The Queen's Exiles (6 page)

He took her hand and squeezed it. How could he tell her? “You’re all right?” he asked. Yesterday’s execution in the market square seemed ages ago.

She squeezed his hand in return. “Right as rain, my love.” She tucked the letter into her pocket. “Come, let’s breakfast. You can read all about Nico after.”

He looked at his children. They stood waiting for him to sit so they could eat. He had no appetite, couldn’t face breakfasting with them as though nothing had happened. “Andrew, did you exercise the gelding?”

The boy looked startled. “This morning? No, sir, not yet.”

“Do it.”

“Now?”

“Now. He needs it, and you need to master him.”

Andrew looked hurt at the rebuke. He marched out to the stables. Carlos turned to his wife and daughter, Nell wide-eyed at his sharp tone, Isabel frowning in concern. Carlos silently cursed Alba. “Go ahead, eat,” he told Isabel. “I want to wash.”

Upstairs in their bedchamber he pulled off his doublet and shirt and poured water into the basin and whetted his razor.

Isabel came in with a trencher of bread and ham for him. “Why does he keep you so late? You’re exhausted.”

He soaped his chin. “Plans for the new patrols.” He couldn’t tell her he’d spent the night at a whorehouse. Playing solitaire, but what wife would believe that? He added, as he set about shaving, “Joint exercises with Don Felipe.”

He caught her shudder. “ ‘Exercises,’ ” she muttered. “What a word for it.” It irked him. He was doing what he’d come to this country to do, damn it. Alba was the lawful authority and Carlos would not apologize for upholding that authority. He and Isabel had been through this before. She knew enough to keep her objections to herself, but those shudders of hers—he felt them like nicks of a blade.

She set down the food for him on the bedside table and picked up his shirt from the bed. Shaving, he saw her in the looking glass as she folded the shirt. “The viscountess invited me to spend June at her country estate once the baby has come. I was so glad to tell her we had other plans.” Carlos wiped off the last of the soap, dreading telling her the truth. He splashed water on his face and toweled it dry. She put down the shirt and came to him and rested her hands on his back and pressed her cheek against his shoulder blades. “Home, Carlos. Now that you have the pension, how soon can we go?”

He turned on her so suddenly she lurched back a step.

“Where’s your brother?” he demanded.

She blinked at him. “What?”

“Adam. Where is he?”

“I have no idea. Why?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know what havoc he’s causing in the Channel. He and the cursed Sea Beggars.”

She raised her head high. “Of course I know. And I hope they keep at it. The sooner they break Spain’s iron grip on this poor country the sooner Alba’s reign of blood will end.”

“Don’t talk nonsense. This country is Spain’s forever. When did you last hear from Adam?”

“Goodness. What an inquisition!”

He snatched her wrist. “Isabel, this is no jest. Have you heard from him?”

She tried to tug her arm free, angry, but Carlos held it tight. A look of confusion, close to fear, flitted across her face. “No. I’ve had no word of him since we came to this godforsaken place.”

“Has your mother? Has she written to you about him?”

“No. Why? Carlos, what’s this about?”

He dropped her wrist, sick of the fight. All that was left was the truth. “He’s lost me my pension.”

She gaped at him. “What? But . . . Alba’s promise. He said there was news—”

“Oh yes, he gave me the news. The King has made me a member of the illustrious Order of San Baltazar. His dumping ground for slackers. Might as well have been a slap in the face.” He saw her shock and longed to soften the blow. But there was no way he could. The only consolation he had to give her was his regret. “Isabel, I’m sorry.” He put his arms around her and pulled her close. “We’re here to stay.”

She stiffened in his embrace. “No.” She said it quietly, but there was no mistaking the firmness. She pulled away. “It’s time for you to leave.”

“I know you’ve been unhappy here, but—”

“I’m not talking about that. It’s you. You’ve done your service to Alba honorably. But his brutal command has made so many enemies. The people hate him. You need to leave before they rise up.”

“These people will not rise up.”

“You saw that crowd in the square react to what Alba did to that boy. They were seething.”

“They did nothing.”

“They already have. Bakers are refusing to bake, brewers to brew.”

“Others will bake and brew.”

“And if the people take up arms?”

“Against thirteen thousand Spanish troops? They’ll be slaughtered.”

She was about to speak but stopped. She knew he was right. Her face had gone pale. “Carlos, if you stay
you’ll
be doing the slaughter. I’m asking you, please . . . for the sake of our children. Leave this man’s service. Come home.”

He shook his head. “I can’t.”

Anger leapt in her eyes. “You mean you won’t.”

“I mean I can’t afford to. My debts.” He looked away. “It’s worse than I told you.”

He felt her eyes on him, felt her absorb this new shock. “How much worse?”

He turned back in scorn. Was
worse
not bad enough?

She rallied. “Mother will help us. Adam will help us.”

“Adam?” The name burst from Carlos in fury. Adam, who had already gifted him two manors for his sister’s sake, loaned him hundreds of pounds. How much humiliation could a man take? “Enough. The Duke of Alba keeps food on our table and clothes on our children’s backs. I am staying and doing my duty to him.”

“It’s not
my
duty. There’s the coming child to think of. I don’t want this baby born in Alba’s bloody realm. I’m going home, Carlos. Home to Nicolas, who needs me. And I’m taking Andrew and Nell with me.”

It stunned him. Never had he expected betrayal from her.

She took a breath, then said steadily, “I hope you’ll come with us.”

T
wo days in Antwerp had made Fenella wonder if she’d been a lunatic to come back. The place frightened her. It had once been an exuberant city, the trading capital of Europe, renowned for tolerance thanks to its multinational merchant and banking population. But she hadn’t been here for five years, and in that time nearly eight thousand Dutchmen had been executed, many more had had their property confiscated, and tens of thousands had fled, mostly into the German lands, rather than suffer under the merciless martial rule of the Duke of Alba. Now, Antwerp felt like a city under siege. People kept their eyes down, anxious, wary. Fenella knew she had more to fear than most. It was Alba’s kinsman she had killed. She often found herself looking over her shoulder.

For what?
she chided herself as she and Johan made their way past the stalls of the Grote Markt. She doubted that news of her crime could have reached Antwerp in the six days since she’d sailed from Sark. She took solace, too, at how well she blended into the crowd. Her clothes, though fine enough in quality, were out-of-date, making her look like so many others among the city’s shopkeepers and craftspeople now down-at-heel from lost business. Johan, shuffling beside her, passed as her tired old servant.
As long as I’m careful and quiet,
she told herself,
I’m as good as invisible
. And yet, as she and Johan passed the cordon of Spanish soldiers and musketeers guarding the municipal buildings that were the center of Spanish authority in the city, a captain’s eyes seemed to bore right into her, knowing, accusing. She looked up at the flags emblazoned with Alba’s crest fluttering above their heads.

“Alba,” Johan growled. He spat in the dirt. “Satan.”

“Shush!” Fenella could have pinched him. The soldiers were watching everyone. “Do you want to get us locked up?”

He grunted his contempt. “Smell that? The sulphur of hell.”

“It’s burnt sugar, you daft man. The refineries.” Ships laden with sugarcane and molasses from Spanish plantations in the New World crowded the riverside wharfs, for Antwerp was the sugar capital of Europe, and the nearby refineries belched a bittersweet-smelling smoke. Johan looked ready to spit again but coughed instead, that awful cough that plagued him. He’d started using a handkerchief to cough into, and this morning Fenella had glimpsed alarming spots of blood on it. Now, he balled it secretively in his gnarled fist, which only deepened her worry. “Here,” she said. “Turn here.”

She hustled him into Zilvermidstraat, relieved to get him away from the eyes of the soldiers. His hatred of the Spanish, her fear that he would do something stupid, had kept her on edge for the two days they’d been at Mevrouw Smit’s lodging house on a lane in the shadow of the cathedral. It had taken Fenella that long to find the home address of Joseph Oliveira, the banker who held her bullion. She did not dare call on him at the Bourse, the international money market where merchants and bankers traded under its vast roof. Notice might be taken of her in such a prominent public place. She would keep to Antwerp’s byways. Zilvermidstraat, where ordinary people were going about their business in the shops, would lead her to Oliveira’s house. She spotted a gallows at the mouth of a side street. It was barren, no “gallows fruit” left hanging to rot and stink as a warning to the people as she’d seen elsewhere in the city. But a black bird sitting atop the scaffold made her shiver, recalling what the landlady had said at breakfast.

“Magpies. They’re everywhere.” Mevrouw Smit had been talking fretfully about her loose-tongued neighbor, a so-called magpie because his gossip about one of her lodgers being absent at mass had led to the lodger’s arrest on suspicion of heresy. Smit was a widow who looked careworn at the burden she’d been left to shoulder. “Anyway, it freed up the chamber for you.”

“We won’t be staying long,” Fenella had said, eager to change the subject. “So many shops are closed.” Her story was that she had come from a northern town with her manservant to buy a wedding gift.

“It’s the new taxes,” Mevrouw Smit had said gloomily. “To pay the Spanish troops. People feel if they have to pay more tax for their goods they’d rather close shop.” She shook her head. “I have to go clear down to the wharf these days to find a baker selling bread.”

Fenella lurched to a stop in the middle of Zilvermidstraat. A man’s corpse was tied to a stake, slumped, mouth agape. A skinny dog had one of the man’s ankles in its mouth, tugging the gray flesh, making the corpse jerk as though alive. Fenella stiffened at the stench. The bloody hand of Alba was everywhere.

Johan took her elbow and nudged her forward. “Come on, Nella. Almost there.”

She looked at him, glad of his dour resolve, and together they hastened past the corpse. How she hated this place! She couldn’t wait to leave it. One more week, then she could sail away. Taste the clean sea air again. Breathe freedom under the open skies. With Adam Thornleigh. How wonderful the voyage from Sark with him had been. The happiest four days of her life. Sunshine and fair winds had smiled on the
Odette,
and the little fishing smack had carved through the Channel as though she, too, yearned for freedom. There were just the three of them aboard, Fenella and Thornleigh and one-armed Johan, and she had loved working alongside Thornleigh at trimming the sails and handling the tacks. In the freshening breeze they had made the
Odette
fairly fly, her bow wave singing under her foredeck, a rainbow sparkling in its mist. On land, the difference in rank between her and Thornleigh was as wide as an ocean, but on the boat they were equals.

Sailing up-Channel they had bisected the shipping roads and passed ships flying the flags of Spain, France, England, Scotland, Norway, Sweden. Big galleons, carracks, caravels, and bilanders, smaller cogs and yawls and pinnaces—none paid attention to the little fishing smack, unaware that the notorious English “pirate baron” was at her helm. Still, when the
Odette
passed astern of a big twenty-gun Spanish carrack Fenella kept an anxious eye on the carrack until her flags dropped below the horizon.

Fenella and Thornleigh took turns at the night watches, Johan asleep in the cabin, and their final night was one that she would never forget. She had come up from the cabin, rubbing sleep from her eyes, ready to relieve Thornleigh at the helm. The night was clear, with a fresh breeze, the sea sheened with moonlight, the air unusually warm for spring in the North Sea, almost sultry. Thornleigh greeted her with a faint smile. “We’ll make landfall before sunrise.”

“At Vlissingen,” she said, returning the smile, though she wished the voyage with him would never end. From Vlissingen at the mouth of the Scheldt estuary it was only a short sail into Antwerp.

She sat down beside him in the peaceful hush, taking in the conditions of sea and sail to be ready to helm the boat, her senses alive to the murmur of the bow wave and the salt-tanged air. That’s when it happened. Thornleigh had spoken his heart to her. Maybe it was because of the hours he’d spent alone in the soul-soothing darkness, or maybe it was the bond they had forged after three days of working together, being at one with their vessel. Whatever was prompting him to confide in her, she drank in his words, sitting next to him under the vault of stars and scarcely moving a muscle lest it break the spell. His manner was as calm as the night, his voice low, his gaze ranging over the sails with an unconscious expertise that matched his relaxed hand on the helm. But an edge in his voice belied his outward calm.

“My children, that’s what I’m going for. I know you’ve wondered.” He glanced at her, then back up at the sail. “My wife left England with them three years ago, our son and daughter. Took them away in secret.”

Fenella’s breath caught. His wife had stolen his children? How cold his voice was when he spoke of her. And no wonder. It sent a thrill through Fenella:
He does not love his wife
. But how had such a breach in his marriage come to pass? How could any woman leave such a fine man? She longed to ask, but something told her to be still. He would say only what he wanted to say. She murmured, “How awful. You must sorely miss them.”

“I tracked her first to Ireland, then lost the scent. I’ve had agents scouring Europe ever since.” He eased the helm to starboard in a gust. “Two months ago one reported seeing her. Seems she was in Spain for a time, then moved north.”

Fenella guessed the rest. “To Brussels.” The capital, a day’s ride from Antwerp. He nodded grimly. It gave Fenella a chill. Brussels was the Duke of Alba’s seat—Alba, who had set a price on Thornleigh’s head. How did Thornleigh dare enter a city so perilous for him? But he knew the dangers. In the silence, the waves murmured past the hull. “Are they safe?” she asked. “Your children?”

“I pray God they are.” His eyes were on the luff of the sail. “Frances may have the black heart of a traitor, but she would not harm the children.”

“Traitor?” Astounded, Fenella could not squelch her curiosity. “What did she do?”

“Conspired to assassinate the Queen. In our own house. Frances and her cursed brother, may he rot in hell. They undermined the house with gunpowder, blew it up. I got Her Majesty out just in time.”

“You saved her?” Fenella was speechless. No wonder the Queen valued him so highly. But what thrilled Fenella again even more was the coldness in how he’d said
Frances
. He seemed to hate his wife’s very name.

“I’ll find her,” he said. “And I’ll get my children.”

She longed to know more. “What are their names?”

He looked at her and his smile was warm. “Katherine and Robert. Twelve and nine. The boy, he’s a quiet one. Kate’s not. A born adventurer. Young though she is, she understands ships.” He didn’t look back at the sails, kept looking at Fenella, his dark eyes aglitter in the moonlight. “Like you. Were you that way at her age?”

She so longed for him she could have wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him until the sun rose. And for a moment, from the way he was looking at her, she thought surely he felt the same. Then a gust heeled the boat, and to keep her balance she had to pull away from him. “Take the helm?” he said. The freshening wind demanded a trim of the sails.

She set her hand on the tiller, brushing his hand, alive to its warmth, and then he left her side and went forward to harden the sheets. The boat settled and rode smoothly. Fenella found no such harmony in herself, her every sense stirred by that moment with him. He looked back at her, and in the moonlight she saw the tired look in his eyes, and it struck her with a pang that she had been wrong, had misread the moment. He’d been relieved to have her take the helm, that’s all. He was just tired. She felt a fool.

“Go, get some sleep,” she said, pretending composure. “Don’t worry, I’ll wake you if I see the lights of Vlissingen.”

He gave her a grateful smile, then ducked under the boom and brushed past her. She savored the last sight of his back as he went down into the cabin.

The next morning they passed through customs at Vlissingen without incident, posing as a fisherman and his wife coming in to repair their boat, Johan posing as her garrulous father, whose nattering soon had the overworked official waving them on. Johan winked at Fenella. She had to smile, relieved that it had been so easy.

They sailed up the estuary, and the closer they got to Antwerp the more nervous Fenella felt, for herself and for Thornleigh, both of them outlaws in this land. Ten miles from Antwerp they entered the scatter of low islands that were wooded humps almost barren of people. Thornleigh tacked back and forth, scanning the mainland shore.

“What are you looking for?” Fenella asked, trimming the sail after a tack.

“A cove I remember. An ideal hiding hole. I anchored in it once to wait out a blow.” He glanced at her. “I lived in Antwerp years ago. My father had a wool trade business.”

“Ah, so that’s why your Dutch is so good.”

“There.” He nodded at the shore as he steered the tiller and sailed toward it. “That’s the entrance.”

An ideal hiding hole it was indeed, she realized as they followed the passage’s scythe-shaped curve—
like a nautilus,
she thought. At its end lay a cove, a snug indent of the sea hidden by the crescent of alder trees crowding the shore. The alders were tall enough to hide the boat’s mast from the sea and from inland. Waterweeds nodded in the shallows.

They lowered the sails and dropped anchor. The quiet was so peaceful, with just the spring chirping of birds in the trees. Johan set to work on the foredeck, coiling lines in his surprisingly efficient one-armed way. Fenella and Thornleigh secured the sails. As they worked together to wrap cord around the bunched canvas, his hand brushed hers. They stopped and looked at each other. Neither moved their hands resting on the canvas, fingers touching.

“When you get to Brussels, my lord—”

“Adam,” he said, his face earnest. “You really must call me Adam. We’re partners now.”

She wanted to stay like this forever, his eyes on her, his fingers kissing hers, his body so near she could feel its warmth. “Adam. It will be dangerous for you in Brussels. If you need a . . . a hiding hole . . . I have a friend. He has a barge. Do you know Sint-Gorikseiland?”

He nodded. “The island in the Zenne.”

“That’s where he lives. His name is Berck Verhulst. If you should need someplace.”

“I’ll be fine. Promise me you’ll keep
your
head down.”

“I will. One brainless act was enough.”

He smiled. “Ten days, Fenella. We’ll meet back here. Yes?”

“Yes.” They’d discussed this already. A rendezvous in ten days, he bringing his children, they hoped. They would sail back to Sark, get his ship, and sail to England. To safety.

That night, as Johan snored in the cabin, Fenella lay awake in the cramped stern berth, her thoughts stealing up to the man asleep on deck under the stars. Thornleigh . . . Adam.

Fenella and Johan turned onto Braderijstraat, where Spanish soldiers sauntered under more of Alba’s banners fluttering from a church. Fenella was beginning to wonder about her gold. She had not seen Joseph Oliveira in five years. She had sent him her profits twice yearly for safekeeping, because Sark was a frequent stopover for pirates and privateers, not the most law-abiding men. She had a soft spot in her heart for Oliveira, who had helped her after she’d first arrived in the Netherlands when she’d had nothing but the clothes on her back and a handful of her late brother’s coins. Oliveira was the first banker she had ever spoken to, nervously approaching him at the Antwerp Bourse about a small loan to start her chandlery in Polder, and she’d been grateful when he’d granted it. His investment had paid off, especially in the last few years as her business on Sark had flourished. She liked the man and trusted him. And now, seeing how much Antwerp had suffered under the Spanish occupation, she wondered how Oliveira had survived it. He came from a Portuguese family of Marranos, Jews forced to convert to Christianity, and all Jews, converts or not, were closely watched with loathing by the authorities of every Catholic country. The Duke of Alba was notoriously bent on making Antwerp spotlessly Catholic. A new thought struck Fenella. “Johan, what if Oliveira has gone?”