The Queen's Gamble (32 page)

Adam flashed the blade, flicking it toward Carlos, then Rodriguez. His grip was firm, and in his fevered look was the desperation of a wounded animal, unpredictable, dangerous. Carlos knew they could not reach him without someone getting cut, maybe killed.

“Stand back!” Adam warned. “I won’t leave this man. Not while he draws breath!”

There was shouting, loud, right next door. Shouts of victory.

“Mãe do Deus,”
Rodriguez whispered in fear. “They’ve found the fire.”

Fenella’s hand flew to her mouth to block a scream. She cowered as if the soldiers could see her through the stone wall.

Carlos’s back was clammy with cold sweat.
They’ll soon find us.
He took a stiff breath and made a decision. It made him sick, but he forced down the bile in his throat before he could change his mind. He went down on one knee beside the dying crewman and made the sign of the cross over the man’s face. He took hold of his head in both hands and gave it a sideways wrench. The neck snapped. The body gave a feeble jerk. Then lay still. Carlos, his hands shaking, looked up at Adam.
There. No more breath.

Adam let out a grunt of shock as though he’d been punched in the stomach. He stared at Carlos, too stunned to speak. The others did, too.

Carlos felt a dizzying rush of shame and rage. Rage at Adam.
You’ve made me a murderer.
He sprang up and went for the stiletto Adam still held. He chopped Adam’s wrist, and the blade flew from his hand and clattered on the floor. Fenella snatched it up. Carlos drew his own dagger and pressed its tip at Adam’s throat. “If it weren’t for your sister I would leave you to rot,” he growled. “Come quietly, and help these two who’ve risked their lives for you, or I swear I will finish you. I’ll tell the French I stopped you escaping and I’ll be a hero. So, resist and get your throat cut, or sail to France and live to see your daughter. It’s up to you.”

Adam blinked as if he had just recovered his wits. He walked out stiffly but peaceably, Carlos and Rodriguez tightly flanking him in case he resisted again. Fenella led the way. She took them up the stairs toward the armory, but halfway up she opened an arched door and they followed her into a dank, windowless room that held instruments of torture. The rack, branding irons, whips, the press. The place stank of excrement. Adam balked in fear, as though seeing his worst suspicion about Carlos come true.

“I said you’re going to France, and I meant it,” Carlos said. “Follow her.”

Fenella led them through the torture chamber and up a narrow staircase that brought them to another door. She opened it a crack, and as she looked out the three men waited in uneasy silence. Carlos tried to steady his nerves. The next step would be the hardest. This door would lead them outside. The place swarmed with soldiers now organizing to carry water to put out the fire.

Satisfied that the way was clear, Fenella motioned them to follow her, and they stepped out onto the grassy space of the outer bailey. No soldiers in sight. They were at the back of the armory, and the back of the fortress. A long stone’s throw away rose the outer wall. It was darker here. The shaggy grass between the high outer wall and the armory looked black, silvered with the faintest sheen of moonlight. An ox bellowed. There was a smell of sheep dung. Animal sheds hulked against the outer wall.

“What now?” Fenella asked in a tight whisper. Carlos was listening to the clamor of voices in the inner ward at the far side of the armory where the fire-fighting continued. That’s where the well was. But the voices were getting louder. Fenella, too, heard them coming. “The cistern,” she said in horror.

Carlos shot her a look. What cistern?

“By the sheep sheds. Rainwater.”

Christ! Soldiers would come around the corner soon to fill their buckets.
It’ll be a miracle if we get through this
.

He motioned for them all to stay tight against the armory wall, and pointed to the walkway atop the outer wall to show why. Two sentries stood there, black silhouettes as the moon hid behind the clouds. He pointed diagonally down from the sentries, across to the postern gate in the outer wall. “That’s where you’re going,” he said. The low, narrow door was always open for fishermen delivering the day’s catch, and for servants going to do chores in the town. It would stay open until the English arrived. “Wait here,” he said. “Watch me. When you see my signal, go. Fenella knows the way.”

He strode across the wet grass to the outer wall and climbed the stairs set flush against it two stories high. He could hear the growl of the ocean on the other side, waves kicking up in the estuary, and when he reached the top he felt the salt-tanged wind hit his face. The two sentries on the wall walk heard him and turned. Carlos knew one of them. Bouchard. He’d played dice with him last week in the alehouse. Fraternizing with the lower ranks was something the French officers, all the sons of aristocrats, never did. Carlos was glad now that he had.

“Bouchard,” he said, “did you see the fire from here?”

“Monsieur Valverde. Yes. Well, we saw the smoke. Christ, was it the armory?”

“I don’t know. So much confusion.” All three of them looked down at the inner ward. Carlos could see the front of the armory where men swarmed with torches and buckets, and dogs ran around barking, excited by the crisis. He could also see its east wall and the corner that led to the back, but he couldn’t see Adam and Fenella and Rodriguez pressed up against the back wall, waiting. “Thought I’d join you fellows up here until it’s out,” he said to the sentries. “If the armory blows, those poor bastards will land in Edinburgh in pieces.”

They smiled at his dark jest. “What started it, do you think?” the other sentry asked.

Carlos shook his head. “Don’t know.” He caught sight of D’Oysel leading a gang of soldiers with buckets out the armory’s front door. He was in shirtsleeves, striding ahead, waving as if giving orders— and leading the soldiers to the east end of the building. Carlos’s heart thumped in his chest. Soon D’Oysel’s gang would turn the corner and then reach the back wall.

It has to be now
.

To distract the sentries he pointed across the inner ward to the blacksmith’s shed. “Look! Is that more flames? In the smithy?”

Bouchard and the other man took a few anxious steps closer to get a better look. It was enough for Carlos. He took a quick step back until he could see the three fugitives, mere black shadows against the dark wall. D’Oysel’s gang was almost at the corner. Carlos waved to the fugitives, a clear signal. The three shadows dashed across the grass toward the postern gate. Carlos flinched as the moonlight hit them like a beacon.

They were halfway across the grassy space when Fenella stopped and turned. Carlos saw her face, her look of alarm. She was hearing D’Oysel and his soldiers coming.
Madre de Dios, Fenella, don’t stop!
She turned back to Adam and Rodriguez and jerked a signal to them to carry on. The two men ran for the postern gate. Fenella turned back again just as D’Oysel and his men swarmed around the corner. She hurried to D’Oysel and reached him, making frantic gestures, leading him back toward the building.

Carlos held his breath. What was she doing? Distracting him? Or informing on Adam and Rodriguez? The two fugitives slipped out through the gate and closed it. They disappeared into the night.

“Can’t see anything at the smithy,” Bouchard said, rejoining Carlos.

“No?” Carlos said. It was hard to find his voice. Fenella had saved Adam and Rodriguez. He was sure of that. But she had sacrificed her own chance to flee. He swallowed. What would she do now?

“Seems the commander’s got it under control,” Bouchard said.

Carlos watched as over two dozen of D’Oysel’s men rushed to the cistern to fill their buckets. D’Oysel sent a couple of men into the building through the same door Carlos and the fugitives had used to get out, no doubt to check that no stray sparks posed a danger to the lockup. Which meant they’d soon find that Adam was gone. Meanwhile, D’Oysel took Fenella by the elbow and led her back toward the inner ward.

Carlos forced himself to exchange more quips with the sentries, who were glad, they said, to resume their standard, boring watch, the more boring the better. He bade them good night. Questions battered his mind as he went down the wall stairs. What had Fenella told D’Oysel? She was smart, so maybe she had said she’d gone behind the armory to check the cistern. How long until the soldiers who’d gone down to the lockup brought D’Oysel word of Adam’s escape? Then he’d send out search parties. Did Adam and Rodriguez have time to reach the cove? Could they even find it without Fenella’s help?

It made him more nervous than he’d ever felt. How could he pretend to act normally when the whole escape might be blasted to hell? If D’Oysel caught Adam, he would torture him to tell who had helped him escape. Torture Rodriguez, too. And whether they divulged anything or not, D’Oysel would hang Adam. Carlos couldn’t live with that. And Fenella—what would D’Oysel do to her? What would
she
divulge?

He had to find out what was happening.

Pedro was afraid he had failed Señora Isabel. Yesterday, his first day on the road, he had made good speed, had ridden almost nonstop even though the spring mud caked his horse’s legs and spattered Pedro’s, too. He had stopped last night for just a few hours of sleep in a farmer’s byre before setting out again in darkness before dawn. But this afternoon he had come to a river where the bridge had fallen in from all the rain, and that had stopped him. A team of men were working to rebuild the bridge, but it would take time, and the señora had said he was to get to London with her letter as fast as his horse would carry him. He did not know how far he would have to go to find another bridge, or even which way to try. He had asked the men, but it was hard to understand their impossible language of English. So he had waited. Dismounted, and sat on a tree stump, and watched them work, and waited.

They had finished the job by dusk. Now he was on the road again and it was dark. Had he failed the señora? He remembered her face, how earnest she had looked, and how sad since she and her lord, Señor Valverde, had fought. Pedro thought she was pretty, and she always smiled at him even though she was sad, and thinking about her now made him want to do what she wanted. But he hadn’t stopped for
that
long. She would understand.

Under the bright moonlight the land stretched out in long, lonely, brown hills that looked tired of life. So different from the peaks behind Trujillo with bright snow on their heads and glossy jungle at their feet. He liked that place better. A happier place to live. But then he thought of the milkmaid, Liza, at Yeavering Hall, and the way the tip of her tongue showed pink between her teeth when she laughed. Maybe the place you lived in did not matter so much. Thinking of her, he wanted to deliver the letter in London and get back as fast as he could to Yeavering Hall.

He was leaving a poor village where big trees grew around a graveyard, when he heard the sound of horses behind him. He turned in the saddle. Five men, riding toward him. He was astonished to see the man leading them. The lord of Yeavering Hall.

“Halt!” the lord called. “You, boy! Stop.”

Pedro’s stomach seemed to drop. The señora had said,
“Let no one stop you. No one.”
But how could he disobey the great lord of the manor? He had already slowed to look at them. It seemed only right and proper to stop.

But the señora’s words filled his head again.
“Let no one stop you.”
He kicked his horse’s flanks and bolted down the road, away from the great lord’s horsemen.

They came galloping after him, the lord shouting at him, angry. “I said stop, you wretched heathen!”

That made Pedro angry. He was a God-fearing Christian, no heathen. A good rider, too, and much lighter a-horse than those big beef-eating men, so he galloped on.

But some devil drove them, and he heard the hooves getting closer, heard their horses breathing like bellows. They caught up to him at the edge of a fallow field. Surrounded him. His horse shied in fear. Pedro hung on. They were all around him. What was happening?

“Get it,” the lord told his men.

One reached across and grabbed for Pedro. He lurched back and the man’s grab missed. But a hand from behind snatched his collar and yanked him with a savage jerk. Pedro’s foot twisted in his stirrup as he tumbled.

26

The Cove

C
arlos crossed the courtyard, heading for D’Oysel’s quarters. All around him soldiers were milling, everyone in high spirits after putting out the fire. He went through the mess hall and climbed the stairs, trying hard not to hurry, not look anxious. He was ready for D’Oysel to suspect him of some involvement in the escape; that had been inevitable—Adam was his brother-in-law, and Carlos had asked D’Oysel to spare his life. But his status as Quadra’s emissary was too solid for D’Oysel to make such a damning accusation without proof. All Carlos had to do was stick to his story: he’d been talking to soldiers in the hall when the fire had broken out and the escape had happened. If asked, they would innocently confirm that he had been there. So D’Oysel had no proof—unless Fenella talked.

In the antechamber he found D’Oysel’s clerk, Fontaine, in a hushed discussion with a couple of captains. Carlos nodded to them. “Lescarbot, any news of how the fire started?”

“No, but that’s not the worst of it, Valverde. The English captain who was in the Hole—he’s escaped.”

Carlos feigned surprise. “How?”

Lescarbot shrugged. “Don’t know. The commander has ordered search parties. They’ll be combing the town. He can’t hide for long.”

The town. Thank God. Not the cove. If Adam and Rodriguez had found the boat, they would soon be under way and safe.

The commander’s door opened and a man shuffled out. Carlos stiffened—it was the turnkey from the Hole. Two guards flanked him and his hands were tied behind him. He looked cowed, terrified. D’Oysel had clearly given him a rough time, and he was almost certainly headed for a cell. As he moved through the room with the guards he looked straight at Carlos. Carlos held his breath, half expecting him to point and say,
“That’s the one.”
But nothing registered in the man’s eyes beyond his own misery, and the guards led him away. Carlos relaxed a little. In the Hole he had been careful to not let the turnkey see his face when he and Rodriguez had gagged and hooded him.

He was daring now to hope that this might work out. If D’Oysel had no proof against him, and Adam had gotten safely away on the water, maybe the whole thing would blow over. With the English army almost at their throats, D’Oysel had far bigger problems to deal with than one escapee.

There was muffled shouting behind D’Oysel’s door. Fontaine and the captains shot uneasy looks in that direction. Carlos asked, “Who’s in there with him?”

“His woman.”

His heart thudded. Fenella, the turnkey
had
seen. She had expected to be safely away with Adam by now. He wiped a bead of sweat off his upper lip. “What a night,” he said to the clerk. He nodded to the wine decanter on the desk. “Mind if I help myself?”

“Of course, señor, allow me to—”

“No, don’t bother, I’ll get it.” The desk was near D’Oysel’s door and he wanted to hear. His hand was a little unsteady as he poured wine into a goblet. More shouts sounded behind the door. D’Oysel’s voice, in a rage. Carlos could make out only a few words, but that was enough: “You were
there
. . . Who put you up to it? . . . Who?”

Carlos knocked back the wine. A devil’s voice inside him said,
Stay out of it. Deny everything. D’Oysel has no proof, just the word of a whore who’ll say anything to protect herself. Go back to your billet. It’ll blow over.

Then he heard reality—Fenella’s voice. Her words were harder to hear, indistinct, her voice too soft. Was she confessing? But then D’Oysel yelled again, “Tell me, you lying bitch!” and Carlos knew that she had not told him a thing. It amazed him. He closed his eyes in shame.
She saved Adam and Rodriguez, and now she’s saving my skin, too.

D’Oysel’s shouts got louder, shriller. The clerk and the captains set to talking even more loudly, as though to block out the unpleasantness happening beyond the door, not get involved. D’Oysel yelled something furious, but he had moved farther from the door and Carlos couldn’t make it out. Then Fenella’s voice . . . crying?

A crash. Fenella screamed. There was a sickening thud.

He’s going to kill her.

Carlos threw open the door. Fenella was on the floor, moaning, struggling to get up. Blood covered the side of her face. D’Oysel stood over her with a broken wine bottle, its jagged edge gleaming with blood. He was breathing hard, and his eyes were bright with fury. He shot a look at Carlos. “Thought she was a pretty piece, Valverde? See how you like her face now.”

Carlos closed the door. “Let her go, D’Oysel. She’s not the enemy.”

Fenella had made it up onto her hands and knees and was crawling away from D’Oysel, trying to reach the desk to hide beneath it. He kicked her in the ribs. She toppled, whimpering, and curled into a ball.

“Enemies
within,
Valverde.” He bent and grabbed a fistful of Fenella’s hair. “Like this lying cunt.” He dragged her by the hair. She screamed in pain.

Carlos lunged for him and hauled him away from her. “I said let her go!” He threw D’Oysel against the desk.

D’Oysel staggered, but got his balance and turned on Carlos, his voice a snarl. “She was part of the escape! I’ll get it from her yet. And if you’re involved, Valverde, I swear I’ll have a piece of your hide before your fine friends intervene!”

He twisted back to Fenella. She lay on her back, moaning. He still held the broken bottle, and he stood over her, the jagged glass poised to gouge her face.

Carlos grabbed two fistfuls of D’Oysel’s collar. “Stop. Or I’ll stop you forever.”

“You wouldn’t dare—you son of a whore.” He shouted to the antechamber, “Fontaine!”

Carlos grappled him tighter. “Shut up.”

“Fontaine! I need—”

Carlos snatched him by the hair and smashed his face down on the desk. Bone cracked. D’Oysel slumped to the floor, blood gushing from his nose. Coughing blood, he groped for Carlos’s boot. Carlos kicked him in the head. D’Oysel sprawled on his back. He jerked in a convulsion. His eyelids fluttered, then closed. He went still.

Fenella struggled to her hands and knees, staring at D’Oysel’s inert body, his bloodied face. Her own blood smeared her mutilated cheek and matted her hair. She sank back on her heels and looked at Carlos, stunned. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered.

He felt so shaky he was afraid he might fall.
Another murder
. No, wait—he could see D’Oysel’s chest move.
He’s still breathing
. Relief flooded him. His body was clammy with sweat. He took deep breaths, fighting to get calm.
Think!
He looked at Fenella. He had to get her out of there before D’Oysel came to. Her only hope was the boat. But had Adam already sailed? “Can you walk?” he asked.

She was so disoriented she looked like she didn’t understand. Her cheek was bleeding badly.

He gripped her arm to help her up. “We have to get you to the boat. Now.”

She blinked as if waking up. “Yes . . . I can walk.” With his help she struggled to her feet.

Carlos grabbed D’Oysel’s wrists and dragged him behind the desk so no one could see him from the door. He looked around. A folded shirt lay on a sideboard. He grabbed it and handed it to Fenella. “Press hard. To stop the blood.” She did as he said. He went to the door. “We do this fast. You’re my captive. Say nothing. All right?”

She straightened up and took a ragged breath and nodded.

He opened the door. The clerk and the two captains turned. Carlos said, “The commander fell. He’ll need some help.” They looked in surprise toward D’Oysel’s room. Carlos shoved Fenella out, holding her roughly by the arm. “I’m taking her to the lockup.” He marched Fenella past the men. They were already on their way in to see to D’Oysel.

Across the inner ward they went, Carlos holding Fenella’s elbow to support her—and himself, too. She was so rocky on her feet she stumbled several times, but he got her around to the back of the armory and across the grass, and they slipped through the postern gate. They had made it out.

But Carlos was horribly aware of the bright moonlight on them as they went down the stone staircase. The wind was stronger here outside the fortress walls. The staircase turned twice with sharp angles. They reached the bottom, where the stony ground was the flat top of a crag above the ocean. A main path led to the left, toward the town.

Fenella stopped, in pain, and leaned against him. But her eyes shone with relief. “We did it.”

Holding her to support her, he looked back up the steps for any soldiers coming after them. “Not yet.”

“Don’t worry, they’ll be swarming the town, that’s where he sent them.” She lowered the blood-soaked shirt from her cheek. “I’m glad you did him. I wanted to. Couldn’t get out my knife.”

“You did enough.” He only hoped Adam hadn’t sailed yet. “Which way to the boat? You’re the leader now.”

She pointed to the right where a faint trail led through trees that hugged the ridge of the crag. They set out along it. Mercifully, the trees hid them from the moon. The trail wound down the crag through scrub brush, and finally to the rock-strewn cove. A stony beach fanned out in a crescent where waves washed in, mumbling over the stones. There on the water, three boat lengths from the beach, the fishing boat stood at anchor. Rodriguez stood at the water’s edge, his eyes on the boat. Hearing Carlos and Fenella, he turned, astonished to see them.

“Good Christ, you made it!” He frowned at Fenella’s blood-smeared cheek. “But not without a fight, eh?”

“We won,” she said proudly.

Adam got up from a boulder he’d been sitting on. He looked surprised to see Carlos. “You came.”

Carlos said, almost as surprised, “You waited.”

“For her,” Rodriguez said. Then he jerked a thumb at Adam. “
His
call.”

Carlos felt too much to speak. Adam’s code: He didn’t leave crew behind.

Rodriguez said, “Enough talk. Let’s be off!” He ran for the water and splashed out knee deep.

Fenella threw her arms around Carlos’s neck and kissed him. She let out a happy laugh. “So, lover, it’s you and me to France after all, eh? Come on.” She ran into the water after Rodriguez, hiking up her skirts and calling to him, “Wait up, you lousy Portugee. We’re coming!”

Carlos and Adam stood alone on the beach, face-to-face. The lapping waves nudged the soles of their boots.

“Your friend is right, we have to set sail,” Adam said. “The tide will soon turn.”

Carlos nodded, glad that Adam looked stronger now that he was free. He glanced at the battered little boat rocking in the waves. “Is it seaworthy?”

“I’ve been aboard, had a look. She’ll make it.”

“And this wind is good?”

“A fresh breeze, yes. It’ll be fair on our quarter.”

“Go, then. No time to waste.”

Adam frowned, surprised. “You’re not coming?”

Carlos shook his head.

“Are you sure? You’ve taken a big risk, Carlos. They’ll be after you.”

“I know. But the water’s not for me. I’ll ride.”

“Where will you go?”

“Never mind about me. How about you?”

“I’ll take them to Amsterdam. They can go on from there. I’ll be coming back.”

“What? Why?”

“To fight for England.”

England again. “You sound like your sister.”

“You sound like a man with nothing to fight for.”

It took him aback.

“Captain, come on!” Rodriguez called from the boat.

“Coming!” Adam called back.

No more time. Carlos held out his hand. Adam clasped it.
“Vaya con Dios,”
Carlos said. Go with God.

“And you.”

He watched Adam wade out to the bobbing boat and climb aboard. Watched Rodriguez haul up the anchor. Watched Adam raise the sail with Fenella’s help, and then take the tiller and steer the little craft out toward the sea.

Now he was alone. Adam’s question stuck with him.
Where will you go?
He looked out at the dark water. He had just destroyed his own future. Cut himself adrift from everything he had come to Scotland for. He had done Quadra’s bidding with the French for one reason only—to win the Trujillo council seat. It would have brought enough cash to pay all his debts. Make him a member of Peruvian society. Secure his son’s future. Instead, he had helped a prize French prisoner escape, and had all but killed their commander. There would be no seat now. No advancement, ever. The King would revoke his
encomienda
. The King’s agents might even arrest him. He might make a convincing case that he had attacked D’Oysel in self-defense, since the bastard’s temper was well known, but all dreams of a lordly life in Peru were blasted. If he managed to evade a jail cell and make it back to Trujillo, he’d be lucky to end up owning a mule.

Yet he didn’t feel like cursing his fate. He felt strangely calm. No, better than calm. He felt buoyed up, felt good for the first time in months. Like he had cut the chains that had kept him striving for Quadra’s reward, like some plow horse in harness. Adam had escaped a dungeon, but Carlos felt like the one who had been set free.

He looked out at the silver stars of moonlight snapping on the waves. Looked up at the vast sky of moon-silvered clouds. He listened to the waves shushing over the stones, and felt the wind tingle his skin. The air held a faint smell of wood smoke—the smell of hearth and home. The place seemed beautiful. He suddenly knew why. Isabel. Her spirit had brought him to this beach.

Adam’s words came back to him.
“To fight for England.”
And what Fenella had said days ago:
“At least the Scottish fools are fighting for something they care about. Their home.”

Isabel cares. She’s fighting for something that matters. Why had he not seen how extraordinary that was? He had been so sure of what
he
wanted, so sure it was the
right
thing to want—wealth and status, a life of leisure delivered by docile Indian semi-slaves. Wanting success like that kept most men striving all their lives, slaves themselves in their hunger to get it.

Not him. Not now. Now he wanted what Isabel wanted. To fight for something that mattered. All his life as a soldier he’d been hired to destroy. Isabel was fighting to build. England. And England was in more jeopardy than she knew if Spanish troops were on the way. He wanted to be on her side in this. Wanted it almost as much as he wanted her. It sent a ripple of excitement though him. To be
for
something, standing with her.