The Queen's Exiles (16 page)

“You do,” she breathed. “Adam, I am yours.”

He’d plowed his hands through her hair and kissed her, and when he tugged down her chemise and her breasts spilled free he felt he could not get enough of her fast enough. Her nipples taut as berries against his palms. Her yielding mouth. He pushed up her skirt and his hand slid up the warm skin of her thigh, and when his fingers reached the warm, wet cleft she gasped. She pushed him gently onto his back. She straddled him. Never had he felt such a ravenous need. Unfastening himself, he gripped her hips and thrust into her, his desire ferocious, his eyes feasting on her mouth, her hair tumbled over her breasts. When they lay together after, spent, catching their breath, he marveled at the pure joy he felt. She amazed him. Her bold confidence. Her lush beauty. Her eager abandon. The glow of her. Sailing from Sark they had bonded in spirit, and now their union was complete, consummated. She was his, all of her. And he was hers. A marriage truer than he had ever known.

“If I were free,” he’d said, gazing into her eyes, “to make you my wife—”

“Shhh.” She had stopped his words with a kiss. “We’ll be together, that’s enough. In England. Soon.”

He felt the thrill of her still, his hand pressing the tree trunk, and a smile spread through him. England, where peace beckoned. The future glowed for him and Fenella. A partnership in every sense, loving and lasting.

A screech shredded his dream. The owl had pounced near him and lifted from the grass, wings beating, with a captive vole squirming in its talons.

He saw something else. The door to the children’s dormitory had opened, just a crack. He jumped to his feet. The faintest light shone through the crack. Adam awaited, his heart in his throat. The door slowly opened. A shape in the shadows. Two shapes. Kate and Robert! Cautiously, Kate put her head out past the doorjamb and looked both ways along the exterior of the wing. Adam’s thoughts flew to her, excitement thrumming through him:
You’re safe. Come!

They stepped out, hand in hand. Kate carefully, quietly closed the door, and then they hurried across the quadrangle straight toward Adam. He snatched the helmet from the grass and pulled it on, ready to go, keeping an eye on the door in case someone came after them.

“Father,” Kate whispered as they reached him. He read a flurry of emotions on her face: amazement, confusion, relief. “I thought they’d killed you . . . Mother’s men . . . in the church. I saw your blood. Then she dragged me out.”

“You were so brave. I got away because of you.”

Tears gleamed in her eyes. “Why would Mother do that?”

He shook his head, wincing. How could he begin to explain to his daughter the animosity between her parents?

Kate said, her voice shaky, “She’s wrong about you. About . . . everything.”

His throat was so choked with emotion all he could manage was, “Bless you.” He threw an arm around her and hugged her. “Bless you. Both of you.” He reached out for Robert, too, but the boy stood frozen, transfixed. Was it the breastplate and helmet, so fearsome looking? “It’s me, Robin. It’s been so long, I know I may look different. But it’s me.”

The boy’s head jerked, a small spasm. The tic. “Mother said . . . to stay away from you.”

Adam said gently, “And yet you came.”

The tic again. “Kate said to.” It was a statement of complete trust. Adam looked at Kate with a wondering smile. Had she been the boy’s only friend in their lonely exile?

There was no time for this. He had to get them both moving. “Listen to me, both of you. I’m taking you home. To England. We’re leaving right now.”

Kate’s eyes went wide. “How?”

“We’ll ride to the canal. We’ll be a sight, the three of us ahorse, but we’ll get there, and we’ll get a boat.” He was gambling that his military garb from Carlos would be his passport through Brussels and all the way to Antwerp. “All right?”

She nodded, anxious but also excited. How he loved her for that!

Robert just stared. Something inside Adam lurched. What if his son refused? Adam might be able to manhandle him onto the horse, but if the boy protested, cried out, people would come running. He glanced at Kate, hoping for help. She took her brother’s hand and said gently, “Don’t worry, Robin, they won’t hurt you. Not anymore. You’ll never have to come back here.”

Adam wasn’t sure what she meant, but he saw the bond between his son and daughter and it moved him. He recognized it, the same bond that men in his crew shared who’d been through battle together. Kate and Robert were comrades in arms.

He suddenly noticed that it wasn’t Robert’s hand Kate held but his wrist, as though his hand was hurt. Adam took the boy’s hand. Robert flinched. Adam was shocked at what he saw. Red welts crisscrossed the small palm. He took the boy’s other hand. More welts. Adam gritted his teeth. “The nuns did this?”

Robert shrank back in his grasp. His head jerked in a spasm. The tic. Kate answered quietly for him, “To beat the devil out of him. The devil that makes him do that.”

Revulsion churned Adam’s stomach. He could never forgive Frances for what she’d done to their children. Kate, sent to be swallowed by the convent as a nun, sacrificed on the altar of Frances’s religion. Robert, beaten by the nuns.

He went down on one knee so that he and the boy were eye to eye, and laid a gentle hand on Robert’s shoulder. “Remember your first pony? You loved that pony. Loved riding him. What was his name? Horatio?”

Bright-eyed for the first time, the boy looked at Adam. “Hector.”

“That’s right. Hector. Tonight, as we ride, you can hold the horse’s mane. Would you like that?”

Robert nodded eagerly. His head jerked. The tic.

Adam tousled the boy’s hair. Then looked at Kate and smiled. “Let’s go.”

Taking the path to the garden shed, Adam kept them in the shadows by the church wall. He untied the horse and swung up into the saddle, then pulled Robert up to sit in front of him, then pulled Kate up to ride pillion behind him. They were as crowded as eels in a barrel, but Adam loved having their warm bodies pressed against him. He realized how deeply he’d missed them, apart for so long. He took the reins, his arms on either side of Robert, who gripped the horse’s mane. Kate held tight to Adam, her arms around his waist. They rode slowly past the church, Adam keeping the horse at a walk and again keeping to the shadows. They crossed the quadrangle, heading for the main gate, and he scanned the dark windows and doorways of the wings on either side. He knew Kate and Robert were doing the same, perhaps expecting angry nuns to come pouring out with torches. He glowed with pride at how courageously calm his children remained.

They reached the gate. It was closed, but locked only by a bar across two iron brackets. “Kate, I need you to get off and lift the bar, all right?”

“Yes,” she said eagerly. She slid off the horse.

“Slow and quiet,” Adam said. “No noise.”

She did it beautifully. Lifted the bar off with such care it barely scraped, then gingerly propped it against the wall. She opened one side of the double wooden gate, very slowly, so the creak of the hinges was only faint. Then she hastened back to the horse, whispering, “I did it,” her eyes aglow.

“Well done,” Adam said with a smile, never prouder. He reached down to swing her up onto the horse. She reached up for his outstretched hand.

Crack!
Something punched Adam’s breastplate with a screech of metal. He lurched in the saddle, hurled back by the punch. A bullet! The reins flew from his hand. Robert tumbled off the horse with a cry. Adam heard him thud on the ground.
Robert! Is he hit?
The horse staggered with a terrified whinny, knocking Kate over. She sprawled on the ground on her back. “Kate!” Adam cried. He groped for the reins, his mind thrashing to understand. Was
she
hit? No, the bullet had screeched off the edge of his breastplate at the collar. The steel was dented. His collarbone throbbed from the force.

But his son lay motionless on his side, a crumpled shape on the black earth. “Robert!” Adam had got hold of the reins, but the horse in its terror wildly tore away from the gate.

Kate was scrambling to get up. “Father!”

Adam got control of the maddened horse and wrenched its head around.
Crack!
He felt the whistle of a bullet whiz past his ear. His eyes raked the roof by the gate for the gunman. He saw only blackness. Black lead roof agleam in the moonlight. Black chimney.

On the ground his son lay still as death. His daughter ran to her brother and dropped to her knees beside him. Adam kicked the horse’s flanks and bolted for Robert. “Is he hit?”

“No, he’s all right!” Kate cried, her hand on Robert’s face. Adam saw the boy move, his pale face dazed. But alive! Adam galloped toward them.

Crack!
The bullet singed the horse’s rump, grazing its hide. It whinnied in terror and made a tight frenzied circle. Adam saw blood glisten in a streak through the hair of the horse’s rump. His eyes again shot up to the roof. A man was crouched by the chimney! He was just a silhouette in the moonlight, but there was no mistaking the pistol in his hand. An assassin.

Sent by Alba?
But how could Alba know I’m here?

The awful thought struck:
Carlos?

No time to think. The gunman was loading the pistol to fire again. Adam had only one thought:
Get the children
. The gate stood open. The street lay beyond. He kicked the horse so hard it jumped. He rode for Robert and Kate.

She was running to him. A bullet whizzed between them and rammed the dirt at her feet. She froze, listing back on her heels. Adam drew rein so suddenly the horse staggered. The bullet had plowed a channel in the earth mere inches from his daughter’s foot. She looked up at the roof. Adam smelled the gunpowder.
It’s me he’s after, but a bullet could kill her
.

“Kate, come! We’ll get Robert!”

She twisted back to him. Adam reached out for her. She reached out for him. A bullet tore across his sleeve. He and Kate lurched apart.

“Father, go!” she cried. “He’ll kill you!”

“No. Robert—”

“I’ll take care of him. Go!”

Adam looked up at the black shape on the roof. The pistol was raised, motionless in the moonlight. Aiming.

“Please,” Kate begged. “Go!”

Adam threw an agonized look at Robert. The boy lay on his back but had made it up onto one elbow, stunned, watching his father. Fury choked Adam. If he stayed he would die, shot down in front of his children. Tears stung his eyes. “Kate . . . Robert . . . I’ll be back!”

He kicked the horse and bolted into the street. The bullet crashed into the wooden gate.

Adam rode for the canal, galloping through the dark streets in rage, in sorrow, in confusion. In hate.

T
he young street seller offered up a cone to Fenella, a hand-sized confection of spun sugar brimming with ripe strawberries. Their fragrance was intoxicating. Fenella was in a hurry, on her way to deliver her satchel of gold to the Brethren, but she could not resist. She bought the cone and slipped an extra coin to the seller, a barefoot girl of about ten who beamed her thanks. Walking on, Fenella popped strawberries in her mouth and licked the ruby-colored juice from her fingertips, savoring the tangy sweetness, a taste like summer itself. She basked in the sunshine smiling on Brussels from a clear blue sky, a delight after the deluge of rain that had driven her to Berck’s barge two days ago. But she blessed that rain, too. It had brought Adam Thornleigh into her arms.

Her heart danced at the memory of their lovemaking, a burst of passion that had overwhelmed them both. She had savored the dizzying memory over and over since they’d parted. Almost as exciting were the daydreams she now indulged of the future with him in England, a life together, building her business. They would often be sharing their days, so why not nights, too, sharing their passion? She felt a sting of guilt about Claes. She was still his wife. And Adam didn’t even know about him. But Claes had released her, had virtually ordered her to go to England and leave him to the dangerous work that consumed him. Even before that, he had known she was living on Sark yet had not sent for her. How could he do that if he cared about her? He didn’t care, at least not deeply, it seemed to her. He felt a bond with her as his wife, but only the kind he would feel for any close relation. What he really cared about was the work he was doing. In effect, by his words and actions, Claes had left the marriage. Did that mean she was free?

She
felt
free. Maybe that was sinful of her, because she knew the answer to her question:
till death do us part
. But she could not deny how eager and excited she was to start a new life. She wanted Adam and he wanted her, and they would take whatever happiness they could get together. She could never be his wife—he was bound in marriage to a woman who’d cut herself adrift from him—but Fenella reveled in knowing that she had what his wife did not: his love. Adam had made that thrillingly clear, and it still amazed her. In all the years that she had secretly held him in her heart she had never dreamed this could come to pass. Her lowborn world was as far beneath his as a cave was from the clouds. That they had even crossed paths again had been a small miracle. Yet now, he was hers.

Her heart was so brimful of love she felt the joy might burst out of her in song.

Or laughter—which it did as she passed a couple of boys racing toy boats in the pool of a fountain. One lifted his and leapfrogged it over his opponent’s, splashing it down at the finish line. Fenella laughed out loud. What a saucy way to win!

It suddenly struck her that those boys might be the age of Adam’s son. Or his daughter. Would they be with him when Fenella joined him on the
Odette
in the cove? That had been his vow, to bring them home, and if she knew anything about Adam Thornleigh it was that nothing would stop him when he set his mind to a mission. The thought of being in the company of his children as they sailed to England sent a pleasant flutter to her stomach. Robert and Katherine. Kate, Adam called the girl. A loving father, to be sure. It gave her a rush of happiness. Who in the world could not love such a man?

The strawberries were gone. She nibbled the sugar cone, keeping an eye out for her destination, a shop under the sign of the dolphin. She was very near it, yet the fashionable street was a surprise. When Claes had told her about the Brussels Brethren she had imagined hard-up men living in a rackety tenement or perhaps some underground hiding hole like the one beneath the farmhouse where she’d first encountered him and his fellow rebels. But this neighborhood she had entered was a prosperous one near the Coudenberg Palace, with leafy chestnut trees and stone mansions and window-bright shops, and the gentlemen and ladies she saw coming and going were dressed showily and expensively.
How dull I must appear,
she thought. Her clothes, though not exactly humble, were far from fashionable.
Never mind,
she told herself.
Let them turn up their noses
. The gold in her satchel could buy the finery off a dozen ladies’ backs.

The sign of the dolphin hung at the intersection with a jeweler’s shop, just where Claes had said. Yet when Fenella opened the door and stepped inside she thought there must be some mistake. No rebel Brethren could live here. The shop was for ladies, and great ladies at that, a place where stylish headdresses were created. She had stepped into a perfumed place of feathers and spangles and lace. Wooden heads lined the counters, all adorned with fanciful creations on wrought-metal frames that rose in crescents dressed with silk ribbons, gauze, sprays of feathers, pearls, silver lace, gold thread, and ornaments such as tiny jeweled birds. Some of the frames rose from full wigs; others were meant to dress the customers’ own hair. Some had long, luxurious curls dangling on either side.

“Looking to sell?” a female voice inquired in foreign-accented Dutch.

Fenella turned. A short woman of perhaps forty, plump as a partridge, regarded her with a condescending smile. Her own headdress was a stylish example of the shop’s craft. “Pardon?” Fenella said.

“Auburn hair. It is always profitable.” The woman reached out to touch a thick red lock that had tumbled from beneath Fenella’s cap, examining it like an item at a market stall.
“Charmant
.
”

Fenella stepped back, startled.
Of course: the wigs and curls.
In Edinburgh she had known young women who’d sold their hair to help their families survive the winter. This shop woman must think she was one such seller. “No,” she said quickly, bluntly, “quite the opposite. I’m here as a . . . patron.”

The woman’s condescension brightened into keen-eyed interest. “Dear lady, please forgive the error of a foolish Frenchwoman. I am Madame Beaumont, and I am at your service. How may I help you?” Without a beat she smoothly went on, “One of our new Turkish arrangements, perhaps?” She gestured to a towering concoction of striped silks and feathers and pearls.

“Heavens, no.”

“Ah, I see.” Madame Beaumont instantly took the cue. “Something more quiet. Perhaps it is for a christening?” Her tone became sensitive, sympathetic. “Or a funeral? We would be happy to create a mourning arrangement to your exact specifications.”

“No. Thank you. I’m looking for someone. I was told I could find him here.”

A blink. “Oh? And who might that be?”

Fenella hesitated. She wasn’t at all sure she had come to the right place, and the Brethren were dangerous company to be associated with. Loose talk with a shop worker might lead to trouble for the rebels, perhaps for Fenella herself. Yet this was where Claes had sent her. “I’d like to speak to the shop owner. Is he here?”

“Madame, I own the shop.”

Fenella heard pride in the woman’s voice. So, a fellow businesswoman. Somehow that settled her uneasiness a little. She glanced around. They were alone. Nevertheless, she said very quietly, “I am looking for Brother Ambrose.”

“Brother?” Puzzlement flitted across the Frenchwoman’s face. “I do not understand. Do you mean
your
brother?”

“No, no. He is no relation to me. Just . . . Brother Ambrose.”

Madame Beaumont looked irritated, as though Fenella were a vagrant who had wandered into her shop. “To seek a monk, perhaps you should visit a monastery. I am sorry, madame, I cannot help you.” She made a stiff bow of the head, a clear signal of dismissal. “I wish you good day.” Turning her back, she moved to the counter, where she busied herself with adjusting a jeweled ornament in a headdress of lace and gold ribbons.

Fenella had obviously come to the wrong address. It frustrated her acutely. Yet Claes had given her no other information. What to do? She could not make inquiries in the neighborhood. That could jeopardize the Brethren. Could even get her arrested by association. Then her murder of the don would be discovered and her next stop would be the scaffold. She shuddered at the thought. But, curse it, she had made a promise to Claes and she was determined to fulfill it. It was the one thing she could do to help him in his cause. Wrestling with these thoughts, she watched the Frenchwoman’s nimble fingers adjust the jeweled ornament in the lace: a tiny ship, its masts topped with emeralds, its rigging picked out in sapphires.

Madame Beaumont frowned at her over her shoulder, a look dark with suspicion. “We keep no other gemstones here,” she said, a warning that there was no cache of jewels to steal. “Our ladies bring their own.”

But it was not the ornament Fenella was staring at. It was the woman’s fingernails. Blue-black crescents of grime beneath the nails. It seemed odd, wrong—this fastidiously dressed shop owner primping the immaculate lace with dirty fingers. A shiver ran up Fenella’s spine.
It’s not dirt.
She had seen fingernails that blue-black color before, in Polder. Her neighbor Vos, the bookbinder. The one the Spaniards had tied to Claes and shoved into the river to drown. Vos’s fingernails had been permanently begrimed. Stained with ink.

Her mind leapt at the connection. She said to the Frenchwoman’s back,
“Bruinvissen.”
Dutch for “porpoises.”

Madame Beaumont’s fingers stilled on the lace. Silence. She did not turn, did not move an inch. “Pardon, madame?” She sounded wary. “I did not hear what you said. Could you repeat that?”

“Bruinvissen.”
Fenella stepped closer so she was by the woman’s side and could see her face in profile. “So perhaps you have something to say to me?”

Madame Beaumont looked at her. All artifice had vanished from her face. Her gaze was clear-eyed, keen.
“Zeemeeuw,”
she replied. Dutch for “seagull.”

Fenella felt a thrill. She had come to the right place after all. Their eyes locked. “Brother Ambrose is here, isn’t he?” It was a statement. They understood each other now. “He’ll want to see what I’ve brought him. From Brother Domenic.”

At the second name Madame Beaumont blinked in surprise. She seemed suddenly to decide. “Come,” she said simply. She went to the front door and locked it by sliding a bolt, then beckoned Fenella to follow her behind the counter to a door decorated with silver gauze and pink silk rosebuds. Fenella hitched the satchel over her shoulder and the Frenchwoman guided her through the door and closed it behind them. Here there was no trace of the stylish whimsy of the shop, just a plain passage of bare boards. They reached a door on which Madame Beaumont rapped her knuckles lightly in a rhythm of three quick taps and after a pause repeated the trio of raps. The door opened. A balding, sallow-faced man regarded Fenella with a frown. He wore an ink-stained canvas apron over his stocky frame. In the small, stuffy room behind him the single window was boarded up. Fenella smelled the coppery tang of ink. Lamplight glinted off the dark metal of machinery. A printing press.

“It’s all right,” Madame Beaumont told the man. “She’s from Polder.”

Ushered in, Fenella felt her head brush sheets of inked pages pegged to dry on twine that crisscrossed the space above them like spiderwebs. On a table beside the press were trays of movable type. Beneath the table, casks of ink. She did not have to read the words that hung above her to guess what these people published: illegal Protestant broadsheets. They were probably Calvinists. Printers of such contraband were regularly arrested and imprisoned. Many stubbornly had held to their heretical beliefs, refusing to recant when given the chance, and been burned at the stake. Martyrs. Such people baffled Fenella. She pitied their suffering but could not help thinking them fools. Why accept tortured death to uphold a mere belief, a cause? What cause could be worth such agony?

The man had taken up a position to block the door, keep Fenella here. She felt that after passing Madame Beaumont’s test she was being tested again. “Brother Ambrose?” she asked.

“Not I, mistress,” he said guardedly, wiping his hands on his apron. “I’m just a laborer.”

“My cousin is too modest,” said Madame Beaumont. “He has felt the bite of prison manacles in Paris and has the scars to prove it.”

Fenella was beginning to understand. “You’re Huguenots?” Her sea-roving customers on Sark had kept her abreast about the French Protestants whose base was the port of La Rochelle. The French king had made annihilation of the Huguenots his priority. Many had fled to Protestant England. Her thoughts jumped to Adam. When his ship had limped into Sark he’d said he was returning from a mission for Queen Elizabeth. Fenella had heard of the Queen’s stealthy support of the religious subversive leaders in France, as well as William of Orange, the Dutch prince in exile. Had she sent Adam to meet with such leaders?

“All who follow the true word of God must work together,” was Madame Beaumont’s sturdy reply. “One day we’ll be back in France.”

The man was eyeing Fenella, still frowning. “From Polder, eh? Proof?”

Fenella lifted the flap of her satchel and took out the note Claes had written vouching for her and introducing her as Sister Anne. The made-up name made her uncomfortable, but she knew that Claes meant only to protect her.

The man’s eyes widened as he read Claes’s words, and a new note of awe came into his voice as he said, “Brother Domenic himself.” He handed the note to the woman and when she read it Fenella saw that she was equally impressed. Claes obviously meant a great deal to them. To the whole underground movement, perhaps. A leader. She felt an unexpected twinge of pride.

“I can always tell,” Madame Beaumont said with a proprietary smile of approval at Fenella. It made Fenella feel like a workhorse being bought.
It’s Claes they admire. I’m just his messenger
. The Frenchwoman went on, “You are most welcome, Sister Anne. I am Sister Agatha.”