Blood Between Queens (5 page)

Later, the servants came straggling back, dazed and exhausted from trying to put out the flames. “The master,” she heard a footman hoarsely tell a lame kitchen girl who had stayed behind. “Burned alive, he was!” The next day the house was in disorder, the servants at loose ends, many looking at Justine in pity. Then the Queen’s men, over a dozen on horseback, thundered into the courtyard, and the servants’ talk turned to terrified whisperings. “Treason!” they breathed to one another in fear. “The master plotted against the Queen!” Frightened, Justine ran to the tithe barn to hide. She heard them calling her name, looking for her, but after a couple of days the calling stopped as if they’d given up. She had the stream behind the barn for water, and at nights she crept into the kitchen, took bread and dried apples, then scurried back to her hiding place. She watched the house for days. Some servants fled. The ones who stayed seemed stupefied. Cinders from the mill still drifted over the courtyard.

Hiding was the only way she could deal with her fear at what she had seen when she’d stood barefoot in her nightdress as the household had swarmed down to the mill. All alone in the courtyard, she had heard coughing. She looked around. No one. Down at the mill people were shouting, but around her it was quiet. She heard the coughing again. It came from behind the stable door. The courtyard was dark in the shadow of the great house, but moonlight struck the stable door. Justine went toward it, the cobbles cold on her feet. The door flew open and she lurched back as a horseman bolted out. He swerved to miss her with a jerk of the reins. The horse reared in alarm. Justine gasped at the sight of the man. His clothes were tatters, black with soot. His eyes were white as eggshells, his hair a wild thicket matted with cinders. His mouth opened, a red slash, as he coughed.

She almost fell to her knees in shock. “Father!”

“Hush!”

“They think you’re in the mill! Dead!”

“Come here.” His voice was dry, sharp. “Justine, come!”

She inched closer. The horse’s flesh quivered. Her father’s breeches reeked of smoke. “Tell no one you saw me,” he said. “You hear me? For my sake, and for yours.” He reached down and grabbed the throat of her nightdress. She flinched at his blackened fingers, his frantic grip. “If you tell, they will kill me. And hurt you. Understand? Tell
no one
.”

He tossed at her feet a leather pouch the size of her hand. It clinked as it hit the ground. “Gold,” he said in a voice strangled by fury and regret. “It’s all I can give you.”

He galloped off into the night.

She stood a long time gazing after him at the blackness before she picked up the pouch. She never saw her father again. And never told a soul.

S
ir Christopher Grenville, at forty-three, had left his youth behind and for eight years had lived a bitter life abroad, but he was neither too old nor too hardened to appreciate a pretty woman. He was watching her across the market square. Though a servant, and dressed in plain gray, she was a beauty. Christopher’s hope was high that she had what he wanted. Information.

Leaning against the wall of the alehouse, he kept his eye on her despite the streams of people eddying between them in this bustling heart of the village of Wooler. Beyond the village was the barren moorland of Northumberland, its population sparse, but people came from miles around for the weekly market. Christopher felt a pang at the sights that had once been so familiar—the farmers plodding on donkeys and on foot; the farmwives carrying baskets of onions, radishes, beans, and wheels of cheeses for sale; the customers haggling, strolling, gossiping. One old crone had a pole yoked across her shoulders with a goose hanging upside down at each end, trussed and squawking. A couple of boys chased an escaping calf. A churchwarden patrolled the crowd, alert for thievery or lewdness. Whiffs of burning charcoal and pork fat drifted from a brazier where a man was cooking bite-sized morsels of the crisped meat and selling them impaled on sticks. It had been eight years, yet Christopher could swear that nothing in the village had changed. What a bittersweet feeling to be home, and far more bitter than sweet. Once, all these common folk would have bowed to him as he passed, the lord of the manor, and scurried to win his favor. Now they looked at him dully, as though he were one of them. He was home, but still in exile.

The beauty he was watching stood talking to a traveling draper at his cart festooned with gaudy scarves. The cart’s awning was draped with ribbons, and its open end formed a counter for bolts of broadcloth, worsted, cambric, fustian, dimity, poplin, and taffeta. The girl was dreamily fingering a ribbon of emerald silk as long as her sleeve that fluttered from the awning. Then, businesslike, she set to inspecting a bolt of garnet-red sarcenet. She had good taste, Christopher thought with approval.

He had watched her that morning as she left Yeavering Hall and had followed her here, already guessing where she was headed. He knew the shire: Wooler held a market every Thursday as it had for centuries. Besides, she was not on foot but rode a donkey though the village was less than three miles from Yeavering Hall and the day was fair, the rolling Cheviot Hills basking in the June sunshine. The donkey was meant to carry home her purchases.

Twice he had lost sight of her in the noisy market square where oxen bellowed from the livestock pens, and traders at their stalls shouted “What do ye lack?” to passing customers. Christopher welcomed the clamor and bustle, for he had found that in a crowd he could move about unnoticed. Still, he was taking a risk in coming so close to Yeavering. A risk in coming back to England at all. He accepted the danger. For Mary Stuart he would hazard anything. In France, he had hungrily followed the news about her, rejoicing at the report last month that she had escaped from the heretics who had dethroned her and imprisoned her, then despairing to hear she had been routed on the battlefield, and rejoicing again when he heard she had fled for sanctuary in England. Exhilarated and downcast in turns, his turmoil had been as intense as if he’d been fighting and fleeing at her side. The moment he heard she was safe and settled in Carlisle near the Scottish border, he had set sail from France. He had come home with a mission. He would do anything in his power to restore Mary to her throne. Without Mary, he had nothing.

First, though, he burned with a private need for what this local beauty could give him. He had to get her alone.

She was moving—gathering up her bought bolts of cloth, making for the edge of the square. Christopher pushed off from the alehouse and strode through the crowd to the draper’s stall.

“Give me all your ribbons,” he ordered the man as he pulled a purse from his doublet.

“
All,
sir?”

“You heard me.” He tossed a handful of gold coins on the counter. The draper’s eyes went wide at the windfall. Christopher craned to keep his eye on the beautiful girl. “
Move,
man.”

He found her beside her donkey, snugging the cloth bolts into panniers slung over the animal’s rump.

“Going home so soon?”

Startled, she looked up at him. “God’s teeth, you frighted me.”

“Fright you? Not I, mistress. I mean to make you smile. Will you share a pot of ale with me?”

She scoffed. “You’re a bold one, you are. Out of my way. I must be off.”

“Before you’ve got what you came for?” He slipped the emerald ribbon from his sleeve, the silk cool as it slid past his wrist. “Why leave without what you want?”

She blinked at him. “You were watching me?”

“What man could not?” That was the truth. She had green eyes to match the silk, skin like cream, and a body made for a man’s pleasure. “Look, I have more.” He opened the satchel slung over his shoulder to let her see the jumble inside of ribbons, scarves, and braided gold cord for trim.

“You’re a trader?”

“Not I, fair one. Merely an admirer. And these pretty things, I can tell, are your heart’s desire.”

She looked wary, one hand still on the donkey’s back, but glanced at the colorful silky potpourri with a longing she could not hide. “Not for me, for my lady.”

“Ah, but do keep some for yourself.”

“I have no coin for
any
. Worsted and cambric are what I came for, and worsted and cambric are what I’ll go with.”

“No coin needed. These are yours.” He lifted her hand off the donkey’s back and sank it inside the satchel. Off balance at his abruptness, she stumbled a step closer to him. “Let me go,” she said. “I cannot be seen like this. Talking to a strange man.”

He held her hand firmly inside the satchel, their fingers together among the ribbons. “It cannot be strange for any man to be smitten by your beauty.”

She looked at him in earnest, as though struck by something she saw in his face. She did not try to lift her hand. “You’re not from here. Who are you? What’s your name?”

“Christophe.”

“What kind of name is that?”

“French.”

“Aha, I
thought
you seemed different.” She pulled her hand out of the satchel. “You’re no Englishman, then.”

“Oh, but I am. Merely accustomed to what they called me in France. And what do people call you?”

She hesitated, then seemed to decide on taking a chance. “Alice,” she said forthrightly. “Alice Boyer.”

The name sounded vaguely familiar. At Yeavering Hall he’d once had a gardener called Boyer. He supposed this might be the man’s daughter.

“Christophe, eh?” she said. “Is that your first name or last?”

Too many questions. “Both.”

She laughed. “Monsoor Christophe Christophe. What cheek.” She snugged down the flap of the pannier, preparing to go. “I know a tosser when I see one.”

“Not so, fair one. I was once a gentleman.”

“Gentleman?” She eyed his doublet of plain brown wool, his dusty breeches. “That’s a lark.”

“Hard times, sadly, have reduced my state.”

“You’re a coxcomb, you are. I know your kind.”

He took hold of her chin, forcing her to look at him. “Hard times, I tell you. I now earn my bread as a clerk. Yet I spent my last sovereign on these fine bits of frippery just to talk to you.”

She looked him in the eye. “Or you filched them.”

“They’re yours, if you’ll meet me someplace where we can talk.”

She looked tempted. Then amused. “Talk, eh? And for
talk,
all this frippery’s free?”

“Free as air. Where are you bound?”

“Yeavering Hall. It’s on the road to—”

“I know it. Meet me on the way?”

 

He rode well ahead of her and reached the hamlet of Kirknewton, sleepy at the best of times and almost silent now with most of its inhabitants at the Wooler market. Christopher brought his horse to a halt beside the stone church named for St. Gregory and looked up at its squat Norman tower. From headstones in the graveyard a spray of starlings fanned up into the sky. He took the satchel of ribbons and went inside. The church was deserted. Striding through the cool air of the nave, he remembered attending the wedding of his chamberlain’s daughter here and standing nearest the altar, lord of most of the wedding guests. A bitter thought. Now, in the garb of a lowly clerk, dusty from his ride from the coast, his appearance might induce a churchwarden to guard the offering box.

He stopped for a moment in front of the altar and grunted in disgust. Altar? To use the word was sacrilege. It was a mere communion table draped with a plain cloth, the Protestant way. Vile heresy, instituted throughout the country by England’s heretic queen, Elizabeth. The drabness looked all the more shocking to him after kneeling for mass at the magnificent jeweled altars of Catholic France in the years he’d been away.

He took the steps to the belfry two at a time, and at the top he went straight for the window. It was unglazed, and the wind moaned past the stone casement. A finger of breeze lifted Christopher’s fair hair, which he wore long, chin length, in the French style. He pushed it back from his eyes and gazed across the valley of the River Glen and up the barren mounds of the Cheviot Hills, to the cluster of buildings that hugged the shoulder of a hill, and the grand house at their core: Yeavering Hall. Though small at this distance, the house was a huge and constant presence in his heart. Once it had been his. Now it was in the hands of his enemy, the Thornleighs. Christopher had endured hard years of exile in France, but he prayed to have justice one day. Mary stood next in line for the English throne, since the heretic Elizabeth had no child, and he ached for the day Mary would take her proper place as England’s queen.
And when she does I will take back from Thornleigh what is mine.

A donkey brayed. He looked down. Alice was tying the animal to a beech tree near the church door.

“Up here,” he called to her.

Turning from the window, he opened the satchel and worked quickly. He hung the colored ribbons and scarves and braided gold cord from every timber of the bell’s casement. A few minutes later, when Alice stepped into the belfry, she beamed at the sight.

“Lord!” she cried with a laugh. “What a show!”

“Not more lovely than you.” He draped a crimson silk ribbon as long as his arm around her neck. He stroked her cheek. She pulled back, but only far enough to give the message that she was not so easily had. Not a message that said
stop
. It was all he needed. He slipped her cotton cap off her head. She gave a small gasp at the liberty. “Try the ribbon in your hair,” he said, tossing her cap aside. He slid his fingers into her hair and brought the auburn waves tumbling down around her shoulders. She bit her lip, but gave him a smile of adventure, then lifted the ribbon in both hands and wound it around her head. Her eyes half closed as she savored its silken feel.

Christopher glanced at the window, at its view of his property. He had been gone so long, he craved information. “What do you do at Yeavering Hall, enchantress?” He took down a jade-colored scarf and draped it around her shoulders. “You could dance the dance of the seven veils and cast a spell, I warrant.”

She smiled at his jest. “I’m my lady’s needlewoman.”

“And who is your lady? I passed through these parts years ago. The Hall belonged then to the Grenvilles. Does it still?”

“Good Lord, no. Not for many a year. The master was a rank traitor. He’s dead. His property was forfeit.”

“Who is lord there now?”

“The son-in-law of a baron.”

He stared at her, taken aback. Had Thornleigh’s wife died and he’d married a peer’s daughter? “Which baron is that?”

“Richard, Lord Thornleigh.”

So, the man had wangled
himself
a baronetcy. It curdled Christopher’s stomach. His enemy had risen to riches.
While I drifted in France, an outcast
. “So, this Lord Thornleigh does not live at the Hall?”

She shook her head as she tugged down another silk ribbon, this one of buttercup yellow. “No, in Hertfordshire.” There was pride in her voice. “I just visited them.”

That surprised him. “My, you have friends in high places. How so, fair one?”

“I know his lordship’s ward.”

He was not interested in her acquaintances, only in Thornleigh. “What is his seat?”

“What?”

“His home.”

“Who?”

“The baron. In Hertfordshire.”

“Oh, it’s called Rosethorn House.”

“And how does he fare? Is he hale?”

She shrugged. “I suppose.”

“And his wife?”

“What a lot of questions. Why do you care about them?”

“It’s always good to know who is in favor and who is out.”

She left off examining the yellow ribbon to look at him over her shoulder as though touched with suspicion. He could not let that continue. He kissed her neck to distract her. She let him. He felt her small shiver, one of pleasure. “Well,” she murmured, her tone of pride returning, “they are very much
in
favor, for they are friends of Her Majesty. That’s right, Queen Elizabeth herself! My friend is their ward, and she has been to court, Justine has. Been in the same room as the Queen!”

He froze. “Did you say . . . Justine?”

“Aye. Fancy that, face-to-face with Her Majesty. I’d not be able to get up off my knees for trembling.”

He was dumbfounded. Could it be his daughter? He had lost track of her—had hoped and assumed that after he had fled she’d been sent to stay with the wife of his late brother in Essex. He had not dared write to his sister-in-law about Justine, for he needed everyone to believe that he had died in the fire.
No,
he thought now,
this must be another girl.
Yet
Justine
was not a name used in England. It had been his wife’s name, French. “This ward of Lord Thornleigh, how came she to befriend you?”