The Queen's Exiles (32 page)

Berck, get down!
Fenella shoved people out of her way, trying to get to the wall.

“Down with Alba! Down with Alba!”

Crack!
Berck slapped his neck as though stung. Blood spurted from under his ear.
Crack!
He reeled on the wall. “Berck!” Fenella cried. He collapsed, tumbling down to the street.

She pushed past shoulders, arms, backs, and finally broke free and ran. Sea Beggars streamed past her, pouring into the city. The tramp and clatter of their boots and weapons was drowned in the roar of the people swarming them, welcoming them. Fenella reached the spot where Berck lay on a dusty strip between houses in the shadow of the roofs. He lay still, blood pooling in the dust from the wound in his neck and soaking his breeches from the wound in his hip. She fell to her knees beside him. He blinked at her. “Berck, I’m here . . . you’ll be all right.”

Crack!
One of the Beggars in the oncoming stream lurched. Blood fountained from the side of his head as he fell. His comrades around him stopped and bent to him, but the oncoming tide of them kept coming amid the welcoming roar of the people. Fenella looked up at the arrow slit in the tower. A star of sunlight glinted off the gunman’s weapon. She looked back at the Beggars streaming in. There was Adam, striding ahead with sword raised. Men kept scrambling in through the opening. She saw Claes.

Crack!
Another Beggar fell feet away from Adam. Adam stopped and bent to help the man.

“Down with Alba! Down with Alba!”

Fenella looked up at the tower. The star of sunlight glinted
. Adam could be next!
She saw Berck’s pistol lying in the dust. She grabbed it. Scrambled to Berck and dug a ball out of the pouch at his belt. She stood. Steadied her trembling legs. The man’s face behind the arrow slit turned to her. She aimed at him. Fired.

Something bit her side, a wasp at her rib. She swatted it . . . but her hand had lost its bones, a floppy thing with no power. Something wet oozed between her fingers over the rib. She raised her hand weakly and looked at her fingers. Bright red . . . a metallic, salty smell like the sea. Her legs buckled. Blackness engulfed her.

S
wimming upward . . . slowly upward, her limbs weightless but weak. Up Fenella drifted, up . . . up.

She broke the surface of consciousness with a jolt. Pain gouged her side. Her eyes flicked open. Sunlight stabbed them. She lifted her head. Pain gouged her rib again and she fell back. A battering ram beat inside her head.

Where am I?
She lay on a bed. Soft, warm. Lavender-scented pillow. Blanket a blue hue like violets. Gauzy bed-curtains, gathered at the four posts of shiny, carved oak. A chambermaid stood at the foot of the bed, engrossed in folding lace-edged linens into a trunk.

A barrage of raw laughter. Wincing, Fenella turned her head. An open window, the brash laughter outside. Men’s coarse, ribald voices, one of them singing drunkenly. She smelled something oily, thick. Gun grease? Shards of memories cut her mind. Acrid smoke billowing above the gate . . . the battering ram’s
thud!
The gate smashing . . . men scrambling through . . . Adam, his sword raised. Sunlight flashing off the gunman’s weapon.
His target, Adam!

With a shudder she turned her head the other way on the pillow. Her breath caught. Adam sat in a chair, absently cleaning a pistol with a rag streaked with gun grease. In sheer relief, tears pricked her eyes. Not even a scratch on his handsome face!

“Oh!” the chambermaid said with a start. “She’s awake.”

Adam jumped up, the pistol and rag in his hands forgotten. “Thank God!”

“You’re—” Fenella had to stop, her throat as rough as canvas. “You’re alive.”

He smiled. “How are
you?
”

Every muscle hurt. Pain throbbed through her left side as though an arrowhead were embedded, grinding. “Thirsty.”

“Water,” he told the maid. “Quickly.” She bobbed a curtsy and hurried out. Adam turned back to Fenella and shook his head in wonder. “The doctor said you wouldn’t make it. Said fever would claim you. You’ve proved him wrong.” He smiled, gazing at her. “Poor fool, he doesn’t know the woman you are.”

She wanted to swim into the warmth of his eyes. But the pain in her side anchored her. The battering ram pounded in her head. “Where am I?”

“The mayor’s house.”

She struggled to remember . . . the mayor’s study . . . smashing the window . . . the couple freeing her. It was a blur, like peering through a wet windowpane. Adam still held the pistol and she suddenly recognized it, that pocked handle of horn. Berck’s pistol. “Is Berck all right? He was shot. Can I see him?”

Adam’s smile vanished. He set the pistol and the rag on the bedside table. “Fenella . . .” His voice was low with sympathy. Something in her shrank back from knowing.
Please, not Berck.
“I’m sorry,” Adam said. “We lost seven men to that gunman in the tower, including your friend.”

She closed her eyes, cutting out the sunlight. She wanted no sun. No soft bed. She could see Berck standing beside her on the deck of the
Gotland,
offering to come with her to Brussels or the coast, to keep her safe. If she had let him she might have kept
him
safe.

The mattress jostled. She opened her eyes. Adam had sat down beside her. “I’ll tell you this. He lived long enough to know that your shot killed the gunman.” He laid his hand gently on hers. “Fenella, you saved a lot of lives. The men are calling you their heroine.” He picked up something from the bedside table and showed her an iron ball the size of a large pea. “The doctor took this from your side. Wedged between ribs.”

She stared at it, the memory still a fog. “We attacked . . . today?”

“No, yesterday. You’ve been unconscious.”

Something he’d said clutched her.
We lost seven men
. She swallowed and asked, “Claes?”

Adam drew back his hand. “He’s fine. And something of a hero, too. He was the first to storm the City Hall and he ripped down Alba’s flags. Made a bonfire on the steps and burned them. The men loved it.” He stood up. “You must be in awful pain. What can I do for you? What can I get you? Another pillow? Something to eat?”

She was still trying to grasp what had happened. “So . . . we won.” Elation washed over her.
Down with Alba!
And yet the victory felt thin, shallow, like water, Berck drifting away, a corpse.

“Amazing, but true.” Adam indicated the open window. Through it they could hear the men’s singing and laughter carrying on. “Hear that? They’re celebrating. La Marck and his Sea Beggars occupy the city. They’re swaggering around as if they’d taken Brussels.”

“No one fought them?”

“A few stalwarts of the city guard, but after the leading citizens fled, the guard surrendered. The councillors lit out to the Antwerp Road with all the property they could lash to their horses. Only the mayor stayed. He’s in the garrison lockup. La Marck and his captains have taken over the best houses. I told them not the mayor’s house. Told them it was for you.”

Adam said it as though he would have fought them for it, for her. She couldn’t help smiling. Though he’d got to his feet he was so near she could have reached for him. She longed for him to sit by her again.

“Fenella!” Claes came through the door, the chambermaid behind him. He came straight to the bedside. “Great heaven, it’s true, you’re awake.” He took her hand and held it in both of his and said with feeling, “I feared we’d lost you.”

“No . . . though it seems I lost a day.” She glanced at Adam. He tore his eyes from her. He beckoned the chambermaid, who’d brought a jug, and told her, “Give the lady some water.”

Claes said to him, “Thank you for sending me word.”

Adam looked about to reply. He hadn’t sent for him. But he just nodded, turned, and walked out.

Claes pulled the chair close to the bed and sat. “You look well. Better than I dared hope.”

She felt far from well. The grinding pain in her side, the pounding headache, the fogginess in her mind. The maid offered her a cup of water and she struggled to half sit up. She drank a mouthful. It felt blessedly cool going down her parched throat. A couple more mouthfuls, then she lay down again, her strength sapped by the simple effort. It gave her a stab of panic. Would she be an invalid forever? No, that’s nonsense, she told herself. People recovered from such wounds all the time. So would she.
He doesn’t know the woman you are,
Adam had said. That warmed her but tormented her, too. Watching him walk out, that was the torment. She looked up at Claes. Bathed and rested and dressed in fresh clothes, he looked healthier than she had ever seen him. “The victory, Claes. I’ve heard. It’s wonderful.”

He nodded, his face shining. “And this is just the beginning. Brielle gives us a base. We—” He stopped and turned to the maid who was setting the jug and cup on the table, and he told her to leave. Didn’t want her to overhear. When she was gone he turned back. “It’s exactly what we needed. A base that we can get supplied by sea. A base we can attack inland from. La Marck and I have sent a joint message to Prince William in Dillenberg, telling him of our victory. It’s just the beginning—and what a beginning! I’ve contacted the Brethren in Rotterdam, and with our combined strength, Sea Beggars and Brethren, we’ll take more ports throughout Holland and Zeeland, all in the name of the Prince. We plan to start with Vlissingen. Just think of it, Fenella—it controls the channel that the entire trade of Antwerp sails through. With Vlissingen we can take the whole western region!”

“Yes . . . that would be wonderful,” she managed, but in fact it made her heavyhearted, the thought of tramping from town to town, following him and his troops of rebels. She didn’t want to think of it. She was weary, so very weary.

“You’re tired; forgive me.” He glanced at the window and grinned. “Listen to them. Once they sleep off their celebrating, those men will be ready to fight.”

“I think . . . I need to sleep, too.”

“Yes, yes, of course. And I must get back to La Marck. We’re planning the attack on Vlissingen. Get back your strength, Fenella.” He patted her hand, smiling. “The men think you’re very brave, you know.” He smiled awkwardly. “Why, I believe they would follow you before me or La Marck.”

She tried to smile at his jest. Her eyes closed as he left the room, closing the door behind him.

She slept right into the night. A dream of Berck falling into a chasm, falling forever into a gale-tossed sea, jolted her awake, sweating. She fell back into a dull, dreamless sleep.

The next day she sipped some broth and ate a little rye bread. The fog in her mind cleared and the headache faded, though the pain in her side was still intense. The doctor, a wheezing white-haired fellow, changed her bandage, and the maid helped her into a fresh nightdress. Claes visited, spreading out a map on the bed to explain the tactics the Sea Beggars were planning. Adam came to ask if she was feeling better. She said she was. He stayed only a moment.

The following day she felt quite a bit better. Stronger. Hungrier. Interested. She ate a dish of rabbit stew and an apple and drank some ale. The maid told her Lord Thornleigh had gone to a neighboring town and had left word that he would not be back before nightfall.

Claes did not come to see her all day. Too busy with the plans, Fenella thought. She tried to ignore the voice inside her that wondered why he would not take a few minutes to look in on her. Lying in bed had become boring, irritating.
Tomorrow I’ll get up,
she told herself,
even if just for a short walk.
She had a hankering to see her ship, the
Gotland
. A hankering to be useful again.

“Your husband left this,” the maid told her when she awoke the next morning. Fenella opened the letter.

Claes had sailed! She asked the maid if the whole fleet had gone. The girl confirmed it. “Yes, they left before dawn with the tide.”

It stunned Fenella. Why had Claes not woken her to tell her? Was a quick good-bye so impossible? She chided herself for the thought. He was on an important mission, a dangerous one, and had a thousand details of organization on his mind. Naturally that consumed him. Her heart beat fast with excitement and alarm. The rebels were on the move! And now that she’d had a moment to absorb the news a guilty shiver went through her, a shiver of relief that she had not had to go with Claes.

Had Adam gone, too? “Did the
Gotland
sail with them?”

The girl shrugged. “All ships look the same.”

Fenella needed to see the harbor. She struggled out of bed, her bandaged ribs feeling like they were grating together, and went to the window. It overlooked the mayor’s garden, and she found that the neighboring houses masked the harbor. She could not get even a glimpse of the water. Infuriating! She turned back to the girl. “The
Gotland
is Lord Thornleigh’s ship. You’ve heard nothing of him?”

“Oh yes. Pieter said at breakfast that the English lord has gone to talk with the mayor.”

Fenella sank down on the edge of the bed, a little shaky from the exertion, the relief. Adam was still here. She knew she had no business being happy, but happy was how she felt.

There was a scent of pear blossoms in the air. Four days had passed since La Marck’s fleet had left, and Fenella was very glad to be outside after so long in bed. She reveled in the freedom of the open air as she and Adam climbed the stairs from the street up to the city wall. She didn’t mind the weakness she still felt, for it gave her an excuse to take his arm.

“Sure you want to go to the top?” he asked.

She nodded with a smile. She wanted to see the harbor and could wish for no better guide. Adam had stayed to assist the people of Brielle in resuming their daily lives.

He and Fenella reached the top. They were alone on the wide walkway. Throughout the city spring greenery frothed the gardens of citizens’ homes and the monastery precincts. Fenella drank in the pear blossom scent. In the harbor, boats skimmed to and from the pier, sails atilt in the fresh breeze. Bright sunshine beamed, then darkened as a flotilla of clouds sailed by, then beamed again. In the quick-shifting play of light and shadow Fenella fancied the sky was displaying the emotions that wheeled through her. She could not have more of Adam and that was something of a torment, but just to be near him satisfied her heart.

“You look well,” he said. “You look . . .”

She pushed back her hair tickling her cheek in the breeze. “Look what?”

“Happy,” he finished.

She could not tell him that he was the reason. She covered her feelings with a cheerful change of subject. “As happy as the Admiral’s men?”

He smiled. “Aye, there won’t be a drop of wine left in Vlissingen tonight, I warrant.”