Heart of Gold (7 page)

Elizabeth stood a step away. The pain and burning in her face didn’t come close to the hurt and anger that she felt in her heart. “Draw your sword. Kill me where I stand.” Her body shook as she moved toward him, reaching for his sword. “Come, I’ll die with a smile. I welcome death over the future you planned for me.”

“
Get away from me
!” he screamed, pushing her away again.

Elizabeth stumbled, righting herself as she saw the tent flap push open.

Madame Exton and the soldier stared, astonished by the sight before them. Before they could react, Elizabeth ran past them, pushing her cousin into the stack of boxes by the door.

Out into the night air she bolted, running blindly as her eyes adjusted to the darkness.

“
Stop her
!” Elizabeth heard the hysteria in her cousin’s shrieking voice. “
After her, you fool
!”

Pressing her hand hard against the gash along her cheekbone, Elizabeth raced down the alley. The shout of the squire and Madame Exton’s raging screams rang out behind her, but she never paused as she ran. She could feel the blood running through her fingers, but she dared not stop to tend it. Flying along the torchlit way, Elizabeth glanced back, catching sight of the soldier chasing after her. Turning corner after corner, she raced frantically in the direction of the clusters of French tents.

She couldn’t let them catch her. Despite all that she had tried to do, Elizabeth knew if she was caught, Madame Exton would make sure Sir Thomas’s plans were carried out. Elizabeth knew, with a certainty that seethed in the pit of her stomach, she would be lying with King Henry before the next sunset. She knew her guardian would see to it.

Panic swept through her as Elizabeth realized that her father’s squire was gaining on her. A grove of trees beyond the next line of shimmering tents marked the division between the rival countries’ courts, but Elizabeth suddenly felt weak, fearing she wouldn’t make it to the tents beyond. She could hear the soldier’s rasping breaths and pounding footsteps closing in.

Rounding a sharp bend, Elizabeth ducked between two large pavilions. They were deserted, but both were too well lit with torches to provide a hiding place. Pausing, she listened to her heart pounding so loudly she thought it would surely give her away. At the sound of the pursuer’s footsteps, she held her breath and listened as he passed by. Then, by the light of the rising moon, she worked her way along the back of two more tents until she found herself at the edge of the wooded grove. Stepping into the shadows of the overhanging trees, Elizabeth paused to catch her breath.

Assessing her situation, she peered down in the dimness at her bloody hands. Her entire body ached. Her lips were puffy and sore, a good match for the swollen cheek her father had given her that afternoon, but what really concerned her was the stinging, throbbing cut that continued to bleed profusely. She would have a scar, she was sure. He’d marked her. Her own father.

Elizabeth looked up at the moonlit sky. Her problems were just beginning. She needed to get away from this place. But how? Everything she possessed was in the tent that she shared with Mary. All her worldly possessions, she thought, her derisive chuckle turning quickly into a wince of pain. Which meant her paints. But Madame Exton would be waiting for her. Elizabeth was certain of that. The only chance she had was to get a message to Mary. If she could just get her sister to meet her in secret. The ember of an idea was glowing teasingly in the corner of her mind.

The sound of raised voices somewhere nearby startled Elizabeth, and she crouched low in the covering darkness. Whomever the voices belonged to, they were not far from where she’d taken refuge. Elizabeth’s first thought was to back out of the grove, but then a familiar voice caught her attention. Creeping forward through the underbrush, she soon spotted the flickering beam of a covered lamp. Following the glimmer of light and the murmuring voices, Elizabeth found herself on the edge of a small glade, and in the middle stood two men, one much larger than the other. He was speaking, and she recognized him instantly. The lamp shone faintly on them from a nearby stump.

“How dare you question me now?” Peter Garnesche growled angrily. “After all this time. Years.”

“Then tell me what was said,” the other man’s voice broke in. “You cannot suddenly begin keeping things from us. We know your king met with the envoys of Charles. I need the details.”

“I don’t know what was said.
”

“You can find out. Don’t play games with me, Garnesche. We know your tentacles reach into every corner of that English court.”

“My sources provided nothing. I could find no information.” The man’s voice lowered to a dangerous drawl. “You will just have to accept my word for it.”

“Your word?” Elizabeth knew that sneering voice. He was a Frenchman. She wracked her brain. From court. Elizabeth remembered. The Lord Constable! The French king’s counselor.

“You doubt me?” Garnesche scowled. “Do I have to remind you that it is in your best interest to continue relying on me? After all, who else could you find with such a wealth of useful information as I provide?”

Elizabeth watched as the Lord Constable studied the giant before him.

“I must admit what you say is true. We have been able to count on you in the past. And yes, we have watched you cut your own countrymen’s throats. Naturally, that has occurred only when it suited you. When it improved your own stature with your king.” The accusation was clear in the man’s tone.

“I know what you’re referring to.” Garnesche glared menacingly at him. “The Duke of Buckingham was a pompous fool who spoke against me before the king in the Star Chamber. He was going to pay for that anyway. It just happened to be his misfortune that his claim to the throne was as good as Henry’s.”

“A circumstance that you were delighted to use to put his head on the chopping block.” The Lord Constable’s voice dripped with cynicism.

“And that bothers you, suddenly? You gained more out of that than I did.” Garnesche paused, but hearing no response from the Frenchman, continued on. “It was Buckingham who was pushing the hardest for an alliance between England and the Emperor Charles. It didn’t take much prodding to make Henry think the two were in league together to take the crown away from him.”

Elizabeth’s mind flashed back to the year before, when the shocking news of the English nobleman’s execution had swept across Europe. It had been the talk of every court in Christendom when the English king had imprisoned the mighty Duke of Buckingham on the charge of plotting to take his crown by force. Henry, lacking a legitimate heir, was acutely sensitive to any hint of revolt against his right to wear the crown. She recalled hearing the details from the endless stream of diplomats passing through her father’s house: the accusations, the questionable witnesses, the trial by his peers, the finding of guilt despite his proclamations of loyalty. She recalled most clearly the talk of Buckingham’s grisly execution. And now she knew what was behind it all. Now she knew who had caused it to come about.

“How you must have smiled to see Buckingham’s neck go under the executioner’s ax.”

“His conviction for treason set back the alliance between England and the Holy Roman Empire two years, Constable. It was what you and your king wanted, and it was what you got. Why, even now the Emperor Charles must tread lightly with Henry. And it is due to me.”

“Yes. It was due to you.” The Lord Constable’s stony gaze was unwavering. “But we have watched how your friendship has recently blossomed once again with the English king, and it makes us lose confidence in your willingness to deal with us. In so many words, there are some among us who don’t trust you.”

“Don’t generalize, you coward. What you mean is that you don’t trust me!” Garnesche snapped. Elizabeth watched as he drew himself up to his full height. “You and I both know, you are the only one who knows of my dealings on your behalf.”

“I don’t have to trust you. I employ you and I pay you to do our bidding.” The Lord Constable’s voice was cold, his tone bordering on disdain.

Garnesche paused, silently considering the other’s words.

Elizabeth stood as still as a statue, all her own problems now totally forgotten. From what she could gather, Sir Peter Garnesche’s employment by the French government was no short-term affair. Though she certainly had no love for England or its king, this was treachery of the vilest kind.

“I’ve told you that the king is going directly to Calais to meet with the Emperor Charles. Of what happened earlier, I can’t say. But if you wish to see your precious treaties with England honored, then you had better move quickly and keep that alliance from happening.”

“What do you expect me to do, attack your king?” the Lord Constable snapped. “I know you are low, but I tell you, we will not dishonor ourselves by killing anyone under a flag of truce. Even if he is the King of England.”

“This is all a farce.” Garnesche took a step back. “Constable, I grow sick of you and your whining demands. I tell you what must be done, but do you ever do it? Nay, you lack the stomach for real action. Barbaric. Inhumane. Low. That’s all I ever hear. Frenchman, you are a spineless coward.”

“You are just a dog biting the hand that feeds him.” The French nobleman stepped closer to the English knight and lifted his fist. “You are forcing me to put you in your place, and I, too, am growing tired of this game. Don’t forget what happened to Buckingham. Treason. It cost him his head. The same could happen to you. But where the charge against him was false, yours will be well deserved.”

“No one can bear witness to such an accusation. No one knows—”

“No one, but me, traitor. And that’s enough.”

“Henry won’t believe you.”

“Fool, you have forgotten my connections.”

Garnesche’s hand came up so quickly that the Constable was lifted off the ground as the knight’s viselike grip closed over his windpipe. The abrupt gurgling sound that the Frenchman emitted was quickly lost in his thrashing struggle for release.

Grasping his foe’s wrist with one hand, he struck at the Englishman’s face with the other. A cut opened on the bridge of Sir Peter’s nose, and the Lord Constable struck at it again and again.

But the knight was not to be undone, and Elizabeth watched in horror as Garnesche slid his dagger easily from its sheath and drove the point upward into the bowels of the struggling Frenchman.

Unable to cry out, the Lord Constable writhed in silent agony as the knight twisted the blade about, tearing the life from the nobleman.

Elizabeth took a step back as she watched the final twitching moments of the most powerful counselor in France. The bile climbed into her throat as she espied the cruel, maniacal grin that crept across Sir Peter Garnesche’s dark and bloodied face. He was mad. Truly mad.

Stepping back again, Elizabeth looked about her in the darkness. She had to get help. As she began to push through the undergrowth, the dragging hem of the kilt caught on the splintered branch of a fallen tree. She could see the giant murderer through the foliage, glancing about him as he lowered the Lord Constable’s corpse to the ground. Panic struck at her heart as he wiped the blood from his flashing blade on the velvet cloak of the dead man. What if he came her way? What if he found her here?

Yanking at the kilt, Elizabeth stumbled backward as the cloth gave way with a loud ripping tear. Garnesche’s head whipped around as she sat motionless and silent amid the soft green ferns. But she didn’t sit for long.

The knight took a step in her direction, and Elizabeth was off through the woods, scrambling on all fours through the undergrowth. Bramble bushes and young saplings slapped at her face as she struggled to her feet. Throwing wild glances over her shoulder, she ran frantically through the dark glade. Flashes of light from a dying moon mixed in swirling confusion with the dark of the passing trees. Chaos had taken over her world, and Elizabeth felt her energy slipping away. Valiantly, she fought hard to keep down the sobs she felt rising in her chest. They were robbing her of her power to run. But on she ran anyway.

She could hear nothing from behind her over the sound of her own pulse, pounding thunderously in her head. Then, as she turned to look for her pursuer, Elizabeth suddenly found herself tumbling in air, only to land with a sickening thud in the soft earth at the bottom of a diverted streambed.

She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breath. She was lying facedown in the blackness of the hollow. Short, velvety leaves were brushing against her face, and her eyes were gradually focusing on the spears of dark grass that rose up and limited her field of vision. One ear was pressed to the ground, and she thought she could hear the dull thumps of receding footsteps. But, convinced briefly that she was in the last moments of life, she thought it probably the sound of her own failing heart.

She couldn’t die. Images of her two sisters flickered in her brain. What would happen to them? With a massive effort, Elizabeth tried to take a breath. Painfully, the air pushed into her lungs as she rolled slightly to one side. Her left arm, she realized, was stretched out above her head. It was numb, though she only knew it when the dull pins-and-needles feeling started to creep into the limb, spreading gradually and more sharply from her shoulder to her fingers. Pulling herself slowly to a sitting position, Elizabeth lay her head on her upraised knees and attempted to take deeper and deeper breaths. Slowly, her senses returned to her, and only the throbbing in her shoulder remained. Flexing her arm, she knew nothing was broken, but she felt as if she’d been kicked by a mule.

Then she looked about her. The wooded glade was eerily silent and dark as death. She thought briefly of the Lord Constable. Of Garnesche. Her panic had disappeared, but a cold fear remained in the pit of her stomach. Pushing herself to her feet, she cocked an ear in the direction she thought she’d come, but there was no sound. Carefully, Elizabeth clambered to the top of the embankment and quietly pushed through the shrubs until abruptly she found herself standing on the worn path between the French and English encampments.