The Exiled (42 page)

Safe? There was no safety. Anywhere. Edward crossed himself. All he asked was that they be in time for Richard, or the urgent need for an heir, legitimate or otherwise, would have passed since there’d be no throne for him to occupy.

‘Help me through what I must now do, dear Lord, for the good of us all in my kingdom.’ Edward was not devout, but his prayer was fervent. ‘And God, if it be your will, let me not die before I meet with Anne once more. Please let that not be.’

He was only a mortal king but perhaps the god of Solomon, of David would understand his need, and forgive his frailty.

For God was also Love, was he not?

The Porpoise
slipped around the southern arm of Whitby’s sea wall, running before the sudden storm as the evening blew into dark. But the tide was on the turn and the boat was difficult to steer as tidewater tried to run the harbour mouth, fighting the fearsome wind. Thus, two mighty forces came against each other in a great cloud of spume, leaving the two women in the prow of the little smack soaked and frozen. At last, however, the vessel caught a sudden gust in its sail and was driven with a grinding crunch into the dock.

Deftly, ignoring the solid rain which had replaced the wind, David and Bernard rapidly worked to lash
The Porpoise
to the sizable iron rings set in the dockwall, fearful that, at any minute, another buffet might force the boat away, back towards the harbour mouth.

Huddled together, Anne and Joan tried to wipe the rain from their eyes, both tense as the dock heaved in and out of vision above them.

At last it was done. Now the women must climb the swaying rope ladder which Bernard and David had already scrambled up to get to the quay. The rings alone would not hold
The Porpoise
in this wind — she must be secured to stone bollards fore and aft as well.

‘Come now, Sisters, just hold tight and don’t look down as you climb.’

Anne gulped and she caught Joan eyeing her fearfully.

She smiled with a confidence she did not feel. ‘You go first — I’ll be behind to catch you.’

It was shouted above the howl of the returning gale as she helped Joan to her feet and placed her hands on the slimy ropes above her head.

‘I’ll hold it — you climb.’

Joan looked fearfully at the dock — so far away in the wild semidarkness. Anne nudged her friend firmly in the back. ‘Go. Now!’ Finally Joan nodded and began to haul herself up the narrow ladder, sodden skirts and wet cloak impeding every step.

Anne watched as Joan, hand over hand, rung after rung, got closer, closer to the lip of the dock — a looming shape above in the howling dark. Her own arms ached: it was hard anchoring the ladder to compensate for Joan’s weight as the wind tried to swing the nun against the stone sea wall whilst she climbed.

‘Concentrate. Hold on. Concentrate. Hold on.’ It became a prayer and just when it seemed her arms must give out as the pain burned and her muscles shook, a red veil blocked sound and sight.

‘Anne, Anne.’ Was the storm speaking to her? ‘You are not the sacrifice.’ It was the Sword Mother’s voice, harsh and direct, as she heard very distantly the sound of steel meeting steel. Swords, swordplay, Anne had heard it often enough at tournaments — and in her dreams.

She heard there was screaming on the wind and, the veil suddenly gone, Anne looked up to see a red-cloaked woman, wild hair flying in the storm, standing behind Bernard and David as they finally hauled Joan up from the ladder to the dock.

‘Lash the ladder, lash it. There’s rope by the mast.’

Bernard waved his lantern to catch Anne’s attention, and his great voice cut through the wind that drove Anne’s wet cloak out behind her like a sail.

‘Lash the ladder and climb towards my light!’

But Anne did not hear him; she was looking at the lines, the black lines, tattoos, drawn all over the Sword Mother’s cheeks, her throat and shoulders — curving, writhing, looped and spiralled patterns. Under her red cloak, she was naked to the waist — Anne saw that when the Sword Mother held one arm high in salute — one great ring of gold clamped around a muscled upperarm. Then she was gone, into the dark.

‘Sister Anne?’ Bernard was calling down to her, increasingly anxious. The storm was gathering force again.

‘I hear you!’ Anne screamed back, nodding, agreeing.

Lash the ladder down, lash the ladder now; this was her task if she was ever to leave the lurching, straining
Porpoise.

Fumbling her way amongst the wicker creels of fish fastened to the sides of the deck, Anne searched for rope — and was rewarded. Near the mast there was a spare coil neatly stowed in case the sail needed extra staying. Stumbling as the boat bucked beneath her, groaning as it rubbed against the stone wall that was close, so close, Anne found her way back to the rope ladder somehow as it slapped and swung against the harbour wall.

Catching the ladder as she would a restive horse, Anne shucked the sodden nun’s cloak as she would a spare skin. Better be as wet as a seal than blinded by flapping cloth. And, finally too, she ripped off her novice’s veiling, leaving only the wimple covering her head.

Somewhere, deep in her mind, burned the image of the Sword Mother. It had force, that last salute: it was a message. Anne was not to be a victim — not anyone’s victim.

Quickly, deftly, Anne lashed the ladder to the deck and then she began to climb, slick rung by slick rung up, up towards the light, towards the men’s faces looming down as the lantern swayed and swayed: shadow and light, shadow and light.

She was in Whitby. She had come this far. When she’d had the vision in Brugge, the Sword Mother had said, ‘I guard, I guard.’ Anne was not alone.

E
dward, like his brother, mostly enjoyed being in York. So many family associations — and the good memories outweighed the bad, just.

Now he was comfortably sprawled inside an enormous butt of good oak, previously used to hold wine, filled with scalding water as he tried to soak some of the pain out of his arms and back after the long ride north.

Richard’s men had carried the open-topped tunn to the duke’s sleeping quarters, placing it in front of the raging fire as relays of servants carried pail after pail of water into the room. Such was their haste that more than one or two slopped the contents of their buckets on the slate floor and were roundly cursed by the duke. An unusual occurrence.

Perhaps the brothers were just over-worried, and God knew they had cause; so thought Warrington as he chivvied the last relay of kitchen hands with empty buckets out of his master’s sleeping quarters.

‘Your Grace, shall we return with more?’ He didn’t even get the last words out as the duke closed the door in his valet’s face with an abrupt snap. From the other side of three inches of good, solid oak, he heard his master’s muffled ‘No. You will be called.’

‘Shortly, Warrington. We’ll call you shortly!’ Edward called out loudly also, less abrupt than his brother. If he was going to all the trouble of having a bath, he wanted hot water and lots of it.

Richard didn’t understand why, himself. All this washing could not be healthful could it? ‘You’ll smell of malmsey out of this, Edward.’

That made the king smile. He liked malmsey. ‘I can think of worse things, brother. You should try this, you know. It relaxes the muscles; much less pain after a hard ride.’

Richard was pacing restlessly and he interrupted his brother. ‘Pain! It’s more than stiff backs will pain us soon.’

Edward smiled mirthlessly. ‘No, brother, it is not we who will suffer, believe me.’

Richard looked at the king as he sat back in what was, effectively, a great wooden bucket. His magnificent, muscled torso was picked out by the light from the fire; mighty arms draped casually over the edge of the butt. He looked relaxed, quite certain of what he was about.

Richard sighed and Edward smiled. ‘There’s no point you know, getting so worried. You’ve done well; planned well, now all we have to do is frighten them for five, maybe seven days. That’s all. Then William will join us. We’ll crush them if they go too far, I promise you.’

Richard kicked at the fire moodily. ‘I wish I had your confidence, I really do.’

‘Come, brother, we’ve been here before.’ But Richard looked uncertain still. Edward sighed and a moment later began, regretfully, to clamber out of the water. ‘I’ve changed my mind. Let’s eat, and you can tell me about my son. That will be more cheerful.’

Richard twitched the bath sheet, which had been warming before the fire, in the king’s direction. ‘A likeable boy, that one. Who’s his mother, did you say?’

Edward, lazily drying himself before the fire, stretching newly supple muscles, one by one, smiled craftily. ‘I did not. And I will not.’ As he dried himself, a different, bleaker look crept over his face as he stared deep into the fire.

‘For all he’s a bastard, he’s well descended, very well descended, on his mother’s side. Better than you or I. And England needs a boy, an heir.’

Richard said nothing, though he was intrigued. He heard the purpose in his brother’s voice. Elisabeth had not given Edward a son, but someone else, another woman, had. Who was she? Who
could
she be? Well enough descended to be the mother of a potential king? He mentally reviewed the very few likely court women as Edward turned with sudden purpose towards Richard’s bed on which was arrayed a new suit of clothes. Pulling a soft muslin shirt over his head — he liked soft clothes, his little brother must have remembered — he shot a penetrating glance at Richard.

‘And so, did you find the girl, this French spy?’

The duke shook his head as he strode to the door and flung it open. ‘Bring food. And wine.’ The guardsman hurried away as Richard turned back into the room again. ‘Not yet but we will.’

‘Dressed as a novice, you say? A good disguise, if you needed one.’ Edward was nearly dressed again, in the quick way that a soldier has before battle.

‘Yes. I have a man on her trail, however. A man with an interest.’

Edward observed the slight grimace as his brother said the words. ‘A good man?’

Richard shrugged. ‘You could say that. Relentless rather. He’s been made a fool of.’ A faint smile lingered in his eyes. It piqued the king’s interest ‘Really? By whom?’

‘His father. It seems the old man fell in love — or lust — with the girl. I’ve heard word that the father now pursues the son and I wait to see who will find her first. Two men on a mission for us, brother — we cannot fail.’

The king laughed. ‘All this fuss about one silly little girl! Is there any proof that she actually
is
a spy, by the way?’

Richard shrugged, slightly sulky. ‘She ran from her hiding place, which seems suspicious; and she caused me, personally, a mighty lot of trouble in so doing.’

The king grinned. ‘Ah yes, the archbishop. I heard.’

Annoyed, Richard flung himself into a Venetian chair drawn up to the fire. ‘That man is impossible, Edward. Impossible! He thwarts me at every turn.’

A discreet knock at the door signalled Warrington’s entrance accompanied by two boys, all loaded with platters of food and an enormous jug of wine.

‘On the table, Warrington.’ The king nodded to Richard’s work table and pensively held his peace until the servants had deposited their burdens and left once more.

‘Seems to me there’s been a great deal of needless bother about this girl, Richard. She’s hardly important enough to fight with George Neville about, is she?’

Richard flared in sudden defence. ‘You were not here, brother! I did what I considered best, for us all. You would not have ignored a rumoured spy, Edward, not if information came from a trusted man.’

Edward smiled slightly; he liked Richard’s spirit, but there was a lesson in this, a valuable one in ‘réal-politique’ for his passionate younger brother.

‘But, Richard, your “spy” caused you to waste much time and energy, it seems to me, when the main game is clearly elsewhere.’

Richard refused to look at Edward, moodily kicking at the fire with one boot-clad foot as the king went on. ‘Oh, I know the archbishop’s a difficult man, stubborn, but we need him, and you, to at least pretend amity in this city; don’t want to scare your people here more than we need. We’ve got much more than Warwick’s brother to think about — we’ve got Warwick himself.’

Edward sauntered over to the fire and offered his brother a beaker of wine. ‘Here, let’s drink to your reconciliation with the archbishop — and to someone, anyone, catching that silly girl so we can make an end of this overblown nonsense!’

S
tephen Hardwell was consumed by an unexpected emotion: a sense of loss.

How could it be that someone he’d only seen once, to whom he’d only ever addressed so few words, could have come to obsess his every waking thought?

He pondered the mystery of the missing girl as he paused, surrounded by his small party, to view the way forward.

Things had come to a pretty pass indeed when a man had to track his son as if the boy were a thief and he the thief-taker! But that was the way of it, he’d committed himself and he would see this through. Things had gone too far now between Henry and himself for him to even consider backing away, for his son would kill that girl even though she was no spy — just to earn favour with his duke.

Stephen shook his head sorrowfully as he thought on it; he was deeply ashamed that his son, knighted on the field of battle — as he had been — should so seek to dishonour his vows to protect all women to reap political advantage.

‘Ale, Sir Stephen?’ The baron grunted distractedly as Liam Fellowes handed his master a leather flask of good ale brewed in the manor kitchens of Bishop Hardwell; the baron was very particular about his ale — no muddy alehouse slop for him on this journey!

‘How far d’you make Whitby, Liam?’

Liam, a Whitby man by birth, cheered up considerably. ‘We’ll be there in the late fore-noon, Baron.’

‘Looking forward to it are you, Liam, after this cold journey of ours?’ Liam was astonished. Normally his self-obsessed old master thought of nothing and no one but himself and his own comfort. Something odd was going on, and not just this mad pursuit of a girl, and his son.