The Queen's Gamble (28 page)

Her words sank into him.
What do I care about?
It used to be Isabel and Nicolas. He would have died for them. He still would for Nicolas. And Isabel?
She cares
. Fighting for her parents, she said. For England. It shook him, remembering the passion in her voice. England was the home of her heart, not Peru.

He knocked back another drink, wanting to forget. “I’ll say this for D’Oysel, he has damn good brandy.” He offered her the bottle.

She stiffened as though she remembered something terrible. “Oh, Christ. If he finds out about us . . .” She jumped up, tightening her shawl around her as if she felt a chill. “I was sure I’d be getting out of here with you. But now . . .”

Carlos saw fear in her eyes. “Don’t worry, he won’t find out.”

“It’s not just me he’ll take it out on. He’s a mad one, he is. You watch your back.”

Rodriguez’s words came back to him, the tale of a man who’d spent the night with Fenella.
“D’Oysel cut off the jackass’s ear.”
Carlos stood up. “Fenella, I promise you—”

“Don’t you come near me again. You hear? Don’t even talk to me.”

In a moment, she was gone.

The courtyard alarm clanged again.
Gong! Gong! Gong!
Carlos shook off the memory and that morning with Fenella . . . and his tortured thoughts of Isabel. Better go see what the commotion was about.

The night was clear and cold, the moonlight so bright the wall torches flaring outside weren’t even necessary. Carlos welcomed the bracing air. It helped clear his head as he set out along the alley that ran from the stables to the main courtyard. When he reached the archway at the end, he stopped to take stock of the activity in the courtyard.

It looked like a play. Thirty or forty soldiers made the audience, standing in a semicircle well back from the “players”—about a dozen soldiers looking proud as their captain exhibited three captives in chains. D’Oysel was hurrying down the staircase from his quarters, followed by several of his men, some still buckling on their swords, the scabbards clinking. And now, making an entrance on the balcony of the royal apartments, came the Queen Regent, flanked by three of her ladies, some looking like they had dressed in haste. Among the watching soldiers a few young recruits hissed at the captives and yelled jibes. The older veterans looked on in grim silence. Carlos knew why, for he shared their experience. They could recall campaigns where they had almost fallen into an enemy’s hands, and knew that a fate like these prisoners’ might still one day await them.

Carlos moved in among the men, trying to get a closer look at the captives. Usually, the rebels brought in were the kind too slow or stupid or unlucky to flee the raiding parties that D’Oysel sent into the countryside. But the Queen Regent wouldn’t be called out in the middle of the night for rabble like that, nor would D’Oysel. These prisoners had to be important.

“English,” a pock-faced soldier beside Carlos said.

That surprised him. “Outriders?” he asked. The coming English army could not have advanced much farther than the Tweed River at the Scottish border.

The soldier shook his head with the smile of one who knows. “Sailor boys. From the English Queen’s navy.”

They had been roughly treated, Carlos saw. All were filthy, and all were bowed by the chains that connected the manacles on their wrists to those on their ankles. One wore a thick, tattered bandage around his thigh, and blood crusted his mouth and nose. Another had his arm in a dirty sling, the bloody, mangled hand hanging like meat. He was swaying on his feet, almost too weak to stand. The third, whose back was all Carlos could see, wore a leather jerkin slashed from the shoulder to the opposite hip, the slash black with grime and blood.

The pock-faced soldier talked on about the capture. Captain LaFollette had caught the English ship offloading weapons to the rebels at Grangemouth some fifteen miles west along the estuary. But Carlos was barely listening. His eyes had not left the third prisoner, who had turned around to look up at the Queen Regent. The soldier said, “That one’s their bloody captain.” Carlos’s heart thumped as he saw the short black beard and recognized the face.

Isabel’s brother. Adam Thornleigh.

Adam’s pain-filled gaze, taking in the courtyard, fell on Carlos. Their eyes met in a shared moment of shock.

Isabel held the silver rattle behind her back, frozen at Grenville’s words.
“Have you found what you were looking for?”

Impossible to pretend she had
not
been looking. She forced her hands not to tremble as she brought the rattle around in front of her. Her mind was afire, trying to think. What was
he
thinking? Was he shocked to find her looking through his private papers? Or did he believe she had known all along about the scroll? Her best hope lay there.

“I was worried that
you
might not have found it,” she said as steadily as she could. She slid the scroll out of the handle to show him.

Grenville looked at it blankly. Was this the first time he was seeing it? Isabel’s heart crammed up in her throat. Had she just condemned herself? But it was too late to go back. “I wasn’t sure,” she pushed on, “since you said nothing about it.”

He took the paper from her. Then looked into her eyes. “Forgive me for that. Business took me to Kirknewton. I should have told you before I left how very welcome this news was.”

She thought her legs might give way in relief—but relief shot with horror that she had been right. Grenville was plotting treason, and the Queen Regent was backing him!

He held the scroll up to the candelabra and touched it to one of the candles’ flames. The paper smoked, then caught fire. He lowered it between him and Isabel and they watched it burn. She could hardly hold back from asking,
What did she write to you? Instructions?
The paper shriveled to ash. Grenville dropped the last scrap of it onto the floor rushes and ground the ashes under his boot.

She needed to know more. And to get it she had to
dare
more. “Shall I take a message back to the Queen Regent at Leith?”

He blinked in wonder. “
Could
you?”

It was the last thing in the world she would do.
Just tell me what you’re plotting
. “Easily. My husband is one of her favorites.”

He considered it. Then shook his head. “No, Lord Grey’s troops will reach them soon. In the garrison, you would be in danger.”

Dread roiled inside her. That Carlos would be in the fighting. That Grenville considered her a trusted fellow traitor. That there was nothing she could do to stop any of it!

He smiled. “Don’t worry, it really is not necessary. We are ready.”

She almost gasped. Who was
we?
Ready to do what?

“You seem amazed. I understand. You marvel that you and I, a Thornleigh and a Grenville, should find ourselves united.” He nodded as though in wonder. “In truth, it is passing strange.”

She swallowed. “God chose us, sir. It is His will.”

His face lit up. “And we obey!” He smiled, the admiration in his eyes unmistakable. “Isabel,” he said quietly. She was as startled by his use of her Christian name as if he had touched her body. “Frances was right. You are one of us.”

Frances, a co-conspirator! It rocked her.

“Are you sure you are quite recovered?” he asked in concern.

“Yes. I am very well. I am only eager to know how you will proceed . . . Christopher.”

She saw a flicker of excitement at her use of his name. But he smiled and said nothing. He was careful, as well he had to be, she thought. To get him to speak would take more than merely asking.

“Come,” he said, opening a drawer. He took a candle out and lit it from the candelabra. “I know what will give you cheer. Follow me.”

He opened a door and beckoned her into a darkness. It seemed to be a tunnel. Isabel forced a smile, saying, “My, you are full of surprises.” She stepped into the dark space, and her skin crawled as Grenville closed the door behind them. His candle was the only light. The tunnel was a crude passage with rough planks shoring up the earthen walls and narrow ones laid down as a floor. The air was cold and smelled as dank as a grave. They walked. Roots were exposed between the wall planks, and in the flickering candlelight they seemed to grope at Isabel. They reached a door, which Grenville opened, ushering her in. She entered a stone room like a large prison cell, the ceiling low, the walls clammy, the light dim, the air musty. She was surprised by the noise, a rushing sound of water, almost a roar, and a constant
Slap! Slap! Slap!

Grenville seemed amused at her bewilderment. “The river,” he said, raising his voice above the din. “This is our mill.”

She turned and saw an iron shaft creaking as it went round and round—an axle powered by an outside paddlewheel. A dam on the river forced the water against the wheel, churning it so it struck the water with that
Slap! Slap! Slap!
Two huge millstones were idle at the moment, not engaged. Along thick beams in the ceiling, empty burlap sacks hung from iron hooks. In the gloom they looked like starved, dead children.

“This way,” Grenville said. She followed him down stone steps into the belly of the mill. The noise below was even louder, and as they crossed the dusty floorboards Isabel felt a gust of cold, wet air and glimpsed the dripping paddlewheel plunging. Grenville opened a door no higher than his shoulders. He bent and went in, beckoning her to follow. She bowed her head and stepped through the door into a brick passageway barely high enough to stand up in. They made their way along it for several paces, Isabel following in mute wonder. This tunnel, she thought, must lead right into the riverbank. When they reached the end and straightened up, her breath caught in her throat.

Before her was a room as big as a rich man’s bedchamber, and it was filled with treasure. A cross of gold as tall as Grenville lay at an angle, propped against shelves. On the shelves were hundreds of objects sacred to the rites of the Catholic church. Jeweled crucifixes. Chalices of gold. Pyxes and pattens of sheened silver. Rood screens of intricate carved beauty lined a wall, stacked back to back, over a dozen of them, each one almost the length of the room, each one a priceless work. In the far corner stood a congregation of saints, perhaps thirty, some of the whitest alabaster, some painted in gorgeous colors of scarlet, gold, sea green, and blue. A doleful Virgin Mary had pride of place at the front. Life-sized, carved of wood and painted in gold and sapphire blue, she spread her arms in a gesture of tenderness, welcoming all who were wracked by life to take comfort in her embrace. Coins lay scattered at her feet.

Isabel was in awe. Possession of any of these articles was illegal. At Queen Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne she had sent her agents—the Visitors—into every corner of the realm to strip all churches of “popish” objects. People caught hiding them had been fined. The unrepentant had spent time in prison. Some would never come out. And here was such a hoard!

She said to Grenville, “You rescued . . . all this?”

He nodded, looking pleased. “Before the Visitors arrived. Throughout Northumberland, from cathedrals and churches and chapels and chantries.”

The sheer feat of organization was amazing. Hundreds of people must have been involved.

“Yes,” he said, as if reading her thoughts, “the faithful risked their lives. We are waiting for the day when England throws off her heretic pall and returns to the one true faith.”

“And surely,” she probed, “that day is coming.”

“God willing. For every one of the faithful who acted then, a thousand are ready to follow now.”

His confidence deepened her dread. Thousands. He could not lead so many alone. Other gentlemen must be involved, all coming together under the banner of the earl. Thousands . . . armed . . . prepared to rise up in rebellion.

“Come,” he said. “I think we are in time.”

“For what?” she managed.

He laid his finger over his mouth with a conspiratorial smile. They went back up the stone steps to the millstone room. Isabel heard a faint shuffling above her head. People moving about on the floor above? Grenville took her by the hand—she tried not to squirm at his touch—and led her up a narrow set of wooden stairs. She smelled the dust of grain in sacks even before they reached the room above. It was as cramped as an attic, but alongside the grain sacks it held people. Four men—clerks, perhaps, or scriveners by the look of their tidy clothes—and three women, one old and stooped, another a plump, well-dressed matron, another young but careworn, perhaps a laborer’s wife. They stood in two rows, like supplicants. It was the fifth man, standing before them, who held Isabel’s attention. He was dressed from head to foot in the sumptuous raiment of a Catholic priest, including a snow white alb and an embroidered silk stole. He looked straight at her, and Isabel felt a shiver at his long white face and crow black hair and eyes as dark as wet stones.

“Father York,” Grenville whispered in Isabel’s ear. “He suffered in the Queen’s prison.” He led her forward to the front of the little congregation, revealing a woman kneeling on a cushion, looking up. Frances! Isabel’s mind tripped as their eyes met. Frances must have slipped out of the supper hall and come down the tunnel before Isabel had gone to the library.

She wished she were a hundred miles away, far from these traitorous Grenvilles! But Frances, looking almost as startled, moved aside to make room for her. Grenville kneeled, and Isabel, following his lead, sank to her knees between brother and sister.

The others kneeled, too, and Father York led the mass. Isabel went through it by rote. The prayers. The elevation of the Host. The consumption of the body and blood of Christ. The priest’s invocation, beseeching God to smite the heretic female who had usurped the throne of England, and to keep safe the rightful monarch, Mary, the young Queen of France. Isabel closed her eyes, trying desperately to keep a calm face as she pieced together what she knew and what she suspected. The weapons stockpiled here, and likely in the armories of Grenville’s fellow Catholic gentry, too. The fighting men among their tenants and retainers, training for the day they would strike. The earl’s gold paying for it all. The Queen Regent, Marie de Guise, promising the leaders rich lands and titles once they had wrested the English throne and installed her daughter on it. A Catholic regime—a French regime—triumphant in Scotland and England.