Blood Between Queens (38 page)

Finally they were abreast of Westminster. But there was still so far to go! “As fast as you can, Fletcher.
Please
.”

She looked at the children in the stern. Katherine had got hold of a rope and was making the end of it dance like a spirited snake to entertain Robert, who giggled.
They have no idea,
Justine thought. The girl had her father’s lively dark eyes. A new fear cut into her. Was Sir Adam part of the treason plot? “Katherine, where is your father?”

“In Portsmouth,” she said proudly. “With the fleet.”

Robert grumbled, “He’s
always
in Portsmouth.”

Safely distant,
Justine thought. Had Sir Adam planned it that way to prevent suspicion? She didn’t know what to think. He used to be one of Elizabeth’s most favored courtiers, but everyone knew he had fallen out with her over his attack on the Spanish ambassador’s kinsman. Besides, he had married a Grenville. Where did Sir Adam’s loyalty lie?

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was keeping her father from getting near Elizabeth. How was he planning to do it? A knife? Poison? A garrote?
Oh, Alice, Alice ...

Past the river traffic she now could see the luxurious grounds of the noblemen’s mansions that ran down to the river from the Strand. Leicester House, Somerset House, Durham House, Russell House, and the sheer walls of Arundel House rising straight out of the river. The home of Henry FitzAlan, Earl of Arundel, and his wife.

Fletcher began to turn the boat, heading for the water stairs of Arundel House.

“No, row on,” Justine told him. She had no intention of stopping there. “Straight on toward the bridge. We’ll stop at the Old Swan Stairs.”

“What?” Katherine asked, curious. “Are we not to visit Lady FitzAlan?”

“No, we’re going to see your grandfather.”
I’ll tell him everything. About Father. He will stop this.

“Go on?” Fletcher repeated, frowning at her over his shoulder, his oars lifted in confusion. “Sorry, mistress, I cannot do that.”

She put steel in her voice. “I beg your pardon? Row
on,
man.”

He shook his head. “My orders are from Lady Frances.”

“Lady Frances entrusted her children to me, and I am telling you, row on.”

He lowered the oars, his mind made up. “My mistress is Lady Frances, and she said Arundel House. So Arundel House it is.” He rowed for the earl’s wharf.

Justine felt frantic. Arundel House was over a mile away from Lord Thornleigh’s house. She had to get there before he left for Chelsea. There was not a moment to lose. “Stop,” she ordered.

He grimly kept rowing. “Pardon me, mistress, I can do without your half crown. Cannot do with losing my post.”

The children watched in surprised fascination, their eyes darting between the two adults.

Justine stood up. The boat rocked. “You are relieved. I will take the oars.” She stepped toward him. The boat wallowed dangerously. Fletcher gaped over his shoulder at her, her balance so unsteady she swayed on her feet. “Move forward,” she said. “I am rowing.” She grabbed his sleeve and jerked him up off his seat. Unbalanced, he threw a leg over the seat but lost his footing. The boat rolled wildly. Icy water splashed Justine’s leg. Fletcher grabbed for her to steady himself, pulling her down. She scrambled to avoid pitching into the river.

“Justine! Look out!” Katherine cried, pointing. The boat, unmanned, had slewed into the path of an oncoming fishing smack, its sails bellying in the wind. Justine thudded onto the midship seat and grabbed an oar. She plied it with desperate strokes, straining to right their course. The fishing boat skimmed past them, the fisherman at the tiller wide-eyed as he veered to miss them. Fletcher got his footing and stood, cursing Justine. He lunged for her to take back the oars. The fishing boat’s stern quarter grated against the rowboat’s beam, jostling Justine and the children and Fletcher so roughly he toppled overboard.

“Fletcher!” Robert cried.

Justine watched in horror as the footman thrashed in the water. “Help me!” he cried.

His struggle appalled her. She could not let him drown. Hauling on the oars, she forced the boat around and rowed back toward him. The current was against her and it took all her strength to make any way. A wherry, coming eastward with the current, reached Fletcher and the wherryman called out to him and threw him a line. Justine watched, panting, her oars lifted, as Fletcher was hauled aboard the wherry.
Thank heaven.

The children looked to her, their eyes huge with amazement. She sat gripping the oars, catching her breath, sweat chilling her skin.

“Now, to your grandfather’s house,” she said, turning the boat again. She had almost got the bow around when she spotted another wherry in the distance beyond the scattered river traffic. It was coming from the west, moving fast under the power of two strong oarsmen. A man stood in the bow, his blond hair streaming in the wind. Even at this distance Justine felt his gaze locked on her. Her heart jolted, them seemed to stop.
Father.

In one icy wave the knowledge washed over her. He had returned to Kilburn Manor and Frances had told him everything. That Justine had come. That she now knew about Elizabeth. That she had taken the children to safety.

His look was fierce. It terrified her.
He’s coming for me.

“Hold on,” she told the children. She rowed with every shred of strength. Rowed so hard her back muscles felt they would snap and the oars burned her palms.

But her father’s wherry was faster, the two rowers accustomed to the work. She struggled on, as fast as her shaking body could manage. They passed the Temple and she shot a glance over her shoulder. Ahead to the north the tower of St. Paul’s loomed into the gray sky above the city rooftops. In the distance the bridge with its houses straddled the river. The Old Swan Stairs was just this side of the bridge, but there was still so far to go—past Blackfriars, Baynard’s Castle, Paul’s Stairs, Queenhithe, the Three Cranes. Her father’s boat was gaining on her.

The children sat clutching the gunwales, frozen in dismay at her desperate effort. They did not know what she was fleeing from, but clearly they saw her terror. Looking at their frightened faces, concern for them swamped her. It was wrong of her to risk their lives. If she were by herself, she would keep rowing until her hands bled, but what if her father managed to grapple her boat and drag her off it? What if he hurt the children? He had proved his savagery in strangling Alice. Some madness drove him. She could not let Katherine and Robert fall into his hands. She had to get the children ashore, even if it meant risking herself.

The nearest wharf was Blackfriars. She turned and rowed hard for it. The old monastery buildings were a warren of shops and homes crowded together on the crooked streets that led down to the wharf. Boats nudged the water stairs, and wherrymen chatted among people packing their wares into handcarts, some already trudging for home, their workday over. Justine came in so fast her boat crunched alongside the stone steps, jostling her and the children. She tossed the bow line to Katherine. “Hop out. Both of you. I cannot take you to your grandfather’s. You must go there on your own.” She would row on by herself. She would reach Lord Thornleigh’s house faster by water, much faster than the children would. But here in the crowded city they would be safe from her father. “You’ll be fine at his house. Get out now, hurry.”

“Where are
you
going?” Katherine asked anxiously as she climbed out onto the water stairs.

Justine didn’t answer. She was watching over her shoulder. Her father’s boat was racing toward her. “Off you go, now. I cannot stop.”

Robert was climbing out. “But we don’t know the way.”

“That way.” Justine pointed toward Fleet Street. “Ask as you go. Baron Thornleigh’s house. Bishopsgate Street. Off with you. Hurry!”

Reluctantly, they backed away from her. A man pushing a wheelbarrow narrowly missed them. Katherine grabbed Robert’s hand and pulled him out of the way. They both stared again at Justine.

“Go!” she called, pushing the boat off from the wharf.

She struggled to turn the boat in the confined space among other boats coming and going. Her oars splashed in frantic jabs at the water. A quick glance back at the wharf. The children had vanished. Thank God! But the glance cost her—she barely managed to avoid colliding with a lumbering tilt boat, and only by veering wildly. It put her on the wrong course. Again, she turned with choppy strokes, her head down with the effort, breathing so hard the cold air stung her throat. Open water lay ahead.

Finally free, she was starting to row in earnest when she raised her head and saw her father closing in on her, looming up on the bow of his boat, his oarsmen pulling hard. They were just an oar’s length off, blocking her way. His boat crashed against her bow, knocking her off the seat. She cried out at the pain of her rib hitting the gunwale. She scrambled to her feet. Her father jumped aboard her boat. She lunged for an oar and wrenched it from the oarlock and raised it to swing it at him. He grabbed it in both hands and jerked it, pulling her off balance. She toppled to her knees on the floorboards.

One of his men jumped aboard. “Keep her still,” her father said as he refitted the oar. The man clamped his thick hand on the back of Justine’s neck and pushed head her down. She was bent over so low it was torture. Fighting for breath, her heart felt it would burst as she heard her father’s hard breathing at the oars.

 

“This is the wrong way,” Robert said, balking at the pull of his sister’s hand. He pointed behind them. “Grandpapa lives that way.”

Katherine kept pulling. “Come
on
.” She was straining to keep her eyes on the two men flanking Justine as they marched her west on Fleet Street. “Look, they’ve made her their prisoner!” The street was busy with people coming and going under Temple Bar, and she lost sight of Justine’s rose-colored cloak. She gave Robert a strong tug and got him moving.

“But we should tell that to Grandpapa,” he protested as she dragged him.

“What’s the good of that if we don’t know where they’re they taking her? We have to find out. Come
on
.”

Past Temple Bar they caught up with the men who had Justine. “We’ll follow them,” Katherine said. But it was hard to keep the men and Justine in sight. People surged past the children, all taller than they were. Katherine felt she was walking through a moving forest. They didn’t dare move into the middle of the street to get a better look for fear of being swallowed up among the wagons and carts and horsemen. When Fleet Street branched into the Strand, cows bellowed as a drove of cattle came south, squeezing all the traffic aside.

“Where is she? I can’t see her anymore.”

Robert jumped up and down, trying to see beyond people’s backs. “There!” he cried, pointing. “I see her!”

“Come on, then.”

They passed great houses of the nobility with their walled gardens running down to the river. Footmen in bright livery came and went, going about their masters’ business. Katherine recognized the front gates of some of the mansions. She had often come with her mother to visit Lady FitzAlan at Arundel House, which lay a little farther along. Were the men talking Justine there? That didn’t seem right. Justine had avoided that place.

She got her answer when the men turned, taking Justine into the sprawling buildings of the Savoy, which hulked between the mansions. “Stop.” Katherine jerked Robert to a halt. “Mother said never to go near this place.”

“Why not?”

“It’s full of thieves. Master Rowan told me that in olden days it was a palace of the church. But there was a rebellion and it got burned and then vagabonds moved in.”

They stood in silence, gazing through the Savoy’s crumbling stone gates at the despoiled mass of tenements. “And murderers?” Robert asked in hushed awe.

“There she is,” Katherine whispered watching Justine’s rose-colored cloak disappear down a gloomy alley. She looked up at the high charred walls with gaping window holes. A rough face glared at her from a window. A bristling black beard, a dirty bandage wound around his head, a mad gleam in his eye.

 

They ran. It was so far to Bishopsgate Street they were out of breath by the time they passed St. Paul’s. The rest of the way they went at a fast, breathless walk. Their grandparents’ house was one of Katherine’s favorite places, always busy with interesting things to do. Helping Grandmamma dig in her garden, playing chess with Grandpapa, throwing sticks for the dogs in the orchard, or goggling at the lords and ladies eating lavish suppers, the children watching from the musicians’ gallery. This evening Katherine had never been so glad to run into the great hall. Now her grandfather would take charge and rescue Justine.

“Bless me, where have you little ’uns been mucking about?” said the old nursemaid, Meg, looking up from the end of the long table where she was playing patience, her deck of cards laid out in columns before her. She tsk-tsked at Katherine. “You look more mud than maid.”

“Is my grandfather upstairs?” Katherine asked. The hall was empty except for the steward sitting at the other end of the table murmuring with the clerk over ale, and the dogs snoring at the hearth.

“Nay, you just missed his lordship. Rode off alone, so John at the stable said.” She turned over the knave of spades, muttering, “John told his lordship he should take him along with darkness coming, but off he went alone.”

“And my grandmother?” Katherine said. Lady Thornleigh could send men to rescue Justine. She could even call on help from her friend, the Queen. “Is she in her library?”

“Nay, child, she’s been all day at Mistress Croft’s house getting the poor dead lady’s things in order. No one’s here.” She peered at the two of them as if realizing how odd their coming here was. “Where’s your lady mother? Not with you? Does she know the pair of you are out running wild at this hour?”