The Queen's Exiles (9 page)

“So I can reach you there?”

“You can.”

“Go. You shall hear from me forthwith.”

She rejoined Jane, who gave her a probing look and asked, “Something wrong?”

Frances forced a smile. “Just a pesky bit of business.” They followed the Spaniard, Alba’s secretary, down the length of the gallery along the wall of windows. Frances was so distraught she felt almost sick. How long did she have until Adam found her? The sun through the windows beat down on her, raising a clammy sweat. She rooted in the sleeve of her gown for a handkerchief and dabbed it to her damp upper lip. Could she move him to mercy for the sake of the children? No, Adam would never, ever forgive her for trying to kill Elizabeth, that witch who held him in thrall.
How can I escape him? Where else can I flee?

The doors opened. An antechamber, smaller, quieter, but still crowded with petitioners, the air stuffy. They followed Albornoz straight through, all eyes on them, and he opened another door. The private suite of the governor. A high ceiling bright with pink cherubs in a cerulean sky. Gleaming Flemish tapestries on the walls. A long table spread with maps. A heavy oak desk cluttered with papers. Frances knew Alba instantly, for he looked just as Jane had described: the lean cheeks, the cropped gray hair and pointed gray beard, the somber clothing, all black. He sat behind the desk, lifting a spoonful of what looked like custard to his mouth. Albornoz placed a paper in front of him. Alba ignored it, swallowing the custard while looking up at the visitors. Frances curtsied, her legs shaky.

“Ah, good ladies,” he said, setting the spoon down on a silver tray with a clatter, “you’ve caught me out. I snatch my meals as I can. Bad manners learned on the battlefield, I’m afraid.” He beckoned them. “Come in, come in.”

Jane and Frances approached his desk, Jane smiling as she said, “Here, as there, sir, you are mightily engaged in His Majesty’s business. I am only sorry to interrupt you in it.”

“Nonsense,” he said amiably, beckoning a footman to take the tray away. “Nothing could please me more, madam, than welcoming you to Brussels.” They spoke in Spanish and Frances knew enough of the language to follow, but her nervous state had her straining to catch the diplomatic subtleties. Alba lifted an ebony cane hooked on the table edge and with it he pried himself halfway to his feet. Wincing, he fell back as though defeated. “Forgive me, I beg you. I am a prisoner to the gout.” He threw up his hands in surrender. “More bad manners.”

“Not at all, sir, please do not trouble yourself to stand. You are kindness itself in giving me and my friend this audience.” Jane indicated Frances. “May I present Lady Grenville?”

Frances felt Alba’s gray eyes slide over her with flat indifference. “Charmed,” he said, then looked back at Jane. “I trust our friends in Seville are well? My wife writes that the Countess of Romero’s son has made the countess a grandmother.”

“Indeed, and they are all very well, sir, I thank you for asking. But now you must forgive
my
bad manners in forestalling any further talk of trifles. Your time is too precious. Lady Grenville has brought important news. About England.”

Alba looked at Frances with some curiosity. “Indeed?” He glanced at Albornoz, who stood patiently beside the desk. Alba took up a pen, dipped it in a silver inkwell, and signed the paper. His secretary took it, gave a perfunctory bow of the head to his master and then to the ladies, and left the room. They were alone with the governor.

Jane wasted no time. She explained that the English Catholic exiles had been busy, raising funds and sending the money to the pro-Spanish faction in England in preparation for a strike against Elizabeth. She assured him that thousands of Catholics in England would follow a leader into battle against the heretic queen, a leader committed to returning England to the one true Church.

Alba stroked his beard. “All this, dear lady, is known to His Majesty. He graciously maintains the pension he awarded the Countess of Northumberland, and welcomes all other refugees from England who are staunch in the defense of God’s will. But he has always held that the initiative for action must come from within England. You mention a leader. That element remains lacking.”

Jane smiled, triumphant. When she spoke again it was in English. “That is why Lady Grenville is here.”

He looked at Frances, intrigued now. He switched to English. “Is this the news the duchess referred to?”

Frances’s mouth was so dry she had to swallow. “It is, Your Grace. I have—”

“I should have mentioned,” Jane put in eagerly, “that Lady Grenville has proved her own loyalty to the Church with courageous action.” She explained the attempt on Elizabeth’s life at Frances’s house three years ago. “Though it ended in failure, it brought an unexpected happy result in a different quarter.” She looked to Frances to carry on.

“I have received this letter, Your Grace,” Frances said, drawing the folded paper from her pocket. “It is written in the hand of Her Majesty Mary, Queen of the Scots.”

He looked astonished. Then frowned, skeptical. Frances understood why. All of Europe knew that Mary, Queen of Scots, deposed in her own realm, was a virtual prisoner in England, kept under house arrest by order of Elizabeth. The Earl of Shrewsbury was Mary’s keeper at Tutbury Castle, where she was treated liberally, with her own household, but kept under close guard. “How did you come by such a letter?” Alba asked.

“She addressed it to me.”

He practically scoffed. Frances was quick to go on. “I assure Your Grace it is true. After I fled England and reached the safety of His Majesty’s realm I took the liberty of writing to Queen Mary. She was close to my brother Christopher, God rest his soul, when first she came into England. My letter was delivered by a young footman, one of ours, in the Earl of Shrewsbury’s household. This letter is her reply to me, smuggled out in the shoe of a loyal maid. Your Grace, you know that Mary once led her armies on the battlefield in Scotland. And you know that scores of valiant English noblemen call her
our
rightful queen, a good and pure Catholic. They are ready to follow her with an army that will smash Elizabeth. Mary is the leader we English crave.” She handed Alba the letter. “Read, sir. See how Mary says, in her own hand, that she is ready and willing to be that leader.”

He took the paper, still looking skeptical. “If she could be freed.”

“We are in touch with men who will hazard everything to do so.”

He read the letter. Frances waited, trying not to show the hunger that roiled inside her. With Mary on the throne Frances could return to England, where talk of her past treason would be cut off as surely as Elizabeth’s head. Mary would reward her, elevate her at court, perhaps even ennoble her as a countess in her own right. Adam could not touch her!

Alba set down the letter on the desk. Something in his face, a hardening, sent a shiver through Frances. “Spain, of course, wants to see England turn back from heresy,” he said, “and therefore would be glad to see a Catholic ruler on the throne. But His Majesty does not feel the Scottish queen is the right replacement. She is more French than English. Her overmighty de Guise family practically rules France. That is not an alignment to make His Majesty content.”

Frances opened her mouth to speak, but Alba held up a hand to stop her and sternly carried on. “Furthermore, another failed strike against Elizabeth could injure Spain. We have no wish to antagonize England and jeopardize trade. Even if a strike were His Majesty’s wish, he could not easily bear the cost. You may have noticed, madam, that His Majesty has the expense of maintaining almost twenty thousand troops here in the Netherlands alone. No, I cannot allow war with England to stretch our resources further.” He turned back to Jane. “And now, dear lady, great though my pleasure is at seeing an old friend, the business of this fractious country awaits me.”

Fear lurched in Frances. He was dismissing them.

“Do allow Señor Albornoz to help you to some refreshment before you leave the palace,” he said. Almost immediately, as if his voice had carried to the anteroom, his secretary reappeared carrying in a sheaf of papers. Jane urged Alba to at least send Mary’s letter to His Majesty, but Alba pushed the paper back across the desk to Frances. Frances did not move. She knew she was expected to take the letter, but something in Alba’s rebuff told her there might yet be a chance to turn him to their cause. It was nothing he had said; his words had been plain. But she had caught an undertone, a slight reticence, and surely that was unusual in a man renowned for his iron will, his unfettered authority. Could it be that he did not share his king’s reluctance to antagonize England? She listened as Jane went staunchly on requesting that he at least keep the letter so he could consider the merit of their case, but Alba was smilingly firm. He tapped the letter. “It is yours, Lady Grenville. Please take it.”

She did not move. “That is not my name, sir.”

He frowned at her. “Pardon?”

She saw his irritation, as though she were a trifling annoyance he wished to be rid of. Anger stiffened her courage. She would be heard! “I have used the name Grenville, my maiden name, to protect myself and my children from . . . reprisals from England.”

He was barely listening. He nodded to Albornoz, who set the sheaf of papers before him. “More death warrants,” Alba said with a glance at Jane, an apologetic statement of the burden of his office, and muttered, “How these Dutch vermin breed.”

“I am Lady Thornleigh,” Frances declared. “Baroness Thornleigh. You know my husband by reputation. He is Adam, Baron Thornleigh.”

Alba looked up at her as though struck. Frances saw his intense, naked interest and she exulted.
Ah, you’ll listen now.

He said to Jane, suddenly cautious, “Is this true?” Jane nodded. Alba asked Frances, still wary, “But you live apart from your husband?”

“Yes. I had to flee. His allegiance is to the heretic queen. Mine is to God.”

“Where is he?”

Alba’s eagerness almost made her smile. Now it was he who wanted something from her. “I do not know. But I may be able to find out.”

A shadow passed over his face and she guessed why. He mistrusted a woman who would betray her husband. It raised her bile. What did he know of hiding like a ferret for three years? What did he know of the dread of being found by a husband who could take her home to hang? She stifled her outrage.
Diplomacy,
she told herself. That was the way to deal with this man whose power she needed on her side.

“We all must do God’s work, Your Grace,” she said with a meek bow of her head. “As you do. My husband is doing the devil’s work. He sails alongside the so-called Sea Beggars, heretics all, attacking Spain’s shipping. England itself is ruled by a heretic queen who gives the Sea Beggars safe harbor. Your Grace, I know that in your heart you want Elizabeth swept from the throne and a pious Catholic raised in her place. How could you not, since His Holiness the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth and called on all good Catholics to fight her?” She thumped her finger on the letter on the desk. “Here is our chance. Here is the willing agreement of Mary herself. I beg you, sir, reconsider our cause. Recommend it to His Highness.”

Alba’s shrewd eyes held her for several moments, and she could almost hear the gears of his mind calibrating.

“The plan may have some merit,” he said, picking up the letter. He placed it carefully with his other papers. “However, before I could consider embarking on such a grave course, I would need a show of good faith from you, Lady Thornleigh. Bring me information of your husband’s whereabouts. Then, we can talk.”

“N
o, wrong box,” Sister Martha ordered Fenella. “This one’s for weapons. Food goes in that one.”

“Sorry,” Fenella mumbled, taking out the burlap sack of sausages and cheese.

It was hard to think straight. She’d had no sleep. Yesterday, joy had almost knocked her down at that first sight of Claes . . . alive. She still felt disoriented, off-balance. People around her were busy packing supplies for an undertaking she didn’t understand. They were in a hurry. She’d been put to work by Sister Martha and was following orders in a daze. She didn’t think it was much past dawn, but it was hard to be sure in this dank underground chamber. She repacked the burlap sack in the box Sister Martha indicated.

She looked around for Claes. Where . . . ? He’d been here a moment ago, giving instructions to the others. It gave her a prick of panic . . . to have him back but now suddenly gone again. A hanging lantern creaked in the draft from the tunnel to the river. Men tramped past her taking boxes and packs of supplies down the tunnel to boats. She glimpsed Johan hustling down the passage with a leather pack slung over his shoulder. Yesterday Johan had been as stunned as she was to see Claes, but then he’d quickly, eagerly become one of the group—while she was still reeling over how she was to fit in with them . . . with Claes. They were going on some kind of mission, but no one had told her the details. Had Claes left? Her head swam with bizarre images: Claes drowning . . . swimming, but dead. “Has he gone already?” she said almost to herself. She wished she knew what was happening.

“Gone? Who?”

“Claes.”

Sister Martha snatched her elbow in a grip that almost shook her. “Brother Domenic.”

“Sorry . . . yes. Brother Domenic.”

Sister Martha studied her, eyes narrowed, hands on hips. “Are you all right?” She didn’t trust Fenella; that much was clear. It’s all that
was
clear. Fenella had lain awake all night on the narrow mattress she’d shared with Claes in this underground warren of chambers dug into the riverbank. People had been stretched out around them asleep, snoring. Eleven men, two women, a young lad. The Brethren.
Am I all right?
How was she to answer?

Yesterday, stunned at seeing Claes, she had blurted to him, “
How?
I saw you drown.”

“You and Vos,” said Johan, gazing at his son in wonder. “Roped together.”

“I had a knife in my boot.” Claes was struggling with his own shock at seeing them. “Poor Vos was already dead. Drowned. I cut the cord. He sank. I made it to the surface. Gasped air.”

“The Spaniards didn’t see you?” Johan marveled.

Claes shook his head. “There was such chaos. Bodies thrashing in the water. Screaming. They didn’t see me drift downriver.” His voice went flat. “The hardest part was Vos’s deadweight as I cut.”

It had made Fenella shudder. She saw he didn’t want to speak of it. How he had changed! So thin! An intense new light in his eyes. Johan rushed to him and threw his arm around him. Claes, shaken by his father’s disability, embraced him with feeling, and Fenella saw tears well up in the old man’s eyes. Then Claes let Johan go and embraced her, and she held on to him tightly, feeling rocked with joy and wonder. All these years she had imagined his agony, his terror, his lungs bursting, water flooding him with death. It didn’t happen! She held him, and her own tears spilled.

The others in the group stood watching, joined by a few more men who came in from the tunnel, and they all waited, anxiously curious about the newcomers. Claes awkwardly, proudly presented them: “My father. My wife. Sweet Jesu, I never thought to see either of them again.”

There were sympathetic nods from the group, and Fenella sensed they knew the story of how Claes had been separated from her and Johan. Some of the men offered gruff statements of welcome. A scrawny woman offered a jug of ale. Johan took it and gulped the brew, looking around, excited, his eyes constantly lighting back on his son. Claes, with his gaze still on Fenella, called for food. The group surrounded Fenella and she felt herself led away.

They all sat down on benches at a long, scarred table where one of the men, burly like a blacksmith, Brother Dunstan they called him, thumped down jugs of ale and the scrawny woman passed out bowls of oily fish stew. Claes sat at the head of the table, Fenella and Johan on either side of him. She scarcely saw the others or heard their noisy talk as they ate. She saw only Claes. Though she was flushed with gladness at seeing him alive, guilt nipped at her. She felt she had to make him understand. “I was sure you were dead. I saw you die. Or I would never have left.” She heard the plea in her voice:
I didn’t abandon you
.

“I know,” he said gently. “What else could you do but leave? I hid in the woods and met others who’d done the same, and several told me they’d seen you and Father flee. I was just glad you’d survived. But I had nothing . . . no way to find out where you’d gone. I could only pray that your good sense and Father’s help would see you through.”

“I was no help, Son,” Johan said, quaffing ale. “The dagos hacked off my arm. It was Nella who saved
me
.”

Claes looked at her, surprised, pleased.

She was still trying to piece it all together. “Did you go back to Polder?”

He shook his head. “There was nothing for me there. I lived in the woods. Banded with a few men who’d lost everything, like me. We talked of nothing except how we might fight back.”

“Ah!” Johan said, a grunt of admiration.

Claes gave him a look both affectionate and sober. “We were vagabonds, living like dogs. But we had conviction, to hit the Spaniards and one day force them out. That sustained us and drew others to our cause.”

His words brought a brusque chorus of approval from the others. “Death to the dagos,” said Johan’s niece Wilhelmina—Sister Martha—her baleful eyes on Fenella as though in a challenge. Johan asked about her family. Her husband had died of fever four winters ago, she said, chewing her stew. She kept the farmhouse but lived with her late husband’s parents at their nearby farm with her children. “My eldest is here.” She jerked her chin to the strapping lad who ate beside her. “He’s with us.”

The Brethren didn’t take long to finish their meal. Johan shoveled down stew as if he’d been starved. Claes ate a full bowl. Fenella could not touch a bite.

Later, she and Claes sat facing each other on the narrow mattress while the others slept, stretched out around them, a single candle burning. He took her hand and squeezed it. His grip was strong, his hand bony, the skin dry as flour. She gazed at him, still marveling at the sight of him. He’d been growing a belly when they’d lived in Polder; he’d jested that it was her fault, her tasty baking. Now, he was so thin his jutting collarbones were like sticks under his homespun shirt and his cheeks were two long furrows. His nose had a new crook in it. She reached out and touched it, shy as a virgin. “Broken?”

He nodded. “Three years ago. A skirmish with collaborators. The DeGroot family. We burned down their warehouse. But not before they got in a few licks.”

How strange it was. Her easygoing shipwright husband transformed into a fighter.

“Fenella,” he said, his voice low, intense. “You coming back. It’s a sign from God.”

Something in her stiffened. “A sign of what?”

“For years I’ve imagined life after victory, after we win back the country. I’ve dreamed of the day you’d come home. It’s what’s kept me going, kept me building the Brethren. Just knowing you were all right. Flourishing.”

She didn’t understand. “But . . . you
didn’t
know.”

He smiled as though holding a secret. “Two years ago I was in Rotterdam organizing a joint mission with a group there. In a tavern I heard a German seaman speak of a woman on Sark. A fine-looking woman who ran a ship repair business, and with her was an old man named Doorn. I was amazed. It could only be you and Father.” He added with emphasis, “Amazed and so happy. You’ve prospered. Just as you should.”

That shocked her. He had known where she was but did nothing? “You could have sent for me.”

He shook his head. “I made a choice, Fenella. A hard choice. The life I was living was too rough. More important, my work was too dangerous—for you. It was best to keep you out of it, for your own safety. You see that, don’t you?”

It struck her that he felt some of the same guilt she did. Her heart softened, sadness flooding her at the ill luck of their long separation, five lost years. Such different choices they had made! She had fled the Spaniards, wanting only freedom, while he had chosen to stay and fight. Would she have stayed if she’d known he was alive? Of course. He was her husband. But what he had said needled her—that he had learned where
she
was and yet had sent no word.

“But that’s all in the past,” he said with sudden fervor. “Now . . .” He squeezed her hand again, his eyes aglow. “My dear wife, don’t you see? My dream is fulfilled. It’s God’s sign that victory is nigh.”

His talk of God gave her a cold feeling in the bottom of her stomach. Claes hadn’t used to be especially pious. They were man and wife, yet she had the sense that she hardly knew him. His work with these people, the Brethren, had become his whole life. He was clearly the leader of this group. They were a dour lot. She had met many rough men on Sark, pirates, privateers, rovers, and rogues, but most of them had been fired with a hungry zest for life. She had not seen one of these Brethren smile.

“But, tell me,” he said eagerly, “what made you come home? Why now?”

It shook her out of her callous thoughts. Who was she to pass judgment on others? She, a murderer! Lowering her voice, she told him what had happened on Sark. How an English corsair had come into her bay with Spanish captives, among them the commander who had sent the men of Polder to their death, including Claes.

He gaped at her. “Don Alfonso?”

“The same. I had a pistol. Every thought in my head vanished except the memory of you drowning. I shot him. Dead.”

Amazement broke over Claes’s face. Then a smile of awe. He pulled her to him and held her. She could not move, he held her so tightly. She felt his body tremble. She realized she was trembling, too. He pulled her away again, his hands still on her shoulders. “Dear wife. You are truly one of us.”

It shook her. Was she? She struggled with the storm of her thoughts.
Finish the story,
she told herself. “I knew they would come after me. Don Alfonso is the nephew of the mighty Duke of Alba. So I left. Sailed away on my fishing smack and left everything. Claes, I can’t go back. But as for coming here . . . I only came to get the gold I keep with an Antwerp banker, and to bring Johan home. It’s what he wanted.”
I didn’t
. She bit her lip, those words unsaid but churning inside her.
Finish
. “I’ve left my boat near Antwerp. My plan is . . . was . . . to get far away. To England. Start afresh.” She feared she was babbling. “But now . . . here
you
are.”

“England?” He was clearly astonished.

What reason could she give for that? She had not mentioned Adam Thornleigh, her promise to rendezvous with him five days from now. Nor
would
she mention it. Struggling for an explanation, she snatched one. “The English queen is a friend of the Dutch. She gives the Sea Beggars safe harbor.”

Claes’s whole expression changed. Sympathetic interest hardened to a steely keenness. “What do you know about the Sea Beggars?”

“I’ve met a few. They roam the Channel, dozens of vessels, harassing Spanish shipping. Captain La Marck—they call him the Admiral—he came in last year to repair his shot-up carrack. Captain Abels came in twice over the winter for new masts.”

“You know La Marck?” he said eagerly. “I haven’t met him, but Fenella, we’re in contact with the Sea Beggars. We all support William, Prince of Orange. One day, when we’ve finally sent the Spaniards home or to hell, William will be our king.” The light leapt in his eyes again and she knew it wasn’t for her. “Tell me,” he said, taking her hand, “did you ever see an Englishman, a captain, in the company of La Marck’s fleet? There’s a lord, a Baron Thornleigh, who attacks with his own ship in solidarity with the Sea Beggars, and he’s hit the Spaniards hard.”

She felt something inside her shrink back from him. She wanted to keep the knowledge of Adam Thornleigh all to herself. She had an urge to slide her hand from Claes’s, but she forced herself to be still. Holding back from him was folly. And wrong. There was a struggle building inside her over her future. If she was to have any hope of making a decision, she must not poison this moment with a lie. “Thornleigh. Yes. He’s the one who brought in Don Alfonso.”

Claes let out a laugh of surprise. Of delight. “God’s sign, Fenella, you see? Ah, I’d like to meet that Englishman.”

She wanted to speak no more of him. “Claes, what exactly do you do, you and this group of yours? The Brethren. You say you fight. But how?”

He seemed about to speak, charged by that inner light. But then something shifted in his eyes, like a door closing. “This has been an extraordinary day. You must be very weary. And early tomorrow all of us must be about our business. Rest now, Fenella. Tomorrow, we’ll talk.”

She lay down beside him on that narrow mattress and listened to his breathing, tight at first, keyed up like she was, then becoming regular, slow. He slept. All night, she scarcely closed her eyes.

Now, packing supplies alongside Sister Martha, she heard someone shout, “Stand aside!”

Fenella turned. It was the blacksmith, Brother Dunstan, rumbling an eight-foot cannon toward the tunnel. He and another man came at a jog, hauling the big gun by ropes like oxen. Sister Martha lurched aside. A hand grabbed Fenella’s arm and pulled her out of the way and she staggered as the wooden wheels of the gun growled by, brushing her skirt, a sharp metallic smell rising from the scabby barrel. She’d seen enough small cannon to know it was a saker. A six pounder. She turned. It was Claes who had pulled her clear.