The Queen's Gamble (36 page)

“He brings me peppermints.”

“Master Chandler,” the lady explained. “He sees to the boy’s arithmetic and grammar, madam. And Master Nicolas and I have just begun our French lessons.”

“And do you see your lady grandmother, Nico?”

“She hears my sums.” He rolled his eyes. “Over and over.”

“Lady Thornleigh visits every morning, madam, without fail.”

Isabel was delighted to hear it. And yet she felt a pang. Nicolas was so well settled and content, it was almost as though he had not missed her, had hardly noticed she’d been gone.
Foolish thought,
she chided herself.
And selfish
. She banished it.

But he had seen the changed look on her face. She was still kneeling, and he threw his arm around her neck and smiled into her eyes as if to reassure her. “Can we go home now?”

Her heart swelled. She pulled him to her, holding him tight. “Soon.”

He tugged free. “But I want to go home
now
. I want Pedro. Where’s Papa?”

“You’ll see Papa soon. I promise.”

“And Pedro?”

She could not bring herself to tell him. He loved Pedro so. “Nico, there has been—”

“Madam.”

The male voice behind her made her look up in surprise. Sir William Cecil stood in the open doorway. “Madam,” he repeated sternly, “you are not allowed here.”

“Sir William!” She had not seen him since he had sent her to Scotland with the Queen’s gold. She got to her feet. “Oh, I am heartily glad to see you, sir.” Nicolas looked shy and pressed against her leg. She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Greet the gentleman properly,” she told him. “He is our good friend.”

Nicolas bowed. Cecil ignored him. Isabel did not wonder at the man’s careworn face. As the Queen’s most trusted councilor, he was carrying the weight of the national crisis on his shoulders. Isabel was thankful that she could help him cut down at least one looming catastrophe. “Sir William, I have so much to tell.”

“Indeed.” He looked at the matron, who had curtsied when he had appeared. “Leave us,” he told her. She padded out. Cecil came closer to Isabel. “You have been mightily busy in the North.”

“I have, sir. Master Knox and the Lords of the Congregation rejoiced to receive Her Majesty’s aid, and I pray that, despite the recent setback, they may eventually prevail alongside her army. But I am come to warn her that she faces another danger, one as great or greater than the French. Will you take me to her? I must speak with her right away.”

He gave a snort of incredulity. “To what possible end?”

“I know she is busy with dire matters of state, but hear me, sir, and be the judge.” She poured out the broad outline of the traitors’ plot. How they intended to take Durham with the musters they had, almost two thousand strong, and there to gather more disaffected Northerners in the thousands and with them march on London. How they planned to kill the Queen and bring over her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of France and of the Scots, and proclaim her Queen of England. “This foul plot, sir, they intend to spark mere days from now. There is not a moment to lose. I beg you to take me to Her Majesty.”

“Names?” he said quietly.

She stared at him in frustration. “Sir William, we must not stand idly talking. Every moment of delay brings the traitors closer to their goal. Let me see the Queen. To her I will gladly unburden my heart of names and places, dates and stratagems. You, by her side, shall hear it all. Only, please, take me to her!”

His face hardened. “So that you may fulfill your mission?”

“Yes!”

He looked as if he wanted to strike her. “Guards!” he called.

Five men in glinting breastplates and helmets marched in.

Isabel instinctively clutched Nicolas closer to her. What was happening?

“Captain, arrest this woman,” Cecil said.

She gaped at him.
Arrest?
Her thoughts flew wildly. Was it about Grenville? His death in the fire? Was Cecil arresting her for . . . murder?

He held up his hand to momentarily halt the guards. “Come away from the child,” he told Isabel.

“No!” She lurched back a step, clasping Nicolas against her. “Sir, I was involved in a terrible thing, it is true. But, believe me, I could do nothing to prevent—”

“So, you confess your crime?”

“I beg you, let me explain everything to the Queen!”

“To increase her misery? The French cheer her downfall. Spain rattles its swords at her. And now
you
—” He stopped as if too sickened to go on. He turned to the captain as if about to order him to take Isabel away.

“Please!” she cried. “You must let me speak to Her Majesty!”

His voice was low with menace. “I know what you would speak.”

Her heart crammed up in her throat. She forced her voice out. “What happened at Yeavering demands examination, I accept that. But before I am put away you must first hear what I have come to—”

His slap came so fast it knocked her head sideways. In shock, she fought to catch her breath. Pride forced her not to touch her burning cheek, and to lift her gaze to Cecil, face-to-face.

His eyes glittered with the emotion of betrayal. “I trusted you. Brought you into Her Majesty’s presence. Trusted you with a mission. Well, I have learned my lesson.” He straightened his shoulders, getting control of himself. “As has Her Majesty, a hard lesson indeed—how to deal with the jackal when he strikes. Months ago, when the peril was fresh, she hesitated. She will not hesitate again. She will strike down these French marauders before they can rage across our borders. Just as I will strike down any traitor who would harm her. Like you.”

Isabel froze. “I?”

His lip curled in contempt. “A traitor, and a fool. I know you have come to kill her.”

“Kill—? God in heaven, no! How could you think—”

“A clerk in Sir Christopher Grenville’s house is my spy. He arrived this morning with his report. He heard you stand in Grenville’s library and tell eight of your confederates how you would wheedle information from Lady Thornleigh, and with it contrive to get one of their agents close enough to Her Majesty to take her life. Perhaps
you
are that agent. Perhaps not. No matter, you are finished, along with your fellow conspirators. Grenville has slipped beyond us to a greater judgment—God’s. He has perished in a fire. But the others will soon be in our custody, and in chains.”

She stared at him, stupefied. “But . . . I never meant Her Majesty harm, I swear it!”

“So,” he snapped, “you told those men no such thing?”

Her words on that day of plotting swarmed in her head like hornets. “I did, but only to bait them. To draw them out, and so warn—”

“Spare us your lies,
Señora Valverde
.” He practically spat the Spanish name. “We will have the truth, if not from you, then from the others. One testimony is sufficient to convict for treason.”

Treason. The penalty was torture . . . disembowelment. Her stomach twisted and she felt her legs would buckle. “I swear before God, sir, I only
pretended
to join those men. It was the only way I could uncover their plot!”

“So say all traitors.”

This cannot be happening
. “Send for my mother! She will vouch for me!”

“I dare say, poor lady.” He shook his head in disgust. “How right Her Majesty was to mistrust you. Enough wrangling. I am done with you.” He jerked his chin at the captain of the guard, the command to take Isabel away.

A guard yanked Nicolas from her. “Mama!” he wailed. She groped for him, but two other guards gripped her arms. She stiffened, resisting them. “Sir, my son is an innocent! Let my mother take him home, I beg you!”

Ignoring her, Cecil told the captain, “Post a guard at the door. I would have the boy closely kept.” He cast a withering look at Isabel. “Sins of the father. Or mother.”

The guards dragged her across the room and out the door. She strained to look back at her son. “Nico, I’ll be back!”

The door slammed shut. She heard him cry in panic, “Mama!” as they dragged her down the stairs.

Durham House, the Spanish embassy beside the Thames, rose up around the bend from the palace. Frances fumbled a coin into the hand of the boatman for ferrying her to the wharf, then hurried up the stairs from the landing. She found crowds of men swarming the embassy’s public rooms, English merchants and Spanish traders alike, all clamoring for information from the ambassador’s clerks about Spain’s intentions in the war in Scotland. Frances pushed through them, their din hammering her terror for Isabel into a painful rivet in her breast.

A clerk stopped her as she approached the ambassador’s private rooms and requested that she state her business. Breathless from her hurry, she struggled to compose her jangled thoughts. “Señor Valverde . . . he has come to see Ambassador Quadra . . . I must see him . . . must tell him . . .
please,
let me through.” Her desperate babbling made no impression on the clerk. He was all politeness, but explained that he could admit only those who had scheduled business with the ambassador or his secretary.

Clear thinking, Frances told herself, that’s what is needed. Panic will only breed more panic. She said that Señor Valverde needed her information for
his
scheduled business, and she was about to invent a reason when she realized that she recognized this clerk. She had seen him in Ambassador Quadra’s private chapel. That Quadra held regular masses for his staff was a perquisite of his rank in this Protestant land, and some of the English faithful slipped in to attend if they dared. Frances had dared. That’s where she had seen the clerk—praying. She lowered her voice and mentioned this to him, spoke of their bond of loyalty to the one true faith. His stern face softened. “Just bringing a message? In and out?”

“In and out, I promise.” She was right—the bond was enough. He let her through.

The corridor was even more crowded, and the men here were shouting even more loudly. As Frances made her way through she glimpsed two men in a fistfight. Then, at the far end, she saw Carlos. He sat alone on a bench, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He kept his eyes down with a scowl on his face as though trying to ignore the chaos around him. He was waiting to get in to see Ambassador Quadra.

She halted, held back by a flood of emotions. How much she owed him for saving Adam’s life . . . and how he loved Isabel! She remembered the day she had met them both, Adam’s sister and this fierce-looking Spaniard, newly returned to England. The family had been so merry together that night, Carlos laughing along with them. Dear God, how was she to break to him this piteous news?

He noticed her with a look of surprise and got to his feet. They both pushed through the crowd to reach each other. By the time they met, his surprise had darkened to worry. “What is it? What’s happened?”

“Oh, now is the time to pray,” Frances said in misery. “Pray God for His mercy, sir. The Queen has arrested Isabel for treason. They have taken her to the Tower.”

30

The Plan

A
cold spring rain lashed London. Thunder boomed like cannon and lightning flashed from steely clouds mustered above the Tower. Carlos hunched his shoulders against the downpour as he stood watch at the street railing above a stairway that ran down to Billingsgate Wharf. From a Dutch ship at anchor, boats were loading passengers and ferrying them to the wharf. He scanned the people climbing out of the first boat, ten or so, as they scurried along the landing toward the shelter of the sheds and shops. Through the slanting rain he caught sight of the one he was looking for as the man stepped out of the boat—tall, gray-haired, with an eye patch. Carlos set off down the stairway, calling, “Thornleigh!”

Isabel’s father heard him and looked up. They hurried toward each other and met in the middle of the stairs. Carlos was shocked at Thornleigh’s haggard face. In the week since he had sent word to him in Antwerp about Isabel, her father had aged a decade.
I must look like that, too
, he thought. For a moment neither spoke, too weighted down with feeling. Then questions rushed out of Thornleigh.

“Have you been allowed to see her? Is she bearing up? Has Honor talked to the Queen?”

Carlos shook his head, didn’t answer. He wasn’t here to commiserate. There wasn’t time. “Come.” He led Thornleigh to a chandler’s shop. Under its gabled roof they could stand out of the rain.

“The trial,” Thornleigh said, agony in his eyes. “Were you there? Who testified against her?”

It made Carlos sick to remember, but he saw how much it meant to Thornleigh, so he told him. How the spy Cecil had put in Grenville’s house swore that Isabel had plotted with the co-conspirators to kill the Queen. How a footman at the Spanish embassy swore he had seen her before Christmas at a mass in Ambassador Quadra’s chapel, and had seen her in hushed private talk with Quadra. A would-be assassin and a confederate of Spain—that’s how they had painted her. And convicted her. She had been sentenced to hang along with eleven men.

Listening, Thornleigh was ashen. He looked across the waterfront’s low rooftops to the Tower, its gray stone walls and turrets hulking in the rain. Carlos followed his gaze. Isabel was locked up behind those walls. The Tower was almost close enough that he could let fly an arrow and strike it. A hundred arrows, a thousand, guns, cannon—he wished he could blast the place to rubble to get Isabel out. But that was fantasy. Her only possible hope lay with his plan. He would not let himself think how uncertain a hope it was. It
could
work—if every piece fell into place.

Thornleigh could barely get out the next question. “When are . . . the executions?”

“Eight days.”

“Of course,” he said bleakly, “Palm Sunday tomorrow. They don’t dare do it in Holy Week. It would inflame Catholic sympathizers.”

Carlos pulled his eyes off the Tower. Talk like this would not help Isabel. “So we have just seven days to prepare.”

Thornleigh blinked at him. “For what?”

Carlos hesitated. Could he really trust the man? Thornleigh loved his daughter, but he was also known for his loyalty to the Queen. If he informed, they would arrest Carlos, and then he could do nothing for Isabel. But the strategy required his father-in-law. He
had
to trust him. “What would you give if we could save her?”

Thornleigh’s eyes narrowed. “What? How?”

“Answer me.”

“To save my daughter’s life? Everything!”

“You swear it? You would give up everything? Your lands? Your title? Give up England?”

“Good God, man, are you saying you have a plan? What is it? Tell me!”

“Swear first.”

“I swear!”

“The ships you own. Where does the nearest one lie?”

“Colchester Harbor. What does—?”

“Can you pilot it yourself?”

“Of course.”

“How long would it take you to bring it here?”

A clerk at the Admiralty told them Adam was across the river in Bermondsey. They walked over London Bridge to the south shore, then past the riverside bear-baiting grounds, and found Adam in a boat-building shed. He stood beside a new ship’s naked ribs, talking to a couple of workmen. He looked bleary-eyed, as though he was bent on constant work, no sleep, to keep his mind off Isabel’s fate. He had returned from Amsterdam only to hear that she had been tried as a traitor and convicted.

When he saw them coming, he left the workmen and embraced his father in silent misery. They had not seen each other in the three months since the crisis in Scotland had sent them on different missions for the Queen. Carlos watched him, thinking: Where does Adam’s deepest loyalty lie? His devotion to the Queen is stronger even than Thornleigh’s. To make sure, he was about to ask a few probing questions, when Thornleigh suddenly said to his son, “Carlos has a plan.”

They both looked at him, cautious but eager. Carlos decided to barrel ahead. In the din of rain drumming the roof, he laid out the details. When he’d finished, he could see a spark of hope in Adam’s eyes. But he also saw the struggle going on inside him. What meant more to him, his sister or his queen?

“I need you, Adam,” Carlos said. “If I don’t make it through this, you might. You can get her to your father’s ship, and then to his house in Antwerp. But we all know what it would mean for you.” Rupture from the Queen’s navy. Disgrace. Exile. “So, tell me now if you can’t do it.”

Adam looked at him for a long, hard moment. He turned to his father, and Carlos saw the look of anguished solidarity between them. Adam took a deep breath and said to Carlos, “There’s work to do in Antwerp for the Queen’s cause. What do you need?”

Carlos let out a breath of relief. Adam was with them. “Fighters,” he answered. “You know where to find them. And you’ll be leading them.”

“The taverns by the bear garden are our best bet. The Black Whale. The Horn. How many?”

“Eight is best, but only if we’re completely sure of them. Six or seven, at least.”

“When do we do it?”

Carlos looked at Thornleigh, who gave him a grim nod of encouragement. Carlos said to Adam, “That depends on your mother.”

That evening the Thornleighs’ house on Bishopsgate Street was as silent as though its people were already in mourning. Carlos had asked the two Thornleigh women to come downstairs and meet him in the parlor. He stood before the fire’s embers in the hearth and watched them come in. Frances was first. She looked drained, from worry or weeping or both. Isabel’s mother came in a moment later, pale and stiff, as though her iron will alone was keeping her from collapsing. Carlos saw Isabel in her, that same strength of will, and it wrenched his heart.

“Close the door,” he told her. Then, to them both, “Sit down.”

They sat in chairs close together, their eyes on him in tense expectation.

He pulled a stool close to them and straddled it. He lowered his voice so he could not be heard beyond the door. “I’ve talked to your husbands. We’re going to try to rescue Isabel.”

Frances gasped. Isabel’s mother did not move a muscle, but her eyes were alight with a stark hope as she asked, “How?”

He held up his hand in warning. “It will take every one of us. Me, your husbands, and both of you. Even then, I must tell you, our chances of success are not the best.”

The women shared a glance of dread. Then Isabel’s mother said, her voice strong, “Tell us what to do.”

He blessed her for that. He explained the plan, detailing the parts that Thornleigh and Adam would play. Then he told Frances hers. “Can you manage it?” he asked.

She lifted her chin and said without hesitation, “Yes.”

“How many servants would you need?”

“Just one. A reliable manservant.”

“Take Arthur,” Isabel’s mother told her. “He knows our Antwerp house.”

Frances nodded. They both looked back at Carlos, waiting for the rest of his instructions. He explained to Isabel’s mother the task that she must undertake.

“Lady Thornleigh,” he said, seeing Isabel in her face, “everything depends on you.”

Yeavering Hall, the building, looked the same, but nothing else seemed the same. That’s what Pedro felt as he limped across the courtyard, still weak from his ordeal. He saw days-old heaps of stinking slops outside the kitchen. An open stable door, banging in the wind. A line hung with laundry that had fallen into the shrubbery. Somewhere a baby was wailing. Everywhere, neglect.

Pedro was headed for the dairy house, but he stuck to the shadows and kept a lookout for the great lord, Grenville. If Grenville should see him, this time he might finish him. But Pedro was determined. He had thought about it all the way here. His duty was to Señora Valverde but he had failed her, had let the great lord take her letter. He had tried to fight Grenville’s three men, but it was impossible against their fists, and he had crumpled and curled up in the mud. They had kicked him, taken his horse, and left him on the side of the road, so beaten and bloody he had felt near death. A farmer leading his donkey to market had found him and taken him back to his cottage, and the man’s wife had tended Pedro’s cuts and bruises with some sticky, foul-smelling herbs. That had helped, and after a few days, as soon as he felt well enough to get up, he thanked the people and set out back to Yeavering Hall to confess his failure to the señora. It had taken over a week, for he was on foot and not yet strong, and he’d had to find cow byres to sleep in. Every mile made the pain in his knee throb worse.

“Pedro!” It was Liza, the milkmaid, coming out of the dairy house. Seeing her bright face, he felt light with relief. He poured out his troubles to her, trying to find the English words, though it came out mostly in Spanish.

“Your mistress?” Liza asked, catching that much. “She’s gone, Pedro. Oh dear, you don’t know everything that’s happened.” She was almost breathless as she told him, and he struggled to follow the English. “A fire at the mill . . . Sir Christopher perished . . . a treasure hoard, the gold melted . . . fished Will Morton’s body from the river . . . the Queen’s agents rode in with soldiers . . . treason plot . . . arrests at the neighboring manor . . . all the folk here in an uproar—”

Pedro stopped her. “Señora Valverde. Where did she go?”

Liza shrugged. “To London?”

Pedro thought of the letter. His duty. If the great lord was dead, was the letter lost? He asked Liza where her master kept his papers. She was not sure. “His bedchamber?” she suggested.

They went into the house, passing servants who looked idle. The place smelled musty, not clean. Pedro was not worried anymore about being caught. The great lord was dead and he was glad. No one stopped them as they went up the stairs and into the great bedchamber. Pedro searched through chests and drawers as Liza ran her hand in awe over the sumptuous bed hangings. Pedro could not find the letter anywhere. “Where else?” he asked. Liza frowned, thinking, then said, “He has a room of books and such. Downstairs. The library, they call it.”

In the library Pedro looked through the papers on top of the desk. No letter. He pulled out every drawer and rummaged through the papers. In the lowest drawer he found it. He knew the señora’s seal. It had been broken. The lines of scrawl on the paper meant nothing to him. He could not read.

“Give it here,” Liza said. “I know me letters.” She puzzled over the words and Pedro thought that she, too, could not tell what they meant. But then she looked up at him at if someone had slapped her. “Your mistress wrote of treason . . . hatched in this very house.”

Pedro knew his duty. First, Liza took him to the kitchen where he ate some cold beef and bread and then wrapped some hunks of both in sacking to take with him. He said good-bye to her, and went out to the stable, and saddled a horse. No one stopped him as he rode out through the gates. He had sworn to deliver Señora Valverde’s letter, and this time he would do it.