Blood Ties (31 page)

She was still hot from that last wild gallop across the open field, overtaking the hounds halfway to this fern sea. Their handlers had halted them, their frustrated yelps and snarls pursuing her as she went where they were not allowed. There were human cries too, fearful voices trying to restrain her as the chains had the dogs. But she would not be so bidden, no command could leash her in, and no one would catch up with her here. She knew this land better than any of them, for had her father not created this whole chase?

She thrust the boar spear ahead of her, using it to part the fern that had overgrown the deer track, her left hand holding it in an overgrip halfway up the oak shaft, her right couching it to her side. It was time to move more slowly, for the boar would have paused somewhere just ahead, now that the dogs had halted. This was when the animal was at its most dangerous. Its instinct had caused it to run so far, to out-distance the baying pursuit. Now it would be listening for her just as she listened for it.

A voice called out, about a hundred paces to her left, she reckoned. Philip! His stallion had almost been at her shoulder when she spurred her mare for that final dash, the smaller horse’s nimbleness giving her the edge over the short distance. He’d probably had a glimpse of her when she dismounted to enter the ferns, but she had cut sharp right and right again down the little paths.

Philip. He had teased her, in his courteous way, when she took a boar spear from the rack. ‘A warrior queen – like your Boudicca!’ he had called her, before gently reminding her that it was the men who did the killing, the women who sat back and admired them. He wanted to preen for her, as he had done the week before with that handsome stag.

Well, she was tired of men strutting before her, leaving her the role of simpering adoration. This was not the dry plains of Castile but her green England. She was Harry’s daughter – and her father had taught her how to use a spear.

She paused, her eyes sweeping the track ahead, her own breath suspended as she listened for other breath from heaving, furred flanks.

There! Was that a creature shifting on dried leaves, rising slowly to its hooves, crouching again, preparing to charge, lowering dagger-pointed tusks toward the fern she was just about to part …

She was hit from the side, the little breath she’d held expelled from her, spear dashed to the ground. No chance to cry out, instant terror, anticipating the bone blades slicing into her. Her face down into fern, one hand pinned under her as she fell, though the other reached across, stretching toward the dagger at her belt.

A hand met her hand, another covered her mouth. Relief at the human touch, then outrage. No one touched a princess in this way! Not even a prince. She bit down, tasted blood, heard a muted but satisfying yelp of pain. But the hand did not leave her mouth, no matter that she bit harder. Instead, a mouth was at her ear and a voice whispered urgently, ‘My lady, do not scream, I beg of you. I am a friend and I bring you news.’

Friends did not press her body to the ground. She bit on.

There was more whispered anguish. ‘Highness! I am Jean Rombaud. I was … your mother’s executioner.’

Elizabeth ceased biting, tried to breathe.

‘It is true, Princess, I swear it. I did … some service to your mother. And now you, her daughter, are in grave danger.’

She turned her mouth away from his smothering hand and he let her.

‘Get off me,’ were the words that came, yet she whispered them and he did. She scrambled away from him, to the far side of what she now saw was a small cave of fern. The scent of boar in it was unmistakable. She had found the lair but of a far more dangerous animal. Her hand reached the dagger now, drew it from its sheath. The man squatting opposite showed his empty hands.

‘Jean Rombaud was a giant. Young, powerful. You—’

‘I have heard ballads, Princess, that make me full seven feet tall and almost as wide. And as for youth … well, it was almost twenty years ago.’

There was something in his eyes, beneath the greying hair, a smile there, a sadness too. She had become good at discerning lies from truth. Her life depended on it. The blade lowered slightly, didn’t quite drop. In the world beyond, she heard someone calling her again.

‘Jean Rombaud,’ she said, ‘is a name from a nightmare.’ She felt the tears come. ‘You took my mother’s head.’

Jean nodded. ‘I did, my lady. I killed her who I loved because I had no choice.’

‘Who you … loved?’

‘Aye, my lady. And for that love I swore an oath to do something your mother asked of me.’

The knife fell from her hand. ‘And what did you do?’ she said softly, although she knew the answer.

‘You mother feared the harm that would be done in her name. The harm that could come to you, among others. So she begged me to … to take her hand,
that
hand, and bury it in a land where once she had been happy.’

Happy? It was not a word that she had ever associated with the mother she could not remember. No one told her happy tales of Anne Boleyn. No one spoke of her at all.

More cries, Philip and others now, concerned, drawing nearer.

Jean looked around anxiously. But he had to wait for her to speak.

Her voice came harsh, the tone set by the emotions surging inside her. ‘And you failed to do this. To keep your oath. For this hand is a great danger to me now.’

‘I succeeded for a time. The hand remained buried until …’ He could not talk about it. There was no point in excuses, in actions by others he still didn’t understand. And the voices were getting nearer. He continued. ‘It does not matter. But the hand is here again. I believe it will be used to threaten you just as your mother feared.’

‘It already has been. Such a threat as I have never faced before.’

She had not admitted that to anyone. But here, with this man, there was no time for games.

‘What do you want of me, Jean Rombaud?’

It was her voice, the way she said his name. Time dissolving, collapsing twenty years, and a queen asking him for a boon. He was asking one of that queen’s daughter now, offering to her great need something he could not deliver. But his own daughter was in peril now and that was all that mattered.

‘I have to get into the Tower, my lady.’

‘You would try to steal the hand again?’

He lied. He had no choice. ‘I have to. For all of us.’

She was versed in reading men’s lies. But her great need, this sudden slight hope, overcame her discernment. Besides, there was no time to consider, as cries of ‘Elizabeth! Princess!’ drew ever closer.

She pulled a heavy bloodstone signet from her finger. ‘Take this. There is an officer serving at the Tower who loved my mother and, during my late imprisonment there, proved that he loves me as well. His name is Tucknell.’

Voices so close now. ‘Princess! My lady!’

‘Give it to him. He will do whatever the bearer desires. For my mother was not the only woman men swear vows to.’

Jean pocketed the ring. A stem cracked and they heard footsteps. Someone had found the little track they lay just off.

He bowed as well as he could from his crouched position, then made to slip through the foliage. A hand on his sleeve stayed him.

‘Tell me, Jean Rombaud – how did my mother die?’

He looked into those eyes, her mother’s legacy. He might not be able to save her but he could give her this much. His hand closed over hers.

‘She died like a queen. And, at the very last, she spoke your name.’

He squeezed her hand and was gone. He did not stay to see her tears; it was Philip of Spain who beheld them as he stumbled upon her.

‘My lady Elizabeth! Are you hurt?’

‘No, my lord,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘I tripped, is all.’

He helped her rise. ‘Why did you not answer our calls?’

The mask was back in place, just where it had to be. ‘What, my lord? And have you mock your Boudicca, who falls over her own spear?’

She laughed and he joined her.

‘Do you wish to see me kill the beast, Elizabeth? My men have it cornered up ahead.’

He gestured the way Jean had gone. She sighed, leaned into him a little, their faces close.

‘I feel a little faint, my brave prince. Could we not sit awhile and talk?’

His face flushed above the beard, his voice came huskily as he pressed back into her. ‘Anything for my princess,’ he said. ‘Let me take your weight.’

As he led her to the track, she glanced back. When she spoke, it was inside her head.

Godspeed, Jean Rombaud. The tide is turning. At least, I pray it is
.

At the water’s edge, Jean sat in a boat, the same one that had brought him down. The wherryman had asked him to drink in the bankside inn while they waited for the tide, but he needed, more than ever, to be alone. The ring lay heavy in his pocket. The tide would turn and he was several hours from the Tower. Once within, he knew what he would do, and what he would not. Reach his daughter, named for a queen, inside the place where he had taken that queen’s life. Free her. He might just have the courage for that, but for no more. He would have nothing else to do with oaths and queens.

In this hour before the dawn, mist rose from the river and frigid vapour fingers pushed beneath his insubstantial clothes. Yet he knew that his shivering did not come solely from the morning’s chill. For he was stood where the wherryman had dropped him, on the dock beneath the Traitor’s Gate.

The guard had been reluctant to wake his officer, had only gone to do so under threat of the consequences should he not. The producing of the ring had made his decision for him, sending him off grumbling. Jean had not wanted to let it out of his keep but he’d been given little choice. Now, as the minutes lengthened and the faintest hint of light reached into the sky downriver, he began to fear that he would never see it again.

‘Where is this man who disturbs my rest?’

The voice made him jump, echoing loudly through the vaulted dock.

‘Here, sir.’

‘Then come up, fellow.’

He climbed the slippery steps carefully. A tall man stood alone in the darkness at the top of them. Jean could not see his face but words came in a whisper from the shadows.

‘How came you by this ring, sir?’

‘You know it?’

‘I know it. And I wonder that you have it. Did you steal it?’

‘I did not. I was given it from … the lady’s hand.’

‘Were you indeed?’ The suspicious voice lowered still further. ‘This … lady told me she would never send this to me except in her direst need.’

Jean kept his silence. After a long pause the man spoke again. ‘What is your name, sir?’

There didn’t seem any point in lying now. ‘My name is Jean Rombaud.’

A whispered obscenity, a snatching of a torch from the wall. The man brought it close, lighting both their faces. Jean saw someone maybe a little younger than himself, though as grey of beard and hair, strong features creased now in wonder. And rage.

‘Rombaud! A curse of a name.’ The torch moved up and down as the man surveyed him. ‘It is you, indeed. We have met before. Do you not remember me … Executioner?’

‘I am sorry, I …’

‘Tucknell.’ He pushed his face closer. ‘I was there when you killed her. I raised her bloodied head, may God forgive me.’

Jean could see the power of the memory take the man. It came back to him now, a little. This man had loved her. One of many.

‘I remember you, sir.’

‘Then maybe you remember … sir,’ Tucknell was struggling to control his temper, ‘that I had no reason to love you. You butchered her.’

‘I rendered her a service.’

‘A service?’ The laugh was strained, false. ‘And do you offer the same service to my Queen’s daughter? Are you measuring the Princess’s neck for your sword, as has so long been threatened?’

Tucknell’s voice had grown loud with his anger. One of the guards drew nearer from his place in the tower above. Jean stepped closer to Tucknell, looking up into the taller man’s face, forcing his voice to calmness.

‘Sir, I think you know that the Princess would not have given me that ring for such a purpose. The service I rendered her mother was greater than you witnessed. Far greater. The Princess understands that. That’s why she sends me to you now.’

He saw the deep suspicion still there on the Englishman’s face.

‘Come, man,’ he said. ‘I loved Anne Boleyn as much as you. I only seek to show that love to her daughter now.’

Tucknell stared at him, shaking his head. Finally, he said, ‘And how will you show it, Rombaud?’

Jean drew breath. Now he had to be most careful. ‘There is a prisoner here, a young woman. She has … information that the Imperial Ambassador desires. He has a warrant to examine her this morning. If he gets the information, it will not just harm the Princess. It will condemn her.’

‘So you are here to end that threat? To add “assassin” to your list of honourable titles?’

‘No. I am here to free the girl. To get her away from here. Out of the kingdom.’

Tucknell studied Jean who stared back, his face betraying nothing. At last the Englishman spoke. ‘What you ask is nearly impossible. If she is to wed the rack then she will be closely watched. It will be a great danger to me to help you.’

‘It is not me you help. It is the owner of that ring. And it is the last hour of the night. Even watchful guards grow weary.’

Tucknell pulled the ring from his pocket, stared at it for a long moment. ‘I swore a vow to her, when she was imprisoned here last year, that I would do everything in my power for her, and for the love I bore her mother.’ He put the ring back in his pocket. ‘It seems I have no choice.’

He turned and walked rapidly away from Jean, who stood for a moment, uttering a short prayer of thanks to the love that princesses inspired. Then he followed.

Though dawn barely glimmered in the east, enough light showed Jean the Green, bare of people yet crowded still with the vestiges of execution. The reek of burnt flesh clung to the walls of the towers. Circular scorched patches showed where the martyrs had been burnt, two at the site before the chapel, one further on, where the giant heretic had rushed and flamed and died. Ravens hopped about, seeking bits of flesh unconsumed by fire, squabbling when one was discovered with cries like the wails of the damned. Shuddering, Jean fixed his gaze on the cloak ahead of him, willing the man to move faster. It was not merely the danger to his daughter that urged him on; all his ghosts gathered on that scrap of grass.