The Queen's Exiles (3 page)

Good God,
Adam thought. His prisoner. He saw the nobleman again, scrambling for the
Elizabeth
’s longboat. Tumbling overboard, his face blown away, a red pulp of blood and bone.

“Now you know, my lord. Why she hates the dagos.”

The sky glittered with stars over Fenella’s cottage. The night breeze stole through the open window, jerking the flame of the candle on the table where she stood. The table was spread with boat gear—blocks, sheaves, shackles—crowding the crockery pot of thyme that Fenella grew. She bit off a mouthful of bread slathered with goat cheese and topped with a spring of thyme and chewed it slowly, trying to savor the tang of the cheese and the sweetness of the bread. Trying not to think about the dead Spaniard.
I’ve done murder
. For one stunning moment when Don Alfonso had pitched overboard she had felt a thrill of satisfaction. If only she could have shot him five years ago! Killed him as he strolled the wharf while his soldiers drowned the men in pairs. She could still see Claes’s wild eyes as he hit the river with Vos, arms bound, thrashing like a speared fish.

She closed her eyes to shut out the awful memory. What was the use of remembering? She had long ago forced herself to let the past die.

But what she had done today could not be forgotten. Of all the stupid, impetuous things she had done in her life, killing Don Alfonso was the stupidest. The thrill was gone, swamped now by a fear that made her feel almost sick to her stomach. Was she going to prison? Seigneur Helier was the Queen’s authority here, the lord of Sark, but he was Fenella’s friend, so could she hope he might turn a blind eye? Lord Thornleigh outranked him, though. Would Thornleigh clap her in irons? Her hand holding the bread trembled. He hadn’t detained her—that was a good sign. Besides, he was fighting Spaniards himself, killing them. He’d almost hanged the don.

But even if both the seigneur and Thornleigh turned a blind eye, what about the Spaniards? What would they do when they heard she had killed one of their own? For they would surely hear. The Spanish seamen whose necks she had saved would make landfall in France as soon as they could, at Saint-Malo or Ushant, and there one or more of them would blab. Probably not to inform on her, not with malice, but just because when they reached a tavern the tale was too good not to tell. The “Sea Queen of Sark” who blew off the face of a Spanish grandee. What sailor could resist telling that? Then word would reach Spain. Don Alfonso might well have a powerful family; they might be royal courtiers. They would demand vengeance from King Philip. Panic nipped at her. She took another bite of bread and cheese to quash it. Manchet bread was her special treat. The fine wheat flour, doubly milled, was expensive. She had it brought from England and baked it herself using her own recipe with rose water and nutmeg. Those items were as dear as diamonds, but a few drops and a few grains scenting the manchet loaf made her feel she was feasting like a duchess. Not tonight. This bite was hard to swallow, her throat had gone so dry.

She forced it down with a mouthful of wine. A Baltic trader had given it to her, three barrels of the renowned wine from Madeira as part payment for what he’d owed her for repairs to his carrack. She had gifted one barrel to the Seigneur of Sark as a mark of their friendship and one barrel to the church elders to keep them out of her hair. The last she savored in the evenings with Johan, or with Madeleine Benoit, the rigger’s wife, who liked a laugh as much as Fenella did. She drained the Madeira from her goblet. Johan always scoffed at how she stood to eat when she was by herself. She didn’t like sitting at a table alone. Made her feel unready. Though for what, she couldn’t say. She set down the empty goblet, her mind on the Spaniards who might soon be coming for her. Her trembling hand made the glass rattle on the wood.

A rasping sound. She glanced at Johan’s closed door. A snore? Annoying, but at least it was a healthy sound, not like his awful coughing fits. Johan was getting sicker. It gave her a pang. Was she going to lose him? How bullheaded he was about wanting to go home to fight the occupation. Idiotic. He’d deserved the tongue-lashing she’d given him. The Spaniards would crush him like a bug. And yet something in his fierce wish to go home gave her a twinge of shame. Who was she to say how any man should live his life? Or sacrifice it. The rasp sounded again. Not a snore, she realized, just his window shutter grating on its hinge, nudged by the breeze. A west wind had risen.

Her gaze rose to the loft above his room. That’s where she slept. Her big feather bed shared the platform with bolts of canvas and heaps of cordage. She liked the snugness of the loft, like a ship’s berth, and loved its window view overlooking the bay and her shipyard. She had taken refuge up there after leaving Thornleigh’s ship, her hand still smarting from the kick of the pistol. She had sat stiffly on her bed and watched through the window as the men careened the
Elizabeth,
her crew and Thornleigh’s working together.

Adam Thornleigh. The way he’d looked at her as she held the smoking pistol. A look of shock, but something more, too, something mysterious. Admiration? It sent a spark through her. For eleven years Thornleigh had smiled at her in her dreams. Claes Doorn had been a good man, quiet and calm, and he had cherished her. No woman could have asked for a better husband. But he had not fired her blood the way Adam Thornleigh had done with a single glance.

She straightened up in self-disgust.
He looked at me as a murderer
. What else could he see? He, a great lord, a baron, honored at the court of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth.
Me, as common as barley bread
. Besides, he had a wife. When he and Fenella had left Scotland, in his fever he’d spoken of his wife being with child, their first.
His bairn,
she thought, envying his wife. It tugged an ache inside her. She would be thirty-one at Michaelmas. No man. No bairn.

Foolish, lack-brain thoughts.
She had a far bigger problem. The noose. She clapped the crockery lid back on the cheese pot to clear her head and swept bread crumbs off the table. Her noisy bustling brought a whimper from Jenny, the young maid asleep on the straw pallet in the corner by the hearth. Fenella stopped with a sigh.
Let the girl sleep. I should do the same. God knows what tomorrow will bring.

She took the candle and climbed the stairs to the loft. Sleep didn’t seem likely. She set down the candle on her nightstand, a priceless ebony prie-dieu she had salvaged from a Portuguese wreck. She freed her bunched hair from her mobcap and shook it loose. Unlacing her bodice, she undressed down to her shift, then turned to the night-dark window, so black it reflected her image as clearly as a mirror. She kept no mirrors, had no time for them, but now she stood still, hands on her hips, and gazed at herself. The flickering candlelight probed the scar on her cheek. She had long ago come to terms with it. A badge of her independence. In a way, it had saved her. Her life had once depended on her looks. The Leith garrison commander had wanted her, so she had traded her body for security and bread. But even then, at eighteen, she’d vaguely known that in the future, once beauty was gone, she would have nothing to trade. Her ravaged cheek had forced her to stand on her own early. Hard at first, with some bitter weeping into her pillow, but she had persevered and grown her business. Here on Sark she had prospered.

But now? She felt cold and fearful. Would she wake one morning to see a Spanish pinnace sailing in to hunt her down?

A rap at the door startled her. Who, at this hour? Benoit reporting trouble with the visiting seamen? She had seen them drinking. Brawling sailors were common as sand flies. She didn’t need that kind of nuisance now. She whirled on a robe and went down. Jenny was sleepily opening the door, yawning and rubbing her eyes.

Fenella’s breath caught. Adam Thornleigh stood in the doorway.

His eyes swept over her loosely tied gown, her tumbled hair. Then back at her face. “Forgive the intrusion at this late hour, Mistress Doorn. But we need to talk.”

Had he come to arrest her? But he could have done that hours ago. She found her voice. “Of course, my lord. Come in.” He stepped inside, ducking his head under the low doorway. How fine he looked! He had washed, shaved, put on a clean shirt and a doublet of garnet wool. His dark hair, pushed off his forehead, was still damp and glistening. His sheathed sword gleamed in the firelight. She glanced at the dumbstruck maid, whose eyes were big with awe. “To bed with you, Jenny.” The girl curtsied, then crept away. Fenella said, “Come through to the parlor, my lord.”

He followed her. She closed the door, took a deep breath, then turned to him. “I hope you are comfortable at the Seigneurie?”

“It’s fine.” He frowned, as though unsure of how to go on. “Couldn’t sleep, though.”

She waited, her pulse racing. This visit could only be about Don Alfonso. In the silence the wind whispered at the window. A hawthorn bush scratched at the pane. She asked, struggling to sound calm, “Will you take a glass of Madeira?”

“Fenella, you need to leave.”

“Leave?”

“It’s not safe for you here. The Spaniards. They’ll want revenge.”

A shiver ran through her. “I know.” Yet the shiver was part thrill. He was on her side!

“Do you?” he asked gravely. “I mean that they’ll come for you. To hang you.”

The word made her flinch. She had seen Spanish torture, executions.

“You need to get yourself to some place safe,” he said. “You have family in Scotland, don’t you?”

“Family”—that was a word only for a lord. The sunken-eyed kinfolk she’d grown up with had long ago been felled by plague and war. The few who were left were too penniless to feed themselves, let alone another. “My home is here. On Sark.” Home, livelihood, everything she had worked to build! Fury boiled up in her at the thought of losing it. At the unfairness of it. At herself for her own brainless act. She lifted her chin, pretending defiance. “Seigneur Helier will stand by me.”

“Not against a diplomatic storm raised by Spain in London. If they insist you stand trial, Her Majesty might have to grant their request.”

A tremor went through Fenella. Would the great queen order her to swing?

“But that’s not likely the route they’ll choose, not with relations between the countries so tense. They’ll take the quick, quiet way with you instead. They’ll come for you themselves.”

Her fear swarmed back. “I have guns. From a French carrack that went down in a gale. I salvaged four demi-cannons, fifteen pounders. I’d planned to sell them, but instead I could—”

“Don’t even think it. Helier would have to arrest you if you fired on a Spanish ship.”

“You
sank
a Spanish ship.”

“And will face Her Majesty about that.”

His meaning was clear. He was a great lord, a friend of the Queen, who would stand up for him. She was a powerless commoner.

“As for the Spaniards,” he went on, “if they want me they’ll have to catch me first. But you, you mustn’t stay here, an easy target. Even if you could use those guns you can’t beat them. They’ll come with a hundred men, and if you sink them they’ll come back with two hundred.”

She couldn’t believe such a thing. “They’d send all that manpower, just for me?”

He was looking at her with an odd intensity, as if he’d just realized something astonishing. “My God. You don’t know
whom
you killed, do you?”

Of course she did. “Don Alfonso. The devil I watched butcher my village.”

“He was Don Alfonso Santillo de Albarado de Cavazos. The nephew of the Duke of Alba.”

Alba! In the Netherlands Alba had the power of a king. Her legs felt suddenly weak as reeds. She reached for Thornleigh to keep her knees from buckling.

He gripped her arm. “Don’t despair,” he said gently. “I won’t let them take you. Here’s what you have to do. Go to England. You’ll be safe there. I’ll advise Her Majesty to ensure it.”

“She would do that?”

“She’s already giving the Sea Beggars safe harbor.”

Fury surged in Fenella again. “I’m no beggar!”

He gave her a look of pity, one that said:
Face it, you are now
.

She pulled back. Pulled herself together. “So . . . to England. For how long?”

No answer, just more pity.

“You mean . . . never come back?”

“As long as you’re here you’re easy to find.”

She struggled to take it in.
Go to England . . . maybe forever.
But there was no use arguing. He was right. Stay here and she would swing. “Johan . . . I can’t leave Johan Doorn.”

“Bring him, too.”

“And . . . I’ll have to sell everything. Vessels. Buildings. My stock of gear—”

“No, there’s no time for that. You have to get away before word reaches Alba.”

“Leave behind everything I own?”

“You can build a new business in England.”

“That’s daft! Pardon, my lord, but the cost—”

“I’ll cover it. In fact, I’ll buy your vessels and have some of my crew sail them to England.” He seemed to read her astonishment and added as though to explain, “Look, I brought this trouble on you. If I hadn’t sailed into your bay none of this would have happened. So let me resettle you in England. Anywhere you choose. A southern port might be best. Perhaps the Isle of Wight. Non-stop shipping there. Wherever you decide, I’ll supply you with whatever you need. And, of course, my protection.”

She could only stare. The enormity of what he was offering! Tears sprang to her eyes, her emotions a storm of confusion and gratitude, anger and relief. She was afraid to lose control and openly weep. To prevent that she forced a laugh. “Partners, you mean?” The baron and the commoner.

His smile was wry. “Why not?” He added quietly, “Fenella, I owe you my life. I won’t abandon you now when yours is in jeopardy.”

The concern in his voice, in his eyes, warmed her to the core. A vision shone through her misery, a vision of being in England with him, his partner in business, being near him. She swallowed her anger at the coming upheaval. She’d been through worse. Besides, if she wanted to stay alive she had no choice. She clung to the vision. “You are kind, my lord.”