaud. She had heard that the Huguenot elders maintained a strict Calvinist discipline over their congregation.

She passed a black-clothed cleric tramping down the nave, flapping his arms across his chest to get warm. He put her in mind of a crow. And looked just as unapproachable. In the chancel she noticed an older cleric unpacking books from a crate into a bookcase. She reached him and made her inquiry.

“Alphonse Rigaud?” He gave a snort of disapproval. “He has not been to church in over two months.” He spoke English with a French accent that sounded like a sneer. “We fined him for nonattendance, but I doubt he will pay. He ignored the fines for lechery.”

Justine suppressed a shiver. Had the lecher committed murder, too? “Can you direct me to where he lives?”

He peered at her. “Is this about one of the bastards he has sired on the laundress?”

“I do not know the man, sir,” she said, uncomfortable under his scowl. “I must speak with him on a private matter.”

He grunted, shrugging off any concern in the matter. “Precinct of St. Martin’s le Grand. Parish of St. Anne and St. Agnes.” He told her the house, then turned back to unpack more books. “You’d better be quick. We deport those who disobey God’s law. That
pécheur
will soon find himself on a boat back to Le Havre.”

She took Cheapside, the city’s main thoroughfare bustling with people, from hawkers to horsemen, merchants to maids. As she neared St. Paul’s Cathedral she passed clergymen ambling to and from its grounds and schoolboys with satchels dashing out from the cathedral school. Ahead to the west lay Newgate, wagons rumbling under its massive arch, a part of Newgate prison, but Justine’s route lay north and she turned onto Aldersgate Street. The fine shops of goldsmiths, jewelers, and saddlers soon gave way to more modest tradesmen’s shops of tailors, pewterers, cordwainers, and catchpenny printers. This was St. Martin’s le Grand, one of the city’s “liberties,” so called because by an eccentric custom of old monastic rule these pockets of habitation lay beyond the city’s jurisdiction. St. Martin’s le Grand was an enclave of immigrants, French and Dutch mostly, crammed tightly together, its narrow streets as busy as Cheapside but with a grimmer air. All immigrants were taxed at double the rate of Londoners, and the dwellers of St. Martin’s le Grand were scraping by as best they could.

Justine’s destination, the parish of St. Anne and St. Agnes, was on the northern edge of St. Martin’s le Grand. It lay just outside the city walls in the northeast pocket of Aldersgate Ward, and the moment she passed through Aldersgate she found herself among a gloomy jumble of dilapidated tenements, each shabby house being home to several families, it seemed. The shops were mere rude stalls and were outnumbered by taverns and alehouses. There was a smell of rotting cabbage and the caustic reek of urine. A drunken man mumbling into his long, dirty beard bumped Justine as he passed her. A baby screamed beyond a third-floor shuttered window. A blank-eyed woman bundled in rags stood in a doorway.
Selling herself?
Justine wondered with a shiver. She had to step over a fallen laundry line, its frozen shirts and hose lying on the muddy snow like dismembered corpses.

She found the house across from the sign of the Cobbler’s Nail and went up the open staircase of rough-sawn wood. She knocked on the first door. Voices sounded throughout the house, barely muffled by thin walls: bickering, haranguing, shouts of anger. Strangely, a woman somewhere was singing with a lovely voice, a sweet but plaintive tune. The door opened a crack and a man appeared. He was short with a face like a fox: sharp, clever, wary. His thick black hair was swept straight back from his low forehead. He was munching a crust of bread.

“Monsieur Rigaud?”

He took in her fine clothing at a glance, swallowing the last of the crust. “And who might you be, mistress?” His French accent was thick but his English flawless. His voice was a low rumble that seemed to vibrate Justine’s bones.

She squared her shoulders with pretended courage. “I come from Kirknewton, in the north. I bring regards from the vicar.” She hoped the lie would prod him to talk to her.

“Hobson?” His wary look changed to one of keen interest. “Is he interested in buying after all?”

“It depends what you are selling, monsieur.”

Two women tramped up the stairs, their hard eyes on Justine. A man watched her suspiciously from his doorway. Rigaud growled at the man,
“Bâtard,”
then opened the door wide for Justine and jerked his head in a command for her to come in, away from the prying eyes.

“No.” She would not walk into a room with a man who might be a murderer. The room breathed out a rank odor of stale sweat and rancid fat. The only furniture seemed to be a makeshift table of a board set across trestles, and two stools. A patched shawl was tacked over the single window and the fabric lifted in the draft, like a ghost. Three small children sat on the floor around a mound of soiled garments, picking out the seams with fingernails and teeth. They watched her with coldly impassive stares that filled her with a mixture of pity and fear. In the far corner a sunken-eyed young woman lay on a straw pallet, propping herself on her elbow to get a look at the stranger at the door.

“No?” Rigaud frowned at Justine’s reply. “Then what the devil is your business with me?”

“Come outside.” When he scoffed she pulled out her purse from inside her cloak and dug out an angel coin. It was obvious he could use the money. She offered the coin to him.

He took it and offered back a foxy smile, his teeth yellow, a front one chipped. “So, what
am
I selling?”

“Answers.”

His eyes were on her purse as it disappeared back inside the folds of her cloak. He gestured toward the stairs. “Lead the way, mistress.”

Down they went, and out to the street where they stood under the tenement’s overhanging second story. A few paces away, at the street’s crooked corner, an old woman with a plump, pinched face like a dried apple crouched over a brazier of coals, roasting chestnuts. She glanced at Justine and then, with weary disinterest, went back to prodding the charred chestnuts. Their earthy aroma tinged the chilly air.

Justine said to Rigaud, “You were in Kirknewton in early June. Why?”

“To see the vicar, Hobson. He was away, off to see the bishop, that’s what his churchwarden told me. But I left him a good offer. Better than good—ten casks of Burgundy, half price. That interfering churchwarden said there was no business to be had from Hobson, but I told the fellow to pass along my offer anyway. Has Hobson sent you?”

“Burgundy? You were there to sell wine?”

He looked eager to please. “If he doesn’t want Burgundy I can get Malmsey. Claret, too. I can get the best, cheap. For Hobson, half price.”

“You are well-connected,” she said, almost scoffing. How did a denizen of this wretched neighborhood have access to fine French wines?

Rigaud bristled and said with some defiance, “You don’t believe me? I ran a profitable trade for years, before I fell on hard times. Supplied northern gentlemen’s cellars from York to Berwick.” He raised his chin and added with a snarl of wounded pride, “Twelve, fourteen years ago, at Wooler, I did business with the lord of Yeavering Hall himself.”

He knew my father
. It made her squirm to think that this man had any connection with her own family. The expression on his face was hard to read. There was pride, and bitterness, too, but something else lurked. Fear? Of being found out? She imagined Alice struggling against his hands squeezing her throat, gasping her last breaths, and in a rush of fury she said, “I have not come on the vicar’s business. Not on business at all.”

Rigaud’s eyes narrowed in mistrust. “Are you from the French Church?”

“No. It’s Kirknewton church I want to ask you about. And the murder of Alice Boyer.”

He stiffened. “Never heard of her.”

“Oh, I think you have. You were there the day she was murdered in the church nave. June fifth. A farrier at the stable across the lane saw you running away through the churchyard.”

His scowl was so fierce she was afraid he might strike her. Part of her wanted to run. But she stood her ground, fists bunched at her sides ready to defend herself. “Did you kill Alice?”