The Traitor's Daughter (8 page)

Inside the stable he found Townsend pacing in the dim light between horse stalls. Nags' stalls, rather. The dilapidated stable was filthy, its matted straw rank with the stink of horse piss that left a sharpness at the back of Robert's throat. It intensified the bitter taste that had stuck there since he'd watched old Prowse plunge over the cliff this morning. That sight, he feared, would long haunt him.

“What's this about a botched attack on Elizabeth?” he said. A brusque greeting—but the news had troubled him on his ride from Seaford. This attempted assassination would result in tightened security around Elizabeth, and no doubt around Mary, too.

“You heard?” Townsend was of an age with Robert, just turned twenty. He was a strapping fellow, though a hint of baby fat still pudged his cheeks. His affable face was clouded with worry.

“At a tavern on the road,” Robert replied. “A wine merchant from London was regaling the locals. He said it was a man with a pistol. Missed his mark, more's the pity. Who is he?”

“No one knows. Leastways, no one I talked to. I knocked on our alderman's door to ask, but his wife said he was none the wiser and had rushed off to ask the sheriff. All I heard was that Baron Thornleigh's troop nabbed the fellow on the bridge as he made a run for Southwark.”

Robert stiffened at hearing his father's name. Townsend did not know he was Lord Thornleigh's son. They had met for the first time only last month. “Nabbed just the one?”

“So far. They'll be doing a house-to-house search, though. God knows whom they'll charge, if only for show.”

Robert knew that danger was real—a vengeful sweep of suspects. Hotheads like this gunman caused more trouble than they were worth. “Some fool acting on his own,” he said with contempt.

“Righteous, though,” Townsend offered. “Maybe one of the Jesuits.”

Robert only grunted. Even priests could be fools. “We'll need to take into account the added security when we make our plans with the others. Now,” he said, clapping his hands with vigor to change the subject, “did you arrange for the warehouse?” Robert had not yet met the five other young men who had pledged themselves to save Mary, but he had corresponded with them all. Paget had appointed him as their leader and Robert was eager to establish his authority immediately. He was also itching to see his personal plan bear fruit. This skulking around London was dangerous. He needed a safe haven, one that would advance his cause, and for this he had pinned his hopes on his sister taking the bait of the letter. If she didn't, Prowse's death had been in vain—and that was a burden of guilt Robert hated to carry. Kate
had
to respond. She would then be the conduit to his real target: their father.

“Robert,” Townsend said, his voice tight with what sounded like fear, “we have to postpone the meeting.”

“What? Why?”

“Roger Griffith is dead. A brawl on Ludgate Hill.”

Robert blew out his cheeks in commiseration. “That's a blow.” Griffith was another man he hadn't met, but knew by reputation, a diligent agent for Mary's interests. Bad luck that some personal conflict had turned lethal. “Well, Castelnau will find another courier. It needn't affect us.” He had not received from Paget any change in his instructions.

Townsend shook his head. “You don't understand. We killed him.”

“We?”

“Someone sent by Queen Mary's people.” Townsend lowered his voice and fear crept back into it. “Turns out Griffith was working for Matthew Buckland. So, for Walsingham.”

That hit Robert like a punch. “Dear God.” He'd had no idea.

Townsend nodded morosely. “The ambassador told Feron and Feron told me.”

Laurent Feron. Ambassador Castelnau's clerk. Robert balled his fists in fury. “Griffith,” he growled, appalled by the man's betrayal. “The double-dealing bastard.”

“That's why we have to lie low. Walsingham may be getting close.”

“What evidence do you have of that?”

“Not evidence, exactly. But it stands to reason. Since they were running Griffith, who can say how much he told them?”

Robert thought about that. So perhaps postponing was the wise thing. But wise men could talk themselves in circles and never move forward. That could mean abandoning Mary to imprisonment for more weeks, months, maybe years. Robert hated it. Besides, what would he tell Paget in his next report? That the grand plan had to be aborted because he was nervous? “Townsend,” he said, “if we quake and quail every time the enemy makes a move we might as well join their foul heretic church here and now. Shuffle like sheep to their communion table and swear allegiance to their Jezebel. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not.”

“Then we need to move fast. I want to meet the others day after tomorrow.”

“But that's a whole week before we planned.”

“I'm
changing
the plan. Send word. The warehouse. Thursday.”

5

Chaucer by Moonlight

K
ate slipped out of the bedchamber with her candle, leaving Owen sinking into sleep after their lovemaking. Padding barefoot along the corridor she glanced over her shoulder at the wing where her grandmother's bedchamber lay. Not a sound from there.
Unlike the lovemaking,
she thought with an abashed smile. It had been animated, to say the least—she'd half feared they had woken the house. Happily tingling from it, she went quietly down the stairs.

The great hall was awash in white light from the huge full moon. A harvest moon. Upstairs, Owen had closed the shutters on it as he'd said again that she must tell Matthew she could not take the mission. Kate had not wanted that discussion. She had wanted Owen. It was she who had cut through his words and pulled him to the bed. Her hungry untying of his shirt strings had silenced him. Their lovemaking had been sudden, rushed, frantic. Kisses that almost cut her lips. Her chemise torn at the neckline. His urgent need, ramming into her. Her need for him, clawing his back.

She reached the parlor off the great hall. As she came in, her grandmother's gray cat, Erasmus, jerked his head up from his cushion on the window seat. This parlor was Lady Thornleigh's library, the crammed bookshelves rising almost to the ceiling along three walls. Moonlight through the oriel window silvered the books' spines. The soaring window and its window seat wide as a man dwarfed Erasmus. Kate went to him and scratched behind his ear and he leaned into her in bliss, then settled back on his cushion, purring. She set down her candle on the desk in front of the window. The night was warm—she had slipped on just a light silk dressing gown over her chemise—and with one arm she lifted the heavy fall of her hair to let the air cool the back of her neck, still damp from lovemaking.

She could not fall asleep. Her mind was too alive. Owen. Father. Robert. The men of her family seemed to surround her. In the silence she heard their voices. Owen insisting that she stay out of danger. Her father demanding her obedience. Her brother needing her help, though he had not asked for it. Robert's tone was hard to imagine. She still heard him as a giggling boy—“Kate! I took Master Prowse's quill. Don't tell!”—but he was now a man. What did he sound like these days?

She sat down at the desk and blew out the candle. The moon over her shoulder cast light enough, glimmering off the room's pantheon of books on philosophy, astronomy, mathematics, history, geography, exploration, agriculture, gardening. Many were in Latin, others in Italian, Spanish, French, and English. On the desk lay five green leather-bound ledgers, a silver ink pot, a quill pen, and five stacks of books, each several volumes high, her grandmother's most recent acquisitions. The ledgers catalogued the collection. It was an ongoing project, one that Kate had initiated. It had kept her gratefully occupied during the lonely months without Owen. Her secret decrypting work for Matthew she did upstairs in the privacy of her chamber. Down here, amongst her grandmother, the chamberlain, steward, footmen and maids, she showed her public face.

She lifted a book off the top of one stack, its brown leather binding spotted with age, then drew toward her the ledger farthest to her right and opened it to the page of creamy vellum where she had last left off. This ledger catalogued works by English writers. She flipped open the inkwell, took up her quill, dipped it, and wrote the date. Then:
The Canterbury Tales. Author, Geoffrey Chaucer. Publisher, William Caxton. Date of printing, 1483.
She paused and laid a hand respectfully on the old volume of Chaucer's beloved work. Next year would be its centennial. Lady Thornleigh particularly cherished her books by English authors, including her onetime guardian, Sir Thomas More, in whose household she had grown up.

Kate bent to her writing. So intent was her concentration she did not hear the footsteps until they reached the desk. She looked up in surprise. Owen.

He came to her side. He was barefoot and his shirt, pulled on in haste, hung loose over his breeches. With its lacings untied, the shirt exposed his chest almost to his navel, and the white scar tissue from a knife stab at his rib gleamed in the moonlight. Owen's life in the theater had not been all poetry and applause. He looked at her with concern. “Forgive me,” he said.

“For what?”

He fingered the neckline of her chemise where he had slightly torn it. “I was too rough.”

“You were not, my love,” she assured him. She slipped her hand around his fingers at her neck. “These months without you, that was the rough.”

He let out a small breath of relief. He bent and kissed the back of her hand as though in thanks. Glancing at the walls of books, then at the volume of
The Canterbury Tales
in front of her, he said with gentle warmth, “What is better than wisdom? Woman. And what is better than a good woman? Nothing.”

She smiled. The words were Chaucer's. She countered slyly with another Chaucer quote:

He chuckled. Sitting down on the edge of the desk, he shoved aside the volume, his expression turning sober. “But we must talk, Kate. Books will give no refuge from the storm you have volunteered to venture into. The times are full of murder, and our enemies ruthless.”

“I know.”

“Do you? I think not, or you would not have offered your life to Matthew.”

“Offered my . . . ? Heavens, I do not intend to sacrifice myself.”

“But that is what's at stake. It's why I cannot let you do this.”

She slid her hand free of his. “Matthew thinks it's a fine idea. And he knows the stakes better than anyone.”

“Matthew is blind when it comes to you. He sees you as a goddess, invincible as Athena.”

She sputtered a laugh, the thought so absurd. “I beg your pardon?”

“He's in love with you, poor fellow. You didn't know?”

She blinked at him. She had
not
known.

Owen took her hand again, and in one smooth motion raised her to her feet and pulled her close so she stood between his legs, where he sat. He gazed up at her face and clasped her hand to his chest. She resisted, her free hand pressing his shoulder with just enough force to show her reluctance to be mastered by his magnetism. “What man could not love you?” he said. “But none but I knows the treasure you are. A treasure I will guard with my life.”

“And what of
your
life? You risk it in going into the Earl of Northumberland's stronghold.”

“That's different.”

“Because you're a man?”

“Of course. Besides, I may not manage to get inside.”

“You'll find a way.”

She said it with fond admiration, but in her heart she hated to think of him going into the camp of a likely enemy, and all alone. She stroked his cheek with the back of her finger. He had arrived at the house clean-shaven and smelling of sweet almond oil. The barber had also cropped the erratic tufts of hair that had proclaimed his prisoner status. With his finely bristled skull he now looked like a soldier of ancient Rome. She bent her head and kissed him.

He broke it off. “Kate, you cannot keep avoiding this subject by seducing me.”

He knew her so well! She took a step back from him and turned to the window.
He's right,
she thought.
Tell him the truth.

She sat stiffly on the cushioned window seat. Erasmus jerked up his head. Kate raised a hand to stroke his fur, but he leapt to the floor as if he sensed danger and streaked away. Kate raised her eyes to Owen. “Something happened today. When I saw my father.”

“Something about the gunman?” She had told Owen as soon as he'd arrived that she had seen her father arrest the would-be assassin.

“No. Something Father said.”

That surprised him. “You spoke?” She had said nothing about their conversation.

“He asked me to come home. To leave you and come home. I said I would not, of course, and I . . . well, I insulted him.” She scarcely knew how those harsh words to her father had come out of her mouth.

Owen left the desk and came and sat beside her on the window seat. “It's been hard for you, I know,” he said kindly. “The breach with him.”

“It's worse than that. He gave me an ultimatum. He said that unless I left you he would disinherit me.”

Owen scowled. “That's plain cruel. He has no right.”

“He has the power.”

“Kate, we don't need him. I'm going to make good, I promise you. Walsingham himself has all but guaranteed me the post of customs chief in Ipswich.”

“You don't understand. I
do
need him. He's my father and I need to know that one day, when this dark time is past, he will see that I've been on his side—the Queen's side—all along. And that you have, too. I need him to know I did everything I possibly could.”

“You already are. You're the best decrypting agent Matthew has.”

“Bah,” she said dismissively. “Much of it I could have done as a child.” She quoted the Bible: “The last will be first and the first will be last.”

“Pardon?”

“
A
is
z
and
b
is
y,
et cetera. Child's play.”

“Come, come, you crack far more intricate codes than that. Codes that have baffled the best.”

“Don't you see? I want to do
more.
”

“But
this?
A double game is the most dangerous work there is.”

“But yields the most valuable intelligence. Without Mary's letters that Griffith brought us we would never have known the extent of her scheming with King Philip. And with the exiles, those traitors from hell.”

The vehemence of her last words took him aback. Kate always found it hard to control her bitterness about her mother.

“Kate, no one censures you for your mother's sins. You do not have to atone.”

She did not want to speak of her mother. Or to waste another thought on her. “I've told you my reason. When the day comes that I can tell my father the truth about us I want to have done everything I can for the Queen. For England. If I don't . . . well, I may be telling him only as Spanish soldiers prod us all to the gallows.”

Owen searched her eyes, a sad look in his. “Your mind is made up, isn't it?”

“Yes. I've already taken the first step. I've written to Marie de Castelnau asking to come and see her baby.”

He said with gloomy admiration, “Ah. That's clever.”

“My love, don't worry. I assure you, no one is better fit for this mission than I am.”

He nodded, reluctantly agreeing. “Because you're a woman.”

“Of course.” It echoed what he had said about being a man, and she could not resist adding with a sly smile, “Besides, I may not manage to get inside.”

He, too, heard his echo and smiled at her wit. Kate saw that he had accepted the plan, however unwillingly. Now that they were agreed, she felt a rush of excitement. In convincing Owen she had convinced herself. She
could
do this!

He said, “I won't be that far away in Sussex. If you need me, send word to the Angel Inn in Petworth. I'll come to your side the same day.”

“I shall.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

He raised both hands and gently smoothed her hair back from her face. “Dear God, I may not see you again for—”

“Shh,” she said, laying her finger on his mouth. She did not want to think of that yet. Another separation. More lonely nights.

“Yes,” he whispered. “We have tonight.”

He lightly kissed her neck. She bent back her head to let his kisses brush her throat. He slipped her robe and chemise off her shoulder and ran his lips over her collarbone. She shivered with pleasure. His mouth found hers. She smiled under his kiss. “Who's the seducer now?”

He chuckled, then murmured, “The one who loves you more than life.”

Their lovemaking this time was slow and languid, beginning with smiles and whispers, then quieting into a silent searching of palms and fingertips, of lips and tongues. It built to an exquisite ache, then an even more exquisite release. When finished, they lay on the broad window seat locked in each other's arms. The moon had trailed to the window edge, casting them in half shadow as if to give them privacy. The cat hopped up beside Kate's bare ankle, startling her with a tickle of his tail. He settled into a ball in the crook of her knee, purring so loudly it made her laugh.

Owen laughed, too, as he unwrapped his leg from Kate's. “Erasmus, when I am with my lady three is one too many.”

Kate sat up, her legs bare to the thigh as she swung them over the window seat edge and tugged her chemise and robe back into place. Straightening his own clothes, Owen leaned against the casement, gazing at her in the white moonlight. “By God, but you are lovely. An alabaster Venus, warm with life.”

Erasmus stretched languorously, yawning, his long body taking up all the space between them. They shared another smile. “Reclaiming his territory,” Owen said. He winked at Kate. “As I've reclaimed mine.” He got to his feet and held out his hand to her. “Come, my love. Sleep. We are both going to need it.”

She rose and slipped her arms around his waist, her body still tingling from their passion, and pressed her cheek against his neck. She did not want to leave this nook of moonlight and love. Did not want to break the spell. He held her close, and she was filled with a sweet gratitude for him. He understood how much the Queen meant to her. And how much her father's esteem meant, though he had turned his face against her. But that would change if she held fast to what she believed. Owen understood that as well. This bond between them, a bond of absolute trust, made her want to share more. She was bursting to tell him the news that had brightened her morning.