The Fugitive Queen (36 page)

“Only I couldn't! I
couldn't
!” Pen said. “But I didn't dare tell Andrew about Brockley—he'd have said I was lying and anyway, that was before I understood that Sir Francis had come and I thought that if Andrew
did
believe me, I'd put Brockley in danger. But I'd have spoken out at the inquest, in public, and I'll still do that if I must. Andrew and I weren't married. We were
not
!” She looked down at herself. “I'm all over blood,” she said wonderingly.

Then the reaction came. She began to shake. The sword she was still holding dropped from her hands, falling onto Andrew's body where it still lay at the foot of the stairs. I ran forward, meaning to jump over him and get Pen into my arms but Clem Moss was ahead of me.

He leapt onto the stairs and caught hold of her as her knees gave way. She sagged against him, sobbing. Two of Sir Francis's men, moving suddenly, as though released from some kind of paralysis, hastened to lift Andrew's corpse out of the way and Clem, picking Penelope up, carried her down the last few stairs and placed her gently on the settle. “Easy. Easy!” He sat down beside her and his voice was warm and soothing. “There, there. If there's an inquest, I'll bear witness that you were deceived and takken by force to be used against your will and against t'law and I'll call out any man of t'jury that brings owt but a verdict of right and just killing against you.”

Sir Francis let out a snort of something very like laughter, but Will Thwaite simply stood there, his face bloodless. “So there's no justice for Andrew? Thee'll all stand against me, an old man that's got no son, no future . . .”

“As a matter of interest,” said Brockley inquiringly, scratching at his black tonsure as though it itched, “why were you so wild to get Andrew married to Penelope? You even tried to kidnap her before she'd reached Tyesdale and that was before you'd seen her. It must be Tyesdale that you wanted but what's so wonderful about Tyesdale?”

From where he stood, backed against the wall beside the staircase, Grimsdale suddenly laughed. “Coal!” he said.

“Coal? What do you mean?” I turned to him in astonishment. “There's no coal on Tyesdale. I know there are some old workings on it—like the ones on Fernthorpe land, where Pen was imprisoned. But they're abandoned. They were no use.”

“They're
old.
I was never happy with that report. I had a
feeling
about it,” said Magnus Whitely sullenly. “Two months back, I had another survey done. There's coal all right, and plenty too, and near the surface at that. You go into those old workings and you'll find
new
digging inside one of them. I told the men to be secret, so the rubble that was dug out was shoveled into a tunnel where the lode really
had
run out. There was another tunnel that told a very different tale. Oh yes, there's coal on Tyesdale. The prospector's bill hasn't come in yet, though I've got the report. I kept that under my mattress. Your prying eyes never found
that.
I took it away with me. Tyesdale's worth a
fortune.
If you'd let us alone, or let Pen get married to Andrew . . .”

In Clem's arms, Pen's sobs grew momentarily louder but subsided as he whispered to her and patted her shoulders.

“They'd have shared it between them, I suppose,” said Brockley contemptuously. “Littleton, Whitely, and the Thwaites.
Now
it becomes clear. The Earl of Leicester,” he added thoughtfully, “will probably have a seizure when he realizes what he kindly gave away to Mistress Pen!”

“It seems,” said Sir Francis grimly, “that there is a fine tangle to undo. But the first step is to take a number of these people into custody. Mistress Stannard, what were you saying about Master Thwaite being unaware of the scheme concerning . . . a certain lady?”

Thwaite looked at him in evident confusion. “I think the Thwaites genuinely know nothing of it,” I said quietly. “I think they were only concerned with getting hold of Pen—and her coal mine.”

“There'd have been grandchilder, too,” said Thwaite. “My lad were a bridegroom this morning and now he's dead.”

Andrew's body was still on the floor, where Sir Francis's men
had laid it after shifting it away from the stairs. Once again, Will Thwaite sank down at its side and gathered his son into his arms.

He was a horrible man, a barbarian. I hated his squalid home, his gap-toothed mouth, and the spittle when he talked. I hated him and Andrew alike for their greed and their ruthlessness and their cruelty. I hated Will more still when, as I passed close to him, going to help Clem lead Pen away, he caught at my arm and said: “I'll maybe go t'law yet and get a rope round t'bitch's neck if nothing more.”

Yet I pitied him, too, as he crouched there, clutching the body of his only child and weeping.

Enough so that I paused to whisper to him: “If you will let Pen go in peace, I will not point the finger at you when we take up the body that's buried in your old mine, and carry him to a decent churchyard.”

He blanched and held his burden tighter. “No use pointing fingers at me, girl. It were Andrew that slew t'lad and that were only by accident.”

I had seen it happen. I could even remember the build of Harry's slayer and I would have said it was a younger man than Will Thwaite. In all probability, I had just been told the truth.

“But you can't prove it wasn't you,” I said softly. “Not if I chose to say so. So leave Pen be. And I'll say nothing.”

I turned away. We left him still holding Andrew's corpse and crooning to it as though it were an infant he wished to soothe to sleep.

I suppose barbarians, too, can know what it is to be bereft. If so—I knew about grief. My mother. Gerald. Matthew. I had endured and survived because I was still young. Will Thwaite was not. His future hopes, all his proud dreams, had died with Andrew. Nothing lay before him now but an empty old age, and grief might well bring his decline on before its natural time.

According to Dr. Lambert, with whom I had begun to study Greek along with Meg and Pen, the Ancient Greeks had a word for the fate which had befallen Will Thwaite. They called it hubris.

On the way back to Tyesdale, I noticed that the imitation Italian priest who was riding with us on Brown Berry had a most unclerical sword at his side. It was in its sheath but the violet gem in the hilt was instantly familiar. “Brockley, where did you get that sword?”

“It's the one Pen used, madam. I went upstairs before we left to collect my own saddlebags and belongings, and collected the sheath and sword belt for this while I was about it. Will Thwaite isn't going to argue. We can send the sword home to Harry's parents.”

“Thank you, Brockley.”

 • • • 

I was thankful beyond belief to see Tyesdale again and not only for my own sake. I was exhausted, but Pen was in a worse state than I was. Clem rode beside her all the way, talking to her in a calm and reasonable manner, but the girl had just killed a man and wouldn't, I thought, get over it quickly. She shivered constantly, although Clem gave her his cloak, and I think she cried the whole way. She almost collapsed as she dismounted.

Mercifully, Sybil was there to take charge of her and Sir Francis did the necessary explaining. I left Sybil, wide-eyed with horror, but kind and practical as ever, to look after Pen and give
her a dose of my sedative, while I stumbled upstairs and surrendered to the ministrations of Dale, who helped me to bed, brought me some porridge and mulled wine, pulled the coverlet over me, and sat beside me until I slept.

Mary Stuart was gone. I had gathered during the ride home that Sir Francis had not brought all his men to Fernthorpe. Three of them had taken her back to Bolton. Thank goodness for that, I said. I could have my own bed again. I presume that Sir Francis also took some rest but he was up and active when I woke, later that day. “I take it,” he said when I joined him in the hall, “that your remarkable ward is still abed?”

“Yes. Sybil gave her some of my sleeping potion. Pen has been very brave,” I said. “Foolish to start with, but then brave and determined. There—won't be any charges against her. I have seen to that.”

“Ah. You threatened Thwaite, did you? But according to you, he really is innocent of treason. We didn't arrest him.”

“I still—er—managed to frighten him,” I said circumspectly. I added: “Pen will suffer greatly, you know. What she did wasn't in her true nature. She was terrified and desperate. She'll remember it in nightmares for all the rest of her life.”

“I agree with you. Don't worry. I too spoke with Thwaite before we left. He certainly seemed frightened. Natural enough in the circumstances, but I take it that you helped to petrify him. There will be no inquest on Andrew Thwaite. His father seems anxious to cause no trouble and avoid getting into any. His family had enough of that in the past! He said he would give it out that Andrew died of a sudden consuming fever and see that the maidservant, Rosie, never says otherwise, either.”

“What about Littleton and Whitely?” I asked.

“They and their helpers—except for the woman, Madge Grimsdale, who probably had to do what her husband told her—will be tried, but only for plotting Mary's release. It will be claimed that she never left Bolton. From the start, I thought it best that as few people should know as possible. The only ones who do know are my own men and a couple of trustworthy women servants. I arranged for the Douglases to go hawking and
spend a night with friends at a distance. From now on, they'll be denied access to Mary, so she will have no chance to tell them.”

“Sir Francis,” I said, “you never told me how it came about that the dogs lost my scent last night. I remember asking you when you arrived at Fernthorpe, but in all the uproar, you never had a chance to answer.”

“That!”
Knollys snorted furiously. “I'm truly sorry, Mistress Stannard. It was a shocking failure on our part. I was concerned with keeping my men back. I didn't want to risk your companions glancing behind them and glimpsing them in the moonlight. We let you go out of sight and trusted that the dogs would do the tracking—only, over in one of the laborers' cottages, there was a bitch in season. Your dogs smelled her and after that they cared nothing for your scented pebbles. They led us to her instead! We didn't know we were off the line till we were at the cottage and they were throwing themselves against the garden fence. We dragged the brutes away but their hearts weren't in the work after that and we never found the scent again. And then we got lost in the mist.”

“So that was it! Our maidservant Bess did tell me once that her father had a bitch and that our dogs usually sired her puppies. What brought you to Fernthorpe at all, then?” I asked. “I've never been so glad to see anyone in my life as I was glad to see you. Whitely and Tobias were going to flee to France and Whitely meant to murder me before leaving, because I knew too much.”

“Fernthorpe was the only lead we had,” said Sir Francis. “That was where Mistress Pen would be taken unless you helped the plotters. You wanted us to lay the trap there in the first place, I recall! Kind of you,” he added dryly, “not to say
I told you so!
Once we had managed to find our way again, we made for Fernthorpe because it was the only place we could think of. Your man Roger Brockley did splendid work in pretending to be a priest. A remarkable fellow!”

“He has had some education,” I said. “He even has a little Latin. I'm sure that helped to make his performance convincing.”

“Indeed, yes. Mistress Stannard, there was another priest at Fernthorpe and I understand that he was hired from a family
called Holme, who live in a house known as Lapwings. Is that household involved at all? The men I left at Fernthorpe to question the captives report that according to Robinson and also to Whitely and Littleton, she was merely paid for Robinson's services as a priest, and nothing more. Is that correct?”

I thought of Mistress Holme and her five frightened daughters, the girls for whom she was so desperate to find husbands. There had already been two deaths, those of Johnnie Grimsdale and Andrew Thwaite. There were several prisoners possibly facing death, and a grieving father. Madge Grimsdale had not been kept in custody, but I wondered if her husband and her last son would ever come home. It was enough.

“I imagine so,” I said. “I heard that, too, but nothing more.”

“Lapwings wasn't by any chance the safe house that Lady Mary was being taken to?”

“Sir Francis . . .” I looked him in the eyes. “Lapwings,” I said, “is occupied by a widow and five young girls. The man of the house, now deceased, was among Mary's supporters. No doubt he left his family with a sense of loyalty towards his . . . his attitudes. But I think that they will reject those attitudes now, out of sheer terror. I doubt if they are still a danger to Queen Elizabeth.”

“Humph!”

I had done my best for the Holmes. I could do no more. Uncertain of what Knollys's
Humph
meant, I changed the subject. “When I came to Bolton,” I said, “I spoke to you, did I not, about an attempt to kidnap my daughter, and the death of a young man called Harry Hobson?”

“You did, yes.”

“Penelope was held prisoner in an old mine working on Fernthorpe land,” I said. “I was taken to her there. In that working, I saw a mound of rubble that looked suspicious. I moved some of the rubble, and yes, there's someone buried there. I think it could be Harry. I believe the Thwaites were behind the attack, along with a few local men under their sway—possibly including some of the Grimsdales. But I think the man who killed Harry was Andrew Thwaite who is now dead. I don't want to pursue the matter, though I do want the body retrieved.”