The Queen's Captive (46 page)

Good. Troops fighting Irishmen were unavailable to fight Englishmen.

She leaned closer and her voice became low, intimate. “Adam, I know you didn’t
want
to stay away so long. You felt you
had
to, for fear of my brother. I understand why, after his…well, his harsh behavior. It’s why we’ve had to keep our betrothal secret. But a promise to wed is one thing, marriage is quite another. A union under God that no man can break asunder. Not even John.”

“You don’t mean…marry now?”

“In his last letter John said he won’t be back for at least two months. We don’t need a lavish wedding, just a private ceremony. A priest and a witness. By the time John returns, we will be man and wife. He’ll
have
to accept it.”

“Or disinherit you. Frances, I do not want to be the agent of your ruin.”

She said with a despairing look, “But I am so tired of waiting. I fear we’ll go on like this forever, betrothed but apart.”

“It’s safest.”

“I am ready to take a chance. Will you?” She slid her hand across the table as though to take his hand, but stopped short, her fingertips almost touching his. “I know it was not your idea to marry me, Adam, but I will make you happy. Truly. I will be the most devoted wife in Christendom.”

He could not meet her eyes. He moved his hand to swirl the wine in his goblet.

She stiffened. Her voice took on a new edge. “I did what you wanted, back then when your father was in the Tower. I persuaded Her Majesty to release him.”

“And for that I will be forever in your debt. But you must see that at the moment everything conspires against us.”

“Even you, apparently.” She looked at him severely. “Did you
ever
intend to marry me?”

He hesitated. If he was not a good spy, he was a worse liar. As captain of his ship he was used to giving orders and having them obeyed, used to aboveboard dealings, not subterfuge and deceit. “I owe you much, Frances, for saving my father’s life. I will never forget that,” he answered sincerely. “Even if we do not marry, I will always honor you, and will find a way to repay your kindness.”

She was silent, regarding him as though hearing him for the first time. She looked out the window at the workmen finishing the religious house she had re-created. “You vowed to marry me, and God was our witness. I would have you honor
that.
” She looked back at him, a new hardness in her eyes. “Honor. It is a thing your father’s wife knows little of, despite her Christian name. Indeed, I shudder to say
Christian
in speaking of her. It profanes the sacred word.”

The switch of subject was so sudden he was totally at a loss. “My father’s wife? I beg your pardon?”

She got up from her chair and fetched an ironbound box fastened with a lock, the kind commonly used to hold important papers. Adam had one aboard the
Elizabeth
to protect his log books. She sat down and withdrew a key from her pocket and clicked it in the lock. The papers she took out looked worn at the edges but the writing seemed clear.

She smoothed her hand over the top page. “This document is twenty-three years old. It was copied from the records of the court of the bishop of London for the year of Our Lord 1535. It is a record of the heresy trial of Honor Thornleigh. The verdict was death by fire. I spoke with the priest who oversaw the case. The condemned was taken to Smithfield to burn, was chained to the stake, the fire lit under her. But depraved persons led by a villain attacked the proceedings and spirited her away. This priest, who saw the whole calamity, swore it was Satan himself who freed her.” Her eyes locked on Adam’s. “You probably did not know this, since you were a mere boy at the time. You have not been aware that you were raised by a criminal damned in the eyes of God.”

His mouth had gone as dry as stone dust. He had been part of that rescue adventure—had been in awe of his father’s brave wife. Brave, and always his friend.

“She lived among the German heretics,” Frances went on, “while our poor realm saw chaos under three shifting reigns, so that even the bishop’s court lost track of her. By the time she slipped back into England, everyone had forgotten. But I will not forget. Her death sentence is irrevocable.”

She set the document back in its box and locked it. In the silence between them, the hammering on the priory roof sounded like nails going into a coffin.

“The archbishop visits Grenville Hall next week,” she went on. “He is always a welcome guest, and takes delight in treating John’s children shamelessly with sweetmeats. His kindness to my nieces and nephews is matched by his vigilance in overseeing Her Majesty’s desire to cleanse the realm of heretics. If he were to see this document, I think Honor Thornleigh would see the inside of a cell beneath the archiepiscopal palace that very night. And the flames of Smithfield soon after.”

Her voice became low, intimate, confiding. The voice of a wife. “It has troubled me, Adam, knowing this vileness about your family. I must confess that the decision to keep it secret was difficult, since it is my duty as a Christian to decry heresy. But I did keep it to myself, for your sake. It has troubled me more since I became sworn, by our betrothal, to join your family. But I take my vow to God as sacred, not to be broken because the time is inconvenient. I charge the same of you. As part of your family, I will do my duty to keep this secret still. But if you break faith with me, and with God, by breaking your vow, then I can no longer deny my greater duty.”

She poured him more wine, refilling his goblet. “I would like our wedding to take place in three weeks, on the feast of St. John. It will be a private ceremony, known only to us until I can safely tell John. I trust that date will be convenient for you.” She smiled at him. “Midsummer Day. Just think, all the flowers will be in bloom.”

Adam hardly knew how he covered the twenty-three miles to Drayton after he left Frances. His fury at her was so violent it seemed to haze his vision, and the fields and people and houses passed him like ships in fog. More than once he was on the verge of galloping back and telling her that she could take herself, and her malicious threat with her, to the gates of hell. But each time he was about to turn his horse, he thought of his stepmother, and the hard facts pounded, over and over, like a catechism drilled into him—
can’t let them seize her, I had to agree, there is no choice
—and he pressed on. One ray glimmered through the fog, and in his mind he steered for it. If they could overthrow the Queen, and if Elizabeth took the throne, Frances’s menace would evaporate, because Elizabeth would never allow his stepmother to be harmed.
And if we can do it before Midsummer Day…

So many ifs.

He jerked the reins to halt his horse. He had reached Drayton and the main street ahead was clogged with people. They all seemed to be thronging the market square. He cursed under his breath. It was getting near dusk and he could not afford this delay. He was to join his father and uncle and Lord Powys’s men at the mine two miles past this town. They had crisscrossed the county, gathering stockpiles of weapons.

He nudged his way past people, moving into the thick of the crowd where he sensed anger in the air. There were sullen faces, and the chatter was the grumbling resentment of a mob. He asked a wiry man on foot what was going on.

“The baron’s men, sir, arresting the miller. Possession of seditious pamphlets.”

Adam raised himself in his stirrups to get a better look. The crowd had converged on the market cross, where armed men in Grenville’s green and yellow livery sat on horseback. Near them stood several town officials in rich robes, a couple with their chains of office askew on their chests, as if thrown on in haste. They glared at the victim, whose hands were being tied behind his back. His hair and clothes were faintly dusted with flour. The miller. Sitting on horseback beside the officials was a man expensively dressed in fur-trimmed green velvet, his hand resting lightly on the hilt of his very fine sword. Some local lord, Adam reckoned, maybe kinsman to Grenville. And no weakling, if his imposing bulk and severe expression and sharp eyes were any guide. It made Adam all the more impatient to move on. His father was organizing secretly under the aegis of Lord Powys, but the preeminent authority in the county, and the district’s principal lord, was Baron Grenville. This town was completely under his influence. The tyranny of this spectacle sickened Adam. The poor, wretched miller would hang. “All for a scrap of paper,” he muttered.

“A potent scrap, sir,” said the man. “It calls the Queen ‘Bloody Mary’ and worse.”

Adam wished he’d kept quiet. Any insult against the Queen was considered a criminal act.

The man spat in the dirt to show his disgust. “Bloody Mary, indeed. Light words, if you ask me, for one who’s burned hundreds of folk. If she fought the French with the fury she shows her own people, we wouldn’t be losing this war.”

Adam relaxed. The fellow was no supporter of the Queen. “I’d say we’ve already lost it.”

“Aye, when she lost Calais, she lost all. And England’s dignity with it.”

Adam couldn’t help admiring the man’s grit. All the laws in the world wouldn’t silence an irate Englishman. He was about to ask if there was another way through town, when he saw, a few house-lengths ahead, his father and uncle on horseback. They were at the head of a train of three wagons, with Powys’s mounted retainers surrounding the vehicles. Adam’s heart thumped in his chest. His father’s party, trying to pass through, was hemmed inside the throng just as he was, and they were dangerously close to the town officials. If anyone got a glimpse of what was under the wagons’ canvas tarps, they would all hang.

He pressed his horse forward. The people suddenly moved closer to the market cross like a tide rushing out, leaving his father’s party marooned, alone but for some stragglers. It allowed Adam to trot his horse over to them, and as he reached them he heard his father say in a fierce whisper, “I won’t stand by and let them string him up. Let me go.”

Geoffrey had gripped his wrist to restrain him, and spoke in the same forced undertone, “Not here, Richard.”

Adam reached them. “What’s happening?”

“Thank God you’re here, Adam. Your father wants to protest. Wants to barge over there and confront the mayor. It’s madness.”

“It’s only right! Thomas the miller has been with us from the start. If we don’t stand up for him, what the hell are we doing this for?”

“Sir,” Adam said, “my uncle is right. This is not the place.”

“I know, I know, I must content myself,” he growled. “Let go, Geoffrey, I’ll be still.” He looked back at the miller being led away. “It’s just so damn wrong.”

“That’s why we’re going to make things right.”

He nodded. “It’s good to see you, Adam.”

“Look.” Geoffrey jerked his chin to indicate the hard-faced lord in green velvet. He was looking in their direction, scowling, and began to trot his horse toward them.

“Christ,” Adam’s father muttered.

“Richard,” Geoffrey warned in a whisper, “hold your tongue.”

“What’s going on here?” the lord demanded as he reached them.

Adam said, “Good day, my lord. We’re passing through with some loads of household furnishings. My father is anxious to get along before dark.”

The man looked back at the wagons. At the seven grim-faced retainers. Adam held his breath.

His father said genially, “My wife will have my guts for garters if I break any of her mirrors or crockery. Sorry for the commotion, my lord. We’ll be on our way.” He signaled the carters driving the wagons, and Powys’s men. The wagons rumbled forward. Adam, riding with his father and uncle, didn’t look back, though he felt the eyes of the lord on them all.

Two miles later, the buildings of the mine came into view across the heath. When they arrived, there was still enough daylight as they dismounted in the tangled grass and the wagons clattered up. Adam and his father and uncle helped the men throw off the tarps and carry the heavy boxes inside. The rough building was caked inside with windblown grit from the cave mouth that yawned beside them, and they kicked up a lot of dust as they worked. Adam was glad of the loyalty of Lord Powys’s men. Powys was not the most powerful lord in the county, but he was the richest—so wealthy he could stand a small army—and his early involvement in the cause was what gave Adam hope of success, despite the dangers. Sir William Cecil had brought his father and Powys together. Powys was committed, but did not dare stockpile the weapons at his home, so Adam’s father had volunteered to take them. Years ago he had bought this piece of property for its lead mine, but because of his lack of capital had been unable to operate it. Sitting idle, it offered an ideal hiding place.

Adam finally had a chance to report to him. They had to raise their voices above the noise of the men trudging in with the boxes, coughing from the dust as they thudded down their loads and shoved them in place. Geoffrey passed out wineskins of beer as the men worked, to mitigate the dust.

“First,” Adam told his father, “Grenville will not return home for at least two months.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes. He wrote to her.”

Geoffrey said with a wink as he passed a wineskin to him, “Handy having the lady in love with you.”

Adam downed several mouthfuls of beer, his rage at the woman matched only by the desire to keep secret his unholy bargain with her. There was nothing his family could do to help him. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and handed the wineskin on to his father. “He asked the Queen for six thousand more troops to quell the Irish, and got them.”