Winter Blockbuster 2012 (81 page)

‘Anna!’ she heard a shout. ‘Wait! Don’t go.’

It was Robert. She saw his face as he came ever closer, his jaw set in a hard line, tense and dark. She started to flee, yet something held her back. Something inexorable and inevitable, holding her fast where she was. She watched him come, anger and hope and fear all boiling inside her. She couldn’t run from him any longer.

He reined in his horse just in front of her, dirt and gravel flying. His boots were splashed with dust, his doublet unfastened to show his loosely laced shirt and the gleam of sweat on his bare skin. He had ridden hard indeed to catch her, and Anna sat tense in her saddle, unsure of what he would do.

‘Where the hell are you going?’ he demanded roughly.

‘To London,’ she said. She tightened her hold on the reins as the horse shifted restively under her.

‘Now? Alone?’

He looked at her as if she had suddenly gone mad and he couldn’t fathom her, and that made her angry all over again.
She
was not the mad one here—not the double-deceiver.
He
was the one who owed her an explanation.

‘I must see to my father,’ she said. ‘Unless you and Lord Edward have already seen him arrested.’

Rob’s eyes narrowed at her words, and she rued the way her anger and confusion made her so rash. If he did suspect her father, she had revealed her discovery. And if he did not
she had landed him in greater danger than he had been in before.

Either alternative felt intolerable to her.

Rob suddenly moved his horse closer to hers and reached out to grab her bridle. ‘What do you mean?’ he drilled out in a voice made all the worse by its quiet calm. A hot-tempered Rob was bad enough, but Anna had seen how his temper was changeable and quickly cooled. This darkly intense Robert …

‘Is my father in danger?’ she asked, holding her head high. She had to be strong now—to find the truth and face it, no matter what. It was the only chance she had to save the ones she loved. ‘Did Walsingham set you to spy on him?’

‘What do you know, Anna?’ he demanded, his grasp firm on her bridle. He held her fast.

‘I found a torn list in Lord Edward’s library. A list of purported traitors. In your writing.’

Rob’s jaw tightened. ‘Did you keep it? Do you know what would happen if you were found with such a thing?’

‘Nay, I did not keep it! I put it back on the desk where it came from. But I remember what it said—that my father’s name was on it,’ she said. ‘What is that list, exactly, and why is he on it?’

He shook his head. ‘I wanted to protect you from all this, Anna. To keep you safe.’

‘To be ignorant of the danger around us is not to be safe,’ she protested. ‘Tell me! Is my father suspected of something? Is he …?’

A traitor
. She could not even say the words aloud.

Rob raked his fingers through his hair, and she could see the tension of his muscles, the rigid way he held himself, as if he had to restrain his temper.

‘Someone connected to Lord Henshaw’s Men is taking Spanish bribes,’ he said at last. ‘For what exactly we do not
yet know, but Walsingham and his men will soon find out. And anyone involved will pay dearly.’

‘They think it is my father?’ Anna squeezed out, her throat tight.

‘He is only one possibility,’ Rob answered, his voice tense, as if he held a hard leash on his emotions. As if he didn’t want to tell her anything at all.

‘And how many
possibilities
have been tortured and killed?’ she asked. She closed her eyes, but the terrible images were still there. The taste of fear in her mouth.

‘Walsingham will not act without some kind of proof,’ Rob said quickly. ‘He knows the cost of moving too quickly and losing evidence of a wider plot. Your father is safe for now. The information Lady Essex brought to Hart Castle shows that.’

Anna shook her head. ‘But for how long?’

‘I am working fast, Anna, I promise you. I will find the villain.’

She heard him slide down from his horse and come to her side. She opened her eyes to stare down at him, and he reached for her hand. She let him take it, and she tried to read the truth in his eyes, feel it in his touch. She wanted to trust him so desperately.

‘Who do you really work for, Robert?’ she said. ‘What do you really know?’

‘Anna, I—’ he began, and suddenly broke off with a frown. He looked back over his shoulder as his hand tightened on hers.

‘What is it?’ she said, but then she heard it, too. Hoofbeats, coming swiftly closer along the road from London.

A cloud of dust in the distance suddenly revealed five black-clad horsemen, moving towards them.

‘Alden!’ one of them shouted. ‘We have been searching for you.’

Rob slapped Anna’s horse on its flank and called, ‘Run, Anna—now!’

‘Nay, not without you,’ she cried out, but the horse had already taken off across the field. She could only halt it at a distance, and she twisted around in her saddle just in time to see the riders overtake Rob as he climbed back into his saddle.

One of the men leaped from his horse, and there was the heavy, metallic clang of steel as he and Rob both drew their swords.

It was a quick and furious fight, a confusion of clashing blades and whirling dust. The two men grappled closely, viciously, and Rob managed to kick out at his opponent’s leg and land him in the dust.

But Rob was outnumbered. Before he could lunge forward with his blade he was set upon by the other men. When the dirt cleared and they backed away Anna saw him lying still in the road, his leg bleeding.

Anna couldn’t hold back her scream at the shocking sight. Her horse, already panic-stricken at the rush of noise and violence, wheeled around and Anna lost her grip on the reins. She felt herself falling, falling, the sky wheeling above her in a grey-blue blur.

Then she hit the ground, and pain shot through her body like a hundred knives. Her head struck something hard and everything went dim and hot.

She heard a man say, ‘And who might this be? Our little lamb, dropped right at our feet? Good fortune, lads.’

Someone touched her shoulder, and fiery agony shot down her side. She couldn’t breathe through it, couldn’t hold on to the light. She tried to gasp Rob’s name—and then all went black.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

T
HE
first thing Anna knew was the sound, faint and fuzzy, of blurry voices and the patter of wheels over gravel. She tried to reach out for it, hold on to it, but the noise kept fading in and out.

She slowly prised open her gritty eyes and saw what looked like wooden slats turned askew. Her head pounded, as if it would split open at the slightest movement, and her whole body ached. She struggled to remember where she was, what had happened, but all was blank. A sudden coarse, loud laugh from somewhere above her was as piercing as an arrow to her skull.

She closed her eyes again and tried with all her strength to move her limbs. Her legs were so heavy, every movement painful, but she managed to wriggle them around against her skirts. Gradually she felt other things—her hair fallen loose on her neck, the cool air on her arm where her sleeve was torn, the prickle of straw under her cheek.

She seemed to lie on her stomach in a cart of some sort, jolting as it moved along. She struggled to open her eyes again and saw the blur of green hedges beyond the wooden
slats, and a figure in black on horseback that rode alongside and led Anna’s horse.

And then she remembered all too clearly, as in a great flash of light. The men galloping towards them on the road. Rob shouting at her to run.

Rob falling, set upon by those men with their swords. She had tried to run to him, but she too had been brought low as she struggled to reach Robert. To see if he was alive or—or not.

No!
No, he could not be dead—not Rob. He was the most burningly alive person she had ever beheld. Surely she would feel it, deep in her heart, if he was dead. She would sense if he was no longer in the world.

Yet when she took in a deep breath and quieted her mind to try and search in her heart for him she could feel nothing. She could see nothing but his handsome, strong body crumpled on the road, so far away from her.

But he had to be
somewhere
. She had to find him, to be with him no matter what.

Anna summoned every bit of her strength and slowly pushed herself up to a sitting position. Her head spun, and pain shot up her arms as she used them to brace herself. But she kept breathing, and gradually the world righted itself. She opened her eyes to see two men on the cart’s seat above her, one holding the reins and the other watching her. His eyes were bright and beady above his thickly bearded jaw.

It was the same man who had leaned over her when she’d tumbled from her horse. She remembered it all now—every terrible, vivid detail.

‘Well, well, it seems our lamb is awake,’ he said, as cheerful and affable as if he greeted her in a tavern. ‘And just in time, as we grow near our destination.’

Anna pushed her tangled hair back from her face. ‘Where
are you taking me? Who are you? I demand to know what is happening!’

The man smiled. ‘I hardly think you are in a position to demand anything, Mistress Barrett.’

‘You know who I am?’ she asked, trying to remain calm and not give in to hysterics. That would help no one. Not herself, her father, nor Robert. But the uncertainty, the not knowing, was terrible.

‘Of course I do. I was sent to find you. Someone is eager to speak with you. It was very kind of you to meet us halfway as you did.’

‘Then may I not have the courtesy of knowing your name in turn?’ she demanded, struggling to hold on to cold, un-revealing politeness. To keep her distance from the whole scene.

‘I am called Smythe. But that hardly matters. My part in this assignment is nearly complete.’

Anna turned away from his piercing stare to study her surroundings. Perhaps she could leap off the cart as it slowed and run into the woods? But there was that horseman close beside them, with his hard face and shining sword.

‘I wouldn’t try to leave us if I were you, Mistress Barrett,’ Smythe said. ‘It would only go the worse for you when you are caught.’

‘I doubt I am in any condition to run,’ Anna murmured. She had hoped to see another cart, one carrying Rob, but they were alone on the road. The fields to either side grew narrower, and in the distance there was a grey cloud of hovering smoke. It seemed they neared London.

‘Where is Master Alden?’ she demanded. ‘Did you murder him?’

The man suddenly climbed over the back of the seat and dropped down beside her in the straw. He no longer smiled.

‘Master Alden should not be your concern, mistress,’ he said. ‘You must look to yourself.’

‘How can I do that when I do not know what is happening?’ she ground out. ‘I have done no wrong.’

‘Have you not? Then you need have no fear.’ He leaned closer and whispered, ‘Yet I think the same cannot be said of Master Alden. You should have a greater care of those with whom you associate.’

Anna bit her lip and said nothing. It was clear she would learn nothing else here. She’d have to wait until they reached wherever they were going. And she refused to show even a hint of fear.

Smythe reached for her hands and bound them tightly with a coarse length of rope. As they sat there in silence, the cart slowly joined the stream of people passing through London’s gates and into the city itself. The silence of the country gave way to the clang of shouts and cries, the shrill call of merchants selling pies and ale and broadsheets of all the day’s scandals. The fresh green air became thick with smoke and humanity, and the buildings grew closer and closer together until their eaves nearly blotted out the sky.

Anna was back in London, her home, yet she had never felt so strange before, so cut off from all that was familiar.

So very alone.

The cart halted by the riverside. In the distance along the crowded ribbon of water she glimpsed the edifice of London Bridge, its decoration of traitors’ heads mere black dots against the gray sky. Beyond that somewhere was the round wooden O of the White Heron, and her father’s house tucked behind it.

Smythe took her arm and helped her to stumble down from the cart. She was quickly surrounded by the other guards, their tall frames blocking her view, and they hurried her
into a waiting boat. As they were rowed across the river she glimpsed the impenetrable stone walls of the Tower, and she remembered the day she had followed Robert there. They had taken much the same path then—across the river, beyond the Tower.

Had that been the first step that had led her here?

Once on the other side she half feared she would be led into the Tower itself, but she was hurried past its silent bulk and into the narrow lanes just past. Then she did see where they were going. The house in Seething Lane.

Smythe held her arm in a hard grasp as he rushed her down the narrow street, almost lifting her from her feet. They went not to the front door, but to a half-hidden entrance at the back of the garden. She was borne down a narrow staircase, dim and dusty, and along a silent corridor. The house seemed like a maze, one where a person could wander lost forever.

Smythe unlocked a door at the end of the hall and pushed her inside. ‘Please wait here, Mistress Barrett,’ he said, with another of those terrible smiles, before he untied her hands and shut the door behind him.

Anna heard the grate of the lock turning, trapping her there. The man’s footsteps retreated and she was truly alone.

The chamber was cold, and Anna rubbed her hands over her arms as she studied this new prison. It was a small, grey space, far away from the luxuries of Hart Castle, with plain whitewashed walls and only one tiny window high up for light. There was a fireplace, but no blaze lit within it, and only one backless chair and rough table. An ewer of wine and a plate of bread sat on it.

Anna dared drink nothing here. She needed to think, and what if it was drugged or—or poisoned? She slowly sat down on the chair and rubbed her fingers over her aching temples.

She felt the weight of her purse still tied around her waist,
and quickly pulled it open. Her coins were gone, but they had left her the book of Rob’s poetry. It gleamed ruby red in the murky light, a precious jewel to sustain her. She raised it to her face and inhaled deeply, as if somehow his essence would still be in those pages.