The Queen's Captive (49 page)

The fire, the smell of blood, the shouting—it all made her horse so frantic it was staggering in circles. She no longer had any control of the animal. She abandoned the reins and tried to slide out of the saddle, but it was impossible with only one good arm and the horse’s wild motion, and she hit the ground in a painful sprawl. The horse bolted.

Honor struggled to her feet and looked at her burning house. Was Richard inside?
Taken away,
the apprentice had said, but so dazed and confused in the telling, what if he was wrong?

She hurried on unsteady legs across the courtyard, making for the house. Monstrous orange tongues of flame crested the top floor and licked at the blue sky. The lovely blue sky—it made no sense to her stunned mind. Fireballs burst from the great hall as curtains caught fire, billowing out of the smashed windows in sheets of flame. She stumbled on a sword hilt. She looked down at it, disoriented. Blood on the blade. Sparks rained down high above her, borne by a wind of heat. Cinders fell on her clothes like black snow. Men ran past her carrying buckets of water that sloshed over the rims, making mud at her feet. She walked on through the muck, and as she neared the fire its heat seared her cheeks and parched her eyes. Smoke made her cough. The front door was ablaze, and in front of it two men lay on their backs. One was too far away to see clearly, but clear enough for her to know it was not Richard. But on the other she saw the familiar round belly, the ginger beard. “Geoffrey!”

She ran toward him.

“My lady! Stop!”

A hand hooked her elbow and she lurched to a stop.

“Let me go!” She coughed in the smoke. “It’s my brother-in-law!”

“You cannot go near. You’d perish.” It was James Alford, the clerk. A timber pitched down from the second story and crashed near their feet, showering sparks. James wrenched Honor backward, away from the blazing timber and the fire’s killing heat.

“He’s dead, my lady. I’m sorry.”

She looked back at Geoffrey and saw the arrow in his chest. Had he been trying to defend the house? She thought of Joan, widowed though she did not know. The horror of it almost felled Honor. And Richard? Geoffrey would have been at Richard’s side. Was he lying unconscious behind the blazing door? She tried to tear free of James’s grip. “My husband…he may be inside.”

“No,” he said, pulling her back. “He’s not, my lady. They took him.”

Again,
took him.
“You’re sure? You saw it?”

He nodded. “I was beside him one minute, the next minute horsemen were bearing down on us. I jumped clear of a big charger and landed on my arm. But I saw them surround Master Thornleigh. They tied his hands. Slung him over a horse and rode out with him.”

Then he could still be alive! James stifled a groan of pain, and Honor saw that his arm was in a makeshift sling, a belt. Soot streaked his clothes. Dried blood caked the corner of his mouth, and his eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with red. He had lived through the hell of the attack. She forced her mind to work. “How many dead?”

“Eight. That we know of.” He gazed around at the blazing outbuildings. His voice was raw. “It was like an army swooping down.”

“Baron Grenville.”

“Aye, Grenville Archers, some of them. The rest, I don’t know. Not men of hereabouts. Hired brutes.”

Killers. And they had taken Richard. And murdered Geoffrey.

“Mistress!” a woman cried out, running to her. “Where are we to go?”

Honor blinked at her. Susan, a housemaid, with two crying children in tow. Honor’s home, being eaten by fire before her very eyes, had been their home, too. The home of almost twenty people. And many more who lived in Colchester and came here to work were now masterless. She wrenched her mind off Richard and tried to think. “James, has any place been spared the torch? The stables? The tithe barn?”

“Tithe barn’s burning. Stables, too.”

She gasped. “The horses!”

“Burned by now,” he said grimly. “We could not get in past the flames.”

She was speechless, imagining the animals’ agony.

“But there’s the abbey,” he said. “They smashed everything inside, looms and all, but there’s no fire.”

She looked to the west across the stream. The abbey’s tower stood free of flames against the sky. Of course, she thought in fury. Grenville had murdered and laid waste, but had spared the abbey as sacred ground. “Susan, take your children to the abbey,” she said. “It shall be shelter for our folk.” The maid and her little ones scurried away, and Honor turned to James. “Where’s Fletcher?” She needed the help of her steward.

“Dead, my lady.” He nodded toward the body beside Geoffrey.

It was too much. She felt herself shaking. “Who is…” Who could take Fletcher’s place? “Arthur Hoby,” she said. Young, but capable. “Is he alive?”

“Aye. He’s yonder at the dairy house, I think. Helping put out the fire.”

She looked in that direction and glimpsed the men’s frantic activity—their small buckets of water, the raging fires. “Hopeless,” she murmured, fighting despair.

“My lady!” Two men came running, filthy with soot and sweat. Word had spread that the mistress was here. She recognized one of the men, a shepherd. He started to speak but his voice soon choked with weeping, so the other man blurted out their desperate report. Grenville’s men had slaughtered all the livestock. “Thirty-four cattle beasts,” he said, eyes wide at the awful tally. “Twenty-nine sheep. Fourteen pigs. Five goats.”

They all stood dumb at the catastrophe. Honor could hardly take it in. More people were gathering round, some bloodied, most dirty with soot, all frightened, and they were looking at her for a glimmer of guidance. She swallowed the grit of cinders in her mouth. “James, the buildings and animals are lost. But our people are not. Tell Arthur Hoby to send the women and children to the abbey.” She looked around at the desperate faces. Feeling lost, she wondered aloud, “What else?”

“Victuals, my lady,” James said. “Nothing’s left. Not a crust nor a bone. Come morning we’ll need food.”

Of course. She tried to think. Lord and Lady Powys had always been her friends. “Forget Hoby, I’ll find him myself. You ride to Highlands and tell Lord Powys what’s happened. Tell him we need bread and meat. And blankets.”

Hesitating, he ran a hand through his sweat-stiff hair.

“Your arm,” she realized. The one in the sling. Was it broken? “Can you ride?”

“I can, and would gladly, my lady, but I have no horse.”

“My horse is loose…somewhere. Get some of these people to help you nab it. If you cannot, then set out on foot for Highlands. Off with you now!”

He ran. Honor set out to find Hoby. The courtyard was a chaos of shouting people and crying children and barking dogs, of mud and household things that people had wildly thrown out of the burning buildings—crockery, shoes, ropes. People kept running to her to report, to ask for help, to merely weep. She had no way to help them, which made her feel sick. At the house a section of the roof crashed down into the garden in an explosion of sparks, bringing screams and sending people running. Honor came upon Hoby, looking exhausted from slinging water from buckets on the blazing dairy house alongside other exhausted men. She told him that he was now her steward and instructed him to round up the women and children and send them to the shelter of the abbey. He seemed energized by the mission, and set out toward the bake house and brew house, calling names as he went.

Honor forced her shaky legs to continue on to a huddle of moaning people. The injured. Burns and cuts and broken limbs. They must be helped. She had glimpsed Mary Carter, a kitchen worker, pumping water at the well. Fat Mary the men called her. Honor knew her to be a strong woman, clever, and not squeamish. She went to the well.

“It’s poisoned, mistress,” Mary grunted as her hefty arm pumped water to fill the men’s buckets. “They dumped a bleeding pig carcass down it, belly slashed to the entrails. Water’s fit for nothing but these here buckets.” Honor told her to leave the well and take charge of the injured people. She called to two men and instructed them to assist Mary, then set a sturdy apprentice to man the pump.

There were so many people to see to. For an hour or more she went from one group to the next, trying to bring order, reassurance, information about relatives. Every glance she took at the burning house left her shivery. Every thought of Richard left her struggling with a dull panic. Why had Grenville taken him?
Where
had he taken him? Was he already dead? There was a sharp pain in her foot. She had lost a shoe…somewhere.

A shout. A racket of horse’s hooves. Honor twisted around in horror. Grenville?

A single horseman. It was Adam! He pounded past the smashed gates, his cloak flying, his horse lathered, and thundered to a stop beside her. His face was tight with shock and rage.

“Are you all right?” he asked from the saddle.

She nodded. “But some are dead. Geoffrey…”

“Dear God,” he murmured. He cast a frantic look at the blazing house. “Where is my father?”

“Grenville took him.”

“What do you mean, took him? Alive or dead?”

“Alive.”

They stared at one another, and the sickening knowledge that Honor had been refusing to face bit into her. If Grenville wanted Richard alive, it was for only one reason. To make him suffer.

Adam knew it, too. He said quietly, hollowly, “As he kept you alive in the Tower?”

She could hardly stand. She gripped the harness of his horse to hold herself up.

“Madam, let go.” She looked up and saw pure, cold fury in his eyes. “I will find him.”

“No…you cannot. Grenville has a whole company of killers.”

“I will not go alone. I will raise our men. And hire more. And get weapons. And strike down this murderer once and for all.”

He spurred his horse forward, calling to men to come meet him at the well. Honor watched in horror. He was going to attack Grenville. Grenville would kill him. Then kill Richard.

She was about to run after Adam when he turned his horse in a wide circle and doubled back at a gallop. But not toward her. He was racing for the gate. A woman had ridden in and stopped. She wore rich clothing and behind her rode a manservant. Honor gasped. It was Frances Grenville! How did she dare to come here? In fury Honor started walking toward the woman.

Adam thundered up to Frances and halted his horse and leaped off. She sat stunned as he stalked toward her. He snatched her by her arm and hauled her down from her saddle. She screamed and staggered as her feet hit the ground, almost collapsing in fear and shock. Her manservant jumped off his horse and pulled a dagger. Adam turned and chopped the dagger from his grip, then punched his jaw, and the man sprawled backward and fell in the dirt.

Adam turned on Frances. “You knew! He was coming for my father, and you knew it!”

“No!” she cried.

“You had me at that church because you knew he was coming here! You told me he would not be back for months. I told my father, and he left just three men at the gate. You knew!” He raised his hand to strike her.

She cringed, tears streaming. “I knew nothing!” Adam stopped, the flat of his hand inches from her face. She dropped to her knees and begged him, “Please, you must believe me! I had no idea!”

He grabbed her arm and wrenched her to her feet. “Where is he? Where’s my father?”

“I tried to save him,” she whimpered.

Honor reached them. “You did what?”

Frances flinched at her voice. “They brought him in—”

“To Grenville Hall?”

She nodded, weeping. “I saw from upstairs. He was bound and bleeding.” She looked at Adam. “I ran out to my brother and begged him to let your father go. But he shook me off.”

“Where is he now?” Adam demanded.

“What?” She looked dazed.

“My father! In the hall? The lockup? The stable? Where?”

Frances shook her head. “I know not.”

Honor said, “You told us you
saw.
”

She blinked, snivelling. “I left.”

Honor slapped her. “Get out! I will not have you here.”

Frances gasped and covered her stung cheek.

Adam was mounting his horse. “Grenville will pay.”

Frances wailed to him, “I have nowhere to go! Please, Adam, I told my brother everything. That your father is
my
father now. He raged at me. He cast me out. I cannot go back!”

Honor ignored the woman’s babbling and tried to focus her fractured thoughts on Richard—how long could he survive? And on Adam—how to stop him from tearing off to Grenville Hall?

But Adam had heard. He glared down at Frances. “Let her stay.”

Honor was dumbfounded. “Stay?”

He said with disgust, “She is my wife.” He kicked his horse and bounded away.

The two women stared at each other. Adam’s words made no sense to Honor. All that did make sense was her need to get this Grenville woman out of her sight. “You can go to the abbey—join the other people your brother has made homeless. If they do not scratch your eyes out.”

“Please, no! Don’t put me with them. I am your son’s wife!”

“You are no such thing.”

Weeping, Frances whimpered her confession. Listening, Honor was too stunned to speak. Bastwick and the bishop’s court…the death sentence upon her…Frances’s threat to Adam to expose her…their wedding this very morning. Frances confessed it all and wept while Honor’s mind reeled at Adam’s sacrifice, and her house burned, and her terrified people struggled to salvage their lives from the ruin Grenville had wreaked on them, and Adam shouted for men to join him.