The Spymaster's Daughter (25 page)

She straightened, stepping as erect as she could, and her hand fell away. Frances wanted him to hold tight to her arm, for warmth and to comfort her, but she could not ask. If he were daring so much as his life, she would have to find her own courage. She knew she had valor bred into her. Her mother had suffered greatly in three stillbirths and had died without a groan. Her father ailed and yet kept to his work. She had to take hold of her own daring, if not for her own sake, then for Robert's.

The guard stopped and turned to them, holding his lantern high. He pointed to a cell. “The prisoner you seek is in there.”

“Thank you, yeoman. I will commend you to Mr. Secretary,” Robert said, clapping him on the back and handing him a silver shilling.

Frances moved quickly to the barred cell door. “Jennet…Aunt…” she called, seeing no shape in the deep gloom.

A shadow moved in the dark. Rising from the straw, a filthy, bony woman, her gown in rags, crawled forward. “Frances?” she questioned. “Child…dear child, I thought never to see you again in this life.”

“Dearest Jenney, what have they done to you? Are you hurt? Tortured?”

Holding to the bars with grimy hands and broken nails, Jennet pulled herself erect. “Starved and questioned,” she said, stopping to wipe a trickle of blood from her dry, cracked lips, “but not put to the hot irons yet, although they have been shown to me…and more….” She bent her forehead to rest it near Frances. “I cannot use my poison. My life is God's to take.” She looked up at her niece. “Mayhap I will die first.” Her voice carried a hopeful note that broke Frances's heart.

“No, Jennet, you will not die. We have come to take you from this place. Robert has arranged all.” Frances pulled her cloak aside and, from the pocket tied about her waist, drew a cloth-wrapped piece of cheese and a small bread loaf. She pushed them through the bars.

For a moment, Aunt Jennet seemed as if she did not recognize what she held. “Food,” she croaked, and fell on it, forgetting all the fine manners she had taught her young charge, and breaking anew her niece's heart.

“Robert,” Frances whispered, aware the yeoman guard had moved too close for normal speech.

“Yes,” he said. “It is time for us to leave.”

Frances's voice shook. “Not without Jennet.”

“No, not without her.” He walked toward the guard and spoke quietly.

The man took out a ring of large keys and with one opened Jennet's cell door, motioning her forward. “Come out, woman. Mr. Secretary has decided to show you mercy.”

For what seemed like hours to Frances, but could have been minutes, her aunt stared, unmoving, crumbs of bread and cheese scattered about her mouth. “Your father will take me back? I am leaving this hellish place?”

Frances looked to Robert, her joy mixed with a question. “Why didn't you tell me my father intended Jennet's release before we left Greenwich?”

“We had to look like a man and woman out for a lark. How could I trust that you would not—”

“You thought me so weak and silly that…”

“No, Frances.” He took hard hold of her arm. “I thought you so loving that you would not be able to still your weeping. Leave off now. You may chastise me later if you still wish it.”

“But my father…?”

“Your father has come to realize that this is a stain on his family honor that it is better he remove in a happier way.”

“Did you help him to realize the stain?”

“We both did. Now, enough talk. We must get to the boat before the cost drains my purse. The waterman will not expect another passenger and will see it as an opportunity.”

Frances said no more, but took Jennet's bone-thin arm and helped her stumble through the corridors and down well-worn steps to the water gate and out to Galley Key. The boat waited there, swinging on its mooring rope.

As Robert had foretold, the waterman eyed the new passenger and held out his hand, which Robert filled with the last shilling in his possession and added sixpence to hasten the trip.

“Waterman, take us to the south side of the river below London Bridge to a ship, the
Rendsborg
, flying the Danish flag.” He shook his head at Frances as soon as her mouth opened to question him.

He wrapped his own cloak about Jennet as she sat shivering, trying to tame her wild hair.

The sun was rising downriver, and the tide was running hard toward the channel. The waterman was skilled and steered confidently as they shot between the pillars of London Bridge.

They reached the ship as the anchor was being winched snug to the windward side, a lug sail unfurling to gain steerage, a loud voice shouting orders.

“Ho, the captain!” Robert shouted.

A bearded man leaned over the aft castle. “Aye!”

“Passenger for Calais.”

“Who be ye?”

“The man and passenger you are expecting.”

“Ye almost missed the tide.”

“But I didn't. Toss a ladder over the side.”

As the heavy rope ladder fell down amidships, Robert grasped it and held it steady. “Say your good-byes quickly.”

Frances kissed Jennet, who seemed not to know as yet what was happening to her. “I will miss you, Aunt. Someday, perhaps…”

“Not in my life, niece, but I will pray for you each day I live.”

“And I for you, to the same God.”

Jennet looked hard at Robert, the blowing river mist already cleansing her face and bringing some color back to her cheeks. “Take my thanks, too, Robert Pauley,” she said, relinquishing his cloak. “You are a better man than I knew.”

“That is my lot, madam.” Robert smiled slightly and handed her a sealed letter. “Money and the name and address of a recusant English family in Calais who have need of a governess.” He hoisted her up to meet the hands of two seamen hanging easily over the
side. Jennet was soon over the polished wood railing and standing on the deck of the already moving ship.

Frances waved while her aunt stared back at her, still unbelieving, until the lug sail filled and the ship moved down toward the channel.

Jennet, standing amidst the spars and rigging, her hair unpinned and whipping about her face, was no longer the prim lady she had been and insisted Frances should be. Aunt Jennet lifted her hand once and then was quickly gone, around a bend, out of sight.

“B
ack to Greenwich quickly now,” Robert ordered the waterman.

They moved along in silence for a time, except for the splash of oars to keep them centered in the river's tidal flow. He could no longer see the topsail of the
Rendsborg
, though he could see Frances straining for a last sight of the ship.

They faced the morning sun now slanting over the horizon.

“I regret the loss you suffer,” he told Frances, hoping she would believe him.

“If not for you, I would have much more to regret.” He heard the words, though her face was muffled in his cloak. Later, he hoped, he could find the exact place her lips had touched, and at the same time he damned himself for a brainless fool.

Although he said nothing, she spoke again. “You are the kindest, most valiant man I know, and I have not been so myself. I did not always appreciate Jennet, or know her worth. She was loyal to her faith and to me. I shall miss her always.” The last words quavered on her tongue.

He smiled at her, hoping she would not cry. He did not trust himself not to embrace her if she did. “My lady, if you find need for guidance or lessons in behavior, you may seek me out….”

She laughed, the tears disappearing in the river breeze. “You look like no nurse I ever saw, Master Pauley.”

“Frances, intelligencers come in all disguises.”

They sat in silence, cloaked in their own thoughts, until they bumped into the Greenwich water stairs.

They continued without speech, retracing their steps past curious guards, through kitchens, upstairs, until they reached her apartment. She took hold of his arm, not knowing how to thank him, or how to say good-bye. There would now be few opportunities to see him.

“Remember, if you ever need a friend, I—” Robert breathed in as if he were almost out of air. “Fare you well, my lady,” he said, making a quick, respectful bow and walking away, at first slowly, then faster.

H
AMPTON
C
OURT

M
r. Secretary Walsingham kept Robert busy and generally far away from court, and from Frances, and had for months. She heard of him only through her father's chance remarks, or saw Robert for no more than fleeting moments in her father's bedchamber or crowded palace corridors, when amidst a throng. She could in no way speak to him as she desired. He did not appear to look her way. It was as well. What could he possibly say? In truth, how would she answer?

In private, she railed against what she tried not to acknowledge in public. She could not accept the reality of her feelings for her father's man, yet she could not deny them without becoming the most dreadful liar to herself.

She wanted him in her sight. At least she wanted to know where he was and when he'd return.

Countess Warwick, the queen's first lady of the bedchamber, had remarked how loose Frances's gown had become, though Frances had attempted to conceal it with a lacy shawl. She had no appetite for food, often drinking a simple of thistle in some wine for melancholia.

Frances, a married woman bound by the Church and all decent and polite custom, had to be faithful and true in thought and deed to a husband who did not love her. And worse, she was forced to turn her back on Robert Pauley, who did love her. Or did he? Though she could not forget his arms about her, the comfort of them, the thrill, no words of love had passed between them. Could she be merely a silly woman, no better than the kitchen maids yearning after stable boys?

And yet there had been more in those embraces, she was certain…most of the time.

She would never know Robert's thoughts now, and that was the heart's ache of it. They could be extreme sympathy, which she mistook for more out of some battered womanish hope for affection not yet quite dead under her breast. She tried to stanch her rampant wishes, but they flowed through her like the Thames at high tide, unstoppable by her will alone. She must find strength to thrust her own emotions deep down lest they show on her face, and the very observant Countess Warwick next to her in the presence chamber be made too aware of them.

She sighed. She had long practice in pushing feelings away, no matter how often they slipped back into her head. Perhaps every woman did, since a woman's emotions must first conform to her father's or husband's, or even her brother's. She had no right to own them for herself.

This day Frances had made her way through tapestry-hung halls to join Her Majesty's entourage to the presence chamber. She held herself upright, having little choice, encased as she was in a farthingale and many shifts.

Bright morning sun cast diamond outlines on the shining marble floor of Cardinal Wolsey's old palace. She liked her new place, away from Lady Stanley, closer to the queen's throne and next to the kind Countess of Warwick.

Fortunately, Her Majesty had nevermore mentioned Frances wearing a sword. Today, she had adorned herself with the string of matched pearls that Philip had sent for the third anniversary of their nuptials. At the last moment this morn, she had removed a small bunch of dried flowers from under her bolster. Like a young girl she had rescued them from the bower Robert had made of her receiving chamber that last day of his service, and had tucked them into her kirtle. She realized with a slight smile that her ornaments were as conflicted as her heart.

Leave off!
she commanded, silently stopping her rambling thoughts. She must take care not to become a self-pitying creature, a pain to live with and a bore to befriend.